How Language Contributes to Ethnic Identity: Insights from a Socio-cultural Framework

Language is an essential component of human identity. In fact, it plays such a pivotal role in shaping human identity that many branches of humanities use it as the main instrument to study the human being and the human condition. This paper aims to show the impact of language particularly in contributing to the establishment of the ethnic identity of an individual or a group and in their historical survival. First, the article discusses how language is used to define ethnicity and how it is used to trace the origin of its present-day speakers. Then some linguistic examples, such as codeswitching and language revival, are analysed in depth to better describe the intimate relationship between language and ethnic identity. This relationship, as the analysis suggests, can be seen as a symbiosis where each is beneficial to the other, and ultimately, they both are crucial for the individual and the group.