Journal of
Languages and Culture

  • Abbreviation: J. Lang. Cult.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 2141-6540
  • DOI: 10.5897/JLC
  • Start Year: 2010
  • Published Articles: 132

Full Length Research Paper

The position of language in development of colonization

Mohammad Khosravi Shakib
Department of Persian Language and Literature, Human Science Faculty, Lorestan University, I. R. Iran.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 24 May 2011
  •  Published: 30 July 2011

Abstract

 

Language as communication and as culture is then products of each other and Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. Language is thus inseparable from us as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world. Most of the people believe that "language" is the basic tool used to give identity to a national culture. Language relationship with mind, soul, identity and thought of those who speak in their mother tongue, make most of colonialists societies to colonizing other societies focus on language and language identity of those societies. Being aware of importance of language and cultural domination, during their colonialism, colonialists try to convey their thought, beliefs and their customs through language as a cultural tool in an invisible and imperceptible way. Using this policy they can complete and strengthen their process of penetration and colonialism on others. As the result of lingual and cultural weakness, conquered societies submitted to colonialists' sovereignty and occasionally they have accepted all aspects of their cultural and lingual sovereignty. Post-colonialism writers and thinkers such as Edward W. Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and so forth have studied the biased approach of lingual sovereignty and its sovereignty effects. This study emphasize on this fact that putting emphasize on lingual and cultural identity and a noble look at the relationship between colonialists and subordinates, post-colonialism studies represent a noble reading of the world as a distracted text and situated societies in it.

 

Key words: Language, colonization, culture, identity.