Language, Culture, and Identity

After my sophomore year of college, I decided to take a year off to live and work in Argentina.  Having studied Spanish for over five years, I left the United States feeling very confident in my Spanish-speaking abilities.  However, I quickly discovered that the years I spent inside the classroom had done little to prepare me for the foreign language experience I was about to have.  My experience in Argentina revealed to me the importance of language in reflecting cultural attitudes and building self-identity.

Just minutes after touching down in Cordoba, Argentina, I began to see the difference between Argentinian Spanish and the Spanish I had learned in school.  When the customs official turned to me and asked, “¿Hablas Castellano?”, I feared I had landed in the wrong country.  Turns out, the Spanish spoken in Argentina is commonly referred to as Castellano, a name that reflects the language’s Castillian origin.  I quickly learned why:  Most of the words I learned in Spanish class were pronounced differently in Castellano.  For example, the “ll” sound which usually represents the [ j ] sound is pronounced as a [ ʒ ] sound in Castellano.  The word "tu", which translates to the informal “you” in most Spanish speaking countries does not exist in Argentina, which instead has its very own informal you (“vos”) and accompanying set of verb conjugations.  

This unique Argentinian variation of Spanish reflects a larger cultural theme.  Many Argentinians consider themselves different from other South Americans.  Many will say they identify as Europeans just as much or more than they identify as South Americans.  This cultural attitude is reflected in their unique vernacular, which sets their country apart from other Spanish-speaking ones.  In addition, Argentinian slang demonstrates strong European influences.  If you listen to an Argentinian speak Spanish, you might almost mistake it for Portuguese or Italian for its intonation, pronunciation, and borrowed words.

Furthermore, the Argentine vernacular reflects the country's cultural values surrounding the nature of work.  One striking example of this is that in Argentine Spanish, the phrase “¿Qué haces?”, which directly translates to “What do you do?”, actually means “How are you doing?”. In the US, the question “What do you do?” is often one of the first asked when getting to know someone, reflecting that our culture places a strong emphasis on one’s career in determining personal identity.  In contrast, Argentinian’s place less value on work as a component of self identity.  The fact that the phrase “¿Qué haces?” takes on a different meaning in a social setting shows that Argentinians consider work to be a smaller factor in one’s self identity.  

Language also played an important role in my own identity when living in Argentina.  Although I was fluent enough in Spanish to express any thought I wanted to convey, I wasn’t always able to do so in the exact, precise way that I wanted to, or with the degree of eloquence that I was accustomed to in English.  My unsophisticated speech had a surprisingly strong effect on my self-identity.  My inability to speak in more complex, nuanced ways made me feel less intelligent when expressing my thoughts.  

When I returned to the states, I brought my Argentinian Spanish back with me.  Back home, my Mexican friends would tease me for my Argentinian accent, suggesting that my new accent made me sound stuck-up and arrogant.  My identity, too, had been shaped by the language.  

My experience in Argentina gave me my first glimpse into the power of language in both reflecting and shaping human culture and identity.  An intriguing follow-up would be exploring the circumstances in which language simply reflects culture and identity and those in which it actually creates and shapes it.