"Ethnic identity is a twin skin to linguistic identity"
In "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" Anzaldua explores the multiplicity of language that exists between English and Spanish, and which is relevant to Chican@ identity. I agree very much with her statement about identity, and I think that language is (probably obviously) an extremely important consideration when creating performance.
Anzaldua goes on to list the eight languages she speaks in various different contexts, but I think it's here that she unintentionally contradicts what she is actually saying about language.
Language, and culture, and ethnicity are fluid and borderless. They are in a constant state of change, and while categorizing them certainly appeals to our need for organization, I don't think a list of differentiated languages represents the reality of language and its relation to culture. As languages blend and mix and borrow and segregate and split and morph, so do the people that speak them. A hundred years ago, had I grown up with the genetics and geography that I did, I would have been a distinctively Irish girl in all kinds of ethnic conflict with new waves of immigrants. But over the last hundred years, languages have become friendlier to one another, and so have people. Now I am a girl with an Irish last name and a vocabulary full of Puerto Rican curse words and Yiddish complaints.
So I guess all that's just a bunch of thoughts, but here are some questions:
1. What does linguistic identity mean for theater and performance?
2. How can we utilize the linguistic-ethnic connection in performance to communicate better and to make social progress?
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