"What You Say Is Who You Are": Language and how It Is Used

Language is generally seen as a means for an individual to directly express him or herself in a way that will be universally understood by everyone. After all, language is merely a set of symbols understood to be representative of specific actions, objects and descriptions. The truth of the matter is, however, that language is not simply an objective means of description used by a society; it is a complex representation of the person speaking as well as his relationship with the person to whom his speech is directed, both of which are determined by the surrounding sociological conditions. Mikhail Bakhtin explains this phenomenon explicitly in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language.…