Language and Culture

Language and Culture Fitting into a culture is not always easy; sometimes, obstacles appear and make it harder. Reading about the stories of both Oscar Hijuelos and Jasmin Darznik, the reader might recognize some of those obstacles. Both Oscar and Jasmin have been surrounded by two cultures, one of their families’ and the other was the American culture. From each story we can learn something; something about how language can affect a person’s life. Jasmin and Oscar have been through moment of feeling lost and inability to identify who they are because they speak English better than the languages their families speaks. That has created some kind of a gap between them and their initial identities, the ones they were born with. In Jasmin case, I believe, her characteristic played a big role in leading her to give more interest to English; she was afraid from getting rejected from the people of the society that she was anew in. That can be inferred from what she told about the way American people were looking at her mother when she spoke English. Therefore, she wanted to concentrate on improving her English language, and working closely and intensively with English, to fit in that new environment of her, making her prefer English language since it what she had been doing for long time. As a result, the old image was turned upside down; she lost her Persian, and became less able to communicate with her old culture. She felt a vague in her identity because what she had been was no more what she became. However, she knew that she was Iranian and didn’t want to lose her initial identity, the Persian and Iranian identity, so she decided to improve her Persian skills again because that what she felt was important; because she felt having a clear identity was one of the most important things for her. On the other hand we have Oscar’s story. Oscar was forced to go to hospital, separated from his family, in a English speaking environment, but when he got