Shapes of Us and Language
The movie Mean Girls is based on a typical high school life, created with general stereotypes of students and their use of different forms of language. ... In this movie the language spoken by each student represents their image or fabricated personalities which the speaker and those around them identify as who they are in the social hierarchy of a typical high school. ... ” Caricatures were created by physical and language exaggerations, but relied much more on the language, which brought me to my next question. ... Related to this question is a second part where I wondered if the language we speak makes us who we are (or want to be) or if we speak a certain form of language because who we are, or both. ... In the movie the language of the students did not so much portray the students’ skin color or ethnicity, but concentrated more on a specific image that a student wanted to project to those around him or her. Using their dedicated group identity, students found “a means to negotiates [their] interactions with the world – both in how [they perceived their] surroundings and in how those around [them perceived them],” and their “language [played] an equally pivotal role in determining who [they] are…” Delpit’s theory is that our race or cultural influences how we communicate or interact with each other and this movie is a good example of Delpit’s point about social influences on language.