LANGUAGE

Does Language Identify You?

Does Language Identify You?

Human existence continuously strives for creating identities in the world, that create their individuality among similar others in the world. While language is a medium to express thoughts and opinions, it can add to their confusion and chaos. Language is a medium of communication and among more than 6,500 spoken languages in the world; Mandarin-Chinese is the most popular language in recent times. Language can be considered as one of the dominating factors that aid in identifying someone's personal characteristics, apart from family, society, and individual interests. Visual language, as expressed in Tsang Kwing Chi's artwork, can convey important insights keeping aside the location of the individual. Amy Tan proves how written language can be used either to define one's self or to manipulate how others see your identity in its truest form. Language barriers can pose threats to understanding individualistic characteristics of people. However, my personal experience of getting to know the identities of my Hispanic friends revealed that if we disregard or ignore their language differences, we can learn a lot about them through assessing their visual signs and ques (Bissell, 2008).

This understanding develops because when individuals interact and form relationships with each other, we can learn a lot of features about them which can help us in identifying their true identity. Hence, a lot can be learnt about someone's personal characteristics and traits by simply spending time in interacting with them. Using various forms of language (written, verbal, visual) we can bridge gaps between personalities and learn about individuals in a profound manner simply by looking beyond the superficial relationships.

While we believe that language reveals important parts of one's identity, the aspects of personality that is revealed or portrayed by language may or may not be true. It may not give us a real picture of the individual. Chi's photos indicate a feature of personal characteristics that are portrayed through non-verbal languages or visual language. His photos greatly reinforce the opinion that visual language poses a significant part of individuals that help us in understanding them. Chi expresses such a thought by taking photographs of himself in a traditional Mao suit and black sunglasses at monumental locations in order to poke fun for the western stereotypes. People belonging to a range of diverse cultures, customs and traditions make a perception about others, solely on the basis of their visual learning and intuitions. This is the reason why people from different cultures engage in affection and friendships even when they hardly know about each other. Their visual perceptions help them in creating lasting impressions about someone they do not know (Morales, 2011).

Chi uses his traditional Mao suit, fake ID tag, his mirrored glasses and powerful stance to let the viewers know that language is powerful and can be used as a form of persuasion. The Mao suit is a representation of how citizens can be deceived to assume someone's identity solely on visual language when in reality Chi's ...