Language+as+a+Badge+of+Identity

=**Language Choice**=

Arianna Scott
Around the world, every single human communicates using some sort of language, whether it be the language of sign, Spanish, English, and thousands of others ( [| Ethnologue] lists 6,912 living languages in the world today). With so many living languages, and subsequent dialects, creoles, and pidgins, people have many choices to potentially make about how they use language. There's a pretty well known expression that says "it's not about what you say, but how you say it". People may make choices every day regarding language for a number of reasons including:

(IE: Bolivia, France, Canada).
 * **Language as a badge of regional or national identity** : This phenomena refers to speakers consciously using language as a tool to make personal statements. This most commonly happens when the speakers wish to take a stand on a particular issue. Speakers may do this to either show solidarity as one united group, or to show differentiation from another group that the speaker doesn't care to be associated with.
 * **Conformity:** Speakers may conform to a greater standard in order to speak what they perceive as a more prestigious dialect. The speakers will then speak the language of that region's [| prestige] center in order to sound more distinguished.
 * **Bilingualism** : many countries around the world have more than one official language, making many of the inhabitants bilingual/multilingual.

On almost any inhabited location on earth, people making choices about language every day can be found. Some of the world's regions that contain speakers who have make choices about language on a day to day basis include:
 * Puerto Rico
 * Paraguay
 * United States
 * Philippines