Language is a huge part of everyone’s lives. Without language, you’re unable to communicate with anyone. For two years in high school, I took an American Sign Language class and that not only taught me a super cool language, but it also opened my eyes to many things. My teacher taught us a lot about the culture of ASL and the importance of language. She always told us that it doesn’t matter how someone communicates, but someone needs to know how to use their language to communicate.
Language will forever be very important to me, especially because I will be a dental hygienist, which you need to know how to communicate with people. Language has helped people communicate and grow throughout their lives and without it, people take a very long time to develop. But just like many things, there are always negative impacts of language. Everyone believes that language is strictly verbal, but it is not. Language can be how you present and use your body during a conversation, for example, sign language. If deaf or hard of hearing people did not have sign language, they wouldn’t have a language at all, thus they would be significantly behind in their development. Also due to the impact of social media and communicating through technology, I feel like the ability for people to use language is decreasing. People can and will confidently talk to almost anyone over technology, but won’t talk to people in person. This also causes a decrease in one’s development.
I never knew how important language was until I took an ASL class. I developed a whole new meaning to language, and I now appreciate that I was able to develop my language at such a young age due to my hearing ability. A toddler that is getting ready to begin talking, pick up their language from hearing the people around them talk, if their mom tells their older sister to get the milk from the fridge and the toddler sees their sister walking towards this thing that has a weird container in it, they will put two and two together. This is something deaf children don’t have, especially when their parents don’t want them to sign, they want them to read lips and learn to speak. Once I learned about how important language is in one’s development, I will never take my ability to hear for granted.
