11.No awareness of a shared reality with other humans was possible without a means of communicating shared symbolic representations.
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22.For multilinguals each language carries its own association to one's memory, as well as to one's perception of shared reality.
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23.A different language can be viewed as another method of interpretation for the same set of individual symbolic representations.
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24.The stronger the association between a set of labels (language) and symbolic representation (one's mind) the closer language = identity.
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25.A mother tongue is the 1st & deepest association with the symbolic representation of reality in the mind.Any second language builds on it
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26.Those associations predate acquiring new "labels" for them, even if new "labels" suggest different associations or representations.
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27.Therefore I posit that one's mother tongue, while not necessarily experienced as such, forms the basis of one's identity.
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http://28.One 's identity as experienced in the moment is shifting depending on what is associated with any given language used.
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29.As a trilingual I have often wondered which of the identities suggested by the language I use to think with is "really me".
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30.But then I remember that language is merely an interpretation of symbol, and that the mind is the symbol-creator that permits reality.
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31.Therefore language doesn't constitute identity but is the means of expression for individual symbolic representation AND shared reality.
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32.Again,the symbol exists prior to the label. The label is identity, but the symbol, insofar as we experience it as such, is reality.
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