زبان و هویت؛ تبیین رابطه زبان خارجی و هویت فردی، اجتماعی، فرهنگی و ملی

In recent decades, language as the nucleus of culture and the key element affecting identity formation has been paid considerable attention to by scholars and experts on humanitarian and social sciences. in the midst of it, the role of foreign language in identity is placed emphasis on. accordingly, various theoretical approaches like the sapir-whorf view point, saussure, burger and luqman, bakhtin et al has emphasized the role of language in identity. hence, the present study mainly aims to find out how the link and relation between learning foreign language learning affects the identity status of people, either personally, socially, nationally or culturally in the population. the study being a social survey, research data has been collected through questionnaire. the population contains all students of foreign languages in the university and educational institutions of kashan in 1391out of whom 180 students were randomly selected and surveyed as the research sample. research results indicate a positive relationship between foreign language proficiency and personal identity (r =., 237) as well as between its negative relationship and national identity, coefficient confidence rating 99 and 95 per cent. besides, a positive correlation between rate of interest in foreign language and rate of socio-cultural identity has been registered as r =.,147, r =.,200 with a confidence level of 99 per cent. key words: foreign language, language interest, social identity, national identity, cultural identity