Language as Intangible Cultural Heritage

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Part A: Question 3. Language as Intangible Cultural Heritage
Intangible cultural heritage denotes practices, skills, terminologies, and acquaintance in society. Language is an intangible cultural heritage because it expresses ideas and thoughts during communication. It also serves as a source of cultural identity for various groups of people. Language is considered a living cultural heritage that consists of practices and expressions that give meaning, continuity, and dynamism to the social life of communities (Bialostocka, 2017). The paper indicates the value of safeguarding language and reclamation for scientific and speech communities.
Language should be maintained because the speech community values language as a source of their identity and uses it to pass their culture from one generation to another. Therefore, it is essential to maintain the value of language because it shows the cultural importance of the speech community. If the language of a specific speech community is lost, it means the community is also lost as they cannot identify themselves within the larger society. It is argued that people's cultural value of heritage, including meaning, knowledge, and skills that deserve to be safeguarded, exists in the language (Bialostocka, 2017, p.19). Thus, language serves as an inventory and living respiratory that protects the meanings and practices and evolves naturally with cultural expressions to adapt to the ever-changing environment. The concept of living heritage in the language is confined within the linguistic connections among the individuals of the speech community. The argument indicates that the vernacular language should be protected because it is a source of pride in the communities that use it. Language as a cultural heritage can be evident among the immigrants to new countries where they continue using their minority language (Odango, 2015, p. 82).
Language also requires maintenance because it plays a vital role in scientific research. The scientific community considers language a crucial resource for the preservation of biology. When linguistic scholars are asked to study language, they consider minority or vernacular languages rather than dominant languages such as English. Odango (2015) describes an interview conducted between Karnim, a Satowan Mortlockese speaker, and an unnamed scholar who found it interesting to study the Mortlockese language (78). In the interview, Karim discloses that she was encouraged to use Mortlockese by her immigrant parents, who taught her the English language but continued to use Mortlockese. Therefore, Karim became a bilingual speaker. Since researchers are interested in studying the emergence and rise of bilingual language, it proves a need to preserve and reclaim language for both scientific and speech communities.
Maintaining and reclaiming the value of language for both the scientific and speech community is essential because it develops a sense of belonging among its users. Odango (2015), through the unnamed speaker, denotes how the researcher felt connected to researching his vernacular language, Tagalog, as he felt studying it was a way of revealing his Filip...