Construction of identity and maintaining identity by language

Language is one of the most important cognitive and communicative tools of mankind which is used for the identification and categorising of man himself and/or by others. In the course of globalisation the traditional role of language as a national symbol of identity is in growing opposition to transnational identity constructions (in the sense of a transnational lingua franca) and regional identity constructions within linguistic communities or identity constructions which may exceed linguistic communities. This results in a conflict potential for the linguistic area of romance languages which is being examined from different perspectives.