How are language and identity shown in poems?

Speech is a significant factor that makes up a person's sense of identity. Many poets have wrote about their own and other people's dialect and language. They use the ideas of different cultures and traditions to highlight the fact that some people are wrongly treated differently because of independent qualities like their language. The poets Liz Lockhead, John Agard, Tom Leonard and Sujata Bhatt all express how differences in language collide, or eat up inside …

…violent ones don't get any further from where they were at the beginning, they haven't really convinced anyone; they've just scared them. Although, they may not have even set out to convince anyone in the first place; after all, that's what they've been upset about, people trying to convince them to change their language. Maybe they were just trying to show them what it is they're asking them to give up; a part of themselves.