No one seems to doubt that language, both in its communicative functions, and in its systems of semantic classification, plays a major role in identity development. I have mainly spoken so far about the communicative-interactional function, but what is most specific about the contribution of language arises from its categorial semantics.
Natural language construes relations among types and between types and instances of types.
It makes meaning by creating differences of kind, far more than by creating differences of degree. Identities may be constituted and expressed as much in how we draw as in what we write, as much by our movement and vocal styles as by the semantic content of our talk. But natural language semantics lends itself far better to categorical distinction than to subtleties of degree. The more also as in speaking we also perform differences in styles of vocalization, in speech rhythms and intonation patterns, and in facial, gestural and movement styles. At the same time, given the patterns of redundancy that make culture, we are likely to also express different beliefs, attitudes, and values, even if only to the degree that such matters are untranslatable between the semantic systems of different languages and dialects.