I graduated from high school many years before most in the class and we had a different language. I grew up in the 1970's and we had the terms groovy and cool, which are not used today or have a different meaning. One word that has changed dramatically is gay. When I was younger, the word meant happy and carefree. The word is now used as a slang for homosexual. Using this word now has a very different connotation than what it did when I used it as a teenager. There are many words that change meaning over time.
(by Cindy)
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Sociolinguistics
I can't think of any time I have experienced someone speaking a different dialect or anything. I have not traveled much and have pretty much talked to the same people since birth. I may have heard someone say something in a different way before, but I cannot remember. Even coming to school here, I havn’t noticed any difference in speaking. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t pay attention to these things.
I guess one language I have experienced is internet talk. This is the computer language people use when talking on message boards. I can only think of two words that seemed to have been invented for it: Noob and Pwned. A noob is someone who is new to the subject or area and doesn't know what's going on. Phrases like “You’re such a Noob” are used. Pwned is when someone gets "owned" or "burned" by a "dis" or something like that. I think someone just typed a P instead of an O one time, but it seemed to have stuck. Phrases like "You were pwned" or "Complete Pwnage" are used a lot by internet "nerds"...or so I have found. That's all I can think of right now.
In the article, I liked the part that talked about different ways to use formal words such as, "barf", "vomit", "puke", etc. I thought it was appropriate to use this in the article because people are always using different phrases for different words. For instance, instead of someone referring to something as being "fun" or "exciting", they might say that it was "cool", "bad", or even “dope”. Nobody uses the formal word anymore. People are going to look at you funny for saying, "Wow guys that was neat!" I honestly don’t think that there are “formal” words anymore. Another phrase that people say is “hott”. Instead of thinking that someone is pretty or handsome, they are now referred to as “hott”. Also, instead of someone saying that their dog has “expired”, they say that their dog is dead, passed, or even kicked the bucket!
In the article "Do you Speak American,it describes how different areas of North America
differently. For example, people from Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago, pronounce bat
like bet, however in Louisiana they might pronounce it differently. In America there is no standard way to pronounce words, it depends on where you grew up and who you listened to speak. I say pop, whereas some people from the southern part of Illinois might say soda or soda pop. In the case of do you speak American, you do just a different form.
The standard of standard is not standard. This became apparent to me when I was tutoring English as a Second Language to students at University of Hawaii's HELP and NICE programs circa early 1980's. My students would meet together at local venues with others in their program and include their tutors. It became quickly apparent that my standard English was very different from Laura's, another tutor. Laura and her husband had come to Hawaii after several years in the Middle East and India where they both taught ESL. I had grown up with an English teacher as a mother, and part of my household tasks growing up was helping prep and grade for her classes. Our credentials were both valid. So why was it that we disagreed on the guidance we gave to our students? I grew up in Illinois and Laura had grown up in Surrey. Standard English in Surrey sounds a bit like this: "After she went to hospital, she studied at university." I would come along behind her adding "the's" in her wake. So why can I say "she studied at college," but not "she studied at university?" That is what our students desperately tried to understand. To make matters more complicated, my new boyfriend was raised in the British school system by way of New Zealand. His ideas for standard were different still. So how is an international student to learn how to express his/herself in English and appear to be properly educated? With humor and a tolerance for variety...and luckily the rest of the world is coming to the same conclusion.
Sociolinguistics:
Living in the same small town my entire life, it wasn't until I moved to Southern Illinois for college that I encountered any dialectal mishap.
The first thing I noticed, of course, was the slow, southern drawl the local people used. I couldn't figure out why I felt like I was in Alabama, when I was still in the same state of which I grew up!
I heard words like "ya'll" and phrases like "a lick of difference" and couldn't figure out what these people were trying to say. A lick? Like to a lollipop?
Not to mention the name of the little towns around here; all of them end in ''boro''. Murphysboro, Jonesboro, Hallidayboro; a little further south in Kentucky there is Murfreesboro, Hollowsboro. There are ''boros'' in the south; what exactly is a ''boro''?
But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was when these slow speaking locals labled me a "city girl". City Girl?! I grew up on a farm in a town with less than 2,000 people and you're going to call me a city girl?
"Well, you have that Chicaahhgo accent," they'd say, holding their nose on the Chicago apparently to imitate my nasaly dialect I had previously been unaware of.
But, I don't have an accent...do I?
After living in Carbondale for four years, I've learned the truth. If you live in southern Illinois, anything north of Champaign is "Chicago" and therefore anyone with the slightest Chicaahhgo accent is labeled such.
But I've also learned that my dialect changes with my environment. It is easy to fall into step with the laid back, slow speaking style of the south. However, once I am back home to "Rural Chicago", I revel with my northern peers in whining out our "a" sounds and even talking through our nose from time to time.
As they say, "When in Rome..."
Language is constantly changing. Influence amongst different cultures play a crucial role in language development. Changes in our society is a key factor in how language is shaped. it's true that language reflects the people that are using it. As each generation passes the values and beliefs of that generation are going to be reflected in the language that evolves. Not only does culture influence language where you live has a direct effect on it as well. For example a person in the north will talk much different than a person from the south, due in part to their surroundings. So what is the universal language link that helps us all, no matter where or who we are, understand each other.
People are always talking. They’re on their cellular phones and on their computers and walking down the hallway, they are all talking. What they say and how they say it is often less about whom they are and more about who they are trying to communicate with. If Student A is talking to Dr. B the student will speak as clearly and correctly as he can. However, when talking with a friend the conversation is full of slang and buzzwords. “Dr. B, do you know what time that dinner meeting is?” might become “Hey man do you know when we get to eat?” when the student is talking to his friend rather than the professor. We are all losing our identity so that we can speak to someone in a way that we think that they might want to be spoken to. No wonder people get nervous and anxious about speaking to their bosses. Instead of saying what they have to say people become so wrapped up in saying what they have to say in the right way that they often come out looking like they don’t have anything to say. After all, what is worse, coming off like an amateur or looking like a fool?
Sociolinguistics:
One aspect of sociolinguistics that we, as students, experience everyday is the act of varying the way in which we speak to do the social situation. As we all know, there are certain slang terms or phrases that we would consider to be appropriate to use around friends, but would never use in a formal classroom or career setting. For example, using curse words is something that is sometimes considered socially acceptable within a group of friends just hanging out. However, if such language was used in the middle of a job interview the prospective employer would consider the applicant to be disrespectful and unprofessional. Everyday we vary the way we speak depending on the people in which we are conversing with and the social situation we are engaged in.
being from chicago and going to school in southern illinois, i have noticed a lot of different dialect and accents. I have learned new words and different ecpressions for things, for an example, my friend, who is from the south, would always say, "mom called me today" or "mom makes the best dinner" when speaking to me. I find that weird, because where i am from everyone would say, "my mom..." unless you are talking to a sibling. My teacher also always says things like, "I ain't done nothing wrong"...that just doesnt sound right? Southern folk think that I sound like fran fine, buuuutt she has an east coast accent... Also, around adults and in class i talk different as opposed to when i am with my friends...and most people from our generation do, i think. So that is true. ummm..i think everyone talks different. tomato, tomotto...egg, agg..milk, melk..that type of thing. No one is going to speak the exact same. It's kind of impossible.
Social lingustics is an interesting subject. I never understood how someone could tell me what was correct or proper english, if they understood what was being said. Thousands/millions of people around the United States alone speak in different ways (or lingustics, I guess). Someone from Boston or New York speaks from another planet compared to someone from Alabama or Mississippi. Not only with different accents but phrases and how they pronounce words. The same thing can be said about people from the midwest. An individual from Chicago or Milwaukee sounds way different than someone from Carbondale, Murphysboro and Cairo. If your from Chicago, that is in the same state. I have dealt with many accounts of this in my personal experience. During Spring Break of my freshman year, I went to Corpus Christie, Texas to visit a childhood friend. It seemed like no-one could understand what I was saying and they all called me a yankee. At the same time, when I go back home (Rockford, IL.) from college, all my friends say I need to get out of the south because I'm starting to talk like a hillbilly. It's crazy.
The article that we had to read for our in class assignment was talking about sociolinguinstics. I think everyone can relate to this article. We all tend to adjust our way of spaeking when we are in different environments or in differnt social gatherings. The article gave a good example; you wouldnt ask someone what there take home pay was if you were at a cocktail party. However if you were speaking with a finacial planner the question would be appropriate. Youre dialect may also change when you are in a class room setting. Sociolingusitics can also be ised in diffenrent fields. For example lawyers and doctors have there own "slang". I think alot of this is subconcious to us because is so common. We tend to conform when we are in different settings.
I believe it's very true that students use slang to try and fit in with different groups in their city or school. I have noticed, after attending here, that even students from Chicago have accents, it's not something that only happens when someone is from another state or country. Often times, slang is considered a sort of rebel language. Some may even call the language of a uneducated person. I disagree. I believe that slang is just another way to speak informal. In Spanish there are almost two different ways to say everything.
There's the way you would speak to an elder or stranger, then there's the way you could speak to a best friend or sibling. Slang is just another way to communicate quicker with your peers. As far as accent goes, this country had many different types of people in it, and whether you’re from St. Louis and talk faster than the speed limit, or Carbondale IL-with that sweet southern tang. It's doesn't matter. Dialect is everywhere, we might as well embrace it, instead of judge it.
I graduated from high school many years before most in the class and we had a different language. I grew up in the 1970's and we had the terms groovy and cool, which are not used today or have a different meaning. One word
that has changed dramatically is gay. When I was younger, the word meant happy and carefree. The word is now used as a slang for homosexual. Using this word now has a very different connotation than what it did when I used
it as a teenager. There are many words that change meaning over time.
(by Lori)
Having never really travelled much and only hearing other people speak that I had grown up around, I was greatly shocked when a girl moved to my High School from Lousiana. I had class with her and stuggled to understand everything she said, but gleemed the idea. I asked her by the end of the first day where she was from, and, in the most drawled answer I have ever heard, "Lousiana, but yawl talk like a bunch a Yankees." I had the most stunned look on my face, and we both burst into laughter. Since then she has lost some of her accent. The most interesting part of it to me was that even by senior year, when we had many classes together, she would start out the day with a somewhat heavy accent and it would lessen over the day. I often wondered about this, until one day when I met her parents. Her mother spoke as if she had just moved from the South that morning, her father was originally from my hometown and had adjusted back to his Midwest accent. She and her two sisters had adapted to their new surroundings, but their mother had been in the South her whole life, and she still held to her way of speech.
Sociolinguistics
In my hometown, there are specific words one says that no one from anywhere else would understand. For instance, and this is really mean, but when someone dresses down everyday, sometimes worse, we have a name for that. Not until we were in high school, did we realize this was a name of a poor family: finney. So, now I don't use it, but it's still used a lot (I hear my younger brother's friends say it, without knowing the word's origin).
Another example I have found with sociolinguistics, is when I went to England and Wales two summers ago. We made friends with this older man. He loved pointing out words we 'still' used in America. While we say 'I take the elevator', they say 'I take the lift'. He claimed Americans used archaic words. Of course, he wasn't being offensive, but it was interesting to hear the differences between how we speak across an ocean, although we are speaking the same language.
This article had a few valid points that I have noticed before. The most interesting of these was the paragraph on context. I have always been interested in the, "rules" in which certain conversations are acceptable and others are not.
My favorite game to play with friends is the socially akward conversation game. In the middle of dinner at a resturant, we talk about socially avoided subjects like our last bowel movement or something equally inappropriate.
I like to see the facial expression and the shifting eyes of those involved in the conversation.
I was unaware that the game that we play falls into the sociolinguistic studies realm. I am embarassed to have overlooked the fact that the reason that these banters are akward is merely because our culture deemed the subjects taboo.
Jason Valentine
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