My Lang World

1. Why do I speak as I do and how does my language define me?

There are many factors for why I speak as I do and some would be the people that I grew up in 2 different countries Singapore and India and these 2 countries have 2 very different speaking styles. The way that I speak really depends on the people that I am with or the people that I am talking to. In my daily speech, I use a lot of code-switching, for example when I am with my parents I speak in specific idiolect where I am formal. Where I don’t use a lot of slang and I keep the number of acronyms that I use to a minimum. As to when I am with my friends I adopt a lot of slang and speak in almost a different idiolect altogether. Then there are times when I am speaking with taxi drivers and this is in Singapore where a lot of taxi drivers speak Singlish where I have come to notice that there was a lot of linguistic convergence when I was speaking to the taxi drivers in Singapore. I would incorporate a lot of small words like ‘lah’ at the end of the sentences because that’s how the taxi drivers talk and when you speak like them you feel like have a connection with them. Another case where my idiolect changes when I am talking to people from India as I have noticed that they don’t understand a lot of the things that I say so in my case when I am talking to relatives there is quite a lot of linguistic divergence, because I have been living in Singapore for such a long time that I can only speak the idiolects that the people in Singapore speak. This is because the Indian community in Singapore, the way that they speak has also changed so it’s not the same as the people in India. As a result of them, I speak how I normally would with the Indians in Singapore.

Language can have a  tremendously large influence on how people perceive me as a person. How we speak is also a large part of our identity. Language is a part of me that has been passed down from my grandparents to my parents and to me, language and how you speak can really tell you a lot about the person. Especially about how they were raised and just what their day to day life is like. As I speak in a Standard English accent which xis widely spoken amongst students people could see me as an international student or someone from a high background being able to speak a certain type of dialect.

2. How can language include, exclude or misrepresent?

So there are many ways that language can include, exclude or misrepresent one of those ways would be moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language. You go to a new school and you are used to speaking English for everything and at your new school people and talking in Japanese. In this case, there is a lot of exclusion because the general assumption for someone from Japan is that everyone that lives in Japan speaks Japanese and that is an assumption that causes a lot of exclusion. A case when language can misrepresent a person this happens when someone speaks a certain wait and people look at you one way and you did not mean for it to be that way. An example of when this takes place is when you speak a certain way without realising it and then people think that you changed how you were and think if you as a different person. The final example where language can include is when you move to a new country and you are not sure whether or not people there are going to speak the first language you speak and when you get there and realise that many people do understand you. The main reason that language can misrepresent us in that a large population of the world cant speak Standard English and we see them as people that are lower than us and that is how we can see others. Another case is for example in England if you don’t speak in overt prestige then you can be seen as the minority as you are speaking a way that would be seen as rap or street people where people expect you to speak in a very posh manner like the queen for example. The language also plays a part in first impressions and if people don’t see you as someone that speaks English then you see them as the minority. One quite prominent example of this is in the UK where many professors speak with a lot of prestige as they are in very high places in society so they speak in a RP accent. This makes it seem that people with an RP accent are people that have done very well in their lives and are going to go and do great things.

The ways that accent/language can include and represent everyone from all around the world, and each small country, each small town has their own distinct accent that makes them different from others. Linguistic convergence is something that is used to include people in a conversation or make them feel welcome to show that you are open to them. Linguistic divergence is a way that people use to on purpose to show that they don’t care where they are from and that they are going to continue to speak how they were speaking and no matter where you are from that it changes nothing. Linguistic divergence is also associated with arrogance and the fact that most people would change how they speak but if some people are extremely proud of where they are from then continue to speak like their country of origin, it also shows how they don’t care for the local dialects and accents.

 

3. Who owns English and why does it keep changing?

English is not owned by one person or one country, but really English is owned and is continuously changing because as people evolve people change the things in their daily lives including English. The ownership is continuously growing and reducing as many new people learn the language and as some people move away from the language to other languages, and with each new generation there are new words and ‘slang words’ added to the English language.  One very good example of this would be Internet English where Millennial are creating new words or acronyms and other words that just make small things like texting  each other quicker to communicate.

1 extremely large growth in the English language would be the creation of Hip Hop and Rap music as these were the times when everyone was extremely malleable and people would believe anything and everything that people were saying so when these rappers started created words like ‘Bling’ and ‘Dope’ where they were created by people who created these words because they saw a use for these words in their everyday lives. Now these words have caught up and some of them gave been added to Oxford Dictionary. Since many people who use these words are seen as cool and people want to be cool they start using these words as they think they will become cool as well. and all of slang that is used in the Rap world has continues to build and many people nowadays speak liken this in every sentence they speak and every single thing that they say sounds like they are singing in a rap song. The way that people see them is a negative that people that speak like this are bad people and are always doing drugs, but what they don’t realise is that the way that do things is a culture for them and they know that you would not appreciate it is they assumed that you are inly speaking like that because you believe you are better than them and that is the same thing that they see.

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