December 05, 2005
Allie's Response to Jessica Yeich's Question
I am responding to Jessica Yeich's following question:
"If colloquilisms are created everyday and jargon accepted commonly, why is it wrong to use them in all situations as long as the listener is aware of the new colloquilism?"
I think that it may be considered "wrong" to use everyday jargon in certain situations, even though the meaning is understood, because of the connotation that comes along with it. The fact that the jargon is jargon itself implies a more casual, up-to-date, and therefore less formal tone. This could possibly be inferred as a sign of disrepect in what may be a formal conversation or situation. OFten more "sophisticated" and less causal conversations take place between people who are not one hundred percent familiar or comfortable with one another, and want to make the best impression of themselves and what they may be representing. The older style of conversation may stick to the "sophisticated" language because if it consisted of new jargon and colloquillisms, the speakers would have to be sure to stay on top of new slang, etc. Doing so would be difficult for those older, professional, "high-society" citizens who do not spend time out with younger people, who generally greatly contribute to new jargon, or in their environments. By sticking to the older, more conventional language as being what is accepted and proper in formal situations, or with someone a person does not know well, is a rule that can be followed throughout the years without drastic change or effort to keep up with something new.
Posted by lcisthur at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2005
Conversational Style
I had an interesting conversation with my neighbor recently. Normally I'm not much of a pauser and half way through the conversation I remembered our assignment and so started pausing and stopped interjecting. The effects were immediate - he started taking his time and talked much more slowly. He paused for long intervals in the middle of a sentence seeming to ponder the very air around him. I think my neighbor enjoyed my not talking! And it definitely changed the nature of the interaction but I was just jumping up and down inside after about 2 minutes and had to excuse myself. I did enjoy the experiment though.
Nanette asked us another question awhile back that I also had the opportunity to explore recently. She asked if people of different cultures use different gestures. And shortly after that a woman, of Indian decent, approached me at the T stop to ask for directions. As she spoke she bobbed her head from side to side in a characteristically Indian fashion and I realized that we do gesture differently based on our cultural norms and that these must indeed lead to some of the stereotypes about different cultures that Nanette was discussing.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)
Conversational Style
My roommates are such great sports. Ever since we started learning about gestures, pauses, and so forth, I've been conducting all sorts of ‘conversational style’ experiments on them. A couple hours ago my roommate was talking to me about the A she got on this really hard exam and I sat and listened. Every time she paused, expecting immediate praise or questions I waited five very long seconds until I responded (or at least it felt long!!!). She asked me "is everything okay?" and after five awkward sentences I responded, "Yeah, everything’s fine." She gave me a look and then said with an appropriate amount of concern she said, “Okay, well if you wanted to talk about it you know I'm here for you." She's so sweet! I felt really bad so I told her. I don't think she likes being the victim of all of my 'conversational style' experiments! Oh, well!!
Posted by lcisowens at 02:36 AM | Comments (0)
Homework 8: Question 2
I definitely agree that social groups are a large part of dialects. I think that geography forms the basis of a dialect, and social groups are subdivisions within those general categories. People change their social dialect depending on who their speaking to, but their geographical dialect is not easily altered. If a person from Georgia, a person from Minnesota, and a person from Boston were all speaking to their friends for example, they would have the same social dialect but would sound very different because of their origin.
Posted by lcisowens at 01:57 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2005
conversation
I was somewhere today, and I noticed that there was this one girl who ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS interupted everybody when they were talking. She always had to get her thoughts in, and could never wait. She didn't have long pauses and when other people tried to jump in and say what they thought, she just kept talking and didn't pay attention to them. I know she is from New Hampshire, but her mother grew up in New York, and I think she spent a lot of time there growing up. So I was thinking that maybe she talks really fast and has really short pauses because of the New York dialect, but it was really noticeable. Or maybe it's just becuase she is rude? I don't know. But it really caught my attention today.
Posted by lcisnelson at 07:16 PM | Comments (1)
November 13, 2005
Social Group Influence
Social groups are, in my opinion, the most influencial factor in different dialects. Not only do we have different tones and word choices with our family and friends but we have different dialects too. With my friends I have a more casual tone and even different sentence structure. I use a more urban language and even my sarcasm rate is higher when I am with my friends. In front of my family I try to make things easier to understand and use a more nice tone. I definetly have more of a German accent with my family because they also show it a lot more, being old fashioned. When I worked as a file clerk for the vice president of a high power company, I would be very formal to my employer. Though a certain level of comfortableness was felt after awhile, tone was kept very even. My word choice was more intelligent and more pronounced (for example, I said "yes" instead of "yea."). Not only do we have different dialects with our employers but also around those who are "upper class" or who certainly make more money than I do.
-Jess
Posted by lcisyeich at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
Questions about Chapter 10 Content
I found a dialect very much like my own on classweb.gmu.edu/accent. My accent is from english99. Typically this is a female from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many of the ways she pronounced her O's and A's, I also pronounce mine.
My accent is infused with Pennsylvania Dutch, which is ultimately German. My parents and grandparents have all lived in the same area for all of their lives so there isnt varying dialects influencing my own. Most of our O's are very pronounced like an O would be. We say "D-ohn-cha kn-oh" exactly how it looks. I grew up in the middle of the Lancaster area, which is "Amish country." Amish dialects are driven by German roots as well. Sometimes I tend to say things as though I am a native german person trying to speak English. At the end of my words, the tone is higher. My tone is even more higher at the end of sentences. In a way, its a very "sing-songy" way of speaking. As well as a rythmic tone to my dialect, I also speak casually and never formal to family members.
Coincidentally, my friend from PA has come to Boston for the weekend and my friends from the New England area and the two PA girls discussed each other's accents and phrasing. For example, we say "outten the lights" for "turn off the lights." Also, we say "wanna go with" to mean "would you like to come with me?" With ends a sentence very often in our area. Very commonly, we say "They're calling for snow" to mean "It is supposed to snow today." Even little things are different. For example, we call subs "hoagies" and creeks "cricks."
Posted by lcisyeich at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
Conversational Styles
At first when we received this assignment I was somewhat reluctant to do it. I did not want to purposefully fill a conversation with long and awkward pauses because I don't like the thought of making someone else feel uncomfortable when they are talking to me, but I then realized that in going home for the long weekend I would have the opportunity to try this experiement with an old friend.
This friend has always had a very different conversational style than anyone else I have ever met. He talks extremely slow, often times pausing for about five seconds before continuing a thought. This pace always annoyed me, and I would usually fill these pauses because they made me uncomfortable. However, every once and I while I would wait a pause out and sure enough he would have something to say at the end of it. It's like during that pause his brain is working to sort things out and concisely say what it is he wants to say.
So I decided that when I talked to him this weekend I would fight the urge to fill these pauses, and instead I would just let him talk. There was a distinct difference between the conversation I had with him this weekend and any other conversation we have ever had before. I felt like he did most of the talking, whereas before it was the opposite, and I was the one to always do all the talking. Even though for me having those long silences was uncomfortable, I realized that for him it wasn't at all, and he probably viewed our conversation as an enjoyable one.
Doing this experiment made me wonder if he has always felt like I interrupt him, whereas I have always thought that in talking a lot I was doing him a favor by making the conversation less awkward. It was a good experience to have because it will probably affect the way we talk in the future in that I will make more of an effort to give him time to finish talking.
Posted by lcissullivan at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)
Conversational style
It is hard for people to talk on the phone if they have different conversational styles. It is because they are not able to see the gestures they make in order to "signal" the other speaker to start talking. Over the past week I observed two conversations. The one was with my parents in Mongolian, and the other with my friend who live in Boston in English. As I talked with my parents I noticed that I was taking longer pauses and taking more time to reflect and to think what I had to say. I was more patient and waited longer. I was usually the listener in those conversations on the phone. However, it was the other way around when I was talking to my friend. I was talking more and even interrupted few times when my friend was talking but excused myself and encouraged her to continue on. Nevertheless, I was the speaker and my friend, the listener. I noticed this before that I reflect on my cultural tradition to wait longer and be the "quiet" one when talking with elders and parents even after acquiring or learning different styles of conversations, like those with my friends. It is important part of our skill and knowledge to know what kind of conversational styles to use with various people.
Posted by lcisbold at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2005
Dialects
I think that I have a dialect in between African American English (AAE) and formal English. Sometimes I might say something like "watcha doin tomorrow?" or "wanna go somewhere". I think that I do this instead of using formal language all of the time, because it is a way to shorten my sentences instead of saying something completely. Even with these shortened sentences I can still be understood the same. I have a southern californian dialect, which is why sometimes I also say "like" a lot when I'm trying to describe something.
When I'm talking to my family I usually use formal language. However, when I'm trying to tell a joke or say something funny I will use slang. I definitely use slang if I'm talking to some of my close friends. Especially if were talking online, we shorten many of the words that we say. I think that I have more of an urban youth dialect, because I grew up in a very urban area and picked up a lot of slang words. When I'm writing or speeking formally I just turn off that swith in my mind and not focus on being informal.
--Yasmin
Posted by lcisperez at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Conversations
Over the past few days, I have been paying attention to my conversations with my roommate, who is from Long Island. Instead of trying to prolong my pauses, I tried to shorten them; otherwise I don't think I would get anything in! Through doing this, I realized that we had to talk over one another. For example, when she thought I was just about done talking, then she would start talking. But if I wasn't really done yet, I would have to speak up and talk over her enough so she would realize that my story was in fact not done yet.
I also had a class discussion in my history class today, which was a good way to see many different conversational styles. First of all, in this class, we set up ground rules that stated that we didn't have to raise our hands to speak, like in many classes. During the discussion I noticed that many people started to talk over one another, which I don't see as a good thing. I think that the people, like myself, who are used to "longer" pauses (or pauses at all!) don't really get the chance to talk. I am a big opponent of interruption, I absolutely hate being interrupted, and I therefore don't like interrupting other people. But those who just talk over one another don't really see "talking over" as interruption, although I do. Therefore, I really find it awkward to talk during these discussions because I can never really figure out when I can join the conversation, and it's really hard to force myself to "talk over" others in order to say what's on my mind.
-Jessica F.
Posted by lcisfaria at 05:02 PM | Comments (2)
Differences in Dialects
(1)I grew up in Suffield. It is a small suburban farming town located near the notch of Connecticut, almost on the Massachusetts border. Both of my parents grew up in Massachusetts. My mother was raised in Palmer, just a town over from my father, who was raised in Three Rivers. Though my parents are both 100% Polish, my mother’s immediate family was Polish-speaking, while my father’s immediate family was a little more modern, not as much Polish speaking. At the time that my parents grew up, being Polish was not an accepted thing. Polish kids were made fun of and tormented, so both my mother and father’s parents did not teach their children much Polish because they did not want others to know about their heritage. I was raised in a Roman Catholic household because my entire family is Roman Catholic, although my religion really has had no bearing on my language or dialect. I have neither the Boston nor the New York dialect. Bostonians pronounce their “r”s differently and New Yorkians have this twang and a distinct vowel sound, it seems. The only word that I can think of that defines me as a Northeasterner is the word “wicked” which is only common around this area. Other than that, usually, people cannot tell where I am from. I don’t really hold an accent or use any particular phrases or words. My family all comes from around the same area; we are all within the same borders on the dialect chart, so maybe that is why I have no real distinct drone or accent. I am not really sure. In general, I speak pretty clearly and enunciate all letters in a word and sometimes, I can speak very fast, when I am not thinking about it. I was brought up in a middle class household, so I neither talk very proper, nor in slang.
(2)I do think that “social group” is an operable factor in different dialects. Personally, I do not really speak differently from my parents to my friends, but I know many people who do. You can almost see a complete turn around from when someone is talking to an adult and when someone is talking to his or her friend. Actually, I notice this a lot in my father. When he is talking with a client, he speaks very firmly and to the point. He is understanding, yet strong. The tone of his voice becomes a little lower and more distinct. He enunciates every letter and syllable of every word in order to get his ideas across. When he is talking to his great aunt, almost 90, on the other hand, his voice is softer and gentler. He is not as strict in enunciating every syllable of every word. He speaks in short sentences and asks short, very simple, questions. There is this dialect difference. I notice it every time he speaks, and he can’t seem to change it.
It is so intriguing how there can be many different dialects because of the immigrants that moved into the United States. There are just some words and phrases I do not understand from the South and the West, just because of my location. It is almost like I need to have a history lesson before I go to different parts of my own country! Specifically, I am still amazed with the disconnect between East coast and West coast speaking. Many of the things that Yasmin says, I have no idea what she is talking about! I just have to write them down sometimes because they are just so random. It is amazing to me that just a difference in location can create this gap between lingoes.
-Christina
Posted by lcisgancarz at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2005
Conversational Styles
There are so many different conversational styles. People can talk so differently and mean something completely different than what they say. For instance a person could say "you are so pretty" and really mean that you aren't, but to you it may seem that they mean what they say. This is shown a lot in the movie "Mean Girls" starring Lindsay Lohan where girls say something nice but really mean something evil.
Pauses are also important in speech. A pause in speech can mean that a person has nothing more to say to the person that they are talking to, or that they are waiting for the other person in the conversation to say something. I noticed that when I was talking to my friend who I've gotten to know for about two months that when we had nothing more to each we just sort of paused for a while and then resumed talking after we had thought about something else to say. Sometimes we even started talking at the same time after a long pause, because we had each thought of another conversation topic. However, pauses can be good because you don't really have to talk the whole time when you're having a conversation. Most people take pauses during speech to think about what they're going to say.
Speech can be determined on so many levels, and each part of it is so interesting.
--Yasmin
Posted by lcisperez at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)