Personal Reflective Essay

815 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Cultural and linguistic diversity

Looking at all the languages, dialects and accents that are spoken in The United States. I will be analyzing my own language, my own language variety and look at my accent and dialect in an effort to try to identify my speech community that shares the same language variety, dialect, and accent that I have. I see Dialect as a form of a language that is particular to a region or social group, for example, Japanese Versus English. I understand accent as a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a nation, locality, or social class, for example, Australian English versus American English. When I am, home I speak American English dialect with Mid-Western or West Coast accent. I am often told I have no accent …show more content…

However, early in my career as a paramedic I worked on a gang violence unit for almost 2 years and I can chameleon or style shift my language into 20+ version of what they call gang slang and even under the most critical scrutiny gang members and residents in known gang territories would believe I was born and raised there. I can understand and speak English with dozens of accents and style shift to accommodate almost any geographic or socioeconomic status in an effort to facilitate better communication and make patients feel more comfortable. Because I grew up all over the world and then was a leader of an international business before working in medicine as a flight RN. My Linguistic Repertoire consists of a set of Languages, and Dialects and Accents. Newscaster English, Tokyo Japanese, Beijing dialect Mandarin, Broken Spanish, Western Iranian Farsi, Wanetsi Afghani & Ottoman Turkish. In my work in Medicine, I can say "what is your name" and "point to where it hurts" in about 30 languages. My Communicative competence is very proficient in when spoken and terrible when written I seamlessly know when to speak as if I was in a boardroom or a Medic in a crack house having to grasp the grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology including social knowledge about how and when to use

Show More
Related

  • Clarifying Misconceptions about Accents in The Myth of the Non-accent by R. Lippi-Green

    542 Words  | 2 Pages

    This chapter focused mainly on misconceptions and attempting to clarify those misconceptions about accents. In the opinion of linguists, accent is a difficult word to define. This is due to the fact that language has variation therefore when it comes to a person having an accent or not, there is no true technical distinction because every person has different phonological aspects to their way of speaking. However, when forced to define this word, it is described as “a way of speaking” (Lippi-Green, 2012, p.44). Although Lippi- Green identified the difficulty linguists have in distinguishing between accent, dialect, and another language entirely, they were able to construct a loose way of distinguishing. Lippi- Green states that an accent can be determined by difference in phonological features alone, dialect can be determined by difference in syntax, lexicon, and semantics alone, and when all of these aspects are different from the original language it is considered another language entirely (Lippi-Green, 2012).

    Read More

  • Richard Lederer's All American Dialects By Richard Lederer

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    Finegan says this is something “living languages must do”. For me, I was raised in a military home in which we moved to a new region every couple of years. Coming from Germany, moving to Rochester, and then to Lowville, my dialect is a combination of all three speech communities. It is different than my parents, and will mostly be passed down to my children. As I age and move locations it is opted to change again as well. So it is not that I speak differently or incorrect than the rest of my family, my speech community is merely growing and changing as it is passed generation to generation. Richard Lederer stated in his article, “We are a teeming nations within a nation, a country that is like a world.” (150) He was portraying how our country, with a universal language, can be so diverted by each region’s version of the English language. I agree completely that although we all “sing” the same song of the American language, “we talk in melodies of infinite variety.” (150) The way our country was built was by different American regions doing their own work, for example, the south had plantations, where my ancestors were small town farmers who worked with manufacturing in mills and

    Read More

  • Summary Of Do You Speak American Rhetorical Analysis

    574 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article " Do You Speak American?" the audience is the general American public. MacNeil purpose here is to inform the general American public of the differences of the English dialect. He does this by looking at the changed backgrounds, races, and experiences people have that can impact their specific dialect. MacNeil talks about how the words each evolving social orders, innovations, and impacts change the way English are talked and comprehended across the country. All through MacNeil's article he talks about diverse dialects found in the middle of blacks and whites, and accents that change from area to locale. In this article, McNeil converses with the assorted American population by expressing numerous examples of the change in English

    Read More

  • Texas Twang Research Paper

    415 Words  | 1 Pages

    Beside media and migration, Becker says “linguistic insecurity” is another reason why New Yorkers are changing their accent. Becker illustrated that they think that other people do not like their accent or they, New Yorkers, are not feeling their accent is interesting. New Yorkers consciously stop “Coffee Talk” and Texans like Robertson and her family stopped their accent on the first syllable like “SEE-ment” or “UM=brella” after they moved from Amarillo to Austin. Texas twang, however, is part of Texans and they are proud of it. Hinrichs points out, Texans use twang when it is appropriate with family or friends. He means that the twang is not going to become extinct. However, the fact that more than 1,000 new people move to Texas annually is changing the traditional old Texas

    Read More

  • American Tongues Summary

    595 Words  | 2 Pages

    The video “American Tongues” is about variety of English dialect in America, and people still carry prejudice and stereotypes in people’s accents and dialects. These accent and dialects are not limited in pronunciation. There are different words, phrases and grammars in their dialects, therefore, some people are noticed where they are from. As a premise, everyone has an accent. However, some people believe they don’t have an accent because people around them have the exact same accent and dialect in their community. Therefore, they haven’t noticed differences. In the video, there was a scene of a woman was correcting her accent for work to speak “standard dialect”. It was required for her to speak “standard dialect” for work because when she was out of her original community where

    Read More

  • Baldwin On Language

    246 Words  | 1 Pages

    Although some people try to not judge other based on their language choices or dialect it is very instinctive for most to do so. As soon as someone begins to speak to you,without even thinking, some of the first things you realize are the dialect, tone of voice and word choice of the speaker. I agree with the statement from the African-American writer James Baldwin where he states that language is the most vivid and crucial keys to identity.

    Read More

  • Learning A Second Language

    1866 Words  | 4 Pages

    Learning a language is quite possibly one of the most difficult and time- consuming endeavors a person could ever undertake. Therefore, it comes as no surprise, that a limited number of second languages are taught in schools across the western world, and languages are sometimes failed to be passed on to children growing up in a different country than their parents did. Even in Canada, an officially bilingual country, only 15% of Canadians speak English and one unofficial language (Statistics Canada 2008) and in America, only 21% of the population is versed in two languages (Logan, 2003). It has become apparent that there is a need for Canadians and Americans to learn a second language. For a country to survive, it needs to rely on other countries as there is no one country that can produce within it’s borders all the means to meet the needs of it’s people. Furthermore, with the threat of international terrorism, the economic crisis and environmental ruin looming above countries all over the world, governments and organizations need to work together to come up with solutions. These cross culture collaborations would not be possible without the ability of even a few people present to speak each other’s languages. Conversely, by remaining monolingual, skills and knowledge will become concentrated only in certain countries and as the transfer of knowledge will cease the rate of human advancement will slow. This report intends to discuss the interpersonal and personal benefits of learning a second language, and investigate different ways of learning. To accomplish this, I have conducted secondary research into the interpersonal and personal benefits of learning another language. These particular areas of research were cho...

    Read More

  • Language Self-Assessment: Verbal And Written Language

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    Verbal and written language is how people communicate with each other and encourage thoughts, achieve goals, and build relationships. Speaking a single, or multiple languages, and growing up in different setting can seriously alter the way that people speak the same language. This can either encourage diverse communication or make communication all but impossible. For the most part I speak English fluently, it is the only full language that I can speak and I developed this language growing up in a small farm town in the middle of New Jersey.

    Read More

  • Being Bilingual Essay

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    Being bilingual always made my life differ as if I lived two lives, speaking Spanish at home and English everywhere outside of home. On the daily basis at my house, my family speaks Spanish. When we communicate we speak very fast, at times we can not even understand one another. After this occurs we all burst out in laughter super loud, no boundaries are enforced in our lexicon. The enforcement changes when entering a different discourse community.

    Read More

  • Social Imagination Analysis

    674 Words  | 2 Pages

    living on Long Island, that contribute to what others perceive as odd dialect. Its the culture that I

    Read More

  • Variation of Personal Dialect Analysis

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are many different dialects across the world. They can change depending on your region, your age or even your gender. Many people would react to a different dialect as wrong or they want to try and eliminate it. When in reality, both are correct. They just sound incorrect due to the fact they are not accustomed to hearing it. If English is just one language, why are there so many different ways to speak it? The study of dialects or the variations in language from one place to another provides the answers. In observing my own dialect, I have found three words or phrases I say or pronounce differently from the people around me. One is the pronunciation of the word ketchup. Two is the word used to describe a spinning maneuver preformed while driving a vehicle. Three is the normality of the question, “Do you have fry sauce?” in different states.

    Read More

  • The Cognitive Benefits Of Bilingual Language

    1458 Words  | 3 Pages

    I had the chance to live in very diverse linguistic environment. I was born in Romania and obviously the first language that I learned was Romanian. I the age of three I moved in Gabon, Africa, where the primary language was French. During my fifteen years in Africa I learned to speak the literary French, Verlan, and the French African dialect.

    Read More

  • Joseph’s Dialect in Wuthering Heights

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Analyzing dialects can be difficult due to the fact that is it hard to transcribe the pronunciation of an individual dialect because English is not spelled the same way it is pronounced. Furthermore, one person’s interpretation of spelling a dialect might not match up with another’s, so the reader might not “hear” the dialect properly. Regardless, written versions of dialects are essential to discussing dialectical differences.

    Read More

  • Bilinguals: The Benefits Of Multilingual?

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is estimated that more than half of the world’s population is bilingual, according to Psychology Today. That means about 3.5 billion people use more than one language to communicate every day. There are commonly held benefits attributed to these people who were identified as bilingual or multilingual, the benefits are usually more concrete and personal. Here are a few firsthand accounts we gathered from multilinguals that help explain the daily benefits of being able to speak multiple languages.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Language Socialization

    1710 Words  | 4 Pages

    An individual is constructed through many aspects , whether it be their likes/dislikes, personalities, goals or self assigned origin(s), etc. One of these aspects that help build up and sketch an individual is the language they choose to speak. This does not simply include choosing between English or French but choosing or learning to speak high/low language, or the type of slang one uses, and even the rules that are set up with that language the individual has obtained.

    Read More

More about Personal Reflective Essay

Open Document