Idiolect Reflection

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Whilst we all share one or more common languages it is our background, culture and life experiences that mold us and the way we speak into the person we are today, making each individual unique and differentiating our idiolects which is a persons distinctive use of language.

As a child, though I was born in Spain, I grew up in London with English as my first language whilst my mother conversed with me in Spanish which later on emerged as a second language. I was surrounded by native speakers, I attended school and as soon as I could talk, I unconsciously began to mirror and converge to the sociolect of my surrounding people in order to learn. As I grew older I found the influence upon my idiolect to be far greater, from the media, friends and family, to the foreign shop keeper I would have banter with after school. I found myself converging and code-switching on a more regular basis in order to fit in with my peers and the environment I was in.

Years later, I moved to Spain where I developed my Spanish language and became fluent. Following 6 years of living there I moved back to North London, which was a significantly challenging transitioning period for me, which I had found completely and utterly distressing. I was bullied and mocked due to my incompetent level of English which I had lost throughout my …show more content…

Most commonly I tend to use language features such as Elision, slang, pragmatics and paralinguistic features such as, ‘wanna’, ‘ganna’, ‘wicked’, ‘bit’s ’n bobs’, ‘whatever’, ‘oooh, those chips look nice’, hand gestures and

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