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Superposed Community Essay

Decent Essays

“Dat Talk”
What is a speech community? This may be a question asked by many. A Speech community is a group of people who share the same norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Everyone belongs to some type of speech community based on their demographic background, race, or age.
Every day I use words that may only be acceptable and understood by the people included in my speech community. Depending on the place or scenario my words may slightly be altered to adjust to the speech community I am entering. When I’m with my friends a normal conversation may go, “what’s good bro?” meaning what is going on or how are you doing? “You at the crib bro?” a phrase used to know if one of our friends is at his place of residence. In my …show more content…

I feel that slang and language itself has come a long way. There was a day where I asked an elderly lady at my job if she knew what molly was she explained with a confused face that she didn’t. I told her that molly was the street name for the drug ecstasy. She then told me that when she was my age they called it ex or the love drug I had never heard of the love drug before. This is an example of how words used are change based on your age, race, or norm of that time period. I feel that race has a lot to do with the words people use this day in age; for example an African American may call his house a crib and a European American may call it his home. In many cases, people would call this speaking in ebonics. Some words that my speech community use are widely used by others around the same age, and that is also a factor of the drastic change in word development. When a member of my group hears an elder use slang younger people use it’s amusing I feel like the older generation is stepping out of their norm when it comes to staying up to date with the new slang. There are a few older people who catch on to the lingo my group and I use, and try to incorporate it into their lives to feel young ,and keep up with the norms of the constant changing world. During our daily lives the members of my speech community seem to know what slang to use during a certain situation. I belong to a few speech communities, but my friends seem

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