The Negative And Positive Connotation On Speech Communities

Talking Black In America addresses how advanced, unique, and culturally important African American English is (Hutcheson and Cullinan, 2017).

Gee defines Discourses as a way of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes. (Gee 278) I decided to do my paper on The World Overcomers Church because I wanted to learn how a church is considered a discourse community. According to Swale’s there are six characteristics that make up a discourse community. They are common goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among members, participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, utilizing one or more genres in communication, a specific lexis, and a threshold level of members with a degree of relevant content and discourse expertise. (Swale 321) I had to go to the church to observe to understand how it is considered a discourse community. The churches goal is to obtain happiness, values, beliefs of ethnic and morals to trust in god and have faith.

Do you ever think about the way you speak and why? Well, Paul Robert does an excellent job explaining why people use the dialect they use in Speech Communities. He discusses that people change their use of language throughout their lives to conform to either society or to what kind of person they want to be, or to just conform to who they need to be at a particular moment, in which I agree. People’s choice of language, including myself, are affected by many of their surroundings, such as where they live and grow up at, their peers, and a person’s work place.

“Language is a product of society. As society changes, so does language.” Because of this, over time, English speakers all over the world have reinvented language and in some cases come up with their own very different ways of speaking. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also referred to as Ebonics, is one of these variations of American English, most commonly spoken today by urban working-class and middle-class African Americans. Not only does Ebonics make up an immense part of African American social life and communication, but also it is heavily used in the music industry. Its use in the music industry today, particularly in the hip-hop industry, has definitely had an effect on society’s use of language, especially today’s youth. Although widely used by African Americans, many other ethnicities also use Ebonics as a way of communication. The use of Ebonics has steered many away from learning and/or using Standard English and unfortunately, this has lead to communication barriers between speakers of Ebonics and speakers of Standard English especially within academic environments. Due to this, it is extremely important for school systems to incorporate Ebonics as well as elements from the hip-hop culture into their curriculum to ensure the success of their students.

Speech is often associate with race because some individuals believe that if the person does not sound “educated” enough the person comes from a lower class and was brought up in the so called “ghettos” and this association is often made towards someone that forms part of a minority group. The author illustrates that race is tight up with speech

Language is a very important and significant part of individuals’ life. It is considered as one of the best device of social behavior. Language is a means with the help of which people communicate and send a social message to one another. But language does have very special characteristics according to which it changes and very depending on many factors. According to the researchers there are no two people who speak identically. Their languages vary as per their geographic location, age, gender, ethnicity, social background etc. many a time, it is observed that even the members from same family speak differently due to differences in their location ( Biber & Conrad, 2014). For example, in my neighborhood, there is a difference in the ways of

Verbal languages vary in pronunciations. Since, Languages are described as being smooth and light, while on the other hand, languages known to being rough and abrupt. The manner in which speakers pronounce and communicate using words, phrases and hand gesture also has a way in building the personality of the language. Furthermore, whilst a speaker pronounces words and letters that are in the non-speaker opinion rigid and tough, an image of a solid language is created in the observing non-speaker mind. Personally, listening to Hindi dialects, I myself seem to find it challenging to pronounce specific words, and an image of complexity forms in my mind. During dialect comparison, we realize that pronunciation is vulnerable to criticism and satire. Comedians during criticizing a specific group usually imitate the dialect to refer to their identity. Thus when they criticize the language they mean it to the group and their specialized behavior.

Savan explains how close yet how far apart the White and African American languages really are. She writes about how often black language is now being used in everyday “American talk”(381) by white people. She feels that the media has used so many words of African Americans that these words are now becoming part of “Standard English”(368). Although many words of blacks are becoming extremely accepted by white people the entire black language is not accepted. “December 1996, the Oakland, California, school board approved [a new way of teaching] African American students [in the classroom]’’(Savan 385). The school board approved the method of using ebonomics in several African American populated schools around the Oakland area. This new way of teaching created an uproar with the media and white people. Once again African American people were being scrutinized over their language and were being made fun of again. Many of the same white people/media using black language were mocking African American’s saying “to teach ebonomics [is wrong because blacks would be ignoring] standard english”(Savan 386). This is a very thoughtless statement because if blacks would be able to use their own black language in school it could help them understand the standard english system along with several

Something Genava said was, “Ebonics: neither “broken” nor “sloppy” speech nor merely “slang” nor some bizarre lingo spoken only by baggy-pants-wearing black kids.” The dominant group or white supremacy want us as blacks to believes that it’s something wrong with the way we speak, or pronounce our words. I personally believe they want blacks to have little to know confidence, so we can start acting like them, and not embracing our culture. I remember one time in class the white teacher name Mrs. Beltowski asked me “Do I know my dad?” and I said, “Yeah” then she said “You mean yes?”

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), or more commonly known as Ebonics, is derived from the words ebony, meaning black, and phonics, meaning the science of sounds. In essence, Ebonics is the science of black speech and language (Baugh, 2000, p. 2). According to early linguistic scholars, as told by John Baugh (2000), Ebonics is, in simplicity, a mixture of African and European languages that formed with African slaves (p. 3). The term Ebonics was coined in 1973 by a group of African Americans scholars who felt “black English” was a discriminatory name and contributed to the low regard of the language (Baugh, 2000, p. 2). However, Baugh (2000) states, just changing the name to Ebonics, or more professionally AAVE, does not help to increase

But “if there is a difficulty understanding what people say, difficulty speaking or forming sounds or words and using language in appropriate social contexts then this can affect a child’s behaviour and emotional development”. (Speech, Language Communication Action Plan 2011)

    If we are not aware of the words that come out of our mouths due to lack of thought or attention, we all suffer and we are all at fault: “When language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference, and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, . . . all users and makers are accountable for its demise” (Morrison 14-15).  The standards of society are changing and with them the

Language change happens every day. New words are constantly being added and new dialects are forming. People have always argued about the causes of language change and tried to control the changes that occurred but ultimately they accomplished nothing. Languages changes and spread as a result of the people who use it daily. African American English and California English are both examples of the different ways language can change. People try to resist the changes in their language because they do not want to see it change. Language change is a natural process that can be affected by others but never stopped. This course has done an excellent job explaining how language change starts and spreads.

Historically, humans have always been separated into groups based on appearance, whether that is concerning body shape, the clothes we wear, or the color of our skin. Stereotyping is a natural instinct that humans have because they feel the need to classify people in order to not feel threatened by them. Humans feel an obligation to know and understand people but do not necessarily want to be associated with them, thus they place people into specific groups, labeling them. One of the primary ways that we stereotype people is by their race. Being a minority that has always been prejudiced against in America, African Americans are often judged because of the way that they speak. Black students have struggled in academic settings that use Standard English, such as in the common American classroom. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) harms Black students through discrimination on standardized tests and in classroom environments.

Purpose Statement: By the end of my speech the audience will be able to see how I exhibit the trait of being anxious.