My Personal Language

Samantha Redden
August 21, 2009
Blog 1
Dr. Hughes
My Personal Language
My language, my own personal dialogue, changes every day. I may learn a new way of saying a certain word, sometimes more educated, other times teenage slang. I may hear a word or phrase I use on a typical basis in a different language and substitute it into my English, for example, “Hola! Como estas?” The changes I make to the way I speak add character into my voice. They allow someone to analyze the type of person I am by the way I speak to them. That is being prejudice; however, everyone does it without realizing. My vocabulary, dialect, diction, and sentence phrasing is constantly developing due to my family, friends, and type of environment I am in.
Often, my stepmother, an English teacher, will correct the way I speak, attempting to make me talk more sophisticated. When I am in my home with my family my “personal language” evolves in order to convince them I have a scholarly vocabulary. However, the minute my bedroom door closes and I get a phone call from a friend “ya’ll,” “ain’t” and other typical southern words come pouring out of me. The way I speak, particularly my vocabulary transforms from one environment to the next within a split second. One minute I am in my dorm room kicked back on my bed with a friend using my beautiful slang, and the next I am sitting in a formal classroom setting dissecting the meaning of language.
Because my language changes according to who I am with or where I am doesn’t not mean that I necessarily try to “fit in.” Everyone at some point in their day changes the way they use their words because of who they are talking to. If I spoke to my friend in my dorm room the way I speak to my classmates, she would look at me as if I had three heads. No one expects anyone else to speak the same way everywhere you go no matter who you are with. The way I speak and the vocabulary I use is all a part of my own language, one in which is changed by those around me and my environment, but still a language that defines me.