“English is a complex, rule-governed system that we use every day without having to think about its intricacies”. (Curzan, Adams 1)Rules are always meant to be broken and we who speak this language do just that, as time goes on. In our week 8 discussion I wrote that words are vocal utterances that we put together in specific patterns to create singular or strung together sounds that are to stand for expressions of emotions, people, places and things and we weigh heavily how we use these sounds to describe any and everything/one on the reactions we get from those we value. I believe this is exactly how the history of words has evolved, through meant and unmeant vocal utterances. Through these meant and unmeant noises and the reactions our friends and loved ones have had towards them we have then changed to suit ours and their emotional needs with these utterances. As we have evolved in life our vocabularies have evolved and expanded to encompass our new environments around us. As people have moved around the world to and from different places in expeditions our languages have expanded as well. According to wordorigins.org “English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages.” (wordorigins.org) This essentially means our language comes from a strong Germanic and old Roman Latin background, which I believe is what gives our language such depth. By depth, I simply mean that we have many words that mean the same thing or different spelling of the same word for other things. Our language is also a dialect of many cuts and clips mixed together to formulate a storytelling language.
After our group discussion with the Lord of the Rings clip, knowing our origin makes me want to develop a story that makes use of our origin language, bring it to life again if you will. It seems like such a waste of perfectly good dialect to let it all go dusty. In my particular career path of contemporary realistic fiction writer, I could conceivably take the old languages and revive them with contemporary backdrops, like the Lord of the Rings seems to have done. I could possibly even tweak their sentence structure like Yoda does and come up with a new Old English altogether. It makes me giddy to think of all the exponential amount of possibilities.
It is important to study and mindfully apply linguistics because it helps people to communicate with each other. Communication is a key part of human existence and while we can communicate through other forms such as body language, it is important to understand the linguistics of speech so that our speech isn’t misinterpreted. It’s important to study when to raise our voice to indicate a question or when to deepen our voice for authority. We also have a specific tone for excitement as well as anger and can even vary our pitch of voice when we cry so that our cries are differentiated. These are all differences in linguistics that are important to learn so that we can successfully cooperate and especially communicate with those around us. In our week 7 discussion, we discussed atmosphere and our authors and I chose excerpts from all three of Steinbeck’s books that I was reading to illustrate that he used linguistics to emphasize each book characters locations because without giving his characters linguistic nuances of speech that derived from where they were from then the reader would have a harder time really getting caught up in the story.
As an aspiring author, I hope to be able to learn what I have learned about linguistics to further develop my characters like Steinbeck has been able to do by really hearing how people talk and translating that to paper so that my readers can be transported to wherever my story takes them.
Society changes English linguistics simply by trying to null and void them to an extent. By this I mean that with the evolution of the smartphone and how much people are texting with acronyms trying to convey thoughts too quickly, it’s stripping the linguistic of language away, which even though it makes the message come across quicker it leaves a lot more room for miscommunication. There are still windows available for communication as it is always evolving, such as video chat and emailing, however, it seems that the acronym of text is spilling over to the next generation n the form of speaking in an acronym. By this measure, I believe that the emphatic nature or empathetic one is getting lost and becoming increasingly drone-like. It seems real emotions are getting lost in the new technology as they are getting replaced by emoji emotions which lack personalization. In our week 9 discussion, we discussed evolving technology and in it, I discussed the pros to why evolving technology isn’t hindering society's interrelationship with English by allowing its constant use of acronyms and emoji’s to break certain foreign language barriers. While in high school it’s stripping our children and teenagers of emotional connectedness it seems to be allowing more people to communicate across language barriers that before technological interventions on society’s people were hoping that their pee-pee dance was enough to let a foreigner know they needed a restroom.
In my particular career path, I plan to simply write. I am an avid reader and avid lover of the written word especially when it is done with style and sarcastic flare. I love reading stories that involve real-life situations that are almost impossible to believe. Whether the stories have a happy ending or not, I appreciate the point and/or lesson; as a writer, I plan to provide a point and/or lesson with every piece I write. I am pursuing this track because books are eternal, they are immortal, they are a way for my mind to go wild and a way for others to keep a piece of my wild mind long after it ceases existence physically.
In my career choice, it is imperative for me to acquire my own writing style if I want to be able to make and keep a name for myself. Everyone is looking for that new way to spin the plan that already works and it is my goal to figure out how I can spin that plan to fit who I am and also give my audience words they will connect with.
Works Cited:
- Curzan, Anne, and Michael Adams. How English Works A Linguistic Introduction. Longman. 2012. Pg. 1.
- Wilton, Dave. “A (Very) Brief History of the English Language.”Wordorigins.org, Wordorigins, 15 Jan. 2001, www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/a_very_brief_history_of_the_english_language3/. Accessed 2 June 2017.
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