Project 2 First Draft

Learning about language is an interesting endeavor, it requires humans to go back to realizing how they are able to communicate with one and other. Personally, I do not think about language all that much as I go about my day, but the reality is that language impacts everything we do and the way we practice that goes along with it. This can be known as a discourse, a discourse is as described by Swales as the things that go into our writing that have an effect on the way we ultimately communicate. Discourse can be seen as the intricacies of language, such as tone, mood, body language, environment etc. In learning about the way I spoke I discovered how I am a code switcher, code switching is when we go from different forms of tone without even realizing that we are making a switch. I thought that I was able to see this by just simply thinking of how I speak with my sister and how I speak with my friends. Right there I knew there was a big difference. It not only showed me how I speak and how different my tones can get, it showed me how I am also subconsciously reserved around certain people when it comes to personal details. The same can be said for anyone, but I never made the connection to language and it makes a lot more sense now.

I did my data collection so far over 4 days. In those 4 days I had class, was with friends, and family. The first two days were a Saturday and Sunday. The first day was interesting because it was the day I went to sell my car, I found myself talking with my friend as we drove out to the guy who was buying my car. Then I went on to code switch from the speech used in talking with my friend to the guy buying my car. After that I went out that night with my mom and sister, I noticed I code switched again for discretion purposes. Then that night I went out with friends in the city, I code switched again. The next day was a Sunday and I went out with my dad to a sports bar in Bayside, NY to watch the Dolphins game. Then the next two days were over my trip to Buffalo to visit my family. Those days were full of travel and spending time with family, however I noticed that my discourse with family did not change much from my friends. The data collection showed me that I have 3 main discourses (types of speech) that I use daily depending on the situation. The thing that separates my form of speech is the formality that I exercise depending on the environment and that is my main hypothesis from my data collection.

I think that my research revealed a lot to me about code-switching, while I felt that at times it was difficult to be in a situation where I was not speaking I figured it out. There were times when I was traveling on the train and when I was surrounded by people I did not know, I found myself totally silent in these times, I would have reflections about how attached I am to my phone like everyone else on the train. Next, I felt that my findings were important to showing me how I formulate decisions on my language choice based on who I am around. The data showed me that I do not care about how I talk in front of my cousins and friends but how I am around family is different. I think that individualistically its important to keep different facets of life in different levels of formality in order to have the best possible reciprocation of respect. The thing that limited my research the most was the times where I was with family and not really talking because I was not exactly comfortable in the situation, my Uncles were around at times and are very strict and conservative so its hard to say the right things in those situations. I think my silence however, was my way of communicating my relationship to the topic being discussed. The topic itself isn’t significant its the fact that I chose to be silent instead of engaging. In this respect I see how my data shows me about my language choice as a person.

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