English 2150 Blog

According to John Swales, author of The Concept of Discourse Community, a speech community is group of people that share linguistic rules, cultural concepts, and shared regulative rules. So therefore based on my research I fall into two different speech communities which are English and Bengali. I interact and switch between the two languages when it is appropriate. Sometimes I also mix the two languages together because though I am fluent in Bengali a lot of the words do not come to me easily, so therefore I just say them in English, but it is still understandable. This also brings me to my next definition of multilingualism and code switching. Multilingualism is the term for using several languages and in my case the languages I use in my daily life are English and Bengali. According to Rosamina Lowi the process of code switching is when an individual switches his or her language or tone based on the situation or subject he or she is talking to. Also according to John Swales a discourse community, a group that one belongs to based on similar lifestyles or characteristics and Is usually influenced by persuasion and occupation. From my research I can say that I can be a part more than one discourse community This data is important to me because it is showing me a glance at how I use some of the terms mentioned above without even knowing.

All of the data was collected by just jotting down how and who I spoke to. I used my cell phone to take note of all the languages I spoke and how I spoke them based on the situations. My data was recorded on two separate times, two weekdays and weekends. I broke the time periods up into 3-4 hours a block I was able to jot down the ways I spoke and whom I spoke to. For the most part I would say I was able to take the data down all the time but there were sometimes where I would forget to, and I would add it to the block. Here are brief descriptions of some of the language types:

Bengali: Language used by people from Eastern India and Bangladesh and also the Bengali diaspora around the world.

Slang English: A type of informal English I use to talk to my friends and cousins. An example would be “Yo where you at”.

Texting English: The English language and grammar that is used when texting. Example would “wbu” which means what about you.

Bengali and English: The use of both Bengali and English in one sentence or statement.

In conclusion based on my data, my use of languages really varied from weekends to weekdays. I anticipated these results because during the weekends I am usually at work and a lot of formal and semi-formal English is used. During the weekday, I use a lot of texting English and also slang and semi-formal English because I am away from work and more around family and friends. This data really helped me realize that code switching is something I do on a minute to minute basis. It also gave me a little understanding of what discourse communities I belong to, though I still believe this is too little of a sample to show what discourse community I am part of.