Learning Investigation #1

Nicole Eulberg
February 9, 2009

Culture is a part of every person and within that culture or community a certain language is revealed. Each and every person comes from a different background which means we all differ in language and how we use it. Most people may speak English however not all people pronounce words of the English language the same nor do they use the same language in a given community setting.
I was born and raised in a white suburban town outside of Denver called Arvada. In Arvada, there was little diversity if any at all and for the most part everyone in the town spoke the same. My parents raised me to speak clearly and use various words or phrases in give situations. While speaking to my teachers throughout my schooling, I never used the word “like” as a filler and always tried to use bigger words to sound more educated. Because of my parents, and mentors over the years, I became aware of how to speak in certain situations or communities rather that helped me later on in life.
When I turned 16 I got a job working at Washington Mutual Bank as a teller. Getting hired for this job meant that the language I used to talk with my friends was no longer expectable in this community. I had to start speaking professionally while at the same time not speak over the customers head using bank terms that I learned in training. This certain community really taught me how to deal with customers and how to speak effectively to them in a way that they not only understood, but appreciated as well coming from someone at my age.
Around my friends however, it is an entirely different community. We all laugh and tell stories using the word “like” in between every other word or so. In a way sometimes I sound like a valley girl because of words that I use such as “whatever” of “Shut up”. Those words would not be considered professional in any way in my work community nor would they be expectable in a school atmosphere when communicating with teachers or my future students. My favorite community of language however is texting. Texting makes every word so much easier to say not to mention it saves you time. In my community of texting, if I was going to say “see you later “or “Love you” if would be “cu l8er” or “luv u”. The texting community uses abbreviations because it saves the texter time while writing a message. As students however, using this language when writing a paper is frowned upon and in most cases can count against you for quite a few points depending on the teacher. This again shows school is a different community in which language differs.
In just a few examples of various communities I have shown you how language is different based on a given setting in my everyday life. For me, being raised in the community I was has affected me in the aspect of when and where I use the above language and how I might sound different from someone who was raised in say an African American community or the streets of Brooklyn. A community member of my community uses these words in the above ways because it is what they grew up knowing and as stated previously, each culture is different, with it, comes the different language communities.