Language Communities

EN 105

April 2012

Which of the language communities you belong to do you think is most mis-understood? Why? Describe that language community--its membership, practices, dialects, values--so as to "set the record straight" and clear up misconceptions and stereotypes.

There are several language communities that I belong to depending on my surrounding. I have a different community when I'm at home with my family and friends. I also have a different one when I'm at work. One thing that I find to be very interesting that I'm able to do is adapt to my surroundings. We have to be mindful of our environments when we go into our different languages. Some audiences may take some different languages as to be somewhat rude or disrespectful.

One of my different language communities that I am involved in, would be Ebonics. When I am around my friends, we all pretty much adapt to the other ones language. We use some words that we wouldn't want to say in front of others, so we would use Ebonics to cover it up. We wouldn't say rude or disrespectful things using Ebonics, its just a different language that my community would use to explain or describe something. Some Ebonics can be viewed as being rude or disrespectful depending on the audience, and some just would not understand. This language is mostly misunderstood, because it can be placed with the urban community. With the Ebonics language, it changes on a daily basis. There are more and more words that are being incorporated to the Ebonics. Not everyone that speaks Ebonics will be caught up on all of it. There actually is an online dictionary that people utilize to find out the meaning of a particular Ebonic word. This place on-line that people use is called "UrbanDictonary.com". This website will list every Ebonic word that is being used in society today. The site is kept up to date by the language community, to define the words. This is one language community that I am part of, and I do find it interesting and also confusing at the same time.

Another language community that I am part of is the Military. The military has several different language communities and not every branch is the same. My experience with this Language Community is with the Air Force. I was in personnel when I was in the Air Force and there were so many different acronyms that we used. We would have so many that even the ordinary Air Force member would not be able to keep up with our lingo. Hard part about this language community is when there is a non-government/military member that you have to break down some the language for. We become so used to the Military Lingo that it becomes second nature when we speak it. We that speak the language know when there is a military affiliated person when we hear the certain acronyms. There are certain words that when spoken, we automatically just know that they have history or experience with the military.