How I have changed my mind about language

Before I took this class, I believed that words that are not in the dictionary could not be considered as “real” words.  This perceived knowledge impacted the way I understood myself, my family/friends, and others different from me because I felt that the more well spoken a person is (grammatical, mechanical, etc), was directly related to and could ultimately determine the amount of respect that would be allotted to them.  It would constantly aggravate me when I would hear someone speak, or would read something that someone had written, and I would notice errors.  It was in my opinion, that that made a person sound extremely unintelligent and uneducated.  

I still have this disposition to a certain extent, but I now uphold a much higher tolerance (patients) and understanding for people and their idiolect.  I learned that although an "idiolect" is the personal dialect of an individual speaker, "we generally tend to sound like others whom we share the same similar educational backgrounds and/or occupations" (Yule 255).   I also learned of an experiment conducted by socio-linguist William Labov in the 1960s to see how speech could serve as a social marker.  A social marker is a linguistic feature that marks the speaker as a member of a particular social group (Yule 256).  During the experiment, Labov traveled to three different stores (all ranging in socio-economic statuses; upper-middle-class, middle-class, working-class) and “asked the salespeople specific questions in order to elicit answers with the expression fourth floor.”  At the conclusion of the experiment, it became prominent that “the higher the socio-economic status of the store, the more the /r/ sounds were produced as compared to the lower the status, the fewer /r/ sounds were produced by those who worked there” (Yule 255).  Learning about this experiment really caught my attention as it gave me insight that completely disregarded the ignorant standpoint that I once had regarding the way in which someone speaks.  It made me realize that just because someone does not present them self in a way that I deem proper, does not necessarily make them any less intelligent, it just proves that different groups of people adapt to the speech which they are raised around.  I also caught myself being hypocritical when I reflected on my own speech patterns.  I began becoming more conscious of the way I speak and to who I speak that way to, and realized that I often become extremely informal when talking to my friends.  This realization made me take a step back and really reevaluate myself and my assumptions about others.

The knowledge that I acquired throughout this course definitely changed how I understand and relate to others because it grounded me a tremendous amount and opened my mind to other cultures and various dialects.  Words are not limited to any one vocabulary.  There are an infinite number of possibilities and combinations to creating new and different words.  The best part of language is there is a word for most every different thought/feeling one could try to relay, and if one does not come to mind, there are not any limits or restraints to making up your own!  I have been able to participate in many more interesting and informing conversations just now having broader knowledge of language and all its different interpretations.