Why do so many of us speak differently at home than we do when at a professional setting? Is it because we want to sound more knowledgeable in public, because we’re linguistically lazy at home, or because of a subconscious want to sound appropriate? Is it to create cohesive groups and insure the continuation of the
group? Our voice inflections, pronunciations, and word choices reveal our thoughts, feelings, humor, intelligence and where we come from. Our unique dialects originate where we are with people we are most comfortable around.
I look up to my younger brother in a lot of ways. This sounds like a paradox, but he was the one who taught me that the way we speak is important and leaves an impact on people. When I was in 8th grade, Ian and I were talking about the results of my soccer game. I told him, “We won, we played really good”. After a long pause my 10 year old brother looked at me and said, “No, Aimee. Your team played really well”. The embarrassment of being corrected by a fifth grader made me strive to always apply the structure of Standard English to any statement or conversation. Now, even when I instant message, text, email, and most commonly facebook, I use correct grammar and punctuation. However, that is not to say that my speech is pompous or that my home speech and school or work speech are identical. Like everybody, I use slang, clichés, and idioms; I just make sure they are used correctly. My own home is filled with words that could sound foreign to anybody outside my family. For example, Ian and I refer to my grandma as “Grandmoo”, while my mom calls her “Mamoo”. We often add an “in” at the end of our dog’s names, so we have “Annin” and “Sammin” instead of “Anne” and “Sam”. My favorite household idiom is “Oh, for Christ’s sake”, meaning “You can’t be serious…”. Ian and I find words and phrases that have been lost and we try to work them back in to ordinary conversation. A classic example of this is the word “wisenheimer”. “Wisenheimer” is a word I would use in formal or informal conversation .A lot of my speech outside of school and work is comfortable and has a sarcastic or hilarious connotation. When my mom and I talk (and especially when I talk to my friends), we talk really quickly. A lot of times my speech gets slurred and it’s difficult to pick apart unless you’re prepared for fast speech. Because we know each other well, we don’t always have to annunciate and elaborate on ideas because the other person knows what we’re getting at. Being close enough to one another to use few words makes conversation comfortable. When I am at school, I am more conscious to slow down my speech.