Sei sulla pagina 1di 5

Rome 1 Christopher Rome Ms. Hofmann ENGL 1101-029 11 December 2013 Speaking, How You Do It?

I was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, right on the border of Fort Bragg, the army military base. The backyard literally touched the fence that separated the military base and the neighborhood. My dad was born in a little town near Ashville and my mother was born in Iloilo, Philippines. My dad was in the army for twenty years and retired to work in civil service for the government while my mom got a bachelors in nursing at ECU then went on to work for the state in the social service department. A single quote that I remember my dad telling me that has seemed to stick too much for my own good is that the less you talk, the smarter you look. Just this past weekend, when my dad called to ask how I was doing in college, I couldnt bring myself to go in depth, resorting to one word answers and single sentence explanations. Throughout grade school, I was placed into the generalization of being the quiet smart kid who was going to do some world changing things, even after I almost failed the fifth grade. In the home, the environment was closely resembling that of a distant family, it felt like, but we all were close. The house was usually quiet except for the T.V. that would be running or the miscellaneous noises from things such as microwaves, organizing cabinets, and typing. My brother is most likely faring better than me, having graduated from West Point and is now three years into his military career. My parents say he is about as talkative as me, though I feel he does talk more than me. I feel that he is about as opposite as is possible from me. My brother is into sports, especially football, and he enjoys going to places with friends and spending time outside

Rome 2 of the house. I, on the other hand, do not care at all for sports in general. I enjoy the video games and the solitary confinement inside the house. I enjoy being absorbed into the virtual world and be able to escape the depressing world that is reality. I did have friends in grade school, but we werent close enough to actually go out and do things together. In my eyes, I caused myself to drive myself away from communicating with other people. Most of the time, I feel nervous and anxious when talking to people. This probably shows in how I speak to others. Despite all this, when it comes to gaming online with others, Im much more confident because of the anonymity of the internet and how Im able to measure my words before I speak or type them. Very similar to how Shizune, a deaf character from the visual novel Katawa Shoujo, is able to communicate precisely what she needs to in the way she wants to because she only communicates through sign language. She even muses over the fact of how she is pretty much forced to think about what she is going to say because of the nature of communicating with sign language. She uses a median, Misha to translate all she has to say to anyone who doesnt know sign language. The internet could be the median that people use to communicate with others and allow them to think more about what they say and put extra effort into their communication. Taking every word into careful consideration before I type it to the people I have been acquainted with over the internet is a pleasure I do not get to enjoy in real life. I dont feel like I have an accent because of how removed from speaking I have been throughout my life. But if there was a gamer dialect, I feel that I would be speaking with it. It generally can only be understood by another person if they know the game and have context towards what I am saying. I like to equate this with how the people who are passionate about football talk about it to other passionate people. Words like center snapping the ball then throwing into the blitz play onto a foul because of some arbitrary touching and then onto some stats and comparing them to other

Rome 3 players means close to nothing to me. On the other hand, using an example from the recent world championship for League of Legends, words and phrases such as LoveLin with the LeeSin Sonicwave into resonating strike onto the enemy A.D. carry, then allowing Corki to pick up the kill for a successful tower dive gank. has some meaning within its context. I can relate to someone who talks about football the same way I talk about League of Legends because of how subject dependent the vernacular is. This type of speech is only effective with others who use the vocabulary when talking about the specific subject matter. Similar to how people who use Ebonics can effectively code-switch whenever they want to fit the situation, I feel like I do the same when with my own speech. Some of the things I say online I will never repeat or say in the real world. Not only would it sound silly, in my opinion, many of the people who do use some internet lingo outside of the internet sound annoying. AS with many things, people need context to understand something and then laugh if it is actually funny. Memes on the internet are macro-images that people overlay with text to make jokes that have a reactionary face or a funny looking animal that some people enjoy looking at on the internet. Memes change every day, only the most popular ones survive the test of time. During my time at high school, many of my peers who tried to fit in and be funny within the various cliques tried to use memes from the internet but not everyone had the correct context. This left the user of the meme looking like a fool who was just saying something random. Acronyms and phrases from the internet should be looked at, not heard. One of the worst things that I can hear from someone in public is actually pronouncing lol as if it should be a word. With communication transitioning from face to face and other verbal communication to e-mail and texting or chatting over the internet, I feel that in some cases people are more out spoken than they would be in a group discussion. As mentioned previously, the internet provides

Rome 4 a wall of anonymity that usually allows people to be blunter with their words or allow them to play the devils advocate and troll other people, which is to incite negative behavior and retaliation from unsuspecting users for the instigators amusement. This allows people to effectively have two personalities, if they wish to. One personality to talk to people face to face and another to communicate over the internet. In some cases, it is possible for a person to have multiple accounts and have a set of traits and personalities for each account and play as different people when communicating over the internet. In some big wig companies, the public relations office and the marketing departments may use accounts on sites like Reddit.com or Twitter.com to post and tweet fake, positive publicity or advocate for the use of the companies product they are working for. If the ploy is done correctly and the general population of the website enjoys the content and promote or retweet it for even more people to see, then there is essentially free advertising. Types of personality switching like these may obscure the identity of the individual. I say this because it may have already happened to me. I can only define myself with my personas on the internet. On the internet I am me the most. I can contribute to a conversation in a forum if I feel like I have something useful to say, but also dont feel obligated to have to say something. When I am with a group of people having a discussion, if I feel that I dont have anything to say that could contribute to the conversation or dont feel comfortable, then I will just sit by idly. My speech relates to me through the different ways that I communicate. It shows the different parts of me that I want to show to the people that I am communicating to. Overall, I feel like my identity that relates to my language and literacy really doesnt matter to me. I probably should value my identity more, but my environment while growing up did not really value communicating. I feel that I have been on the internet for so long and made

Rome 5 many more long term friends in the virtual world than the real world that I am comfortable to say that it is where I feel most at home in. I dont think it matters that most of my life is invested online, so long as I am still able to function and be productive in society. I feel like my life had a negative impact overall from being online so much because of the reduced face to face personal interaction I could have had with other people. I find myself being reserved and socially awkward in many situations because of the fear of the unknown. On the internet, I can somewhat control what happens to me, enough to keep me comfortable and happy.

Potrebbero piacerti anche