Vashti Chowla, Grade 12
UWCSEA East
My idiolect is my linguistic fingerprint. It makes up a huge part of the identity that I project to others. I am unique, therefore my language is too. I believe that we speak as we do because of the influences that subconsciously shape us, and the choices that we have made in order to present a certain version of ourselves to the world, to promote clarity, as well as our values and beliefs. Our speech defines us to a point of recognition, though it is something that changes as often as we do. As an individual, I am a piece of the puzzle of the future, and the past of English as it is the language that speaks to me, even when I don’t speak to others.
Though we don’t have control over the factors that influence us, we can certainly define them. One of the most important influences on my language would be the way I have been brought up. ‘Nurture’ as it is often called, in my case has a lot to do with prestige. In my culture respect is sacrosanct. One such example is that in my parents’ mother tongue, Hindi. The language I speak at home. In Hindi there are specific names people have to be called in relation to their age. For example, older brothers and sisters have the prefix ‘bhaiya’ or ‘didi’ in front of their names. This suggests that Hindi has put more pressure on it’s speakers than English to express prestige. This particular value of Hindi has bled into my idiolect because it is part of the sociolect in my home. As it is a crucial part of my idiolect, when talking to anyone, it has been ingrained in me that expression of prestige should come from not only gestures and tone of voice, but also the names that people are called. Highlighting how multilingualism has impacted not only my speech, but my values too.
The fact that my parents chose for me to be multilingual is a defining influence on my language. This caused me a lot of confusion in the past because I believed that all languages had one set of rules, the rules of one could be applied to others. I would use the English suffix ‘ed’ in Hindi to indicate past tense. ‘Maro’ means to hit in Hindi, and because many words in English such as ‘need’ have an ‘ed’ suffix added to them to show that something was needed in the past, (funnily enough ‘hit’ doesn’t do this in English), I this applied to Hindi as well. This has now evolved into a slang word that I use with my parents. Suggesting that in some cases, sociolect is created out of jokes or misconceptions of certain languages, and becomes a conventional way to speak to those who can understand it. It gives a sense of community to those in the sociolect, because it is exclusive.
I have become aware of the conscious acts that I commit in order to include or exclude a group of people or a specific person. Slang words that have evolved as part of the youth sociolect for my age have been parts of my language that I have consciously adapted to show covert prestige. At first, I thought that standard English was the more powerful form of English when speaking to my peers, but I soon realised that replacing gymnastics with ‘gym’ sounded much cooler. Why? It’s all to do with identifying myself as part of a group that others cannot. That is why it is much more impressive when I say, “I have gym afterschool,” to someone who is not a gymnast. This gives me a feeling of power, because I know what ‘gym’ is and have to explain it to them. Like they say, “Knowledge is power.” This proves that I sometimes value the feeling of power over clarity. Clarity is necessary for a feeling of community, but power is exclusive. Oftentimes one has to be compromised to achieve the other.
This next choice is a mix of an influence and a choice. Growing up, I used to watch American sitcoms on Disney Channel like many of my other peers. “Shake it Up!” or “Phineas and Ferb” take me right back to my childhood. They also taught me how to speak in an ‘American accent’ and use phrases that the characters in these shows use. The phrase “What'cha Doin'?” I picked up from Isabella in ‘Phineas and Ferb’, and still use it to this day, though it is not a native expression from India or Singapore. This shows the influence on entertainment on my language. It is part of the youth sociolect, so phrases and words from these popular TV shows must be known, and if not, a feeling of isolation and pressure to watch them builds. The choice to use these expressions makes me a part of the youth sociolect.
As well as that, being a third culture kid and meeting people from so many different cultures, a part of me does make a conscious decision to adapt my accent while speaking to different people. For instance, I speak in an ‘Indian’ accent with my family and friends from my condo. At school I speak with an American(as I’m told) accent. So much so that my mentor told me I should be in an American TV show! This demonstrates that I consciously code shift my accent to meet the standards of those who I am speaking to and to build a better sense of belonging, regardless of who I am talking to. Theoretically, I could use the same accent with everyone, but in doing that, some understanding is lost. We can also observe this phenomenon in Starr, the main character in ‘The Hate You Give’ by Angie Thomas. ‘That’s when I realised that Williamson is one world and Garden Heights is another, and I have to keep them separate.” (Thomas, 2018, page 39) Williamson is her school, and Garden Heights her neighbourhood. She feels like two different people in both places.
I found many traits of myself in Starr. Having these different worlds means that sometimes I am at a loss to explain to myself who I really am. This can make me feel very isolated.
The way I speak is mostly dictated by what I want to convey, and the outcome that I want my words to have on others. My knowledge of the outcomes of my language has been built up in waves. The graph of my growth in speaking English will be quite an interesting one if it is ever made. Just like the making of English, my idiolect has been made in waves. New information hasn’t come to me at a steady rate, rather it has come when I have made mistakes that need to be corrected. Case in point, I once called one of my mother’s friends fat, and my mother told me off. That day I learnt that it is not acceptable to point out qualities of people that are negative in the views of society. This highlights the fact that language is like a carving tool, and when used in a certain way, can reveal insecurities and perceived weaknesses.
My English is changing as my values change. For instance, if I wanted to ask one of my girl friends who they had a crush on, I used to say, “What is he like?” But now, after learning about the LGBTQ community, and learning that some of my friends are a part of it, I changed the question to, “What are they like?” This is a conscious change I have made. This proves that new concepts can still shed light on new ways to speak the English language, and we, as teenagers, still have the ability to shape the future with our language. And though these changes are not only in the English language, they are most prominent in it because it is the language of prestige in the world currently, because it is correlated and advances along with Technology, Culture, and Religion.
To conclude, I will say that my speech takes up a lot of my identity, but certainly not all of it. I speak the way I do thanks to the many influences and choices that have shaped my languages, such as my nurture, or the shows I choose to watch. This language defines me to a point that people are able to recognise my language, whether it be in writing or in speech. My language is impacted greatly by the changing values of the world, as people start to invent or become more open to new ideas. Because it is the language of the world, and of prestige, I can see English bearing the brunt of a full force of changes in order to accommodate the changes the world is undergoing. Language is as fluid as our species, so who knows what’s in store for it next?
Works Cited
“The Hate U Give: Adult Edition.” Walker Books - The Hate U Give: Adult Edition, www.walker.co.uk/The-Hate-U-Give-9781406387162.aspx.
“LGBTQ Counseling Clinic.” LGBTQ Counseling Clinic | College of Education | University of Iowa, education.uiowa.edu/lgbtq-counseling-clinic.
“Multilingualism - Language Contact.” Multilingualism - Language Contact, sites.google.com/site/hongkonglinguistics/Downhome/Topic1.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate u Give. Walker Books, 2018.
XD, Disney. “Theme Song 🎶 | Phineas and Ferb | Disney XD.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkQrKxT
Though we don’t have control over the factors that influence us, we can certainly define them. One of the most important influences on my language would be the way I have been brought up. ‘Nurture’ as it is often called, in my case has a lot to do with prestige. In my culture respect is sacrosanct. One such example is that in my parents’ mother tongue, Hindi. The language I speak at home. In Hindi there are specific names people have to be called in relation to their age. For example, older brothers and sisters have the prefix ‘bhaiya’ or ‘didi’ in front of their names. This suggests that Hindi has put more pressure on it’s speakers than English to express prestige. This particular value of Hindi has bled into my idiolect because it is part of the sociolect in my home. As it is a crucial part of my idiolect, when talking to anyone, it has been ingrained in me that expression of prestige should come from not only gestures and tone of voice, but also the names that people are called. Highlighting how multilingualism has impacted not only my speech, but my values too.
The fact that my parents chose for me to be multilingual is a defining influence on my language. This caused me a lot of confusion in the past because I believed that all languages had one set of rules, the rules of one could be applied to others. I would use the English suffix ‘ed’ in Hindi to indicate past tense. ‘Maro’ means to hit in Hindi, and because many words in English such as ‘need’ have an ‘ed’ suffix added to them to show that something was needed in the past, (funnily enough ‘hit’ doesn’t do this in English), I this applied to Hindi as well. This has now evolved into a slang word that I use with my parents. Suggesting that in some cases, sociolect is created out of jokes or misconceptions of certain languages, and becomes a conventional way to speak to those who can understand it. It gives a sense of community to those in the sociolect, because it is exclusive.
I have become aware of the conscious acts that I commit in order to include or exclude a group of people or a specific person. Slang words that have evolved as part of the youth sociolect for my age have been parts of my language that I have consciously adapted to show covert prestige. At first, I thought that standard English was the more powerful form of English when speaking to my peers, but I soon realised that replacing gymnastics with ‘gym’ sounded much cooler. Why? It’s all to do with identifying myself as part of a group that others cannot. That is why it is much more impressive when I say, “I have gym afterschool,” to someone who is not a gymnast. This gives me a feeling of power, because I know what ‘gym’ is and have to explain it to them. Like they say, “Knowledge is power.” This proves that I sometimes value the feeling of power over clarity. Clarity is necessary for a feeling of community, but power is exclusive. Oftentimes one has to be compromised to achieve the other.
This next choice is a mix of an influence and a choice. Growing up, I used to watch American sitcoms on Disney Channel like many of my other peers. “Shake it Up!” or “Phineas and Ferb” take me right back to my childhood. They also taught me how to speak in an ‘American accent’ and use phrases that the characters in these shows use. The phrase “What'cha Doin'?” I picked up from Isabella in ‘Phineas and Ferb’, and still use it to this day, though it is not a native expression from India or Singapore. This shows the influence on entertainment on my language. It is part of the youth sociolect, so phrases and words from these popular TV shows must be known, and if not, a feeling of isolation and pressure to watch them builds. The choice to use these expressions makes me a part of the youth sociolect.
As well as that, being a third culture kid and meeting people from so many different cultures, a part of me does make a conscious decision to adapt my accent while speaking to different people. For instance, I speak in an ‘Indian’ accent with my family and friends from my condo. At school I speak with an American(as I’m told) accent. So much so that my mentor told me I should be in an American TV show! This demonstrates that I consciously code shift my accent to meet the standards of those who I am speaking to and to build a better sense of belonging, regardless of who I am talking to. Theoretically, I could use the same accent with everyone, but in doing that, some understanding is lost. We can also observe this phenomenon in Starr, the main character in ‘The Hate You Give’ by Angie Thomas. ‘That’s when I realised that Williamson is one world and Garden Heights is another, and I have to keep them separate.” (Thomas, 2018, page 39) Williamson is her school, and Garden Heights her neighbourhood. She feels like two different people in both places.
I found many traits of myself in Starr. Having these different worlds means that sometimes I am at a loss to explain to myself who I really am. This can make me feel very isolated.
The way I speak is mostly dictated by what I want to convey, and the outcome that I want my words to have on others. My knowledge of the outcomes of my language has been built up in waves. The graph of my growth in speaking English will be quite an interesting one if it is ever made. Just like the making of English, my idiolect has been made in waves. New information hasn’t come to me at a steady rate, rather it has come when I have made mistakes that need to be corrected. Case in point, I once called one of my mother’s friends fat, and my mother told me off. That day I learnt that it is not acceptable to point out qualities of people that are negative in the views of society. This highlights the fact that language is like a carving tool, and when used in a certain way, can reveal insecurities and perceived weaknesses.
My English is changing as my values change. For instance, if I wanted to ask one of my girl friends who they had a crush on, I used to say, “What is he like?” But now, after learning about the LGBTQ community, and learning that some of my friends are a part of it, I changed the question to, “What are they like?” This is a conscious change I have made. This proves that new concepts can still shed light on new ways to speak the English language, and we, as teenagers, still have the ability to shape the future with our language. And though these changes are not only in the English language, they are most prominent in it because it is the language of prestige in the world currently, because it is correlated and advances along with Technology, Culture, and Religion.
To conclude, I will say that my speech takes up a lot of my identity, but certainly not all of it. I speak the way I do thanks to the many influences and choices that have shaped my languages, such as my nurture, or the shows I choose to watch. This language defines me to a point that people are able to recognise my language, whether it be in writing or in speech. My language is impacted greatly by the changing values of the world, as people start to invent or become more open to new ideas. Because it is the language of the world, and of prestige, I can see English bearing the brunt of a full force of changes in order to accommodate the changes the world is undergoing. Language is as fluid as our species, so who knows what’s in store for it next?
Works Cited
“The Hate U Give: Adult Edition.” Walker Books - The Hate U Give: Adult Edition, www.walker.co.uk/The-Hate-U-Give-9781406387162.aspx.
“LGBTQ Counseling Clinic.” LGBTQ Counseling Clinic | College of Education | University of Iowa, education.uiowa.edu/lgbtq-counseling-clinic.
“Multilingualism - Language Contact.” Multilingualism - Language Contact, sites.google.com/site/hongkonglinguistics/Downhome/Topic1.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate u Give. Walker Books, 2018.
XD, Disney. “Theme Song 🎶 | Phineas and Ferb | Disney XD.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkQrKxT
www.unitedworldwide.co