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Sheila Lutz
Structure of English
Dr. Schlitz
Linguistics Research Assignment
April 28, 2014
Introduction
Language is consistently evolving and shaping the world we live in. Language varies all
over the world, from the language a nation speaks to the various dialects and accents that are
spoken around the world. Every person in the world has their own unique way of speaking.
Patterns, however, can be found within the same language of a country, culture, state, city, or
even a neighborhood. These vocal patterns can be noted as a persons accent. An accent along
with the slang and unique vernacular of a region creates a dialect. The way a person speaks and
the sound of their voice can tell a lot about a person. We can use language to explore a persons
identity by the way they speak. We can learn a lot about a persons age, gender, ethnicity,
geographic region, and even their education level. For example, preschool is an exciting time in a
childs life due to everything being new and wondrous. What if the preschooler came from a poor
area with little to no pre-education? What if the preschooler came from a rich area with a lot of
pre-education? Their language style is going to be vastly different, but it all boils down to one
problem. Nobodys language is wrong. Is it appropriate to correct a childs speech even when
you can understand them?

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A major issue with our culture is the misinterpretation and classification of dialects.
Language is often distinguished as social and political. In this view, languages are typically
prestigious, official, and written. Dialects are mostly spoken, unofficial and looked down upon.
Having a dialect is often associated with having a low social status when in fact that a lot of
actors and high class people do have a dialect or accent but its sometimes subtle or they decide
to conceal it for personal reasons. If we look at dialect linguistically, we can come up with a
major distinction when it comes to the difference between dialect and language. If two related
kinds of speech are so close that speakers can have a conversation and understand each other,
they are dialects of a single language. If comprehension is difficult to impossible, they are
distinct languages. In addition to the two different varieties of dialects that you can encounter,
dialects of the same language and dialects of different languages, there is also standardized
dialect in which the dialect is supported by institutions and nonstandard dialect in which its not
the beneficiary of institutional support.
While having a dialect helps shape who we are, there are a lot of problems that are not
specifically social problems. Mutual intelligibility is when two varieties are said to be dialects of
the same language if being a speaker of the other; otherwise, they are said to be different
languages. A dialect continuum is when Dialect N is mutually intelligible with both Dialect S and
Dialect E but Dialect S and E are not mutually intelligible with each other. This makes it
impossible to decide whether S and E are dialects of the same language or not. Another problem
occurs when one dialect understands another but no vice versa. These complications can make
dialect act as a foreign language if someone is unable to understand it and create invisible
barriers between individuals of the same language. Language expresses solidarity and group
identity. Language can separate insiders from outsiders. What happens when we strip down a

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persons identity and tell them that the way theyre living their lives is wrong? Language is then
turned into a tool to degrade and dehumanize a person. Not only do people degrade each other,
but society plays a big role in humiliating people as well. Institutions like colleges set the
standards on what is acceptable and unacceptable grammar.
Analysis
I was born in a small city called Ellwood City and lived there for 12 years. It was about
half an hour away from Pittsburg so I spoke with a Western dialect or Pittsburg English,
commonly known as Steelers Talk. When I moved to Shamokin, I immediately saw a difference
from the way I spoke to the way the people in Shamokin spoke. It was amazing how quickly I
was isolated all because I was different from them. I didnt think the way I talked was wrong yet
my peers and even the people I was told to trust, my teachers, told me my speech was different
and not right. I was baffled on how my language insulted and repulsed some people. I say the
word pop for a carbonated beverage while the common norm was to say soda. Lexicons are
words in a language or used by a group of people that are two different nouns but have the same
meaning. Some examples are pop vs. soda, couch vs. sofa, and cart vs. buggy. People in Pittsburg
say, Grab me a buggy, while people in Shamokin say, Grab me a cart. Even though my
language is not wrong, Im isolated because I dont fit their societal norm.
I once saw a girls fly down so I politely told her that, Kennywoods open and I kept
glancing down to her pants. After an awkward pause she noticed what I was referring to and
instead of thanking me, she told me I was creepy and ran off. I felt offended and hurt because I
was only trying to help her but my dialect created this wall around me that reminded me how
different I was. Language can intimidate some people because you can tell a lot about a persons

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character by the way the spoke. If you are familiar with Pittsburg, you may have heard the word
yinz to describe a group of people. As you can see from the map in Figure 1, the word yinz
is not widely used. Therefore, it may be unfamiliar with many people across the states.
Dialects can also get in the way of work. When I went for my interview at Target, I had
to watch a training video that contained some interesting vocabulary that I had to get used to
saying. We were taught that Target was our home and the people who entered our home were not
customers but our guests. Target doesnt have a Customers Service, but a Guests Service instead.
My coworkers were more than just coworkers, we were all family. The transition from customers
to guests was easy for me, but I had difficulty adjusting when I was cross-trained over at Food
Avenue because of my own dialect. When I had to ask the guests if they wanted a soda, I would
say pop. Some guests just smiled and corrected me by saying aloud; yes, I would like a soda
while others flat out corrected me and questioned what a pop was. I alter between the words
icee and slushie but at work I say icee because thats the word used on my menu screen so
I just read whats there. A majority of guests say slushie and when I repeat their order with the
word icee instead, they mostly just say yes. However, I have had guests ask if I was mocking
them. They asked me if I was making fun of the way they talk and I always apologize and make
light jokes about my whole pop and soda dilemma. I dont intend to hurt anyone; I just read
whats on my screen.
My observations from work and my personal life gave me these two conclusions; dialect
can give a person a sense of individuality and purpose but it can also lower a persons selfesteem when someone attacks what is dear to you and what you may not be able to control.
While I believe that dialect shouldnt be oppressed and should be openly spoken, I do not think
dialect works well in formal writing. I read an article by Scott Eagan who brought up a crucial

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criticism when dialect is evolved in writing. He says, A lot of famous authors from Mark Twain
to Alice Walker have used dialect in their writing. As readers we have all experienced reading
dialect and seen both the power it has to suck you into the world of the character, while at the
same time, really becoming an obstacle to our understanding of the story (Eagan). I understand
why universities would want to keep dialect out of the papers due to it being informal and more
work for the professors. However, I feel that not letting students express a huge chunk of who
they are and telling them that the way they speak and write is wrong, is very degrading to the
students and it robs them of their potential creativity they can put into their papers. Its even
more dehumanizing when we rob the young minds of children by saying the way they grew up
and the language they learned from their parents is too improper to use in their institution.
Within a dialect area, not all people talk the same because they are influenced by other
factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, and social and educational background. These factors can
have an impact on a persons speech. It can change the frequency of the use of regional dialect
features. There can also be an impact when you pick up all distinct features of the speech of the
people you identify yourself with and of the people who are like you. This causes blending of
your natural dialect with your associates dialect. Some people can assume another person may
have a dialect before they even start talking by racially profiling the person. This is horrific
because theyre judging the way a person speaks on their ethnicity which is incredibly impolite
and despicable. In 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was caught making racial remarks
about President Barack Obama. According to the article, Reid referred to Obama, then a fellow
senator, in private talks as light-skinned and speaking with no Negro dialect, unless he
wanted to have one (Thomma).

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I asked a few of my friends what they think African Americans speak and some replied
with the terms Black Speech and Ghetto. If you look Chinese, you speak Chinese. If you
look Mexican, you speak Mexican. If you look like a guy, you speak masculine. If you look like
a girl, you speak feminine. Andrew Lincoln is a great example of someone who shifts his dialect
to match his character on the TV show The Walking Dead. Andrew plays Rick Grimes who has
this southern twang. In real life, Andrew has a British accent. Society has this obnoxious stereotyping system where we stick generic labels on everyone despite the fact that humans are
complex creatures that cant be defined by one word. Its like trying to fit a cube into a circular
hole. Its impossible.
A dialect should be unique to that societys culture and not a system where we profile a
person by it. While dialect has its drawbacks, we can learn a huge deal about the culture the
person grew up in by studying their dialect. I love the website IDEA (International Dialects of
English Archive). Paul Meier is the founder of IDEA and his website was the first online archive
of primary-source recordings of English dialects and accents as heard around the world. The site
has a global map of all the dialects and accents from across the world and their sound clips so
you can hear the variations as they speak. The site is truly impressive because it offers a special
collections tab where you can hear the dialects of Native Americans, play names and terms, and
even Holocaust survivors. On the website it says, A simple, yet powerful phrase is often spoken
by the survivors: never forget. It is our wish to not only remember those who were lost in this
terrible tragedy, but also to hear the voices and stories of those who endured (Meier). The
special collections tab not only lets you hear the various dialects but also lets you feel the
weighty words of those who survived the tragedy more than eighty years ago.

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Media plays a big role in how dialect is portrayed. People all over the world connect with
each other through text messaging, chat groups, e-mails, forums, instant messaging, etc. The
internet has allowed us to create and explore a lot of new language forms and styles. Its almost
as if the users of the internet created a new social dialect among each other. As an avid
technology enthusiast, I can confirm this as true. People are not only speaking their community
dialect but their online dialect as well, this opens door for opportunity to shape the way we view
language as a whole. The English Language is now incorporating popular phrases such as selfie,
LOL, etc. A lot of words were shortened for the sole purpose of using less characters in short text
messages. The internet dialect even has its own online dictionaries that explain the different
words. New internet dialects develop when the use of certain words depend more on the type of
group you want to be associated with, like being a gamer or YouTuber, rather than saving
time with typing. You can also see the variation between these new words like lol. LOL and
lol mean two different things. The capitalization of lol usually means they are laughing
louder than just the original lol.
While dialect is always changing and shaping the way we speak, its not always a positive
thing. Language can degrade a person just as fast as fashion and weight can. I was once isolated
because my speech was different from my classmates. You can break through the isolation and
public discrimination by owning up to what you have and be proud of the way you speak. There
is no right or wrong way to language. Language can be compared to the whole up or down
toilet paper debate. In the end, it doesnt really matter as long as you have basic communication
skills and the other party can understand your dialect. Some people are going to get offended
either way because thats just the way they are. Im always going to unintentionally correct

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someone because to me, icee and slushie are one in the same. When I speak out loud, Im
honestly not trying to correct the person but rather Im just reading whats on the menu.
I believe that we all have a Grammar Nazi inside of us. If something sounds strange to
us, we want to automatically correct it to make it sound like something we are familiar with. We
just need to take a step back and appreciate that language is going to have variation due to its
vastly growing culture and social norms. So many people are intermingling with each other, and
with the use of the internet language is growing at a phenomenal pace. Im excited to see where
the future of language is heading. I just hope our formal papers dont start looking like a
common text message we would send to our friends. Though I would enjoy being able to inject
some creativity into my formal papers rather than just straightforward facts and long sentences.
Using Emojis would be interesting and a creative way to write a paper.
Conclusion
There are many areas of study that could potentially enhance my understanding of the
nature of dialects. These areas include four different categories: rhythm & melody, sound
changes, resonance points, and oral posture. Rhythm is the tempo of the speech, and the melody
is the pitch. Sound changes are the specific phonetic changes that vary within ones language. In
my experience, these are usually the first things one can notice when conversing with a person
from a different dialect. A sound change may make a word sound like a completely different
word from another dialect. Resonance point is the imaginary point of focus or point of maximum
resonance within the articulators when one speaks. Some people hold their resonance point very
high in the center of the mouth, and others low in the back by the root of the tongue. And finally,
oral posture is the way one holds his or her articulators. Articulators are the parts of the vocal

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tract that can move to vary the sound including the lips, cheeks, jaw, tongue, velum, epiglottis
and vocal folds.
In Conclusion, a dialect is a very flexible yet specific thing. It is never exactly the same
within a region due to its ever-changing nature. It can, however be studied in general forms
academically. Focusing on the four aspects of dialects study: rhythm and melody, sound changes,
resonance point and oral posture; it will help me to recreate the sound within their own
articulators. Sometimes, all someone needs is one of the four aspects to catch on, but all of them
are required to perfect an authentic sound. In order to learn about one of these aspects correctly
however, I must always continue my observations because a dialect is constantly changing and
evolving. I can also further my research by observing other cultures and travelling abroad to hear
the different dialects from across the globe. Some of the questions I could investigate include, Is
Country X more accepting of the dialects within their country compared to ours or Is Country
X more unwilling to accept that there is variation within their country. I can then use this data to
not only compare dialects but also contrast the social impacts that dialect has on their culture
with the social impacts that dialect has on our own culture.
Appendix
Figure 1: A map of what word(s) do you use to address a group of two or more people?

f. yins (0.37%)

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(Source: http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_50.html)

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Bibliography
1. Vaux, Bert, and Scott Golder. "Dialect Survey Results." Dialect Survey Results. Harvard
University Linguistics Department, 2003. Web. 05 May 2014.
<http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_50.html>.
2. Eagan, Scott. "Babbles from Scott Eagan." : The Pro's and Con's of Dialect In Writing.
Scott Eagan, 26 Mar. 2013. Web. 05 May 2014.
<http://scotteagan.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-pros-and-cons-of-dialect-in-writing.html>.
3. Thomma, Steven. "Harry Reid Apologizes for Calling Barack Obama 'light-skinned' and
'with No Negro Dialect'" Chicago Tribune. Chicago Tribune News, 10 Jan. 2010. Web. 05
May 2014. <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-01-10/news/chi-tc-nw-obama-reid0109-0110jan10_1_second-democratic-senate-leader-office-after-tom-daschle-campaignby-mark-halperin>.
4. Meier, Paul. IDEA International Dialects of English Archive. IDEA International
Dialects of English Archive. Ed. Paul Meier, Dylan Paul, and Cameron Meier. Paul Meier,
1997. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.dialectsarchive.com/>