To give you some background knowledge on what you will be reading; I spoke with Armando a

twenty-two year old coal miner in central Utah. He has been working in the Skyline Mine for two
years; and had lived in the area all his life. His education level reaches some high school. He has had
approximately four jobs in his life all of which involved some type of machinery, physical labor, or
both. I believe all these aspects are very telling to what information my interview will reveal to me.
The goal I have for this project will be to look at the morphology and semantics of the coal
miners career jargon. Jargon is a term used to describe the language a group of people use to
communicate about a specific topic that others unfamiliar with the topic may not understand. An
example of this would be like using acronyms only people in your field of work may know the meaning
of. Like an IEP is an acronym that only people in the education field may know the meaning of. I will
also analyze both his and my experience's with our natural language along with our accounts of second
language acquisition. Based off my personal experiences and knowledge gained in this class I will
attempt to decode and define some of the terms used that in its initial content (the interview) I did not
understand.
My initial plan was to record Armando and his brother, who also works at the mine, talking
about work. His brother, however, was not available to talk so I interviewed Armando solely. I asked
him to walk me through a day at the mine, what he does, along with tools and machinery that are used.
I also asked him to go over some job titles that are used at the mine. I was able to get a little less than
twenty minutes of him talking for me to analyze.
The interview was harder than I had expected it to be. It was difficult for him to talk about work
without explaining what the terms he was using meant. He knew I did not understand all the terms that
were being used so he wanted to help me and explain what they meant. I explained to him that the
unknown terms were a good thing and were giving me more information to learn from. After about five
minutes he was catching himself start to explain something and was able to stop himself. I feel I would
not have had this problem had I been able to observe both Armando and his brother talking with one

another.
The first term that caught my attention is longwall , based solely on what I know about these
two words I guessed that the term longwall was a section of the wall underground where they are
focusing their mining. I was somewhat correct. A longwall is actually a piece of machinery. It is a long
belt that has what they call Shields attached to it. The shields, which looked like giant blades to me, cut
the wall of the mine and the cuttings fall onto the belt and are carried to another belt and so on from
there. Every 4-6 months the miners have to work seven days a week for two four weeks and it is
called the longwall move, or longwall for short. Now that I know what the longwall is, I realized the
longwall move is when all hands are on deck to take apart the longwall, move it, and set it up
somewhere else. When Armando took me underground a few months ago I got to see the longwall up
close. While we were down there he kept telling me how it (the longwall) can really bounce. I took this
as the ground is unstable and imagined being on a rope bridge. What it actually meant was there can be
huge pounding noises. They are so loud I thought my heart was going to bounce out of my chest.
Perhaps that is how it got the name. Armando was not sure why it was called bouncing when nothing
was actually bouncing around. I feel my interpretation based off my heart nearly leaving me is a pretty
good reason.
Armando's job is a bolter. I bolt the top and part of the rib with mat and mesh and either cable
or re-barb bolts depending on what kind of scheme we are in, Armando said to me when I asked him
to tell me what a bolter does. Thankfully it was all recorded because I would not have gotten all that in
just one listen. Lets break this down so we can understand what exactly is going on. Based on the
content it is being used in I presume top is referring to the ceiling. Ribs on the other hand took me a
bit of digging to figure out. Ri is not a preposition as I had first thought it to be. Turns out the sides of
the tunnels are called ribs because they are rounded like the ribs in our body and are used as a wall to
protect the people inside just as our ribs protect vital organs inside us. The rest of the sentence made
sense to me, in context, up until he threw the word scheme in there. I asked him to explain by the

different kinds of scheme's without explaining what scheme is. He told me there is coal scheme and
there is rock scheme and rock scheme is the better of the two. There are no prefixs or suffixs that I
was able to find and the definition most would use when hearing this word does not relate to the topic
at hand. On this one, in the end, I had to ask what scheme meant. Turns out it refers to what the walls
and ceiling, or as they would call it the top and the ribs, are made out of. If the walls are coal scheme
they are not as strong and the bolter needs to use the longer and stronger cable bolts. If the walls and
ceiling are rock scheme the shorter re-barb bolts are used to secure the mat and mesh to prevent the
walls from caving in.
In all my findings about the coal miners jargon I have realized a lot of their vocabulary is based
off other things not pieces of words as I had suspected. The term miner is now referred to as a large
piece of machinery that cuts the coal off the ribs. This machine got its name because it took the place of
the team of men who swung axes at the walls to get that coal. These men were miners and now a
machine is the miner. Don't get me wrong the men are still greatly needed and this job could not be
done on machinery solely, I am just pointing out that most of the coal miners jargon is based off
nicknames not the different parts of a word.
I would like to hear another person from the mine speak about these same things so I can look
for differences. I am now interested in seeing if others pronounce the words and terms differently. Does
the fact that Armando's first language is not english affect how he pronounces things? I also would like
to see some of these terms spelled out. Remember I only had word of mouth go to off of so how I spelt
the terms was based off what my ears heard and what my schools has taught me up to this point about
spelling.
Although Armando and I were born and spent our first years of life in the same small
community our first language was not the same and how we learned english was very different. I was
born into a family with an English speaking mom and a Spanish speaking dad whose second language
is english. I learned both english and Spanish in my first three years of life and I feel it is safe to say my

first language was spanglish. However after my parents divorced when I was three the Spanish slowly
died out in me and I now feel that english is my first language. Armando was born into a house where
both his parents spoke Spanish and very little english; his first language was Spanish. Because of our
very different experiences with english I feel that we approach new vocabulary in very different ways.
Armando had to learn english from the neighbor kids and from school. He wasn't one to ask
questions because that slowed everything down and brought attention to himself that he did not want.
He got the main ideas and just rolled with it. It wasn't until recently he noticed he doesn't say some of
the same words the way I do. Some words he adds rolling R's, other times he drops sounds or adds
sounds. Although he has only noticed this in the last few years I believe it has always been there. If
you are attempting to play catch up because the national language is not your native language you may
not be so picky to have every sound and every word just right.
I on the other had grew up around so many accents I learned to listen closely and ask questions
when I was not sure. My dad has a thick Spanish accent, my grandma (technically not blood related) is
from Japan and has a very thick accent that most cannot understand. And my moms fiance when I was
young was from Africa and spoke I believe 5 languages. I learned early on to listen closely and speak
up when I did not understand. I feel I was privileged in this experience however because even though
many languages were known, english was almost solely spoken to me. Everyone else was in a more
difficult position than I was. They were speaking my language, only with accents. What Armando had
to go through was listening to a second language and having to not only understand but be able to recite
it himself.
Only in the last few years has he gained the confidence to ask questions when he does not
understand. He is not embarrassed to as me how do you say that word; or is it said like this or like that.
I am very thankful he trusts me enough to open up, let his insecurity show, and ask for assistance. His
english is very good, I never meant to have it sound like it wasn't. You could very easily assume english
is his first language. He is now simply reaching a place where he is comfortable and wanting to fine

tune his language. The things he points out and asks questions about are things that 95% of the time I
did not even notice. Hopefully I will be able to do that with my second language one day. I have not
yet reached the level of confidence needed to relearn my second language.