My last post

It's kind of shocking that this is the last blog entry in my first blog ever. It is even more shocking that the quarter is nearly over and my one fun class will be done. This introsem has made me more aware of the way people speak. I constantly find myself noticing differences in language everywhere more than I ever did before.
I haven't really noticed changes in the way I say things, although my family might notice things I haven't when I get home. I may have a hint of a Wisconsin accent because I have a Wisconsin roomate. She says bag so it rhymes with vague and I wonder if that has rubbed off on me at all. At times I have almost caught myself saying the word "hella", even though I just learned it a few months ago. Although if I went home and said that, everyone would look at me funny and not even know what I was saying.
I've noticed a few things about other people's accents in my dorm as well. There is one kid from New Zealand who used to speak really weird, you could tell right away that he spoke different English. Now it is a lot more difficult for me to tell. He mentioned that he was adjusting his accent to the American accent. He said it was a both conscious and unconscious thing and that it's just easier for everyone else if he just spoke "American". I have also noticed that some people not native to California have begun to adopt the word "hella" as well. Among non-native English speakers, I have noticed a few lexical differences. These are particularly funny when they involve swear words. This Chinese girl in my dorm constantly uses the s-word in the wrong context. Through her tone of voice it is clear that she d0esn't mean it in the sense that the word suggests when she inserts into conversation.
While being at Stanford, I have watched accents evolve and it's fascinating. It made me realize that language is not static, it is always subject to change. I am glad I have come to know that through this introseminar and hope to learn more about Linguistics in the future.

What is the most important feature of language comprehension-again

We thought about this same question at the beginning of the year, and I thought I had a pretty clear understanding of what makes us understand each other. I thought that sound was the most important feature of language comprehension. Now, I think that it's a lot harder for me to pinpoint which aspect of language I think is the most significant in language comprehension. Although, I think I've come to the conclusion that vocabulary is a very significant factor most of the time.

As we have learned in class, there are so many different kinds of accents within English, and somehow we still understand each other. It doesn't really matter whether or not that person is a native speaker; we still understand them even if we can tell that they don't pronounce English like we do. The way different people pronounce language comes from the different sounds they make to form the word. People can use different sounds in the same word, and as I've come to realize, I can still understand, it just takes a bit of getting used to.

Syntax, part of the way in which we structure words grammatically, seemed to be of slight importance to me before. Now when I think more deeply about it, I realize that I can understand people even if they have incorrect English syntax. For example, if someone says "come eat you here", I could still understand that as someone wanting me to eat with them, even though the syntax is completely off. 

The last aspect of language is vocabulary, which I have come to realize is very important in understanding. If one does not know the words in a language, they cannot comprehend what another person is saying. Let's suppose that I could pronounce all the sounds in French and I understood the way in which the syntax works because it's like Spanish. However, I do not know much French vocabulary whatsoever. I would have a very difficult time understanding what I would be able to read and pronounce in French, and I wouldn't be able to understand someone else either. 

While I now think that vocabulary is very important in language comprehension, I still think that the others have a big impact on comprehension as well. Maybe it is all of these that are necessary in language comprehension, maybe it is certain combination of two. Overall, syntax, sound and vocabulary seem like significant aspects of language depending on the context. But overall, it seems that vocabulary is more significant than the other two many times. 

This exercise has made me realize the complexity of language and that it is not just black and white, it changes with time.

Lexical Differences and comprehension

Even in common English among Americans, there are often lexical differences that hinder comprehension. For example, sometimes I'll use the word "pop" for "soda". Some of my friends were confused about what "pop" even meant and they had no idea that I was talking about soda. I found this really interesting because I say soda half the time, and people at home will get slightly confused and say they never use the word soda.
There are a lot more lexical differences between American English and British English. I have seen a few of these lexical differences here at Stanford that have confused some people at times. I was talking to a kid about football, and since he was from England, he thought I was talking about soccer. So, for the next few minutes, he was slightly confused and then realized I was talking about "American Football" as he called it.
There are also lexical differences between people who speak English as a second language and those who don't. Each foreign language often has it's own typical lexical differences found in English. For example, my mom is a native Spanish speaker and will often say things like "feets" instead of "feet". This has nothing to do with her ability to pronounce "feet", it just comes from the fact that in Spanish, feet is made plural with an "s", just as many other words are in both Spanish and English. We have corrected her multiple times, it just seems to be an instinct. This hasn't really caused any problems with comprehension, just a bit of embarrassment for her.
Often these lexical differences do not affect language comprehension that much, they simply stop the conversation for a bit because the issue often deals with just one or two words in the sentence. The context of the sentence often resolves these misunderstandings quickly.
I found lexical differences to be really funny at times, they are a point of conversation at times. Overall, I found lexical differences really fun to talk about.

Perception of Regional Dialects

After reading the article, I found the way people perceive different accents very interesting. I hadn't realized that people perceived their own accents as proper or not and that that affected the way they judged other accents. Although, the piece confirmed my belief that geographic mobility makes you a better indicator of various accents and showed that naive listeners perceive accent somewhat differently. Or at least that is what I gathered from the article, although is was kind of confusing at times.
There are a ton of cool things one could do an experiment on to examine the perception of regional dialects. One of these potential experiments could be done to determine whether or not people thought there was a "correct" accent and how those answers compared to the participant's own regional accent. The participant would listen to a recording of all of the main regional dialects and be told to identify the "correct" accent. It would be interesting to see how often the "correct" accent and the participant's accent were the same. It would also be interesting to find people who really believed they spoke English incorrectly, but were raised here. It would bring up many sociolinguistic issues.
Another possible experiment could be comparing young children's accents and how the children perceive accents that are different from their own coming from other children. Presumably, there wouldn't have been enough time around the age of 5 or so to develop such deeply held stereotypes about language. The kids could listen to tape recordings of stigmatized and non-stigmatized regional accents and say which ones they thought were "bad" and "good" speakers of English. I wonder how that would correlate with adults doing a similar experiment. I would hypothesize that the adults will have developed certain ideas about what is good and bad English socially.
Finally, a third really cool perception experiment would have to do with how people adjust their accents in different contexts. This would relate to how people thought their accent would be perceived among a certain group of people and this would motivate them to either consciously or unconsciously change their accent based on the accent of the person they were talking to. I have seen this happen with a few people I know. When they are with their family or friends, they talk in their more colloquial manner characteristic of their region, like people from the South. But when they speak with people who are not southern, they fear judgment and slowly change their accent to accommodate to what is perceived to be proper English. This idea can also be seen the other way. If someone is around people who they perceive to speak and a stigmatized why, when speaking with them, some people may unconsciously reinforce their own accents to clearly stand apart from what they perceive as an incorrect accent.
Overall I realized that perception is such a large part of regional dialects and that perception may cause accents to change over time. I found these ideas very interesting and hopefully my final project be as interesting as I begin the process of performing the experiment.