Language makes up a large part of one's identity and is often overlooked by those closest to us. It is only when we interact with those different from us, do we truly see the intricacies of our speech patterns. My project explores this concept in an effort to truly understand how we perceive ourselves and others based on the way we speak. When it comes to vocal communication between humans, there is more to it than just the languages we speak. There are complexities within the way we say certain phrases or even specific words which set us apart from the people around us. These differences may be influenced by a variety of factors including where we grew up, who we spend our time with, and even how we grew up within our communities. I intend to explore each of these factors and hopefully more from a series of 133 responses of a google form, which I made myself, and use these responses to identify trends in speech.
One of the first questions I asked was age and biological sex, and while this may not seem to have much of an effect, I do believe it did affect the results in some way, especially age. As many know, the English language has not remained stagnant. It has gone through many changes and trends in speech patterns and slang usage, and the same is to be said for other languages as well. I assumed this would be very easy to see when we look at the results of "supper vs. dinner." As you can see in the pie chart below, the majority of the responses stated that they use the term "dinner" when referring to the last meal of the day. Only 17 people, or about 12.8% said that supper and dinner are two different meals, which is not something commonly known anymore. Even less people, only 9 or about 6.7% answered that they specifically call it supper instead of dinner.
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Of those who answered saying supper, four of them were over the age of 24, and the remaining answers were all from people ages 16-23 in southern Missouri. While this did not prove a difference based on age, it did show a trend in location. I noticed that out of all 9 responses, 7 of them were from smaller towns in southern Missouri (which is where I grew up), One answer was from a male in Midland and another was from a female in Houston, but who spent a significant portion of her life (30 years) in Africa. Out of the 17 responses who recognized the differences between supper and dinner, four of them either currently lived outside of the United states, or had done so at one point for a significant period of time. The remaining responses all came from Texas, mostly College station. After looking at these answers, I began to look for trends based on location instead of age, as that is what tends to affect one's dialect the most. The majority of my answers were from the United states, however I was lucky enough to receive a handful of international answers which provided a very interesting insight into how non-Americans speak. Out of all 133 responses, it seems that only 8 of them live somewhere other than the United States at this current time and more so, only 6 responses have moved from somewhere outside of the country to now live in Texas. When asked if they ever got singled out or made fun of for the way in which they speak, 6 of the international responded that they did as did 4 of those who moved to the U.S. The common denominator between 6 out of these ten answers specifically mentioned that it was Americans which would point out the differences in their accents. One response that particularly stood out to me was that of 116, a male between the ages of 16-23, who has lived in many different places before moving to the United states including Singapore, London, and Switzerland. He states that this did not affect his accent at all because he was placed in international schools and all of his friends spoke English. However, he did use the British spellings for many words which he says would get him marked off points from English teachers. This is a clear example of how social expectations of how we are "supposed" to be can affect things such as our speech or even the way we write.
