How you use written and spoken language

How you use written and spoken language

Code-Switch Essay

I constantly use slang and standard English in my conversations. Slang is an informal means of communicating, incorporating non-standard lexicon and grammar use tailored to specific interest groups or demographics. I use standard English, the predominantly employed linguistic approach in academic and professional talks. When I utilize the standard English register, it evokes authority. Despite being concise and clear, the standard English transmutes any of my words into dry and unfruitful text that fails to vet real-life cues I constantly exercise in my interactions. Therefore, standardized linguistic use fails to reflect my character and dehumanizes my persona by failing to capture the emotional and social undertones of my expressions. Conscious of these shortcomings, I sometimes use slang, although it comes with specific shortcomings. First, it incorporates non-standard grammar and lexicon skeptical to the foreign ear. Thus, it excludes individuals unskilled in a particular jargon from comprehending my communication message. Furthermore, it restricts my unit to subgroups who use and understand such lingo (Honey, 2018). Ultimately, using slang criticizes and counters authority (Thelen & Young, 2023). While these shortcomings are significant, slang is consistently necessary and beneficial. It effectively creates a sense of intimacy, community and authenticity among people sharing similar experiences and sentiments. Individuals become closer when they apply informal words that depict in-group culture, experiences, and conversations. This assists individuals in belonging to one community and fosters ardent fraternity links (Honey, 2018).

I also use emojis while texting, which are graphical language elements to supplement or share messages. Emojis foster the potential to capture, share and authenticate emotional contexts in conversations that are hard to convey when using merely conventional words (Barbieri et al., 2021). Youths, myself included, utilize it to appear cool. Emojis also assist in constructing a digital language that makes reading short text messages appealing. Also, an emoji is a non-verbal approach of enhancing the impact of formal texts aimed at various audiences. Sometimes I am skeptical that whoever I am sending the message is unfamiliar with emojis, may not get it. Despite its shortcomings, it ultimately assists people in understanding things beyond the read-meat layers of the content. In addition, my close relatives and friends understand the jokes I am trying to express with my use of emoji, hence being family in showing love (Barbieri et al., 2021). Nonetheless, foreigners may be scandalized and confused when they see my emojis, build new jokes, and claim to be distant from the issue. Likewise, emojis are also vulnerable to misunderstanding the context of the message (Barbieri et al., 2021). It might evoke a defensive character, notwithstanding how civil one is or the context. There is a need to see whether the specific emotional nuance I am trying to express aligns with the corresponding emoji utilized, given the condensed semantic context. All in all, using emojis is incredibly diverse, and there is a natural tendency to limit the implications of specific messages by failing to meet the diversity tangents to the relationship between symbols. While emoticons are a robust contemporary language aspect, boundaries incorporating their usage should be accepted when a clearer semantics of the message reveal need.

References

Barbieri, F., Lingles, D., & Teich, J. (2021). : Does it mean What i think it means? A multidimensional exploration of the relation between emojis’ usage and semantics. Language Resources and Evaluation, 55, 273-304. Doi: 10.1007/s10579-021-09520-w.

Honey, J. (2018). Trading between communities of practice: A descriptive and prescriptive perspective on Australian slang's understandability. Journal of Pragmatics, 134, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.03.008

Thelen, M., & Young, R. (2023). The language and social psychology of slang. Language and Linguistics Compass, 17(1), 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnco.12602