My high school did not do a traditional graduation ceremony. We had three commencement speakers instead of one, and I was chose out of a class of over four hundred to be one of them.
Speaking in front of audiences is what I do best. Nothing thrills me more than making a crowd of people rise and fall with my words, laugh or cry depending on my diction and voice. But speaking at commencement is a challenge that I’m not sure if I can handle: over 5 thousand people, including my peers, their parents, my teachers, my mentors, not to mention the Board of Education for my city. Could I really do this? Play on the emotions of over five thousand people?
I made one crucial decision that made that answer a yes.
I was myself. I didn’t use famous quotes from celebrities long since dead, or speak with a solemn superiority, using big words that I didn’t understand to make myself look smarter. I spoke as I would speak. Because, however this was something that my classmates and I would remember for years to come, I wanted to add some sort of inspiration for the future.
I didn’t begin my speech with a quote from Bernard Shaw or Rocky Balboa like the other two speakers. I used a line filled with my usual sarcastic self-deprecation: “Senior year. When the school year was about commence, I told myself “Carrie, this year, you’re gonna be cool.”
I used the slang term “gonna” to appeal to my classmates personally, because that is how we speak together. This speech was, after all, for them. I continued, “You’ll wave at people, and they’ll notice. No longer will people ask what your name is after going to school with you for ten years. And somehow when you get invited to a party, no longer will Mike Koester ask you, “’how did you get invited?’” I used language as we use it, to do something completely different from the others. But I did not forget the fact that my speech was being addressed to five thousand people, including a prestigious Board of Education. A line that I’m particularly proud of, one that touched me, was, “…the point is to take that strength of character we have gotten here (high school) and use it to carry ourselves over obstacles in the future.” This language was meant to sound inspirational. A touch more of formality made it appear eloquent and motivational. I changed my normal word choice and fluidity of speech to address a more serious section of my speech and to impress on my audience the importance of the tasks lying ahead of us.
My use of both formal and informal language in this piece of writing shows the diversity as well as the similarity in my changes between speech patterns. While my everyday language includes slang and rather sarcastic tones, I was able to morph them into formal speech with a more sophisticated rhythm and tone of speaking and word choice.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
It Bees Dat Way Some Times
IAR for : "It Bees That Way Sometimes"
A Whole New Outlook
The text was very insightful. It taught me a lot about Black Language and broke the preconceived notion I had about. What really stuck with me and resonated in my mind was the fact that Black English is not a random way to write or speak, like many people think. It has just as much structure and guidelines as White English. It is constantly evolving and changing with the mainstream twenty-first century. Having so many grammar rules, just like White English, I found it confusing to understand and learn all the Black English guidelines discussed in the text. The reading was pretty simple to understand, I think the only question I would have is how the Black English Grammar rules came about.
What is being invented in the text is the difference in the Black English grammar and White English grammar and how they are so similar all balled into one. The text shows how Black English is misunderstood, and how blacks have intense pressure to conform to White English. It shows that Black English usually is characterized as a pseudo language and has always had a bias. It then shows how Black English is an actual way to speak and has just as many rules and similar grammatical structure as White English. The author gives plenty of examples of Black English sentences and what it means in White English. Also how certain things are spoken in Black English and how a Black English Speaker would say them. A practice that could be done to compare and contrast and learn from Black English is to write a sentence in White English then translate it to Black English, or speak Black English. The arrangement in the text consists of dialects to grammar. It shows how in Black English, one speaks and how that would grammatically be written and the rules and regulations that must be followed. Basically, how something is spoken and how it is written in Black English. Also I believe biases in relation to the actual dialect. I believe that in certain cases people have a bias about personality or content of character by the way one speaks. In the text there is that underlying message that many feel Black English is not really a language , which is a bias, but on the contrary, it has just as many grammatical rules as White English. Thus, proving it is its own language, just different. The problem is that people have that preconceived notion about Black English. What the author does is set up a variety of different examples to prove the credibility of Black English. In doing so, a revision is made. The authors’ primary goal is to show that Black English is a grammatically correct way to speak and through various usages of different examples the author was very successful.
I admit that I had a preconceive notion about Black English, yet through my reading, found it is very credible and a grammatically correct way to speak, it depends on how you look at it. The author ends with a poem by Langston Hughes. What I took from the poem sums up the context of the entire text and my feelings about it as a whole. Grammar is not everything, if what your saying has meaning that’s all that matter, which is very, very true.
Cited Text: Smitherman: " It Bees That Way Sometimes"
A Whole New Outlook
The text was very insightful. It taught me a lot about Black Language and broke the preconceived notion I had about. What really stuck with me and resonated in my mind was the fact that Black English is not a random way to write or speak, like many people think. It has just as much structure and guidelines as White English. It is constantly evolving and changing with the mainstream twenty-first century. Having so many grammar rules, just like White English, I found it confusing to understand and learn all the Black English guidelines discussed in the text. The reading was pretty simple to understand, I think the only question I would have is how the Black English Grammar rules came about.
What is being invented in the text is the difference in the Black English grammar and White English grammar and how they are so similar all balled into one. The text shows how Black English is misunderstood, and how blacks have intense pressure to conform to White English. It shows that Black English usually is characterized as a pseudo language and has always had a bias. It then shows how Black English is an actual way to speak and has just as many rules and similar grammatical structure as White English. The author gives plenty of examples of Black English sentences and what it means in White English. Also how certain things are spoken in Black English and how a Black English Speaker would say them. A practice that could be done to compare and contrast and learn from Black English is to write a sentence in White English then translate it to Black English, or speak Black English. The arrangement in the text consists of dialects to grammar. It shows how in Black English, one speaks and how that would grammatically be written and the rules and regulations that must be followed. Basically, how something is spoken and how it is written in Black English. Also I believe biases in relation to the actual dialect. I believe that in certain cases people have a bias about personality or content of character by the way one speaks. In the text there is that underlying message that many feel Black English is not really a language , which is a bias, but on the contrary, it has just as many grammatical rules as White English. Thus, proving it is its own language, just different. The problem is that people have that preconceived notion about Black English. What the author does is set up a variety of different examples to prove the credibility of Black English. In doing so, a revision is made. The authors’ primary goal is to show that Black English is a grammatically correct way to speak and through various usages of different examples the author was very successful.
I admit that I had a preconceive notion about Black English, yet through my reading, found it is very credible and a grammatically correct way to speak, it depends on how you look at it. The author ends with a poem by Langston Hughes. What I took from the poem sums up the context of the entire text and my feelings about it as a whole. Grammar is not everything, if what your saying has meaning that’s all that matter, which is very, very true.
Cited Text: Smitherman: " It Bees That Way Sometimes"
Sunday, January 18, 2009
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