What's Your Dialect?

Or what's your favorite dialect? You speak more than one. Do you even know how many English dialects you speak? Probably a lot more than you might have thought. Although we generally recognize standard written English as the dialect our nation uses to talk with itself, it is, in the end, only one dialect. And it is never our only dialect.

We normally think of a dialect as being a regional variant of a language, in our case a variety of American English that is distinguished from the others by sound, vocabulary and grammar. But what we often forget is that dialects are also used by groups of speakers to distinguish themselves from others socially in so-called discourse communities. What is more, while certain dialects of geographic origin are starting to disappear because people are becoming less and less isolated (think television and the Internet), the number of discourse communities appears to be increasing for the very same reason-these groups are less isolated than they had been in the past and can now come about, grow and mutate very easily.

And whether we are aware of it or not, we are all members of various discourse communities and we bounce back and forth between them effortlessly all the time. We speak various groups' lingos with ease. We also are able to easily recognize and even imitate other discourse communities we are not normally connected to. We are language poets but don't really know it, in other words. Here are a few examples of some dialects you can easily recognize and most likely speak:

Hip-Hop English Computerese Airport English Police English Bureaucratese Professional Athlete English Hospital English Legalese Government Agency English

Get the picture? But it doesn't have to stop there. We can just as easily break a dialect down further into a more specific group that a certain segment of the population would have no trouble at all recognizing.

Thirteen-year-old-boys-obsessed-with-Jersey-Shore English, for instance.

The dialect one chooses to use depends on the person or persons one is addressing, of course. The discourse community we strive or feel compelled to belong to is, after all, a state of mind and a set of sensibilities. It is all about group community, inclusion and exclusion--a form of ideological groupthink, if you prefer. And choice is perhaps not the right term here either. In many cases, inclusion in a discourse community is a question of social life or death.

In fact, these dialects we come into contact with at a young age are our first real socialization outside of the family. Here is where we learn about "us and them," about how an us always needs a them and if you are not one of us your are a traitor, one of them.

Just think about standard written English again, our main dialect. As important as it is, is only one dialect and there are very many situations in life where it is clearly the false dialect to use. Think of a poor teacher's pet type who never figured out how to speak "properly" out on the playground and remained ostracized from the rest, praised by his teachers and despised by his peers.

Or try this thought experiment: Two young urban black guys are talking on the street and a middle-aged white guy comes up and tries getting into the conversation with "yo" and "that's what I'm talkin' about" and "bro" and who knows what else. Why won't this work? A dialect of English is used either because it is your native "language" (or vernacular) or because it's the dialect of a group by which you wish-with some degree of plausibility-- to be accepted.

So the next time you might be feeling down and out about your English grades or your seeming inability to speak a foreign language, think twice. You may not be the best at standard written English and your French might indeed be awful, but if step back and consider all of the English dialects you can speak or at least understand and the many discourse communities you already belong to, you will have to admit that your are quite a language expert after all.

Originally from California's Central San Joaquin Valley and washed ashore on the coast of old West Berlin, Charles Larson is a freelance writer well versed in German and German culture. For more info, feel free to visit his website at EnglishPro & Co.