Country. Born and Raised, but tryin' to change.

     I grew up in a rural town about an hour away from anything worth talking about. My high school had a week dedicated to the Future Farmers of America, and a day on which students were even allowed to drive their tractor to school. I think it is safe to say my educational upbringing was into what I assume people would refer to as 'country talk'. 'Country talk' could be indicated by several differences in the spoken language from the speed at which people seem to speak to the tone they speak with. 'Country' slang may consist grammatical errors such as the use of double negatives.  Words such as ain't,  yonder, and y'all come into use often. Speakers often leave the g off of a verb for example "talkin" as opposed to "talking", which is seen in other accents as well, but not as often in the formal speech of the language. The language has what some describe as a "twang", I believe this refers mostly to the way some speakers draw out the vowel sounds in some words.      Having a mother from the north, but not the "Yankee north" (no offense) as well as advanced classes in school had given me a pretty good balance of what proper English was supposed to sound like. With all those things in my favor, I still ended up sounding as if I were raised on a farm.      I do not remember the moment at which it happened, but at some point during my life I realized that it was imperative that I get away from having an accent that indicated that I was from the south. As proud as I am of where I was born and raised, it is undeniable that people associate and most likely always will associate the rural south with uneducated people. I feel that as I get older and continue to travel throughout the United States and the world I feel that I do not want people to mistake me for someone that is not well educated. I aim to be and sound like an intelligent, professional person when I converse and conduct business with others and in order to do this I have to work on how well I speak.       Over the past few years I have been trying to distance myself from and remove the 'country' from my speech. This has been a difficult task as I had been exposed to and surrounded by nothing but this way of speaking for the majority of my childhood. I feel that being at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has made it easier to drop the accent as I have been surrounded by such a culturally diverse group of people, all with unique accents and dialects of their own, many of which more proper than what I had been exposed to for a majority of my learning career. One thing I cannot drop with the accent, has been my use of the words Sir and Mam. In my travels I have come to realize that people in different parts of the US do not use or hear these words frequently if ever.  Where I am from, regardless of your age or position in society a gentleman will use sir and mam when speaking to a elder or authority figure. I do realize that this may link me to my southern, country upbringing, but in that case, I would rather be mistaken as dumb and respectful, than disrespectful. 

Literacy and Language

  In continuing the discussion on literacy I feel it necessary to mention the separation of regions, dialects, and social classes as mentioned in the readings. I will admit I had very little knowledge of the number of variations of the Spanish language. These variations strengthen the bonds of the local community by drawing them nearer with a common bond, while spreading the language as a whole at the same time. This can be a good thing to a  certain degree, but does it also come with a price? Will regional, social, and dialect variations cause us to one day get so far from a central language that one person may be misjudged or subject to prejudice because another's misinterpretation.  Another thing that I feel is changing is the bountries that prevent these variations of language from spreading. The most obvious boundary has always been physical, seperation of colonies and tribes by land and water created it's own limits on where any given language could travel. In the present, the physical boundaries are no longer an issue to a greater majority of our country and I would think the civilized world in general. As technology, networking, and more specifically social networking expands we will only become closer to those in other cultures and parts of the world, perhaps picking up subtleties in other languages and incorporating and infusing them into our own. While, this will be something that would likely take years or decades to begin seeing in our everyday lives, I am certain that one day we will begin to see it. I think people today take for granted how easily language is changed and manipulated, even within a family, from generation to generation there are differences that are brought on only by influences in society. Will it be for the better or for the worse? That is for us to decide.

Literacy.

        After the discussion in class Tuesday about literacy I found myself with more questions than answers regarding the correlation between literacy and knowledge. Also, I began to question how either relates to a persons worth and place in society as well as in the workforce. I feel that there are several misconceptions that are common when discussing literacy in these contexts.                              First, we must find a definition, that most accurately matches what literacy means to us as a society. This may prove to be the hardest part, as being able to test ones ability to read and write may be a simple task, but being able to determine who can do so well, may be more difficult. Then, we must ask ourselves if those who are literate, by the standards of our tests, are any more intelligent than those whom the test deem illiterate. Also, not a simple task as there are numerous reasons that could cause inconsistencies in the results of the test. These reasons include such things as dialect, cultural influences, regional influences, and formality or context of the situation. As an example I refer to a study that I have read about in the past. The study compared similar students in high income schools to those in lower income schools in the same general area, the students were asked to provide synonyms for the words provided. Many of the words received the same answers, but a few of the words drew attention from the scorers. The word 'blaze' in particular stood out to me, as the high income schools' students were able to provide an answer that was 'correct' such as fire or burn. Several students at the lower income schools however used the words 'to smoke' as their answer, which was marked wrong for the purpose of the test, but given their history and the culture that they have been accustomed to, it was a correct answer to them. Literacy would be an easy quality to quantify if there were not so many subtle differences and inconsistencies throughout our language, however there are those differences. Those differences and the ability of language to adapt and evolve to fit the surroundings and the situation is what makes it so important in society today.         Next, we discussed the relation of ones worth or place in society and said persons literary ability. This topic is one that, I feel, has likely changed the most over time, as in the early years of the 20th century the literacy requirements in the workplace were probably of the least importance they have been, something that eventually changed into  more of what we see today where an employee must show the ability to read and write just to apply for a position. However, I believe that technology is leading us to become more lazy and complacent with what we have learned about reading and writing. Twenty years ago there was no such thing as spell check on computers and now our PHONES will auto complete and auto correct our sentences and words for us, if we even still type them, as now many programs have been developed to read and write for us by speaking. I feel that this advance in technology is solely responsible what I consider to be the beginning of the end as far as intelligent language is concerned. A statistic that I feel supports this theory is that of the most recent SAT scoring studies that prove the generation of students (those graduating 2013) have had the lowest SAT scores since the conception of the SAT in 1926. I feel this to be a direct result of the technology dependent society we live in today.

I will do it... Later

Webster's dictionary defines the word procrastination as putting off intentionally  something you know must be done. I believe everyone can relate or think back to a time when they may have put off an important task which need to be finished or may have had a deadline for something of less importance. Maybe it was a task as minuscule as writing a blog for your English course and instead you decided that going to the mountains because it snowed this weekend and you haven't been snowboarding since last season. (hypothetically speaking of course). Or perhaps it was something more serious such as missing a plane and having to take an extra thirty hours and almost fifteen hundred miles of flights just to get to an airport that could fly me home. If I remember correctly the trip went San Francisco to Oakland via bus, then flew from Oakland to Phoenix, from Phoenix to Las Vegas, from Vegas to San Diego and San Diego to Charlotte. 
My ability to procrastinate, or inability to prioritize, to has certainly caused a bit of problem and some undue stress in my life, but I feel that it may also be somewhat beneficial, because I seem to do my best work when I have a strict deadline to work with. However, I feel that eventually the negatives of my habitual procrastination will outweigh the benefits I get from always being motivated by a deadline, and I am going to do my best to better prioritize and stop procrastinating. Tomorrow...