language

Introduction

People always use language in different ways according to the different situations languages are used in. Style oneself using languages is a technique used by most people in order to behave as if coming from a special social class or to appear as having a special education or cultural background. In this assignment, using language to style people's characters within interactions in society will be discussed according to personal experiences and according to views of authors and linguists as well as mentioning some examples from real life situations. The assignment is a human research for learning about people's techniques to use languages in communities for social styling purposes. 

Body

Languages in interactions have their specific methods to be presented through according to the people using the language as the way a language is expressed differs from a person to another and each person can use the same language in many different contexts according to the situation, the receiver, the community , the inner purposes and desires or the time a language is used. Language users can use the language as a tool for affecting others in meeting, parties or whatever occasions that include people. They tend to leave specific impressions on others by the help of  a specific style of the language that could serve them. An example for this is when a teacher uses a very formal language in class with specific words in order to leave an impression of seriousness and respect on the students who are considered his or her audience. This teacher can void calling the students with "kids", "guys" or girls. Once we had a teacher who used to call us:" Ladies and gentlemen". This is a technique for leaving specific influence on the recipients to control them. Speakers can attract the listeners attention by using specific performance gathered with a good appearance and language can be a way of taking attention of the audience. An example is when a father advises his young sons and daughters beginning with words as :"my sweetheart', "my dear" or" my beloved son, I have something good for you", here the son will soon be attracted thinking of the good thing his father has. (Arab Open University, The Art of English: literary creativity, Chapter 3)

As it is found by (Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, 1999) Language and social life are related to each other as people use languages to suit their identities and they may choose some speaking styles that signify such identities. Speaking style is decided by individuals as there are people who use certain dialects of their own native languages in order to pretend a specific identity, there are also people who engage English words and sentences within the context of their speech in order to convince the listeners with specific ideas about themselves. They could do this in a different way each time so as to be having more than one identity according to their choice. Language is not just a way for communication, it is a social representative of people from different places and social classes. An example is a girl who tries to look as coming from an upper social class but a word se says shows that she is not. When someone is engaged within a group of people, his or her language is affected that others can notice different pronunciations in his or her language or even new words and expressions. This also occurs when there is a heterogeneous society that carries different people from different cultures and identities like the society of Kuwait where there are words said by Kuwait which are coming from English but being mixed within the Kuwait accent such as "shaek" which means to check and "lait" which refers to the "light" and others. (Arab Open University, The Art of English: literary creativity, Chapter 3)

Speaking styles of females are not the same as those of males specially when they tell jokes, quarrel, confess or even lie. Even in the most civilized societies, male try to dominate conversations and guide the speech lines towards what proves their male identities in spite of the fact that women are more talkative. Male's speaking styles still stronger and more aggressive at sometimes specially with each other in the presence of women as every man tries to prove he is the stronger in all presenting men. (Tannen, 1991) An example for this occurred when we were young and young male family members directed the speech to be about football and all young female were upset but the boys thought their speech would admire girls and each one tried to show that he knew more about football heroes. Women speech is different as although it could be delicate and soft, it can carry heavy strong meanings hidden within words and women always use messages and hints that are more dangerous than the tough words of men. According to Eckert, category membership and gender have a relationship as girls jokes are softer than those of boys and they are always in non-standard forms and girls are often conservative when they tell jokes. Eckert suggests that there are two main styles speaker use the language through which are the suburban style versus the urban one and each style is characterized with the speakers' certain use of grammar and pronunciation. (Eckert and Rickford, 2001) This also occurs among youth groups as each specific group has its own style of language, for example, the language of nerd students is serious and conservative but the language of cool funny peer groups could be loose and bear some slang words or even insults, such cool groups do not give much interest to grammar rules, correct spelling or correct pronunciation but nerd groups respect the language more.(Bucholtz, 2010) 

People switch the language styles to affirm specific identities which could be switched along with the language switching. An example for this is what a friend who invited us for her birthday party did as she greeted us at the door, welcomed us and introduced us to her husband and sisters, then when her husband and sisters went away, she used simpler language with us, she said:" hey, go and enjoy yourselves with the food", as Arabs, it is preferable to provide guests with the food but here our friend's identity became less formal and she began to use a local language which shows her friend identity but before going away, she insisted on shaking hands with us and saying goodbye to confirm her hostess identity and to show how generous and loving she is. There are some views suggest that language is related to ethnicity as each person is born with a specific dialect that even if changed, it has some significant features on the person that shows his or her origin such as Rampton who also mentions that language style involves language crossing which is integrated with the individual's performance as someone could read a quote of another person, imitate him or her through the quote and use a specific voice tone to convey a specific impression of the person. An example on this is a friend of me who is used to imitate teachers and of course to add personal impressions on the quotes of the teachers while imitating them. Language styles could be used to bear two meanings specially when sexual matters re addressed and in an Arabic society, such matters are mentioned through hints and hidden meanings, an example for this is a conversation I once heard in a store for home appliances as a young girl was buying a stove and the seller who was flirting was telling her that the stove is too hot but she would like it and that she would never leave it before she enjoys its delicious food. The conversation may seem normal but the facial expressions of the two persons showed shyness by the girl whose face was going red all the time. (Arab Open University, The Art of English: literary creativity, Chapter 3)

Conclusion

Language style is a technique used by people everywhere and in every society classes as this is a technique for using language to introduce people's identities, ideas, wishes and desires. Many linguists discussed this topic due to its importance in understanding people's performance through language styles as presented in this essay. Language accents and dialects represent the social background of individuals and groups and the origins of people sometimes. It is good to research how linguists saw this matter academically and how they analyzed it which was presented in this assignment.