Sarah Gaskins English 1101-016 11-10-13

Speech Community Essay

In the beginning of the Speech Communities Unit, I had never heard of the term Speech Communities. I initially inferred, in the most simple definition possible, that Speech Communities were communities separated by differences in the way people talked. Therefore, I categorized Speech Communities by dialects, accents, and languages. Although this wasnt incorrect, I soon realized I had a very narrow perspective of what encompassed Speech Communities and this led to frustration in picking a Speech Community to research for the project. As I read the assigned excerpts from Language Awareness, my closed mind slowly opened up and my previous frustration transformed into enlightenment and curiosity. From then on my brain became a sponge, soaking up any and all definitions, concepts, and interpretations of speech communities. In the following paragraphs, Im excited to share my process and journey of discovering my membership within my realm of speech communities and the unique identity I found within a specific speech community I have become increasingly passionate about. Initially, Paul Roberts Speech Communities had the biggest impact on my understanding of speech communities. As simple as this sounds, I found his essay to be the most detailed and complex explanation of speech communities. From the reading, I began to understand how speech communities form around more than just an accent or dialect, but also by age, geography, education, occupations, hobbies, ethnicity, traditions, and more. Then I contemplated what speech communities I currently have a membership in. The daybook writing helped immensely with this thought, as I jotted down a timeline of where I have lived geographically, as well as a chart of the groups and organizations that have shaped my life: family, school, church, chorus, etc. As my brain revved into

Sarah Gaskins English 1101-016 11-10-13 overdrive I backtracked and circled the word chorus in my daybook. I wanted to pick a somewhat complex speech community to challenge myself, but how would I explain a Choral Speech Community? What is involved within a Choral Speech Community besides just singing? Is it too specific? I only had experience in this speech community through choral ensembles spanning over several years. Do other Choral Speech Communities function and share the same speech characteristics as the ensembles from my experiences? Should I broaden my community to Musical Speech Communities? That is probably too broad. What specific speech characteristics does the Choral Speech Community share? This is where I had the most trouble. Despite my freshly opened mindset of speech communities, the concept of the speech characteristics was very narrow. At the end of class that day I had chosen to research the Choral Speech Community and focus on two speech characteristics, singing and specialized vocabulary. The rough draft of my Wiki Readers Guide grew to be an intimidating feat. There were so many possible approaches to start with. My ultimate decision was influenced by another essay in Language Awareness Two Ways to Belong in America that I so happened to be a blogger of. Although the Choral Speech Community had very little relevancy with immigration and politics, I learned from reading and blogging about the essay, the importance of recognizing ones identity within a speech community, as both Mira and Bharati recognized their self-transformation from joining contrasting communities. In other words, how does being a member of the Choral Speech Community shape my language, my mannerisms, my perspective, my attitude, my passions and ambitions, and my values? I had never noticed before just how much my experience within the choral community had shaped who I am today. I decided the best

Sarah Gaskins English 1101-016 11-10-13 way to broaden my understanding of speech characteristics within my speech community, was to brainstorm, in my daybook, the different aspects of chorus and how those aspects shape the members within the community. Chorus has many different aspects. Of course there is singing or vocalizing, that is a given; but what many outsiders dont know is how much training is necessary to not only control ones individual voice, but to work together as an ensemble to become one voice. Training begins with warm-ups each rehearsal. For the Wiki Readers Guide, I researched several different approaches to warm-ups and although they differed slightly, the goal was all the same. Warm-ups are not only meant to accomplish the obvious task of warming up vocals, but to stretch and prepare the entire body, as well as focus the mind to become aware of ones own voice and posture, and fellow neighbors. New members of the Choral Speech Community quickly learn how to become fully aware of their physical presentation, another necessary training. Vocalists are performers and as such must not only learn control of their voices, but also their posture and facial expressions. My high school choral director constantly reminded our ensemble to widen our eyes, lift our eyebrows and raise our cheekbones. In fact part of our warm-ups each day was to stretch out our face and practice big facial expressions. Not only did this change the tone of our singing, but it also made our ensemble more interesting to watch, not zombies as my director would say. These important aspects of choral training shape an individuals identity through facial expressions and mannerisms within the choral community. Other aspects of Chorus that distinguish members are the recognition of popular choral repertoire, choral jokes and the use of choral vocabulary, all of which I included in

Sarah Gaskins English 1101-016 11-10-13 my Wiki Readers Guide. As I transitioned from my Wiki Readers Guide to my Video Capture, I decided the best way to visually express how the choral community shapes ones identity, is through an example and explanation of several choral warm-ups. As I recorded the video and reviewed it several times, I paid close attention to several characteristics of a typical choral member that my friend Leia demonstrated unknowingly. I detailed several of these characteristics in my context report. For example, I noticed she constantly used choral terms that outsiders wouldnt recognize or understand. This is an example of the speech characteristic specialized vocabulary. She also used several singing techniques, like vibrato and scale singing, that outsiders would be unable to mimic due to their lack of vocal training. The video capture factor of the project greatly aided me in pinpointing specific choral speech characteristics because it allowed me to examine and scrutinize a member of the community and discover what exactly sets the choral speech community apart from any other speech community. After this entire process of inquiry, research, and analysis, I still had one final question I was very curious to answer. Besides the specific analysis of vocal technique, warm-ups, vocabulary, and mannerisms, there is one special defining characteristic of a Choral Speech Community: personal ensemble connection. From my personal experience, every ensemble is different and shares a very special, personal connection because each one must work together and grow as a team. In high school, at the very beginning of the year, my director would always start over from scratch to work on building relationships, developing a sense of family, teamwork, and uniformity. Shed mention every year that each ensemble shed ever had the privilege to direct, had a unique personality, with strengths, weaknesses, and inside jokes. In fact each director has

Sarah Gaskins English 1101-016 11-10-13 their own personal style of teaching, and explaining choral techniques. This new realization makes me realize that a member from one ensemble would feel like an outsider in another ensemble. Therefore, my specific membership is the Garner High School DieMeisters (Advanced) 2013 Choral Speech Community. Ive enjoyed learning about Speech Communities this semester, especially because it has allowed me to vicariously relive memories from my favorite speech community. I will truly always be a Choral Nerd at heart.