As explained in the title, I was going to write about "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" but then I ran into a situation yesterday. Currently, I am in Venice, Florida which is about 20 minutes south of Sarasota. Venice is full of old tan people, dressed in printed shirts, khakis and horribly ugly sandals. It is not the place for me. I feel completely out of place anywhere I go, even if it's just the grocery store.
In fact, thats where my situation begins. Yesterday, I decided to go to the local Publix with my grandmom. We just needed to get a few things at the grocery store. I thought I was dressed fine, I was just wearing jean shorts, a nicer shirt, and oversized sunglasses. Then my sister Taylor said "Kate, why is everyone looking at us weird" and I just replied "I have no idea..."
My sister, my grandmom and I go to check out, and we are just having a conversation, and right away the lady at the register asks if we are from New Jersey. We told her we were, and she laughed and then said "Yeah if your accent didn't give it away, the way you girls are dressed sure did. The locals don't dress like that." Me and my sister were shocked.
But then I realized, people from New Jersey are completely different from the people in Florida. One huge difference, being our accent and the way we speak. Our language is the same, but the dialects are different. We say things like "wooder" instead of water, Monday becomes "Mondee", and instead of saying whole phrases, we tend to run our phrases together. For example instead of saying "did you eat" we say "didja-eat?" Also, we have our own little phrases. An example of this would be phrases like "bro", "guido/guidette", GTL, and "legit".
Bottom line is, your surroundings do affect you. Homer shows us this in The Odyssey too! Circe is very lusty, dark and mysterious...just like her island. So what does the make people from New Jersey? Are we as obnoxious, loud, and crazy as television shows like "Jersey Shore", "Jerseylicious" and "Housewives of New Jersey" have portrayed us to be? Do we really dress, act, and most importantly speak differently? Comment, and let me know what you think.
I remembered that I read this yesterday, but like a fool, I read it again. I think that you took a tangent in the wrong direction. I wasn't ready to jump on board with the post to begin with, but I figured that Chris' topic was horrible yet a great post, could this be all that bad? I think you tried to make it too accessible to the everyday person without adding literary value, which was the assignment. You should go back and add a bit more on how accents affect literature to strengthen your point. Overall, it was boring because it didn't have any kind of new flavor. It's saving grace is that it is too short. Far shorter than it was supposed to be.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you introduced your stand point it was very well written. I enjoyed reading this because it fit into everyday life and was easy to relate to. When I go to Philadelphia, people often ask me "Are you from Jersey?" because according to them I talk "proper" or "white". Dom, the topic had to do with Literature OR Language, and Mr. Carty made it clear that there were no restrictions; therefore, I think her topic of dialects was completely fine and fitting. However, I do agree with Dom that you should have talked more in depth about dialects because my attention was lost when you began to talk about The Odyssey :/ .
ReplyDeleteI thought that this was an entertaining blog post, but it was slightly off topic. Only one paragraph was really dedicated to the subject of language. I agree with Jordan that the part about the Odyssey did seem out of place, and it just didn't fit in with what you were going for. The post was entertaining, but I think the focus should have been more on dialects.
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