Gay = liking boys?

Yes, in our current society, I would agree. Even though its just ONE of the meanings of the word ‘gay’, there has been a huge semantic shift from our society that it prioritizes this definition over others. The semantic timeline of ‘gay’ has started from being full of joy, to being hedonistic, to being recognized as the term for homosexuals. During the 1980s, when people were really against homosexuals, it even shifted to being a defamatory term given how much it was used to insult people.

Yes, in our current society, it’s subjective. There are certain linguistic characteristic surrounding words like ‘gay’ that opens to different avenues of interpretations. I’m questioning if it has anything to do with the sensitivity of this word, given how everybody in society has their own opinions on gays. However, the fact that there have been semantic shifts proves that majority of the community, or at least influential figures that people respect and follow, have agreed on a certain definition of the word. However, I think in our current generation, this opinion leaders refer to mostly social media influencers, as compared to expert linguists who study words. Says something about the possible future and the language we use doesn’t it?

Yes, given our current society, I am worried yet hopeful. Knowing that the words we use to will be decided by society scares me. Knowing that I can’t say certain words or it will trigger backlash, such as faggot, scares me. Wondering what’s in store for the future, the words to determine our social position, regardless of what it means and the moral principles behind it scares me. Yet, if we realise that we can still change all of this by realising the power words have, I believe we will be able to avoid this route.

 

Ok here we go, time to drop the SASS on SES. First of all, WHAT?! I totally disagree with the idea of displaying these acts circled equating to being lower SES. I enjoy playing basketball at neighbourhood courts, eating cheap food from coffee shops, but maybe it’s me being broke most of the time hm. Anyway, I understand that speaking standard English like a true Gentleman might be considered to be polished, and I believe the media has a part to play with that. With that being said, this does not mean that speaking Singlish makes you like dat lorh.

I have personally seen quite the opposite actually. I worked at Dior for a period a few years ago as a runner/labour guy, and during my free time I observe the customers that patronise the store. Now, Dior is known to be a luxury brand. The cheapest item there, if I remember correctly, were the sunglasses …. for $145. Regardless of its stature, I do see Singaporeans come in and even purchase items. However, at least half of the paying customers were dressed in slippers, bermudas and a simple tee shirt. They walk in with a slouched back, looking very sloppy, immediately speaks Hokkien and code switches to English. Their standard of English is also pretty broken, as if it was their secondary or even tertiary language, yet they buy the items that totalled up to $1k+ just like that *snaps*.

I definitely don’t see the language spoken or standard of it as a determining factor of SES and social class of people. I do agree that sometimes, this perception is often tarnished by more rebellious students or hooligans, that chant Hokkien vulgarities, and portray a negative light towards the social class of people who don’t speak standard English. However, having witnessed first hand, I wouldn’t dare to immediately judge the social class of people solely base on how they speak

 

Gender is NOT sex. This was something that I learned in sociology. For the longest time, I never realised the difference because most forms just stated “Gender: M/F or Sex: M/F”, so I assumed it was synonymous. Given Singapore’s closeted nature on this issue, I am now not surprised that they tried to downplay the difference. Sex refers the biological characteristics that one is born with, whereas gender is a social identity that is constructed through actions.  In relation to the topic I want to talk about today, I want to briefly discuss the link between gendered ways of talking and how it leads to sexual identities.

Personally, I have a higher voice as compared to other guys. I have had experience where I ordered pizza delivery and the receipt often shows ‘Ms Kyler’. This made me think whether it was my voice and how I sounded that led to the implication that I was female, or whether it was a name. Therefore, I tried changing my name to ‘Alex’, a mostly masculine name. The receipt still showed Ms Alex. So, I tried changing the way I spoke. In my 3^rd call, I incorporated words such as ‘yo’ and ‘thanks man’ for example, while retaining my actual name of Kyler. The receipt finally showed ‘Mr Kyler’.

Does communication through technology really provide an obstacle? How much of an impact does using words that “belong to a gender” help to identify one’s sex? If I disabled my profile picture on social media, and have a gender-neutral name of Kyler, does it provide a bigger challenge for me of using certain words to prove whether I am a guy or girl? I would think this mostly applies to people who gender-neutral names such as Ashleys, Taylors and Sams. I wonder if there will be any future solutions to solve this issue of having to speak certain words to display your sex.

Let’s talk about globalization. Globalization refers to the advancement of transportation and COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY. Now, this advancement of the way we communicate will indirectly lead to an advancement of how we communicate. This can be easily seen from evidences of writing formally (postage), to using acronyms (SMS) to using a single emoji and stickers to represent an expression (WhatsApp & telegram). In the slides, it explains how globalisation has spread and influenced English to many countries. However, I would like to make the case for global contact of emojis.

Emojis is undoubtedly a very big part of most youths in countries that use a smartphone. When emojis were first released, it ushered a wave of ‘Wow’ because before this, everyone was still using basic text smileys such as :-), :(, or even :O. People were considered cool if they managed to do more sophisticated ones such as ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) or ಠ_ಠ. However, this was still limited in terms of variations. When the emoji wave hit, it introduced over 100 new smileys that added colour and often overlooked expressions, such as 🤢, 😈 and 🙄. However, what’s different is that it was Apple, an organization, that initiated the global language of emojis, not from a country’s lingua franca.               Furthermore, it has evolved to having the capability of evoking a full conversation.

This makes me wonder if there will be future shifts or instances of global contact, given how rapid technology is advancing. There will be no shortage of creativity and platform to introduce this. For example, a global contact in the gaming community have terms such as ‘ggwp, feed and glhf”. While these may be considered jargons to the general public, it is considered to be vocabulary in the gaming language. Therefore, this reinforces the notion that globalisation will allow global contact.

I have a reason for only starting to write my reflection blog in week 3. Honestly, nothing has interested me so far. The field of sociolinguistics hasn’t exactly captured my attention from the start. It’s a new subject, and I have not exactly gotten back into the groove of schooling, which negates me picking up on sociolinguistics even more. However, something finally grasped my interest, which was the topic of Variation & Style.

During the 1^st week of school, I was looking through the syllabus to see what I can expect from this module, and variation caught my eye. This is because I always wondered why some people talked differently, and what influenced their way of talking, and the involvement of semantics and how it came into play. However, at that time I only thought it was an aspect related to variation, only learning that it IS variation.

As the lesson progressed, the concept of Style-Shifting intrigued me because I felt I did that a lot when I talked. Personally, I have a high self-monitor and thus watch what I do and say in public. I am very conscious of myself and what other people think of my actions and what I say. Like it even reaches the point of sometimes controlling my breathing because I feel my breaths are very loud in buses. Although I do sometimes accommodate myself to my audience (having to watch what I say); eg. When it comes to matters of race/religion, I find myself committing more of Bell’s Audience Design concept. Coupled with my high self-monitor, I often structure the things I say according to who is my audience. With close friends, I can be very crude, open and honest to the way I feel. My close friends know that I often can’t be bothered about certain things. Yet, this is an aspect I can’t show publicly to people who I just met, people would be thinking “What the hell this guy is just not interested, why should I even bother trying to build on this relationship”. While this may seem as feigning interest, I choose to see it as part of theory of communication accommodation (CAT). Instead of changing the way I am, I use the CAT to style and shift my language to new people, and eventually they find out my nature once we’re closer.

Personally, I feel myself style-shifting a lot, and the example above is just 1 scenario that I do almost on a daily basis.