Speech Communities

The concept that I chose to write about this week was speech communities.  We are raised within these communities beginning at a young age.  In the end we choose what communities we want to be in, and with our choice comes how we relate to speaking in that community.  To further go into detail about speech communities is how our gender can help choose what kind of community we place ourselves in.  Depending how we're raised as children helps enlighten our choice.  This can be defined as Gender Speech Communication.  For example, I was raised in a family that has a history of military members and sports affiliation.  Because of these affiliations I placed myself in a setting that had me playing baseball, football, and joining a military program called the U.S. Naval Sea Cadets.  Within all these activities I was taught teamwork, discipline, leadership, and motivation as some examples of what I learned.  Being brought up with these came along the mindset of working as a team and relying on one another rather than being an individual.  Speech communities varies from person to person, and everyone has their own choice of what community to be in.  Once we choose we make friendships with people that are also in the same community.  With extra help from others in the same community that we place ourselves in we create who we are growing up, and what future speech communities we decide to associate with.

Hate Speech

Hate speech is a way of communication that speaks down to people.  It primarily focuses on insulting people due to their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.  According to the Free Speech Museum it is seen as speech that is racist or anti-semitic.  As much as it wrong for this kind of speech it would be a step back since it would violate the right to Freedom of Speech.  I don't agree with this kind of speech, but people are free to say what they want since it is one of our rights as citizens of America.  The true solution to solve this would be ban this kind of speech all together, but that is not going to happen.  We can only hope that people see how hurtful and painful this kind of speech is, and hope they change their ways.  Other than this type of solution it's not going to stop in the near future.

Metaphors

Describing the United States as a melting pot is not really the way I would describe out nation.  When I think melting pot it's everyone that resides in the United States becoming one mind, and one person.  Most of all I feel like it means that there is no individualism when I hear our nation being described as a melting pot.  Jesse Jackson's metaphors were more realistic to say rather than a melting pot since they describe items that include differentiation between one another.  I feel that a better metaphor to describe our nation is a bag of original M&M's.  I say this because we are different on the outside like the different colors in a bag of original M&M's, but we are all Americans on the inside just like all original M&M's taste the same on the inside.  We are a country of different races and cultures that make up what America is.  We shouldn't melt it all together and lose our sense of individualism, but embrace our individualism and know that we are all Americans on the inside.

Week 3 DQ: Concept

The concept that I decided to choose was self-concept.  Self-concept is defined as a process in which an individual sees him or herself as unique from others and their surroundings.  This is an important concept to me since I believe that everyone is unique from one another.  Even though many of us come from the same race, ethnicity, or religion for examples, we are all independent and unique due to our personality and actions.  Self-concept is made up of four guidelines that need to be followed:

Making a firm commitment to our personal growth: this is where we make a change about our present self.  To achieve this we must be determined to pursue this goal if we want to see the change/s happen.  It takes hard work and dedication to reach our goal if we want it to happen.

Gaining and using knowledge to help support personal growth: the knowledge we gain can either be from good or bad outcomes.  The best way that I can describe this is that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger.  With knowledge that we gain helps us improve our self.

Setting realistic goals: you never want to make goals that are far out of our ability to achieve.  You always want to make them goals that you know will take hard work, but able to achieve at the end of the journey.  To help motivate ourselves it is best to start out with something small before making a bigger life changing goal.

Seeking contexts that help support change:  placing ourselves in a positive setting is very important.  If we set ourselves up in negative setting then we are not helping with our progress to achieve our goal/s.  You want to be around people that are going to support, encourage, and motivate you.  People that don't do these things are only going to slow down your progress, or even stop it altogether.

Week 3 DQ: Race

Race is classified by any many different categories.  These categories include characteristics from our heritage, geographic location and ancestry, ethnicity, and our physical traits.  Race is a common way of identifying people in our society.  Unfortunately, certain people don't always identify people in a good light or mindset.  An example of this can be shown from past events in the world when Nazi empowered Germany believed that they were the most dominant race in the world, and believed all of others were below them.  This was one of many reasons why the world went to war, and why majority of the world fought for other people's freedom.  I want to point out that I do not bring this up to purposely offend anybody by bringing up the Nazi organization, but to only back up my statement that race was not always seen as a good thing in certain people's eyes or beliefs.  Race makes everyone unique in their own certain way, and our individualism makes us even more unique beyond our race.

The United States is a nations of freedom and rights to all American citizens.  We are all seen as equals in our nation's eyes of rights and freedoms.  Citizens of different races join together, and this leads to a lot of us being molded into individuals with multiple races and backgrounds in our make up.  With this being said, I believe that it is fair for the Census Bureau to allow individuals to check multiple races rather than only one.  If we are to only check one race we are only lying to others, but most importantly to ourselves.  It is not fair to our many heritages that a lot of us were grown up to learn and appreciate.  

Week 3 DQ: Gender Roles

I spoke to my best friend's grandparents since mine have passed on.  When I spoke to them they said that men and women were not really seen as equal and had different gender roles at that time.  Men were considered to be the "breadwinners", and expected to bring home food and profit to the family.  Women were to marry, provide a clean house, and take care of the children.  They told me that this was the way of living and social statuses at the time, and there was really no other way of living.

I also interviewed my best friend's father and mother as well since my father is an Alzheimer's patient, and isn't able to carry a conversation to an extent like this.  When I spoke to his father about what it was like to be a man in his 20's he told me that women were still seen as a stay at home wife and mother.  This was still the status of most women even though they were able to have jobs in the work environment.  Even though he didn't women in this light this was how he was raised, and was told to finish college and get good paying job to support the family.

His mother was raised a bit differently even though she knew the stereotype of what women were to be in their 20's.  She agreed with her husband in the way how men and women were portrayed in society at the time, but she considered herself outside of the stereotype of women.  She was a very independent woman, and wanted to finish school to get a career job, and help support her family.  She believed that women had the same rights and responsibilities as men do.  She would stay at home when she had her kids, but when she able to return to work she took advantage of it.

With today's men and women in their 20's it is nothing like it was twenty and forty years ago.  Today, men and women have their own independent goals.  This can range from graduating from college, finding a career job to make money, starting a family, being a stay at home wife/or husband, etc.  This is because men and women have the same rights as each other according to our rules.  Anyone has the right and freedom to make whatever decision (good or bad) they want to make as long as they are willing to deal with the consequences and benefits that come with their decision/s.  Men and women are free to also express themselves however they want too.

Week 2 Discussion Question Part 3

Concept:
I-It Communication-This type of communication is the most impersonal of the three types.  This is where individuals treat others more in lines of an object rather than people. We act as if they don't exist and don't acknowledge their presence when around us. An example of this would be the way people treat salesclerks, restaurant servers, etc.

I-You Communication-Majority of our interactions surface in this level. We don't fully engage a particular individual as someone who is unique, but we also don't treat them as an object either. This can be seen when talking to someone in class, interacting with people inside a bar or nightclub.

I-Thou Communication-This is considered to the highest level communication and dialogue.  It is also said to be the rarest form of relationship.  I-Thou is where we let our guard down to an individual/s that we know we can trust.  It is considered that we become fully human and genuine.  This can include a romantic relationship with boyfriends towards girlfriends (and vice verse), marriage, or close friends.

Week 2 Discussion Questions Pt. 2

The old linear model was revised back in 1949 by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver.  When they revised it they added onto the model the factor of noise.  They described it as a factor that causes a loss of information from the source to the destination.  The problems with this model was it portrayed communication as only going one way-from a sender to a passive receiver.

When it comes to the interactive model it portrayed communication as listeners giving feedback, or what is also known as a response.  The model also applies the communication factor of creating and interpreting messages within personal fields of experience.  Basically when fields of experience coincide with each other there is more understanding, and less understanding when they fields don't overlap.

The interactive model can applied in my life with people that I consider my really good friends compared to people that I only see as an acquaintance.  With my friends I'm able to hold a conversation because we all have many things in common.  There is never that awkward silence of not knowing what to say with them unlike people I see as an acquaintance.  Those awkward silences and lack of things in common show me that I cannot really associate myself with this person on a much closer basis than I am with my real friends.