Tired of Surfing
A couple of weeks ago I came home from a hectic day as usual and decided to relieve my tension by sitting on the couch for some "quality" television. As I turned on the tube and began channel surfing, I unconsciously stopped at a commercial for a daytime talk show. Clips of many different women fighting over men were being shown sporadically. Then the narrator of the commercial announced the title and I about fell on the floor laughing. "Black women who want their white friends to stop dating black men because they are taking up all the good ones!" I couldn't believe that a whole one-hour show was going to be dedicated to this subject. I was instantly consumed by the thought of what kind of people would actually want to watch such an outrageous show. It was at that moment that I realized that this show related to a certain type of audience that didn't include me. In fact, every television show relates to many different people. It's not necessarily the topic of the show that gets people addicted; it is most often the language within the show that draws them in. I thoroughly enjoy shows in which I can affiliate with the language. If my schedule allowed me, I would come home every night and watch
It wasn't until I started looking for certain types of language that my notes became useful. Rosie O'Donnel also would give recaps and previews before and after the commercial breaks allowing the audience to keep up with her. As I monitored the different speech communities I found within the shows I discovered the three categories that James Britton discusses in The English Language: "An Owner's Manual. They are both female talk show hosts in their thirties. On the contrary, the language I found on Ricki Lake was repulsive. I couldn't affiliate with half of the things that were being said. As I discussed earlier, each of them relates specifically back to the speech communities that they represent. If they were telling a story about recent work they have done, their hands would sort of move in circular motions. Their social class showed when the guests spoke and greatly represented their speech community. I love every aspect of the law and can watch court television programs without giving any of the language said a second thought. In watching these two shows I fell upon knowledge of television that I didn't have before. The language expressed on Rosie's show was almost always at a level that children could understand. There were common misuses of English words possibly due to the lack of education. This situation isn't the same for all people. I found myself working my pen out a lot harder with Ricki Lake than with The Rosie O'Donnel Show.
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Acceptance Essays
