My Speech Community In Les Misérables By Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo, the author of, “Les Misérables,” once said, “Change your opinions, keep your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.” This is a quote that can be reassuring to a person who is going through a rough patch in life or when they are at a stance in their life where they have forgotten who they are. When I read this quote, I think about where I come from and how it has shaped me to be the person I am today. One way that my roots have affected me is by my speech communities. The speech that my community has is mostly urban with some southern speech from the older generations. How I was personally affected is that I have the best of both worlds: I have the skill of understanding and speaking to different age groups.
Covington
is where my roots are at. Covington is in Northern Kentucky- or as it is better known as the “Greater Cincinnati Area.” I attended Covington Independent Public Schools from the time I was in preschool all the way until I graduated. Growing up, I was influenced by the way my parents spoke and how my grandma spoke. My mother was born in the late ‘60s and also lived in Covington and attended the same high school I had and my dad was born in the early ‘70s and lived in Cincinnati. My grandmother was born in the ‘40s and has lived in Covington her whole life. Yet, both of my parents have an urban way of speaking, while my grandma has a more southern way of speaking. When I was growing up, there were some words that I pronounced that sound urban, while some words that I pronounced had a bit of a twang in it. For example, when I say “window,” it sounds like “wind-ah.” When I was starting school, I noticed how my peers all pretty much sounded urban. Some had a bit of a southern way of saying something, but overall the urban way of speaking is what was dominant.
Forming my speech communities don’t end at where I grew up. Rather, my speech communities are also formed by my interests. One of those interests is music. Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. As I was growing up, my parents played all sorts of music around me: ranging from rock, metal, country, and pop. As I got older and started to have a feel of what I liked to listen to, my music taste pretty much has stayed the same from what I grew up around. While I was in middle school, I started to listen to more rock, indie, hip-hop, rap, and R&B. While I was in high school, I discovered k-pop. K-pop is Korean pop, just to clarify. The first k-pop group that I listened to was the all-male group, EXO, and from there on, I’ve been a steady k-pop fan. Having such a varied musical taste, I can pretty much get along with anybody regardless of what they listen to.
Additionally, becoming a gamer has also helped shaped my speech communities.
I started to play video games at the age of four, and have been a steady a gamer for the past 15 years. I started out playing kid computer type games and watching my dad play Grand Theft Auto to having multiple gaming platforms. Around the time I was in elementary school, I’ve had my own PlayStation 2 and a Nintendo DS. (Which was the first non-Sony gaming system in our house.) I was also introduced to the Sims 2 during this period of my life; which has become my favorite gaming series. Middle school was the highlight of my gaming life where I would play video games constantly. The Sims 3 was released during this time and I had gotten a Nintendo Wii, so I spent a lot of time playing between the two. Nearing the final two years of high school, I got a Nintendo 3DS and a PlayStation 3, which was when I reverted back to my gaming habits I had in middle school. Now that I am a college freshman, I don’t have a lot of time or the energy to play videogames, which is unfortunate for me, since the Sims 4 is out and I have recently bought a couple of games for the 3DS; however, we have a bit of a long break coming up over the horizon soon, so I know how I am going to spend my break. Being a gamer and playing games over different kinds of systems and playing multiple kinds of genres allows me to talk to other people who play video games regardless of the genre and age. Besides, listening to someone who talks
passionately about a game makes you feel as though you should give that game a chance.
Lastly, but not least, literature and manga’s have also played a role with aiding into the shaping of my speech communities.
I never was big on reading, if I’m being honest. My parents taught me to read as soon as I could sit up and when I was in kindergarten, I read to the principal and got a medal, but I wasn’t passionate about reading. I may not have read a whole lot when I was younger, but that never stopped me from reading at a faster pace than my peers. When I started middle school that was when my attitude about reading changed. When I was a sixth grader and I was placed in an advanced D.I. class and we had our parent and teacher conferences, my D.I. teacher told my parents that I read at a tenth-grade level. Hearing that, it encouraged me to want to read more, and around that time was when Twilight was a huge thing, so naturally it peaked my interest and I finished the entire series within a week. From then on, I could easily pick up a book and read through it in a short amount of time. I would read in class (more or so during math class,) I would read at the dinner table, I would read at any given chance. As the more I read, the more my own personal library grew. In the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year, I read over 100 books and I enjoyed just about every single one of them. I steadily read a lot while I was in high school, but now that I am in college, I sadly don’t have the time to read an actual novel. I can only get my fill of reading when I am
reading stories and stuff on my phone, but it’s not the same as reading an actual, physical book. How manga comes into play is that I enjoy Asian culture and plan on visiting East Asia sometime before I die and what had really influenced me to start to read manga was the anime Inuyasha. Inuyasha is my favorite anime and when I learned that it was based from a manga series, I became obsessed of trying to find this series. Luckily, I found the first few at Half-Priced Books and I quickly bought them. After a short while, I was able to find and purchase the entire series. (If it wasn’t for VizMedia, the biggest anime and manga publishing company, and them putting the manga’s into 3-4 volumes of VizBig books, I never would have gotten them.) Reading mangas are a fun hobby to me, while literature has the biggest impact on me. Reading has influenced me on choosing the career path that best suite me and that would be an author. Not a journalist, but an actual author. I started to create and write stories when I was in seventh grade, and when I was in high school, I started to write stories on FanFiction and got a lot of positive feedback on my writing. I love to write and I love it when people enjoy my stories, but I have the struggle that I can’t write when I am not inspired, which sucks because I have so many great stories in my mind but I can’t get them out and typed unless I am generally in the mood to write. I understand that I am not the perfect writer and that there is quite a big room for improvement, but that makes me want to work harder so that way I can accomplish my goal of becoming an author. Besides, one of my favorite quotes is by Victor Hugo, who once said, “A writer is a world trapped in a person.”
Everyone has multiple speech communities. From their upbringing to whom they hang out with to their interests. Everyone is connected by speech communities, no matter how big or small that community may be. We, the people, are connected by the internet, for example, which is a speech community all in its own. It doesn’t matter if you are from some small town or a big city, if you are from another country, it doesn’t matter what your race is, what your religion is, what your gender is, what your sexuality is, none of that matters because we are all connected by our speech communities, no matter how minuscule they might be.