Yes But I Was Drunk Analysis

In Engstrom’s piece, “Yes… But I Was Drunk”, ideas regarding speech communities are expanded on, more specially the speech community of college aged people. It discusses how the way people talk about experiences influences and is influenced by social change. It then dives into the perception of college drinking and how alcohol consumption does not merely lead to bad decisions, but instead explains how certain habitual ways of speaking normalize underage drinking and justify bad choices. This same idea of how talking about something normalizes the behavior that follows it can be applied to interactions in everyday. Further exemplifying the notion behind normalizing behavior is the growing fear of Islamic people in our country, also known as
Islamicphobia. Engstrom speaks on the idea how society gets ideas of what is considered “normal” in social spaces from a variety of sources. This is illustrated when people of Islamic decent are frequently chosen for supposedly random searches while going through airport security, as well as having prejudices held against them politically. A few of these incidences may not seem like they would create an effect, but when all of these events are combined together, the trend of islamicphobic greatly increases. This then becomes what society deems “normal”. Even if one’s intentions were not sinister the normalization of racism can be fed by simply remaining ignorant and failing to address the growing bias. Additionally, we see Bailey’s micro to macro idea come into play with how a seemingly simple search at airport security further feds into the growth of islamicphoia. I have also seen this happen in my life directly with the children I nanny. I spend the summers with a family so I have become very close with the children, as I watched them grow up and mature. I have noticed how the children act around me versus how they act around their parents. With me it is a more laid back environment, we play pranks on each other and call each other silly nicknames. When the children are around their mother and father they are tamed, will not speak unless spoken to and do not joke around. These two environments are two different speech communities where different speech codes have been normalized. Overall Engstrom’s approach in regards to speech communities is strategy that can be applied to one’s everyday lives. It is interesting to see how the same idea of normalizing something can be applied to college drinking, children that I babysit, as well as racism that plagues the United States.