Words Over-Easy

In balance of my silence, I want to examine the different ways in which I use language, and the particular effects its different uses have on me. I realized that we all engage in a variety of rhetoric, depending on our moment-to-moment situations. There is a rhetoric for conversation with friends, generally less formal and hinging off of an implied context of mutual understanding than say would be academic rhetoric, in which we would employ an elevated use of vocabulary and make context explicit in words for utmost clarity and proof of intelligence. Speech with friends includes more play and wit of words, can make great leaps from topic to topic, and even come back full circle after multiple interruptions and interjections. There is a sort of loose, free-form weaving of ideas that encourages the meandering of thoughts, the effusiveness of emotions. When we speak in an academic setting, we imitate the language, the vocabulary, trajectories of thought, and meanings of those that we read, who we deem to be of certain authority. There is a rhetoric for parents, which could include some degree of censorship or filtering, a rhetoric for lovers, draped in terms of endearment and often a rawness of emotion encapsulated in words exchanged (words delicate and highly flammable). It is possible we even have a rhetoric that we reserve only for our own inner ear.

My work rhetoric as a waitress at the breakfast joint Slim Goodies is full of repetition. After many hours waiting tables, I feel as if I have slipped into auto-pilot, thoughtlessly running through a handful of phrases that apply to most communicative needs. Like a mockingbird that sings as if on loop, I become an automated recording of myself, and hear myself speaking as if from afar. While I can surely snap out of my floating reverie of detachment to my immediacy if something on the outside engages me, such as a customer who actually desires to interact with me as the person and not just me as a figurehead representing the means to a full belly, I am mostly insulated in my inner world of thoughts with content far removed from my speech. I thus experienced it entirely possible to be speaking and thinking worlds apart, especially through the use of habitual rhetoric that does not require much focus or effort.

I realized too in this setting that we not only draw from distinct wells of language depending on situation, but our voices, the very sounds we make, too change. We speak a different plane of sound to affect or appeal to different listeners, inflecting and texturing, sweetening or deepening to the ears of particular listeners. When I serve customers, my voice becomes higher in pitch, my accent rounded and my rhythm chipper, my language polite but decidedly informal (this was a definite change from the rhetoric I had been required to use at my previous job, an upscale tapas restaurant). After some time at Slim Goodies, I caught myself saying “ya’ll” very often, and didn’t remember ever having used it regularly before. While the choice was most likely not conscious, I reflected that I probably had adapted my accent to be more accepted by locals, and “more southern” for tourists looking for that local color and flare that affirms they are having a “true New Orleans experience.” I highly encourage this exploration of the ways in which we conform (consciously or not) to the uses of different rhetoric in different circumstance. One might even try switching to an out-of-context rhetoric and see how odd it feels. Speak to a baby as you would to your Environmental Theory professor. Or perhaps this is a good idea.