Speech Communities and Speech Sponsors

By: Dhaval Patel

Julie Ann

Main idea

Different Speech Communities and Their Sponsors Make UNCC Diverse

How?

This picture above is a family, they represent our home and where our very first speech community formed. Our family are the ones who help us with our speech and help us develop it. Mother tongue is great example of how our family shapes our speech they are very first and most influential speech sponsors.

The picture of the school represents the place where we began to choose our own speech community and create our own identity. Our teachers act as our sponsors, they help and guide us to better our speech, our peers also act as sponsors, but they paly a larger role in helping us choose what speech community we want to belong to.

Different speech communities at UNCC

Frats/sorority

Faculty and staff

Athletes

Cultural

Religious/Spiritual

Majors/ learning communities

Stats Of Cultural Speech Communities

African American

14% of UNCC Campus

Hispanic

2.9% of UNCC Campus

Native American

< 1% of UNCC Campus

Asian

3% of UNCC Campus

Theses statistics allows us to see the diversity of this campus which then allows us to see the broad difference of speech communities that exist on and off campus.

Speech community sponsors

Parents

Teachers

Classmates

Friends

Roommates

Co-workers

These seem to be our main speech sponsors, because we have a great amount of interaction with them on a day to day basis. The more time we spend with them, the more we start to sound like them.

Regional Background

Location of people who came to the University of North Carolina Charlotte

People move from different states and leave there speech communities, to form new ones, which can be influenced by your new friends, roommates and even teachers. Our sponsors Influence our speech, but as we move around we find new sponsors and join new communities.

Mother Tongue

Mother tongue is basically our natural way of speaking, it is the bases of our identity.

Forms of mother tongue could be the way words are pronounced, or if you talk with a particular accent, or if you mix up your words when making sentences.

Example of mother tongue

“ I made a party” vs. ” I had a party”