Ways of Speaking and a Sense of Place

I'm sitting in the cafe of the Boulder Public Library, watching the grey water of the creek below. This is the only cafe I have ever visited that also serves as a bridge over a creek. No doubt, the architecture and ambiance of this beautiful building is a part of what makes Boulder uniquely Boulder.

Bruce Springsteen (younger readers, imagine an old school Chris Smither) is playing on the sound system and New Jersey is on my mind. My flight home for the holidays has been delayed by weather warnings, so I've time to muse about how language changes when used in particular contexts.

It is more than synchronicity that Bruce Springsteen is playing on the stereo in this special Boulder cafe... Springsteen, a.k.a. The Boss, is a New Jersey icon. He has reached my ears as I sip my tea and wait out my flight delay. I was scheduled to return to my family home, to a place where we are known by our language. Have you ever heard a Jersey accent? My language changes according to my context: oral language shifts in the form of accents as I move from Colorado to Jersey, written language shifts in the form of styles as I move between the context an academic paper to the context of a web log, and another change occurs when I shift to the magical use of speech I love best... the Poetry buried in the messy layers of my migratory my life.

Shifts in the varieties of ways of speaking are happening all the time, usually without our conscious recognition. Shift are noticeable in the ways of speaking used by participants in a dually-present conversation where two people sit at a nearby cafe table. The couples' way of speaking contrasts with the way of speaking used by a cell phone conversant. The difference I'm noticing is not in the words used, but in the way they are spoken. The cell phone conversation sounds different. It's louder than the duet conversations that buzz all over the cafe, possibly because the cell phone user's voice is directed into a device that relays the message over long distances.

One may notice a pattern or a generalization to be made about how the sound of a cell phone user 's voice grabs attention, even over the din of a room full of conversations taking place between two physically present people. What is it about the cell phone conversation that SOUNDS different? It is in this subtle, audible shift in the voice that we may detect one of the various ways we use our language differently according to context.

The subtleties of language that I am chasing after lie somewhere between the concept of ritual and the accents of my hometown New Jersey neighbors. If you listen with a trained ear, you can hear in the voice of Donna, my best friend's mom, that she is from Jersey City. You can hear something of her identity in the way she speaks, and even notice that she is proud of the distinction she reveals when she deliberately contrasts her speech patterns with others. If you're not from Jersey, you might miss some of the subtle information communicated in the way she talks (as a quality separate from the actual words she says). Donna's accent is subtly different from the Appalachian hinted speech of the Northwest Skylands of New jersey. Donna is a transplant from Jersey City to the more rural area of Lake Hopatcong. When she is out on the deck at a summer party overlooking the lake, you might overhear her laughing, holding the wrist of her long-time friend Patty, and repeating the words "Tanks a million," just so she and Patty can hear the difference in the way she says it, the contrast between her way of speaking and her neighbor's way of speaking. Her way of speaking connects her to a specific place.

A sense of place is inevitably interwoven with poetic language. The origin of poets, their stories, their identities, are inseparable from the places they have moved through and the patterns of speech they learned to communicated with there. Springsteen’s sound, the way he speaks, is as essential to his identity as are the lyrics he's made about goings on in New Jersey. Boulder, a sense of place, this library cafe, the details that make up the context for oral expression: All influence the ways of speaking that will be used in the poetry performances here.