Nichole 1/22

I was getting coffee the other day at Palmanos on Park Avenue (much better than Starbucks, as I am opposed to such globalization in our world today), and saw the grille outside that I said to a friend looks “very masculine”. To which he replied, “Yes, my friend just built a new pool house and another “grille-atorium”, a house for the huge grille. I feel that this is a gross display of wealth, but the real reason I bring this up is because I found it interesting that he made up this word to describe the grille house and I completely understood what he was describing. This relates to my take on Tuesdays class when we discussed the adaptation of language to different people in different times. I sincerely doubt someone of my grandmother’s age would understand what a grille-atorium would come to mean, or because of class I should use the word represent.

Sergeant Pepper said in his blog: “as we learn more about the language, as our vocabulary grows, and as our world experience grows, we adopt our own ways of saying things [and therefore, understand the language of our peers].” The language that we understand, as Doc Rog also brought up texting language that only people of our generation and below would comprehend, is completely dependent upon what we have experienced in life. I think important factors that weigh in on our speech are: age, education, our exposure to other cultures, and socio-economic standing. It is most likely obvious to you all why age, education, and exposure to cultures are tied into our diction but I say economic background because, in the situation of the grille-atorium, someone from inner-city Orlando might not know that people actually build houses, most likely larger than their own homes, for a freaking grille.

I also would like to refer back to my anti-Starbucks aside from above. Usually the things I am opposed to, like this worldly known coffee shoppe, are the ones we can know only by looking at the sign, like the green circle with a woman in the center with long flowing hair, or the EXXON sign discussed in class. That symbol to me, and most others, means coffee but to me it also means a company that is attempting to monopolize the coffee market by placing one every mile in suburbia and two per block in NYC. Sure signs mean different things to different people but the reason that little green woman means globalization to me is because of my environmental history background and education. I am sure that the green woman means something different to a person in economics. Perhaps it means, to that econ man, a successful business and one that he aspires to emulate one day. But seriously, get your drink on at the family run Palmanos, its better, I promise!