Blog #8 Tannen, Deborah. “Ethnic Style in Male-female Conversation.”

I think Deborah Tannen is right when she says that our language greatly reflects our ethnicity, they way we grew up and how our family communicates. Similar to the Greeks, I see my Hmong nephews and neices loosing their native language but not the way our conversations are spoken. I've also noticed that how someone grew up socially and economically shapes their way of speech as well. Kids from my neighborhood, which consisted of lower to middle class immigrants, spoke very differently than friends in school that were from wealthy neighborhoods. We're all speaking the same language, English, but it's almost like it is a different dialect. Certain words and sayings take on totally different meanings from one neighborhood to the other.