Words and Language

In class we briefly discussed how some people refuse to utilize the term “hella” if they are not originally from the Bay Area. Personally, I also prefer not to say the word “hella” since the word itself embodies a specific social context and regional pride that I don’t belong to, given that I am from Los Angeles. Saying this word represents membership to a specific social group, however only those individuals who are actually part of the group can truly experience the true meaning of the word. As Bakhtin elaborates, “not all the words…submit equally easily to this appropriation, to the seizure and transformation into private poverty; many words stubbornly resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in the mouth of the one who appropriated them…they cannot be assimilated into his context”(pg.77). In other words, some words involve pre-established social contexts, meanings, and implications that cannot be easily removed when one tries to use them for a different purpose. Language involves deeply embedded complexities that play a significant role in creating boundaries when determining who is able to appropriate certain types of language. Hence, language is, indeed, “not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intention” because it depends on who the speaker is and what social contexts he or she belongs to.