Month: February 2015

I disagree with Isabelle Kerr, the language the youth use is for specific reasons and displays creativity. They use slang because it excludes other people and is used in personal relationships.

She claims to be a part of the young generation when she is in fact older than the people that use these words. Isabelle Kerr is a hypocrite because when she was younger she most likely used slang and spelled words differently without using proper English.

She also states Shakespeare would be turning in his grave, but Shakespeare himself was very creative with language and invented his own words which was considered genius among his peers and future generations still appreciate his work. He would be proud of this creativity. Shakespeare alone created 1700 common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and just making up new words completely such as addiction, champion, cold-blooded and rant. It is very ignorant for her to disrespect the younger generations creativity just because she isn’t intelligent enough to understand it.

She also thinks younger people talk this way all the time however it is just with friends they still know how and when to talk standard English. The language the youth use represents their culture, their background and where they are from, who is she to disrespect this.

“Regardless the future of the English language looks bleak” Isabelle Kerr states but I strongly disagree. As the times change obviously the language naturally develops as well, with new inventions and technology comes new phrases and sayings that young people will use while others will be oblivious. For instance ‘Selfie’, this is a new word created because of technology, it describes the act of taking a photo of themselves so the word ‘Selfie’ follows on from that quite logically. Young people also refer to exciting and enjoyable things as ‘live’ this also makes perfect sense as they are describing their enjoyment is causing them to feel full of life. Conversely if something is boring or dull it would be referred to as ‘dead’.

I find it ironic how she quotes people from twitter, which is a platform that only allows you to use 140 characters which encourages people to become creative with language. Yet she later states her anger at people who use abbreviations such as ‘srsly’ instead of writing the whole word, which would waste characters on twitter. Twitter is where ‘smh’ originated, it stands for ‘shake my head’ a term used to express disappointment, ‘smh’ allows you to express those feelings without taking up a lot of space, it is a necessity in the world of twitter.

To summarise I have explained why I strongly disagree with Isabelle Kerr and the pointless argument she puts forward. I see creativity and expressive language used by young people, I don’t see disrespect and stupidity as she continuously states. Lastly I believe Shakespeare himself would be proud of this language that they use.

I can tell you now that nothing annoys me more than being treated unfairly and when people who think they have authority contradict themselves, I have had lots of experience with this.

During my RE class I may have let a slightly inappropriate word be heard by the teacher, although I wasn’t the only one who uttered this word the person sitting next to me did say it as well. I was given a detention while he got away with it. At the end of the day I went to his class to do this detention but I see the RE teacher lock the door, walk past me and wave. I presumed that he was letting me off, oh how wrong I was. I find out during the next couple of weeks he’s chasing me down for missing the detention trying to now give me an hour after school; double the initial detention. After that I went to his room asking how this had happened and how he had the nerve to say to me that I missed the first one, I was shocked and slightly angry at this injustice. In the end we agreed to do the initial 30 minute detention, but the whole situation angered me. In my next few lessons with him, people around me were swearing more than I ever did and apparently it was okay for them to do it  without any consequence. To this day I still don’t like him because of a mistake on his part that he wasn’t willing to acknowledge.

Another occasion when a teacher has contradicted themselves to my misfortune was when my Art teacher told the class that we don’t have much time to finish off our final pieces and books (these are important pieces of work for our GCSE’s) on the same day I asked her to take a look at my work and tell me what I needed to improve, after being assured multiple times that she would do this it was 3 weeks before I had any feedback. She repeatedly informed us we only had 2 weeks left of working time, this was 5 weeks ago and we’re still working, I wouldn’t have rushed my work if I knew the true amount of time we had left, thus affecting the quality of my work. As well as this at the beginning of each lesson she proceeds to monologue for at least 10 minutes explaining how little time we have ironically taking up a lot of it.

On many occasions I face the same issue with my parents of them contradicting themselves and holding me to a higher standard than they hold themselves. For example when I lost my earphones, when I told my mother she went into a lecture of how irresponsible I was to be losing things at my age, especially things of value. She eventually offered to lend me hers, however, after taking a lengthy period of time trying to find hers I asked her “Have you lost yours?” she replied in a nervous voice that she had just misplaced them, this made me roll my eyes in disbelief. After being on the receiving end of some verbal abuse, It felt so good being able to dish some back. This angered me because she expects things of me that she can’t even do herself.

These are only a few examples of when I’ve felt angered by being on the receiving end of unfair treatment.