Yiling
According to Van Herk, “People evaluate an interaction and decide which way of speaking is the best suited to it, and change their language (and expectation) accordingly. Sociolinguists use the term styleto describe this kind of intra-speaker(within the speaker) variation.” (p104)
During the class activity with our guest lecturer, when I received a text message from Fangzhe, inviting me to skip my class on Thursday and go to a hockey game with him, my impulsive answer was “no”, which was literally what I typed back. Would I have replied differently to a different person? Or would I have replied differently if he had asked me in person or by phone? Sorry, but NO. I would have replied the same in different contexts and to different people. This is my language styleto my friends, which is rooted in my personality and also reflects the degree of closeness between me and my friends.
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