My first blog post: Harris and Writing

I am the kind of writer who is very inspired of things that happens in the environment around me. Because of this I prefer to sit in open public spaces instead of in a separated room when I write. I often have many ideas, sometimes too many, which can be challenging sometimes. I tend to not want to take any short cuts and make it easy for myself. I am a writer who reads my own texts out loud and also think out loud. That is the way I remember my own ideas and the way I easy can correct my own mistakes in my writing. I am a writer who enjoys brainstorming my ideas with other people and listen to their opinions and thoughts. I am a writer who never stops writing.

By reading Harris I understand a community to be a kind of unspoken relationship or bond between certain groups of people. It can be divided in to two communities; “interpretive community” where like minded people with same values and beliefs are grouped together, and “speech community” where people that are living in same space and time are grouped together. I understand it as the one most people are drawn to is the interpretive community where they can find people sharing their views of what is “normal” or “abnormal”. A community is where alike people turn to as a comfort and where they also can identify themselves as individuals but also see others acting, thinking, and believing alike themselves. However, individuals can belong to and identify themselves to more than one community. Communities can be both small and big such as “English 254 class community” or “US upper-class community”.

I see myself belonging to many different communities, big as small. On the big spectrum I identify myself as being a part of “the Swedish middle-class community” and also “Swedes in America-community”. Smaller communities I understand myself to belong to are for an example “English 254 community” or “UNL International student’s community”. Either a big or small community, all the communities I identify myself with is ones that I feel like I am surrounded with people thinking the way I do and view the world the way I do. These different communities I understand come from social status, culture, values and beliefs, and educational status.

Writing and language play a role in making communities since different communities value the tone and the way of communicating differently. I would assume this probably has to do with what certain groups of people see as “normal” or not. For an example, in a community of a university the tone and way of communicating is probably more sophisticated and grammatically correct compared to e.g. a sports community, such as a football team, where grammar isn't in the focus and slang might be used acceptably more often.

After reading Harris I believe that every individual is a part of a community. I believe that it is also important for the individual to feel a part of a community according to identify themselves and find safety in life.