Over the past decade or so, I have been increasingly emphasizing that the languages we speak belong to the linguistic communities we participate in.
A few days ago, I was a little thrilled to be vindicated when Adam Curry declared what I wish to refer to as his cardinal rule of podcasting:
Be about your community.
No Agenda Show Episode #1795, 2:24:18 [ https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1795/transcript?t=2:24:18 ]
I do want to acknowledge that Adam’s remarks were actually addressing what he refers to as “Hyper-Local podcasts”.
At the same time, I also want to acknowledge an observation about business communications made by a couple acquaintance(s) who told me (about 2 decades ago, so please forgive me for not recalling the exact words):
Local is no longer a term limited to the geographical conceptualization of location.
Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky, somewhere on the Internet, a long time ago (for more information, please refer to http://www.sohodojo.com )
Over the intervening years, I have become ever more of an advocate for this perspective … and I feel this is somewhat the perspective found at the intersection of three avenues of thinking arising from the views referred to as “local”, “topical” and “milieu”.
Let me try to elucidate how these three views are related by describing a situation we are all familiar with from our childhood (and also from early adult years). The scene is that of a school, or perhaps also a college or university. You are the pupil or student walking though a building towards the classroom of a class you’re enrolled in. As you walk, you pass other classrooms with other classes. Perhaps you hear a few words from inside — but since you have hardly any context, these words don’t really affect you in any way. You distinctly recognize that you do not “belong” to these classrooms. These rooms do not feel like home. The topics being discussed are relatively meaningless to you. If you do happen to spend some time following such a “foreign” discussion, it may seem odd or strange, perhaps even alien.
This alienation need not be strong, nor need it even be clear or obvious, but still it is completely clear that this is not “your” classroom. If for some reason the physical location of your classroom was different on some day, you would have no doubt whatsoever regarding where you belong.
You belong where your people understand you, speak the same language, are familiar with the same jargon. The location isn’t really important. What’s far more important is the community … and the fact that we feel we belong here is not just a matter of the linguistic community we are members of, our milieu is also the community we associate with, participate in activities together with, these are the people we “hang out” with, engage with, etc..
I also strongly feel that people generally belong to several milieus — even though many people might seem to behave as if milieus might be mutually exclusive. The irony of “mainstream” media is precisely that: in the mainstream attempt to speak to (i.e. “reach”) everyone, mainstream media lack the coherence with which a members of a linguistic community will engage with other members in the same milieu.
Socio Business blog 