Date:  Tue, 8 Feb 1994 13:13:43 +0100

From:  Peter Trudgill <PeterJohn.Trudgill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ANGL.UNIL.CH>

Subject: Re: Regional variation in BE



    The sociolinguistic (or is it psycholinguistic?) principle at work

in all these anecdotes is simply that hearers notice what is different

about a speakers accent, not what is the same. Some Midwestern members of

my wife's family (she's from Illinois) maintain, in all seriousness, that

after 12 years in Britain she sounds EXACTLY like me. They are quite wrong,

of course, but that's how it seems to them!

Peter Trudgill





P.J. Trudgill FBA

Professor of English Language and Linguistics

Section d'anglais

BFSH 2

University of Lausanne

CH-1015 Lausanne

Switzerland



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