Date:  Mon, 22 Nov 1993 10:16:52 CST

From:  salikoko mufwene <mufw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



In Message Fri, 19 Nov 1993 17:42:35 -0500,

 Cathy Ball <CBALL%GUVAX.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vma.cc.nd.edu> writes:



>Thanks to everyone who responded to my query a while back re: diversity

>of accents in the U.S. Here's the outcome (sorry it took so long!; original

>copies are on their way to Robert Wachal and Donald Livingston, who got

>cited.)

>

> -- Cathy Ball (Georgetown)

>

>

>----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Washington Post, Friday 10/15/1993 p. D5 (Style Section)

>

>Why Things Are

>by Joel Achenbach, Washington Post Staff Writer

>

>James R, Odom of Olney asks:

>"Why do people in different sections of the country speak with regional

>accents?"

>

>    Dear Jim: We passed this question along to Cathy Ball, a linguist at

>Georgetown University, and she then sent it out to the Internet (you know,

>that big web of computers that spans the globe) to her colleagues in the

>American Dialect Society.

>

>    We learned that accents are basically a product of immigration.

>German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, English and French

>immigrants and African slaves in the Deep South, Scotch-Irish settlers in

>the hills of Appalachia, Scandinavians in Minnesota, and so on. Accents

>can mutate over time. "Members of lower socioeconomic classes often

>imitate the speech of those in the class above them. The class above them

>then adopts other features to distinguish them from the classes below

>them," notes Robert Wachal of the University of Iowa. (Before the

>Thurston Howells developed that lockjaw accent, they said "y'all" just like

>everyone else.)

>

>    What surprised us most is that almost everyone said that

>Americans don't have a great diversity of accents or dialects, at least not

>anymore. Accents are preserved by geographic isolation, and with the

>advent of mass media, many accents are melting away. Soon we'll all

>sound like Tom Brokaw (but without the slight lisp). "The diversity of

>accents in the U.S. is fairly narrow compared to, say, the diversity of

>accents within just London proper," says Donald Livingston of the

>University of Washington.

>    So maybe everyone should vow, this moment, to start pronouncing

>words in a peculiar fashion (pronounced puh-KOOL-ya FATCH-un).



The above is supposed to be a joke, right?

Salikoko S. Mufwene

Linguistics, U. of Chicago

s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu

312-702-8531