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



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 10:20:57 -700

From: Keith Russell wkr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CPU.US.DYNIX.COM

Subject: Re: song



On Tue, 16 Nov 1993, Donald M. Lance wrote:



Doesn't 'south' collocate with 'down' and 'north' with 'up' in general?

Would any of you ever say "up south" or "down north"?

We use 'out' with 'east' and 'west', and 'down' with 'east'. We wouldn't

say "out north" or "out south" or "down west", would we?

These seem to me to be set expressions, and certainly mapping practices

contribute to these uses, but map directions don't explain "down east".

DMLance



I agree with you on 'down' and 'up.' 'Out west' is also fine, but 'out

east/north/south' and 'down west/east/north' are not. 'Back east,'

however, is fine.



Keith Russell



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 12:55:56 CST

From: Mike Picone MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.BITNET

Subject: Re: linguistic nationalism



In response to Alan Slotkin's request:



English only policies were established with regards to education in the

Louisiana public schools in the early 1900s in order to supress varieties of

French (which had the simultaneious effect of suppressing Creole and Native

American dialects).



A good overview of the evolving situation, concerning French at least, is

available in the following:



Ancelet, Barry Jean. 1988. A Perspective on teaching the problem language in

Louisiana. The French Review 61:345-356.



Mike Picone

U Alabama



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 13:07:00 CST

From: Cynthia Bernstein BERN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DUCVAX.AUBURN.EDU

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



The article Sali mentions, claiming the disappearance of American

dialect diversity, reminds me of one that appeared last February in

the New York Times. I'm afraid it's the impression of the media that

the media are making us all sound alike. Some of us may soon be seeking

other employment.

Cynthia Bernstein, Auburn U



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 16:08:00 EST

From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



I hope that Sali Mufwene is right and that the putative newspaper article on

'dialects' is a joke.

If not, it perpetrates two of the silliest unprofessional notions around (ones

my beginning undergraduate Language and Culture students could refute). 1)

That linguistic change is instituted by the upper classes and then abandoned

after lower status groups begin to sound like them. See any of the intensive

socioinguistic work on change in the last three decades to show that all

carefully studied change we are aware of beings in lower status groups and

works its way up (unless it is noticed and clobbered, of course). 2) Careful

studies (even of lexicon!), for example Ellen Johnson's recent dissertation

from Georgia, show that dialect areas are just as differentiated today as

thjey were when the were first studied in the 30's - quite a long time for the

media to have had an effect - NOT. That they were never as distinct as some

European dialects is granted, but that information is embedded in a popular

rather than scientific view. (The reasoning bhind all this, of course, is that

we learn our basic lanuage patterns (our 'vernacular' if you will) from

interaction (peers, siblings, other family) not from talking heads on TV.

I hope Sali is right; dialectology has a bad enough reputation among 'real'

linguists.

Dennis Preston 22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 16:15:57 -0500

From: "William A. Kretzschmar, Jr." billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ATLAS.UGA.EDU

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



While the newspaper article may not be a joke, the media are still capable

of noticing dialect differences: WSB, the 50,000W Atlanta AM station,

interviewed me during the playoffs so that I could explain the funny

accents up in Philadelphia. (Needless to say, I found irony in the

request on *many* counts). I didn't hear what WSB edited out of the

phone interview, but it was scheduled to play the morning of game 5.



******************************************************************************

Bill Kretzschmar Phone: 706-542-2246

Dept. of English FAX: 706-542-2181

University of Georgia Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hyde.park.uga.edu

Athens, GA 30602-6205 Bitnet: wakjengl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 16:26:49 -0500

From: Cathy Ball CBALL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



For those who may have joined the list after I posted my original request ...

The Washington Post called me for help answering a reader's query, and I

passed on the query to ADS-L. The request generated a number of responses,

which I faxed to the Post, and they chose several. Voila. Actually, the

end result is not as bad as some of the things the media do with our input.

And as for the absence of 'change from above', noted by one of the recent

'is this a joke?' messages, I may note in passing the entry of 'who' into

the restrictive relative paradigm.



-- Cathy Ball (Georgetown)

cball[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]guvax.georgetown.edu



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 16:47:53 -0500

From: GURT[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



Well said, Dennis Preston!



And a recent thread on the Sign Language Linguistics list concerned

hearing children of deaf parents. According to the studies cited, these

children apparently don't learn to SPEAK from listening to the television.



I thought one of the things we learned from Genie is that children

learn language from *interaction*, not from mere exposure.



I remember as a child asking my cousin in South Carolina why she

talked like that, even though nobody on TV talked like that (i.e.,

everybody on TV spoke (more or less) standard American English). She

insisted that she didn't talk any differently than people on TV -- my

impression at the time was that she was arguing that she couldn't hear

a difference between her dialect and the standard.



Can we infer that you learn your dialect from interaction, not mere

exposure, AND that dialects spoken by people you don't interact with

don't sound like different dialects?



Joan C. Cook

Department of Linguistics

Georgetown University

gurt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]guvax.georgetown.edu



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 17:41:54 -0500

From: Cathy Ball CBALL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



Dear Salikoko -



The above is supposed to be a joke, right?



If you meant the whole message, no! But the Post column in question is

a more-or-less tongue in cheek one - I can send you the original ADS

postings that underlie the column, if you're interested.



-- Cathy



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 16:59:30 CST

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

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



In Message Mon, 22 Nov 1993 13:07:00 CST,

Cynthia Bernstein BERN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ducvax.auburn.edu writes:



The article Sali mentions, claiming the disappearance of American

dialect diversity, reminds me of one that appeared last February in

the New York Times. I'm afraid it's the impression of the media that

the media are making us all sound alike. Some of us may soon be seeking

other employment.

Cynthia Bernstein, Auburn U



Sorry, Cynthia. I made a comment on the report from Cathy Ball. Making

allowance for media distortions in reporting academic positions, I just

thought the intention must have been to entertain subscribers to the ADS

List.

Salikoko S. Mufwene

Linguistics, U. of Chicago

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

312-702-8531



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 21:04:23 -0700

From: Rudy Troike RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ARIZVMS.BITNET

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



Response to Dennis Preston's note:

Don't forget the 'parachute effect' in modern conditions, when

Chicago vowels jump to Phoenix without, as in olden days, traveling across

the intervening farm and ranch country. It is almost certainly NOT the media

which are responsible, since they are often the LAST to reflect such changes.

But change is occurring constantly at all social levels; which mutations

survive and spread is often a matter of the particular local circumstances.

Were it not for the influence of the upper class in post-Norman England, we

would not have so many French words incorporated into English, and would

still be using more of the good o

Old English vocabulary. It would make German easier to learn. Older upper-

class usages in turn survive in relic areas. Unfortunately, American English

IS being homogenized at the lexical level, with so few people left on the farm,

and most people getting 'school-larning', if not in school, via their 7 hours

a day of TV and the supermarket.

--Rudy Troike



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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 21:15:41 -0700

From: Rudy Troike RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ARIZVMS.BITNET

Subject: Re: Diversity of accents



Joan,

It's not so simple as we dialectologists, always going for the larger

picture, like to make out. Individuals will be individuals, at least at times,

no matter how much we try to squeeze them into our isoglosses or sociolinguis-

tic variables. I remember reading an interview some years ago with someone

who grew up in Brooklyn, in which he commented that his friends early on said

that he was eventually going to leave Brooklyn when he grew up, because he did

not sound like his peers. And he did leave. Unfortunately the interview was

printed, so there was no way to prove this, but it does suggest people are

not Skinner-conditioned, and may select which aspects of the environment they

will attend to as most salient. I have a colleague from Montana who sounds

like a Britisher.

Rudy Troike



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End of ADS-L Digest - 20 Nov 1993 to 22 Nov 1993

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