cinderella, creole

[kaigou]

Japan's Cinderella Motif- Beauty Industry and Mass Culture Interpretations of a Popular Icon — Laura Miller

Too much evo-psych but still important observation, from Psychology Behind The Cinderella Complex:

...there is also a division between the smart and the pretty girl. “We can’t do both, evidently,” Fraser said. “And if you are both, then you’re universally hated by both men and women; women because they’re jealous of you, and men because they don’t know what to do with you.” She said that a woman “who is living up to her potential is often cast aside or becomes a social outcast.”

From Wiki's entry on prestige (sociolinguistics):

Some instances of contact between languages with different prestige levels have resulted in diglossia, a phenomenon in which a community uses a high prestige language or dialect in certain situations—usually for newspapers, in literature, on university campuses, for religious ceremonies, and on television and the radio—but uses a low prestige language or dialect for other situations—often in conversation in the home or in letters, comic strips, and in popular culture. Linguist Charles A. Ferguson's 1959 article "Diglossia" listed the following examples of diglossic societies: in Switzerland, Swiss Standard German and Swiss German; in the Middle East and North Africa, Standard Arabic and vernacular Arabic; in Haiti, Standard French and Kréyòl; in Greece, Katharevousa and Dhimotiki; and in Norway, Bokmål and Nynorsk.

Although those (I gather) are significant linguistic differences between prestige and standard, couldn't a situation like Southern/non-Southern be considered a kind of diglossia? My understanding is that code-switching is when you mix two languages (dialects?) in the same sentence/breath, like a kind of maladapted or hyper loanword use. Diglossia sounds more like a complete switch, like what I do when speaking with relatives versus the way I speak at work. It also sounds like what people are talking about for Black Americans, who switch easily from Standard American at work to Black American while with friends/family or non-work situations. As others mentioned on earlier threads, that as long as you use those structures and expressions, you're still speaking "Southern" even if your accent is soft (or non-existent), the accent of Southern American, like Black American, is not the key feature. It's the significant differences in the grammatical structure as well as the idiomatic expressions.

Now I am reminded of that segment from Airplane: "Oh stewardess! I speak jive."

---

Tangential note: out of curiosity, I just looked up jive, wondering where the name itself (jive) originated. Still no idea on that one, but I did just learn that linguistically, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, or what I was calling Black American) is a creole. The bit about prestige dialects remains at the forefront of my lizard brain right now, so that popped back in as I got to the section about Ebonics... and I gotta say, I loathe that term. The political ramifications aren't helped by a strange kind of verbal synesthesia, where the capital E + the bon looks... I don't know how to put it. Like something you'd call a child's music toy, or something. Not quite plastic-cheap, but that kind of reaction. Hard to qualify/express.

However, it seems to me there's a prestige, of a sort, when a dialect is known as a creole, probably in part because of the association with "creole" and "New Orleans" (in terms of cultural import/impact). New Orleans is, and hopefully will continue to be, a huge cultural value for America. So maybe we have an association, thanks to that, that lends prestige to "creole", regardless of whether the listener understands the linguistic differentiation. I think maybe it's also because most people are aware that "creole" (unlike the maligned notion of 'pidgin') is a dialect-into-language. Credibility, perhaps, that isn't granted by a bizarre and frankly stupid invented-word like Ebonics?

Strange, to be reminded yet again (as though I could forget) that words really do make all the difference. Instead of Ebonics and its ridiculous assumption that the non-Standard English is a sign of Black American childrens' lesser communication skills (oh please)... by emphasizing the creole aspect, the truth becomes: Black American children are actually gaining a skill many Standard-American speaking children don't gain: multilingualism. There are huge benefits to having that kind of multi-linguistic exposure as small children, not the least of which is a facility to learn other languages, because the brain is already used to switching back and forth -- and we've got more than just American-English vs non-English languages, we've also got computer languages, these days.

Too bad I'm never a hiring manager, or I think this would be a valuable trait in potential developers. Someone who can code-switch (or use diglossia) between a creole and Standard American is possibly also someone who can do the same with computer-language syntax. It's just one more way of adapting and working with language, and long experience in code-switching gives you the tools to apply the same in a new area. I think that'd be incredibly valuable (especially in industries like mine, which are always stumbling over and into new developments that then need to be integrated with the old).

Then again, I'm not a hiring manager... nor has any hiring manager ever given even a moment's notice to the languages I've studied. Or maybe it's just that as far as I know, I've never had a direct manager who isn't mono-lingual. Maybe you only recognize the value when you're multi-lingual yourself, or spend most of your time in multi-lingual environments, enough to realize that mono-lingual is... well, it's a drawback. It's not something to be proud of.

Also, awesome quote: "A language is just a dialect with an army."

Comments

[qem_chibati]

While the prestige of New Orleans creole might be true, the local creole is looked down in most other places that I know of; New Caledonia, Mauritius, Seychelles. But those places also tend to have highly lingual people - the majority of people I know are at the very least trilingual.




I come from a French background where my immigrated relatives mainly speak a form of creole, here in Australia. Their reasoning was that creole didn't count as a "language" so while they wouldn't speak French to confuse the kids who they wanted to speak primarily English, they could still speak creole and talk behind peoples backs.

If you ask them to say what Creole is they will often use the word pidgin-French or mixed language, since it has a lot of loan words from the surrounding cultures that have immigrated to Mauritius over the years. Their explanation is that creole is a street language as different people speak their own language at home and can then communicate with other groups more comfortably.

My relatives that are still in Mauritius do not think highly of people who speak creole as opposed to proper French in casual settings (including the family that is in Australia).

This is despite the fact that the regional form of creole there is recognised as a language by their court system (but this only happened in the 90's IIRC) and you can organise to have a translator represent you in court if needed. (Something that was strongly needed in my opinion to assist with allowing accessibility to justice for the poorer classes.)

[kaigou]

It's true that "creole" (with a little-c) is often considered sub-standard variation on whatever is the standard language, little better than a pidgin. What I'm riffing off is that in the past twenty years in the US, Creole (with a big-C) has become more and more something associated with a certain amount of regional prestige.

Regional in the sense that it's distinctly American -- whether or not it is, and linguistically, it doesn't seem to be, is the impression I get, and what I'm talking about isn't necessarily facts on the ground in academic sense, but the reputation. So, distinctly American melting-pot, with prestige in certain areas: architecture & cuisine being the two biggest. Just thinking out loud, that one way to give credibility, or push for greater acceptance (and pride) is by capitalizing on the other ways in which Creole has become so popular in the mainstream.

[nagasvoice]

I believe quite some time ago twistedchick posted a link which discussed the term "shuck and jive", where street sellers would sit shucking oysters for customers on the spot in places like NOLA. Shucking was scooping oysters out with a knife, and jive was talking to the customers while you did the shucking for them.
The impression I've gathered is that historically Creole didn't get a lot of respect on its home turf, because it's still a touchy subject for folks who play Cajun and zydeco music, for instance. Up until the late sixties or early seventies or so, I understand that kids were actively punished for speaking Creole French in schools in the Southern states (Cajun/Creole, as distinguished from other types of pidgins/creoles, such as African or Caribbean ones.) I understand there's a unique language inthe Carolinas too (I'm blanking on the name of it, though.) There's a greater respect for native languages and more academic interest in creoles now, but it still doesn't get any respect in business and states out here do not treat it as another language in the bilingual sense here on the West Coast--never mind that we have a lot of Katrina refugees out here. Ebonics as an idea gets ridiculed outright by ring-wing commentators in the media too.

[kaigou]

Oh, absolutely Creole, Cajun, and plenty of other regional dialects -- even languages, like Gullah (the one from the Carolinas) -- don't get any respect locally. Hell, from the other posts I've done, it's obvious some of them don't get any respect nationally, either. But I think it's also maybe because we assume that we're dealing not with a language but with a dialect that we (mainstream) privately are thinking, well, it's not really a dialect, because how can you consider bad grammar and lack of education a dialect? That's just how ignorant people talk... that kind of disdain.

If, though, there's already a growing interest in Creole (and as much as Katrina sucked, it has brought a lot of attention to New-Orleans-related-things, like the traditions or the cuisine or the architecture), just that tapping into that might be using those connotations for good. I mean, my impression of "jive" was that it was a modern term (mid-60s or so), and of course, Ebonics as a term is really only known since maybe the mid-90s. Creole, however, has age and credibility, since people were speaking Creole in New Orleans well before it ever got signed over into American territory.

Or maybe it's just rattling around in my head, a positive version of the emperor's new clothes: you give something a fancier title, something with the veneer of history on its own, and suddenly, oh, everyone wants one. Like selling things on ebay, stick someone's name on it and suddenly everyone wants a so-and-so tiepin or a such-and-such coffee table... capitalizing on the cool factor.

Obviously I'm in no position to do much, other than ponder my observations, and consider today's mini-education: that it's a form of multilingualism, and is something that deserves pride, not disdain. Not to mention is something that I can see being of value in this multicultural world, yet it doesn't get treated with that respect. Least I can do, in my own corner, is recognize its value and give it prestige.

Or something like that. I've been doing battle with stupid bank online credit card transactions all day, so I'm afraid I'm even less articulate than usual.

[nagasvoice]

Best I recall of twistedchick's original post (and sorry, I don't have the direct link) the original references to jive were from tourist accounts from the 18-somethings in New Orleans, but that was regional usage. It must have migrated along with workers heading north to Detroit, Chicago, and NY, because it got much wider use in the 60's with blaxploitation movies using Detroit or Chicago slang (not sure if Superfly used that term, for instance) but then it was part of hip culture with further translation into mainstream with things like Saturday Night Fever ("jive-talkin" is in one of their lyrics, and it's interesting because the movie about Italian kids facing life in the factories, whether or not you consider them losers or scrubs or what have you.)
All of this is years before any of us pale people were aware of rap culture in any way, BTW. I understand that was getting going in some of the really tough slum areas for years before it reached Motown-levels of fame, but only folks seriously into digging up new music knew about it back then.
going back to qem-chibati's interesting comment, what you have going on there would be tri-lingual, the formal French at home, the English, and the street-culture pidgins or Creoles. I have the sense that a lot of immigrants in poor neighborhoods across the US similarly navigate those three very different sets of codes.
I don't understand a lot of the elusive new slang I'm hearing on transit, for instance, but then they don't intend for me to understand it, I'm not supposed to get it. There's all the multivarious terms for "incapacitated," and by what particular chemical, for instance. I know some of this is coming from mass-culture stuff I don't follow, gangsta rappers etc., and other bits are coming from jail and from gangs who've left LA to come here instead; so in that sense it's being imported from minicultures in other cities.
I'm privileged enough that I don't have to, these days. It does become a big deal when your neighbors have drug parties and strange people are constantly wandering around and fights erupt for reasons that are invisible unless you're aware of the dynamics within the groups.

[kaigou]

Post-dinner, I think maybe one way I'm looking at it is that a dialect is a sub-part of a language, as though it's incomplete on its own. To speak a dialect is to speak something... that's not as thorough, or as standard, like it's lacking something that languages have.

(Except that dialects are supposed to be mostly mutually intelligible, right? I defy anyone to translate what my paternal great-aunt is saying when she gets going. Hell, I can't even understand what she's saying, sometimes, between grammar, accent, and the actual idioms used. Not to mention the very subtle nuances of what appear to be grammatically incorrect phrases but are in fact very precise -- like the use of "done" and where it goes in the sentence, but I digress.)

To speak a language signifies being part of a group, distinct (as opposed to being a mediocre not-close-enough attempt at someone else's/mainstream's language). Could there be more prestige if there was a big push to see jive/creole/American Vernacular as actual American, and the mainstream language -- as American English -- to differentiate them like so. As in: "American English" is a dialect of [British] English. American is not; American is a language in its own right, and the main speakers and conveyors of this language are not, in fact, white people.

Actually, I think that's pretty cool. At least, it is if I'm thinking what I think I'm thinking, but if it doesn't come across or comes across kinda wierd, maybe it's post-dinner haze. Post-code haze, post-dinner haze, maybe I should blame the entirety of today on the fact that I had cake for breakfast...

[nagasvoice]

I suspect any day is improved by starting with cake, but perhaps that's just my inner four-year-old talking. (I have distinct preferences on what types of cake, which is one of the warning signs.)
RE: American as a distinct language/slanguage, and who's generating it, we do know that the demographics *will be* nonwhite majorities in future, IMHO clearly a big part of what's got the Tea Partiers' knickers in such a racist twist.
Local demographics may lead to interesting specialities. A good chunk of what you hear in border states will be Spanglish, which feels free to borrow whichever distinct terms that convey meaning more concisely. I don't quite know what to expect from other immigrant populations. Locally, for instance, we have a large Russian population, and one of the more interesting grocery stores started off as a Korean ethnic market which also stocked unusual and specialty items for the local Hispanic population. Now it imports all kinds of things from former Soviet Union states. It makes for very interesting store shelf labeling.
Then there's fads. I see all kinds of use of anime and manga terminology which I first started hearing from rapid adopters back in the 80's, for instance--those folks who were learning Japanese so they could translate new movies imported directly from buying services, none of it easy to do. Otaku, in current western terminology.

[maire]

Much as I like what I see as your intent here (suggesting ways to respect non-standard dialects of English spoken by people who aren't in power) I do have a couple of issues with your approach here.

***

1

One is with the idea that anyone's dialect can be seen as an incomplete language. If it's someone's native tongue, it's a complete language. Maybe not as wealthy in words as one spoken by millions, but still a complete language and capable of extending to a pretty much infinite degree, as the speaker encounters things they need to express.

Actually, the same goes for anyone's *ideolect* (their personal variant of their dialect).

'Standard American English' is a dialect. So are 'standard British English' and all the other 'standard' versions of English.

***

2

American English (AE) is a cousin of modern British English (BE), not a descendant of it. It's got features of the two dialects' common ancestor that have been lost in modern BE, just as modern BE has features that AE has lost.

Both also have innovations unique to themselves and both have borrowed from each other.

[axelrod]

Maybe you only recognize the value when you're multi-lingual yourself, or spend most of your time in multi-lingual environments, enough to realize that mono-lingual is... well, it's a drawback. It's not something to be proud of.

Though I get the impression - um, largely from the wikipedia article - that there are plenty of Black USians - who themselves see AAVE as with lesser value, and some may do so even if they know it and speak it in different contexts. So hiring managers and other people in positions of relative power who speak two or more US dialects may or may not see the value of code-switching that you do, since they may be fighting through internalized racism and linguistic shame.

Interesting post, thanks!

[kaigou]

AAVE, Southern, and New York City (especially the Bronx & Brooklyn) all have the same bad reputation, just reputations in different ways... but equally looked-down-on. And it seems that all three equally internalize a certain amount of racism/classism and shame about the accents, but all the more reason to work on coming up with a way to see it as a source of pride and value. The Southern accent is getting a very slow turn-around, by virtue of people (throughout the US) seeing it as a "friendlier" way to talk, and I'm just thinking there might be a benefit in borrowing the growing prestige of New Orleans & Creole-with-a-capital-C.

[brainwane]

I've hired people, including technologists. I find a few linguistic skills actively useful or proxies for other useful traits/skills. Two that come to mind:

(1) Being able to shift registers and approaches appropriately to communicate effectively with different audiences.

(2) Having studied a case-based language, such as Greek or Russian.

[kaigou]

Case-based language. Is that one in which everything is conjugated/declined?

A coworker once told me that the reason it's so easy for Hindi-speakers to pick up certain computer languages is because Hindi is structured very similarily to the big languages, like ASP and PHP. Something about first you call (verb) your function (object) and then give the particulars (subject, adjectives, adverbs). I'm a little fuzzy on it now, since it's been years, but it was the first time I'd every consciously thought about the whole subject-object-verb (and other orders). With the exception of Gaelic, every language I'd studied up to that point were basically subject-verb-object languages, in the Romance/Teutonic line.

Gaelic being verb-subject-object, I think. Verb first, at least. It's been years!

[love]

Thanks for posting the link to the Cinderella article. I'd never actually thought about the points raised, but she's right, Cinderella is a really affirmative and empowering concept there. Wow.

[kaigou]

Yep -- it startled me, because it made me realize just how bad Disney is (as if I didn't know it already), but still: that there could be a positive (agency-filled) way to view Cinderella, and Disney ain't it. On the other hand, Cinderella's agency being used entirely towards the purpose of beautifying herself (subtext: to attract a husband) is still... not exactly my idea of true agency, but better than the alternative.

[maire]

I grew up with Eleanor Farjeon's very old children's novel 'The Glass Slipper', which gives Ella much more agency (having to pass tests of bravery and generosity to win the fairy's help, although she doesn't realise it) and an actual relationship with the prince she marries, while still sticking to the standard plot pretty well.

warning: linguistics is my armchair hobby.

[soukup]

I'm curious about something you say above. "Code-switching" is a term which (as far as I know, at least) is typically used to talk about situations involving two languages that are distinct enough that speakers of the one can't automatically understand the other without deliberately studying it. I'm not from the South, and I can usually understand people who speak Southern English, so I'm surprised and fascinated by the idea that there might be a group of speakers of it somewhere with whom I couldn't communicate. Is your dialect really unintelligible to people who aren't familiar with it?

BTW, I'm not asking because I disbelieve you -- I'm just insatiably nerdy about this stuff.

[kaigou]

Y'know, I don't really know why it's called code-switching. I always thought code-switching was between two totally distinct languages, and that if you're speaking dialects, it's not switching -- the first place I saw Southern and non-Southern mixing as "code-switching" was in Do You Speak American?, a text on American dialects that's written for the non-linguist.

That said, two dialects may be mutually intelligible, but I don't think that always automatically means comprehensible. (I'm reminded of the time I was trying to explain a SF book's science to my step-father the biophysicist, and he replied, "All those words you just used were English, but when put in that order, they make absolutely no sense.")

There are things I've always said, and understood, and never thought twice about how or what I was saying or understanding. I think in some ways, I'm also guilty of internalizing the view that Southern speech is sub-standard, or just "ill-educated". Only in the past month or so of these posts have I been reading, thinking more, and thinking about things my parents and grandparents and extended family would say, to realize there are definite nuances. What they say may be all English, but strung together, in some cases I doubt an outsider (non-Southerner) would actually understand, and I don't just mean accent-wise. I mean the grammatical constructions, and the use of unexpected (per standard American-English) arrangements.

Like the use of "done", and whether it goes before (done been working) or after (been done working) the helping verb. Or the use of "like as" or "near to" or different definitions of apparently simple words, like "carrying" for "showing". (You don't show someone the way, you carry them.)

As for mutually intelligible, that much... well, sometimes maybe not so much. I went to CT for a week, after I got out of HS, to visit a friend. While there, we road-tripped to MA, visited Cape Cod, and pulled an all-nighter driving back. Somewhere around Fall River, Mass, I was driving, it was 3am, and we were almost out of gas. Had to go a far piece to find a place ("far piece" meaning "drive until you cain't drive no more" and roughly synonymous with a yankee's "about a mile down the road"). One lone gas station open. I filled up, and asked for directions back to the highway, having lost my way. The guy replies. I boggle. I ask again. He replies. I hadn't the faintest what he was saying. I honestly didn't think it was English. Finally I grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote down, "I'm sorry, I don't understand," just as he was doing the same. His note? "Do you speak English?"

[We ended up doing the whole conversation written. He couldn't parse my Virginia-inflected accent, and I couldn't parse his middle-of-nowhere coastal Mass accent. In the end, I never did find the highway, and ended up driving by the moon instead, but I got us back to CT in one piece all the same.]

[soukup]

*chuckles* Oh, yeah, coastal Mass has some interesting backwaters. Isn't it funny how little pockets of regional dialect can happen sometimes in otherwise mostly Standard American English*-speaking areas? At least, that's how things are where I grew up (rural-ish New England): in certain tiny towns up here, outsiders have to really try hard to understand anyone over fifty.

Funny too that you're from Virginia, and particularly in re. to your other post, because I'm actually writing a character lately who's from that state. She's in politics, so she has to keep it tamped down most of the time, but I'm discovering that she has just a hint of an accent when she's tired or emotional.

*(That is, in so far as SAE actually exists, in which re the jury is still out, natch. For the sake of clarity/simplicity I'm using the term here and hoping you'll allow it with a big grain of salt.)

[kaigou]

I'm not from Virginia, by Southern standards. I lived in Virginia, but I'm from Georgia, since most of my family is in/around Georgia. (That's a fine detail, but an important one, to not just Southerners; it's just that Southerners have that way of putting it, from what I understand.)

Virginia is a crazy place, though. There's Northern VA, where... well, that's not really the South. It's not really anything. It's its own place. Its own reality, even. Tidewater -- south to Fredericksburg and down into Caroline County, and east from there to Dahlgren and that area, and you'll still hear a strongly Scots-inflected tone in the accent. It's rhotic, so you'll hear the r's, but you'll also hear people saying they're going "oot to the hoose". Then you get down to Richmond, where it's a more classic Tidewater stereotypical/known Southern accent... and if you head east into Norfolk, whew! Don't ever get none of them mad, or you won't be able to understand two words in ten. They're right up there with coastal Mass on the incomprehensibility scale.

A'course, if you head west from Fredericksburg, through Orange County and into the foothills -- from about Charlottesville up along the I-81 stretch -- you'll hear Appalachian creeping in to mix with the Tidewater drawl. Phrases will start changing, humor shifts, and people are friendly if you have an accent yourself but not so friendly otherwise, especially if you're driving a fancy car or look like you're too good to ever do a lick of work yourself. West from Richmond and points south, you're heading into a more Carolina-inflected accent, and once you get over the I-81 band and into the Appalachians proper, it's a whole 'nother world. The East Tennessee drawl is strong in them parts, but not surprising given you're only a stone's throw from the border. Visiting Blacksburg, and I'd hear accents that weren't too far off the East Tennessee (Jonesboro/Knoxville) accent my grandfather had (and that my mother inherited).

People used to be surprised, in New England, that within a year of living there I could peg someone's hometown based on their accent. Nothing new to me, since I spent my childhood pegging accents as a means to determine whether someone was local or a newcomer. Once you learn the peculiar quirks of a certain accent, it's easy enough to identify it no matter where you hear it.

And it's one reason that Brit actors trying to do "a standard American accent" drive me bonkers, because they tend to pick up accent-inflections from a variety of places, so they sound awfully schizo to me, like one second they're from just northwest of Boston, and the next few words they're from northeastern Pennsylvania, and then suddenly they're from the Tidewater. It's not that the individual accents are wrong or bad... just that there's too many of them. Few actors really have an ear for accents. They can do mimicry, but that's not the same as listening to the cadence and understanding how it flows.

The irony, of course, is that I am completely tone-deaf when it comes to mimicking accent/cadence in other languages. Other people tell me I speak with an accent, and I can't hear it at all. It's like I can't inflect my voice differently -- I can't do mimicry. But after finding out my Chinese professor was raised in Shanghai, and he admitted he spoke with a strong Shanghai accent outside of class, I've actually pegged Shanghaiese when overhearing them speak. Yet I couldn't duplicate that sound for the life of me.

Or maybe that's just like the difference between identifying spices in the food, versus actually being able to cook.

Ah, one other thing: Northern Virginia, yeah, you'd tamp down the accent. Anywhere else in Virginia (the "real" Virginia, really) to not have an accent just might render you a bit of an object of suspicion, like you were putting on airs. You'd drop the accent if you went into DC, of course, but local level, there's been a push over the past twenty or so years to sort of revel in one's accent, at least within each region. It marks you as an insider, as part of the in-group (because you'd better believe Southerners can tell when you're faking it!)... and politicians are the ultimate insiders. Some of the strongest accents I've heard are in political stump-speeches. (Plus #42 and #43 also had major influence in people seeing "folksy" Southern talking as friendlier, more approachable, more "regular-person-like".)

I have no idea whether SAE exists. If it does, it's in schools and national-corporate offices, and possibly at the desks of nationally-broadcast anchorpeople. In the street? Don't know as I've ever heard it, but some say even the rarest critters can hold on for a long time, no matter how many people are convinced that extinction has already come and gone.

[maire]

No one ever really speaks the exact 'standard' version of a language, I imagine. It's a Platonic ideal.

[kaigou]

I've heard rumors that "BBC English" -- what they use for anchormen, regardless of country -- is supposed to be the version that's most clearly understandable to the largest part of the population. Which makes sense, if you're trying to train people to be understood by a wide audience. I don't know as that's standard, but it does seem like it could be considered a type of standard.

[maire]

Not so much 'understandable to the rest of the country', if my understanding is correct, as 'not offensive to anyone in the country, while still sounding like a reliable source of information'. They may have said it was about being understood, but what I've heard about the hiring of New Zealanders by the BBC (what they were told when hired) suggests otherwise.

The classic BBC accent of twenty years ago (back when they weren't hiring people who had obvious local dialects colouring their speech) was not quite RP (AKA Received Pronunciation -- the speech of the British university-educated) but was similar.

A number of New Zealanders with upper or middle-class NZ accents in the sixties and seventies did very nicely out of working for the BBC. We sounded upper-middle-class British to them then, but not from any identifiable location. This was regarded as a very good thing as it meant the BBC got to sound nicely 'British' while lacking that very British feature of a clear local accent.

[kaigou]

The same is true, generally, of what I understand of anchorpeople in the US -- not a really identifiable accent, except maybe the slightest tone here and there. As neutral as possible, I guess you could say... as "american" (or "british" or whomever) without actually being geographically distinct within the country itself.

[soukup]

Oh, boy. *noms your comment greedily*

I'm embarrassed to say I was not aware of how heterogeneous Virginia is in terms of local accents. Thanks for alerting me! And now, of course, I'm getting nervous about whether or not what I've imagined for my character is accurate. At the risk of completely wearing out my welcome here, can I bug you for advice about this? *grovels*

The character I'm speaking of is Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw of The Manchurian Candidate, and my version of her is based heavily on the 2004 film version. In the film's final cut her accent is a very bland, unmarked, New York-ish thing; but the actress seems to have toyed earlier on with the idea of giving her a slight twang, because she's quite audibly Southern in a screentest which was done for one of her costars. In my head her accent is much the same as the following video, if somewhat fainter -- the "why," for example, would have a slightly sharper long "i" sound and a very little bit less of an "ah" about it.



(In case you're scratching your head about this, her son talks like a New Yorker because he's lived there for a little over a decade now.)

To my uneducated ear her speech sounds mostly Carolinas-ish. The film doesn't specify where she's from, so I had decided that she'd been raised in Richmond, but after reading your comment I'm starting to reconsider whether that's really the most fitting choice considering how she talks in my head. IYO, where did the woman in the video grow up?

Of course, I do realize that this is a performance by an actress who herself lives in NYC. But given this actress's reputation for putting an insane amount of preparation into her roles (and particularly into their accents) I'm hopeful that there's something coherent going on here! If you can't tell what she was going for, though, feel free to let me know it.

Or if you're busy playing with your adorable cat and can't be bothered to do my research for me, that's totally fine too, and I will completely understand -- feel free to ignore my natterings, and no hard feelings in that case.

[kaigou]

Okay, I've watched it like three times, and... I know Streep is considered one of the best when it comes to accents, but it's like... I guess all I can say is that to my ears, it's like she sounds Southern and yet... not. Like, she's saying it how someone Southern might say it, but what she says isn't Southern at all. Little things. Like when she says "and everything", I was expecting the phrase "and all". And the "sss,sss,sss" sound followed by "thank you very much" sounds... off, just a little. So it's sort of like she's doing a Southern accent with a script that's not really a Southern part, if that makes sense. I would've expected, "hush, you," and maybe a "goodness" or a "gracious" thrown in there somewhere. Even if only partly said, and the rest is just left hanging, half under the breath. "Gracious" is a relatively common kind of expression in older generations that acts like the equivalent of "sheesh" or "geez".

Accent-wise, there are parts -- like at first -- where she sounds more Coastal (Mississippi, Delta), but that has some in common with Tidewater. And then it seems to shift, just a fraction, and by halfway through, she's starting to sound more like maybe Richmond, or the north part of the Carolinas. She's getting too much at the front of her mouth to be Coastal or true Inland, but she's not completely nasal-twang like upstate Alabama or the southern stretch of the Appalachians. She's not got a lot of dialogue to hear whether she's dropping r's (which can be partly geographical and partly generational, so that's not really a precise thing).

I guess... she sounds generic, but at the same time, false, to my ears. And the false-ness has (I realize, after thinking about this carefully) its roots in the fact that her phrasing is wrong. She has some of the cadence right, here and there, that makes me think Coastal, but... I would probably guess Tidewater, with assumption that she's only lived there since maybe college. That it's not her native accent, I guess is what I'm saying, and that's because the cadence of the spaces between words, and the syncopation of certain words -- and the word choices themselves -- feel too, I dunno, northern.

I imagine she was probably trying to aim for the classic Southern accent, not the extreme sing-song of Atlanta speech, but the gentler Tidewater version. And it's not that she does a bad job, it's just that what she's given to say doesn't fit the accent at all.

It's possible she sounds more like Carolinas. I haven't been in those parts for years, so I can't say, and I don't really talk all that much with the Carolina sides of my family, so I don't get constant reinforcement the way I do on other regional accents. I lived in VA for years and travelled all around the state. And I guess I'm surprised anyone'd expect the accents to be all the same, because VA is a big state! And there are major stretches of land dividing some very different geographical regions, with very different socio-ethnic backgrounds of the settlers. Or maybe it's population density? Seeing how Rhode Island wasn't exactly all one accent, either, and it was... well, teensy. Heh.

[My other reaction to your comment that her screentest was with southern accent was, "did she know going in that she was trying out for the part of the bad guy?" since if the southerner isn't the dimwitted fool, he's the ultimate evil wrapped up in an easy smile and a friendly drawl. And probably wears white, and walks with a cane he doesn't need. Bleah.]

[soukup]

Yes. When I first watched this I was wincing for the same reason, and I think that may have been why she chose to leave it blank in the end. But Streep's actually said in many interviews that she didn't consider Eleanor a villain -- her take on the character was that she was an extremely righteous, patriotic, self-sacrificing person; not at all an evil woman, just tragically misguided. I do totally grok that the accent was problematic because most people would have read it as the Eebil Southerner trope, but on reflection I think the intent may have been less about evil and more about insincerity. Eleanor is an extremely charming, warm-and-friendly sort of person, the sort of woman who smiles almost constantly, whether or not she's truly glad to see you. And I think that that type of excessive, fake sweetness is something that Northerners perhaps associate with Southern women. (Hopefully it goes without saying that I don't subscribe to this.) Which I suppose isn't much better, really, but my point is that the actress actually kind of loved this character, and I doubt that she would ever have meant to present her as a villain.

Now that you've pointed it out I can hear what you mean about the shift she makes halfway through -- in retrospect that was what caught my ear about that first "why." I think I'm just going to pin down her accent as being a soft Richmond one, with the caveat that her mother was from Connecticut and her dad's speech was heavily influenced by Washingtonese (he was in politics as well).

Thank you so much for helping me puzzle this out! Getting people's voices right is always really hard for me, so this was a crucial bit of my process.

[soukup]

...Ooookay. Somehow the embed failed? Er, there's a video at the following address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLVMlAuxKBY&feature=related

(Like I said, your cat is very cute, so I will totally understand if you have better things to do.)

[maire]

Code-switching is the term I was taught in linguistics classes at university for swapping dialect, language, or even sometimes register.

[kaigou]

Register? You mean like going from a higher pitch to a lower pitch? Hunh.

(Makes me think of a jdrama I was watching, where the eldest daughter in the family would speak at a normal maybe low-soprano pitch, but if she answered the phone knowing it was a guy, her register would go up and she'd get all breathy. I found her exceedingly annoying, but I think that was kind of the drama's intent.)

[maire]

Oh dear. No, I mean register as in going from formal language to informal.

"I am pleased to make your aquaintance" is in a high register.

"Glad to meetcha!" is in a lower register.

It's the sociolinguistics term, rather than the phonology term.

[kaigou]

BWAH. Okay, that makes a LOT more sense.

Register = formality.

Just struck me, because in English we don't really change register all that much, compared to some of the Asian languages/cultures, where it seems that "female voices" are expected/pressured to be considerably higher-pitch, sometimes unnaturally so, than male voices. So I immediately thought of that as a kind of code, from masculine-pitch to feminine-pitch.

[maire]

:-)