Inmigration

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Ben
Greyhound Bus

Photo: Ildar Sagdajev

Can you get a feel for the local dialect of a city just by visiting there? The answer varies by city. There are towns like London or Liverpool where the accent is so pervasive that it would be hard to avoid. In New York or Boston, meanwhile, the traditional accent differs so strongly from General American speech that, regardless of the proportion of those who speak it, it holds a place in the our cultural imagination. But what if a city’s ‘local’ speech is unique in subtle ways? Here the picture is greatly complicated by inmigration.

‘Inmigration’ is, as far as I can tell, not a word used much out of the academic community. (My computer’s spell-checker certainly doesn’t recognize it). It’s a very useful way of describing transplantation within the borders of a single country. For linguistic purposes, after all, dialects between regions of one nation can be as distinct as between nations themselves. When African-Americans migrated north at various points in history, for example, the linguistic and cultural differences between the rural South and urban North would have been almost as great as if moving to another country entirely.

But let’s look at a more subtle example. This weekend I visited Vancouver. My initial thought while overhearing the conversations of passengers on the train was, ‘Wow, when you cross the border everyone suddenly sounds Canadian.’ But Vancouver has many inmigrants, as a waiter from Winnipeg would attest. Do these outweigh perceptions of whatever local ‘Vancouver’ accent may have once existed? (Which is sometimes attested as sounding ‘less Canadian’ than others.)

The point being, how we perceive dialects ‘on the ground’ can be very misleading. While living in New York City, I perhaps went days without hearing the traditional New York accent. Likewise, strolling through a street in a British coastal town one might make the assumption that ‘everyone here talks like Londoners,’ but how many London tourists, inmigrants and part-timers are contributing to that impression? What we hear on the street isn’t always the same as what we would hear in a local pub.

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The Importance (or not?) of Vowels

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Ben
Vowels

wikimedia

Linguist Will Styler has a smart, funny website titled ‘The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vowels.‘ In the page ‘The Anti-Vowel Agenda,’ he elucidates his gripe:

Yet every day, vowels are bought and sold on national television, subjected to reduction (or even deletion) in unstressed environments and worst of all, in elementary and middle schools, students are systematically taught to deny the existence of more than two thirds of their ranks, focusing instead on five (sometimes six) lies spread by the million-dollar-a-year spelling bee industry.

This is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but Styler does have a point. When I learned to read, I was given a detailed description of the consonants of English. The vowels, on the other hand, were something of an afterthought. I knew what an ‘n,‘ an ‘r,’ and an ‘l‘ were as a child, but I certainly couldn’t identify an ‘ash’ (the vowel in words like ‘cat’ and ‘trap’).  It was only crude a, e, i, o, u, and occasional interloper y.

Much of this discrepancy can be attributed to spelling, as Styler suggests; those 5-6 Latin vowel symbols certainly give laymen the impression we have less vowels than we do. Yet I think there is more to this misperception than orthography.

In some ways, vowels seem to cause native English speakers less trouble than consonants. As I’ve mentioned here before, Scottish children can master their native dialect’s complex vowel lengthening rules quite early in the game, even as they struggle with the same consonants that most English-speaking children do.  Young children are prone to vowel ‘errors,’ of course, but I find they don’t have quite the salience of adorably ill-formed l‘s and r‘s.

So why do we tend to view vowels as less “important” than consonants? Probably because many of our vowels are more than a little disposable. (Not to put too find a point on it.) While we keep the front vowels fairly distinguished, the vowels in ‘book,’ ‘cut,’ ‘caught,’ ‘father’ are all merged with other phonemes in various accents*. That’s a whopping four vowel phonemes the absence of which doesn’t impact intelligibility. So we arguably don’t see vowels as ‘important’ because some of them, objectively speaking, aren’t.

Then, of course, there is the matter of dialects. One phone (IPA a) can be used to express the ‘o‘ in ‘lot,’ the ‘a‘ in ‘father,’ the ‘a‘ in ‘cat,’ or the ‘u‘ in ‘strut’ depending on which regional variant of the language we’re talking about.  I don’t need to repeat the countless ways in which English vowels shift, merge, and neutralize.

And yet, despite vowels being less ‘important’ in terms of comprehension, their sheer instability makes them arguably more ‘important’ culturally. Much of the debate and discussion here centers around vowels, and how vowels reflect class, society, and identity. Consonants are vital to discussions of English dialects as well (note the many posts here about l-vocalization and th-fronting), but they can’t quite compete with the vowels’ near-endless shades of sociolinguistic meaning.

*I’m hardly the first to point this out, but the ‘disposable’ vowels of English are typically the back vowels. Not surprisingly, this part of the vowel space is smaller than the front.

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‘Hey!’ and its Variants

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Ben

Exclamation MarkThe word ‘hey’ has been around for a good thousand years or so (probably more). A remarkably versatile little word, it can be used in American English in any number of contexts. For example, to express annoyance:

“Hey! Stop doing that.”

Or to express sympathy:

“Hey, now! Don’t beat yourself up.”

Or as a kind of greeting:

“Hey, man! What’s going on?”

By the way, The American Heritage Dictionary has an interesting dialect-related take on that last usage:

Until recently, this greeting had a distinctly Southern flavor. The national survey conducted in the 1960s by the Dictionary of American Regional English found hey as a greeting restricted chiefly to Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. The friendly hey has since spread throughout the United States.

I’m not quite sure about that take on things. But if true, it’s perhaps another example of African American Vernacular English making its way into ‘Northern’ speech. (The states listed above strike me as fairly close to the ‘heartland’ of AAVE).

As you can tell in all of these contexts, we often use ‘hey’ as a kind of verbal exclamation point. It’s certainly more useful than screaming in public.

Trying to track down the etymology of ‘hey’ is nearly impossible, though, as The Online Etymology dictionary suggests. It is found in a number of Germanic languages, but was also common in (presumably classical) Latin:

c.1200, variously, in Middle English, hei, hai, ai, he, heh, expressing challenge, rebuttal, anger, derision, sorrow, or concern; also a shout of encouragement to hunting dogs …
In Latin, hei was a cry of grief or fear; but heia, eia was an interjection denoting joy.

I’ve noticed that, despite the somewhat extralinguistic nature of ‘hey,’ there seems something of a growing divide between how ‘hey’ is used in America versus England. In many dialects of the latter, ‘hey’ often equates to American ‘huh?’ That is, it serves as a short hand for ‘what did you say?’ This seems true of Australian English as well, as I discovered thanks to this exchange with a Brisbanian co-worker:

Me: Did you [unintelligible]?
Him: Hey?

There is a different ‘hey’-like word in Britain (and Australia), of course: ‘oi.’ This is exemplefied by Sir Ben Kingsley’s complaint that he can never set foot in a London pub without someone shouting, ‘Oi! Gandhi!’ (This being Cockney, the latter word rhymes with ‘candy.’)

A number of sources report ‘oi’ as being derived from the Romani phrase ‘oi mush,‘ which more or less means ‘hey you!’ The Romani were one of the immigrant groups who settled in London’s East End, so this explanation seems plausible. The East End was also the refuge of many Yiddish-speaking Jews, of course, who may (or may not) have reinforced ‘oi’ with they’re strikingly similar ‘oy*.’ Words like ‘hey’ and ‘oy’ don’t seem confined to one language.

One rather notable thing about such little exclamatory words is that they all seem to feature diphthongs. I’m thinking not only of ‘hey’ and ‘oi,’ but also of ‘ow’ (an English exclanation of pain) ‘ai’ (an exclamation of pain in many Romance languages), and bringing things full circle again, ‘oy’ (a Russian exclamation of pain). What is it about diphthongs that are so expressive of basic emotion?

*Yiddish ‘oy’ has a more exasperated tenor.

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Words of Faint Praise

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Ben

SmileToday’s topic is not very academic, but is worth discussing in relation to the American dialect(s). I’ve lived as an American my whole life, and something I find endlessly fascinating about our speech are ‘faint praise words.’ These are non-committal congratulations and compliments that, when you think about it, don’t much compliment or congratulate anything. Words such as:

1.) Cool. This is still the reigning king of such pleasantries. Ostensibly an old jazz term, ‘cool’ once meant something hip or trendy. (And still does, of course). However, it’s become a half-hearted platitude in all kinds of contexts. ‘I’m going to an antiques fair this weekend’ might prompt a ‘That sounds really cool.’ I doubt the respondent in this interchange actually thinks antiquing is hip.

‘Cool,’ I would surmise, originally derived from a sense of laid-back joie de vivre. We still use the word in this way, for example when we tell an angry person to ‘keep their cool,’ meaning to ‘cool’ one’s passions. Which is why the word is somewhat strange in the context of praise or enthusiasm. It suggests something agreeable, not exciting. Which is perhaps Americans why adapted …

2.) Awesome. This word doesn’t much change from its dictionary meaning, keeping its definition of something awe-inspiring. However, the ubiquity of the word in contemporary American English robs it of much of its gusto. We say ‘This pasta is awesome,’ ‘My apartment is awesome,’ or ‘Your job in insurance adjustment sounds awesome.’ Are any of these things mind-blowingly impressive? Not necessarily. In essence, this is the inverse of ‘cool;’ In the case of ‘awesome,’ we take a word conveying breathtaking excitement and make it surprisingly banal.

One of the unfortunate results of this reappropriation of ‘awesome’ is that when one requires use of the word in its traditional sense it is easily misinterpreted. A classical music critic might write of Faure’s ‘awesome Requiem,’ and while the word makes sense in this context, it can be interpreted as alarmingly off-the-cuff by contemporary readers. Such is language evolution.

3.) Neat. I can think of few words laced with as much withering neutrality as ‘neat.’ When we describe an experience as ‘neat,’ as in ‘We had a really neat time at the zoo,’ we are suggesting something that is quite literally clean, ordered and convenient. There is nothing dangerous or exciting about something that is ‘neat.’ Rather, it’s something pleasant, non-threatening, and uncomplicated. And of course, the word’s more human-applicable cousin is …

4.) Nice. On occasion, I’ve heard both the terms ‘Seattle nice’ and ‘Minnesota nice’ refer to their respective localities. Neither equate to outgoing, gregarious demeanors. Rather, we refer to Minnesota and Seattle, two of America’s more Scandinavian-influenced cultures, as having a mixture of surface friendliness and cold weather reserve.

‘Nice’ is decidedly unsexy, which is why it’s something we Americans are very ambivalent about being called. ‘Girls don’t like nice guys’ is a common (and decidedly misogynistic) refrain, which exemplefies our strange attitudes about niceness. We all want to be nice, but don’t necessarily want what comes with it. And so, again, we use ‘nice’ to denote something we feel very neutrally about.

So what’s with all these words? Pragmatically speaking, they seem to serve the purpose of withholding judgement in as pleasant a way as possible. That’s not to say I have any problem with you going to the zoo, just that I am not particularly
interested in the fact that you are going to the zoo, and so interject with a meaningless, ‘Going to the zoo sounds awesome.’

I don’t mean to suggest this kind of thing only exists in America. Far from it. I’m fairly certain all the above pleasantries have made their way into the British Isles and elsewhere.

But I am reminded of all this when I hear a common British observation: that we Americans are ‘direct’ in our language. In fact, our tendency to use the polite words above suggests we may be indirect in a rather different way. Rather than buffeting our statements with a lot of ‘rather’s and ‘quite’s, we Americans seem to codify specific words so they are understood by all parties to be inexpressive of actual emotion.

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‘Going to’ Contractions

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Ben

BalloonThe phrase ‘going to‘ has two meanings in English. It can, of course, refer to one’s intent to make a physical journey (as in ‘I am going to the store’). But it can also refer to the intent to do anything, as in ‘I am going to talk with her’ or ‘they are going to take a balloon ride.’

It is this latter sense of ‘going to’ that is especially susceptible to contraction, the process of vowels and consonants being elided for the sake of efficiency. ‘Going to’ features an ‘ng’ followed by a ‘t,’ which is a rather awkward juxtaposition of sounds in English. Our inclination is to assimilate nasals so that they conform with proceeding consonants, hence ‘goin’ to‘ (with an alveolar ‘n’ that fits nicely with the ‘t’) is easier to say than ‘going to’ (with a velar nasal).

Of course, we don’t stop there. We often elide the ‘t’ and drop the diphthong in ‘going’ completely, resulting in one of the more ubiquitous ‘incorrect’ words in English: ‘gonna.’ This contraction is unique in that it’s only used in specific contexts. Namely, we can use ‘gonna’ when we’re describing the intent to do something (“I’m gonna talk with her”), but not our intent to go somewhere (‘I’m gonna my sister’s house’ doesn’t sound right, does it?).

‘Gonna’ can be reduced even further. I’ll cite an example from personal experience. Something I’ve noticed among younger American English speakers is the contraction of ‘I’m going to’ something like ‘angunna‘ (ɑŋɘnə). In this case, the ‘m’ in ‘I’m’ is assimilated with the ‘g’ in ‘gonna,’ (with the ‘g’ itself invariably dropped). Quite an evolution from ‘I am going to!’

Then there is a dialect-specific contraction that is one of the most extreme in the English language. That would be African-American Vernacular English’s ‘Ima‘ (ɑmɘ). ‘Gonna’ is entirely elided here; the 9-phoneme phrase ‘I am going to’ is contracted to a mere three sounds.

(I’ve noticed an interesting variant of ‘Ima,’ in which everything after ‘I’m’ is smoothed out into a single, nasal, rounded vowel. As a recent commenter here observed, this contraction might be more along the lines of ‘Imo,’ of which something like ɑmɵ̃ seems a good representation.)

Since we are so inclined to contract the living daylights out of ‘going to,’ it’s not unreasonable to ask why we use ‘going to’ so much in the first place. Why do we not just scrap it and go with ‘will?’ Both are variations of the same simple future tense.  But ‘I will’ is much more efficient than ‘I am going to.’

The answer is that there are subtle shades of meaning that ‘going to‘ expresses that ‘will‘ does not. Not that there aren’t situations where the two are nearly interchangeable. The difference between the meaning of ‘I will talk to Molly about it’ and ‘I’m gonna talk to Molly about it’ are slight. Yet while ‘I’m gonna ask Molly to marry me’ makes sense, ‘I will ask Molly to marry me’ sounds strange. The former is full of romantic longing, while the latter has the tenor of a waiter saying he’ll consult the chef about the wine list.*

And so ‘going to‘ perseveres, its clumsiness inspiring a variety of interesting contractions. Any others worth noting?

*I’d recommend this brief run down at The English Page for a more complete description of the difference of the two.

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Lax Vowels for English Learners

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Ben

Letter UA bit of phonetics humor made its way into a recent episode of the TV show Modern Family. Gloria, a Spanish-accented character from Colombia, consistently confuses her nephew’s name, ‘Luke,’ with the word ‘look.’ The misunderstanding stems from ‘look’ using a ‘lax vowel’ that the Spanish language lacks (no pun intended). But do native Spanish speakers actually hear ‘Luke’ as ‘look?’

Lax vowels in English are difficult to explain. The two most important of these are the aforementioned ‘oo’ in ‘look’ and the ‘i’ in ‘kit.’* On a very theoretical level, the lax ‘oo’ is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘goose’ but with the tongue slightly more front and lower, while lax ‘i’ is pronounced like the ‘ee’ in ‘fleece,’ with the tongue slightly more back and lower. I use the word ‘theoretical’ because in reality the two vowels cover a large spectrum of possible realizations. (More on that later).

English learners can struggle with the lax vowels, since relatively languages have them. I’ve always wondered, then, what non-English speakers make of this unique vowel category. Does the ‘i’ in ‘kit’ sound more like an ‘ee’ sound or an ‘e’ sound to an Italian, for example? And what about the ‘oo’ in ‘look’ and ‘book?’

A 2008 study published by the Acoustical Society of America** found that Russian and Spanish speakers actually can process the distinction between ‘Luke’ and ‘look,’ but do so differently from natives. Speakers of these two languages use the distinction between the relative length of the ‘u’ in ‘Luke’ compared to the relative shortness of the ‘oo’ in ‘look.’ Quite fascinating, since neither Russian nor Spanish uses length as a way of making distinctions. (Vowel length in both languages is exists primarily on the allophonic level.)

Then there is the question of languages that feature vowels similar to the lax vowels in English, but whose intrinsic ‘meaning’ is somewhat different. Take, for example, standard Italian. The short ‘e’ is arguably quite close to the ‘i’ in American ‘kit.’ (This is why, if you’ve ever watched Giada DeLaurentiis on the Food Network, her meticulously authentic Italian pronunciation of ‘Spaghetti’ sounds awfully close to ‘Spaghitti.’)  Would an Italian hear the American pronunciation of ‘bit’ as something more like ‘bet?’

There are indeed accents of English that either lack one of the lax vowels, or else use a vowel that is considerably less ‘lax.’ Such is the case with Scottish and Northern Irish English, which merge the ‘oo’ in ‘look’ with the ‘oo’ in ‘Luke.’ I can’t think of any native English dialects that outright lack the ‘i’ in ‘kit,’ on the other hand. Although in both the British Midlands and Australia one finds accents where this vowel is close to being a short version of the ‘ee’ in ‘fleece.’

And speaking of accents, it strikes me that non-English speakers would logically perceive the lax vowels as different depending on the accent they’re listening to.  Linguist Penelope Eckert has posited, for example, that in Northern California English, the ‘oo’ in ‘look’ shifts toward the ‘u’ in ‘luck.’ I can’t see, then, that a Spanish speaker listening to a strongly-accented Californian would immediately see a connection between ‘look’ and ‘Luke.’

Anyone out there whose native accent/dialect lacks short vowels? If so, how do these vowels ‘sound’ to you?

*You’ll read about other vowels being ‘lax’ in English, but this is much more of a grey area.

**Kondaurova, M. V. (2008). The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners. J Acoust Soc Am, 124, 3959–3971.

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On Dictionaries & Pronunciation

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Ben

DictionaryThe fine folks over at Collins contacted me recently about their online dictionary. It’s in beta, but looks to be an excellent addition to a growing body of online word tools. I recommend checking it out here.

Anyway, this got me thinking. Most online dictionaries have pronunciation guides featuring IPA characters and a recording of an actor reading the word aloud. This actor is going to have an accent, of course. So how does a dictionary compiler choose which accent to feature as the ‘standard’ pronunciation?

Collins is a British dictionary, so they use Received Pronunciation (more on this in a moment). But note that the pronunciations of words in their online English-Spanish dictionary, by contrast, are typical of this side of the world. They opt for the Latin American variety of the language, as shown by the pronunciation of ‘cierto’ as sjeɾto (in much of Spain, this would be θjeɾto, with the ‘c’ pronounced the same as English ‘th’).

This is true of more than one Romance language. I used to spend hours at the foreign language dictionary shelf of Barnes & Noble, because, well, I have a rather unusual sense of fun. One thing I found most interesting is that Portuguese-English dictionaries typically use the Brazilian variety of the language for their pronunciation guides. For the Latin American languages, why do many dictionaries go with the language typical of the colonies and not the original imperial power?

(While I’m on the subject, another question about (foreign language)-English dictionaries: Why are there never, or very rarely, IPA transcriptions for words in Asian languages?)

But back to English. I should mention that I know not a thing about the compilation of dictionaries, or what the editorial process is like. But I’d imagine it’s a herculean task to make the near-endless number of choices that go into creating a work so large and definitive. After you’ve decided which accent to go with, another question arises.  As accents evolve, when do dictionary writers decide to evolve with them?

Take the vowel in the word ‘goat.’ In British dictionaries over a century ago, this vowel was represented by the diphthong oʊ, in line with the pronunciation of the word in Victorian-era Received Pronunciation. At what point did they decide to switch over to the more ‘contemporary’ vowel, əʊ?

And here in America, the contrast between the vowels in ‘caught’ and ‘cot’ has been steadily eroding throughout the country.  When will pronunciation guides in dictionaries reflect this?

Obviously, I’m not discussing books like the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, which are compiled under the direction of renowned linguists. But for more traditional dictionaries, who makes choices about pronunciation?

*By the way, I’m nearly as fascinated by the many accents of Spanish as I am by the accents of English. Anyone who wants to talk about Mexican vowel reduction or the various allophones of the Puerto Rican /r/ is more than welcome to do so.

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American Offglide

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Ben

SchwaThe English language is notorious for its diphthongs.  A diphthong, as many of you know, is two vowels combined into a single sound, as in the ‘i‘ in ‘kite’ or the ‘ou‘ in ‘mouth.’

Nearly every vowel of English can be pronounced as a diphthong in at least some variety of the language.  In fact, modern English largely emerged due to vowels that were once monophthongs (single vowels) shifting to become diphthongs.  (The ‘i’ and ‘night’ and the ‘ou’ in ‘mouth’ are two examples of these.)  Our language undergoes a perpetual process of single vowel phones evolving into two.

In American accents specifically, a specific kind of diphthong emerges.  Namely, monophthongs are often followed by a schwa, the little ‘uh’ sound in the word ‘afraid.’  We generally refer to this as a centering diphthong, with the schwa itself an example of an off-glide.

Perhaps the most famous example of an American centering diphthong is the New York pronunciation of ‘coffee’ and ‘thought,’ which are roughly ‘caw-uhfee’ and ‘thaw-uht’ (IPA kɔəfi and θɔət).  You can find parallels in a few non-American accents; Belfastians can pronounce the word ‘saw’ in a similar way (sɔə) and Cockneys do the same with words like ‘bore’ (bɔə).  But in neither accent is this as widespread or systematic as it is in New York.

Then there is the ‘a’ in ‘trap,’ which has an off-glide in some accents, ranging from the Inland North to New England and California.  Out West, I’ve noticed that it’s quite common for a schwa to follow many short/lax vowels, such as the vowel in ‘kit’ (kɪət) and ‘dress’ (dɹɛəs).  Bostonians, meanwhile, can add a schwa after the vowel in ‘lot’ (lɒət), although this strikes as indicative of the strongest accents.

To summarize, then, vowels don’t simply become longer in American English; they often become longer and become diphthongs.  Why?

There are no clear answers, and those that I can think of are mere speculation.  As I mentioned, schwa off-glides are typical in Northern Irish accents, and as one of the early settlement groups in the US was the Scots-Irish, one might see a correlation there (although many of these early settlers would have presumably spoken Scots, so maybe not).

Earlier varieties of Dutch (an important language in 17th-Century America) would have featured centering diphthongs of the type discussed here.  In fact, contemporary Afrikaans features a long ‘o’ sound that is not dissimilar to the New York City vowel in ‘thought’ (oə).  This is possibly pure coincidence, and I don’t know enough about 17th-Century Dutch to say if this was a common pronunciation then.

Of course, many non-American accents have centering diphthongs as well.  British Received Pronunciation has three: the ‘ear’ in ‘fear’ (fɪə), the ‘air’ in ‘fair’ (feə), and the ‘oor’ in ‘poor’ (pʊə).  But these all serve a very specific phonemic purpose.  In American English, by contrast, it seems that a schwa or schwa-like off-glide can be tacked on to almost any vowel without it changing the meaning of a word*.

So at the end of the day, it’s puzzling why this tendency seems so much a part of the American dialect landscape.  Why are we so inclined to add a schwa after vowels?

*An important exception are the ‘oo’ in ‘goose’ and the ‘ee’ in ‘fleece.’  

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‘The Jersey Shore’ & Jersey Accents

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ben

While in a hotel room the other night, I watched a few episodes of MTV’s The Jersey Shore.  For those living on Mars these past two years, the show follows a group of young ‘Jersey’ layabouts during a raucous summer on the titular coastline.  If ‘The Decline and Fall of the American Empire’ is ever written, this show warrants its own chapter.

By the way, Americans might note an intentional error in the above paragraph: the ‘Jerseyites’ in ‘The Jersey Shore’ are mostly not from New Jersey.  Three out of eight of the original cast members are in fact from Staten Island, a working-class borough of New York City.  Hence, their accents are more traditional New York than contemporary Jersey, exemplified by JS cast member Vinny Guadagnino:

Note Guadagnino’s non-rhotic accent, particularly repeated r-less pronunciations of ‘hair’ (as hɛ:).

Many New Jersey residents take offense to ‘The Jersey Shore,’ particularly as it passes off young New Yorkers as representatives of Jersey culture.  And much of this, I believe, is a matter of speech.

Some New Jersey accents indeed fall into the spectrum of New York City metropolitan English.  However, as I’ve said here before, my impression is that the ‘New York City-accented’ part of New Jersey doesn’t extend much further west than Paterson and much further South than Edison.  And as strongholds of non-rhoticity like Hoboken and Jersey City are becoming increasingly attractive to affluent commuters, such accents are perhaps getting rarer by the day.

So is it possible that the producers of the show hand-picked cast members with accents that conform to stereotypes?  Beyond the three Staten Islanders, the remaining males on the show include a Bronx native and a Rhode Islander (the non-rhotic RI accent is not entirely dissimilar from traditional New York).  Some are perhaps right to take offense; there is only one Jersey accent in the bunch.

In reality, of course, the state has a wonderful variety of accents.  There is the NYC-influenced accent mentioned above, of course.  Accents in the Northwest part of the state, meanwhile, are much more strongly ‘Northern’-sounding (I’ve noted a monopthongal /o/ in GOAT for some speakers), while accents in the rural Pine Barrens almost sound slightly Southern.  So it’s best not to reach conclusions based on what one sees on TV.

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“Hate Speech”

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Ben

I want to briefly comment on a comment made in the last post, from reader boynamedsue:

I think it’s an interesting cultural difference between the UK and US. The concept of “hate speech” as a generalised category has not really entered into our public consciousness, though you’ll hear it from some very middle class people who work in the media and allied political trades. Partially, I think, because it’s so hard to define.

There has obviously been a sea change in the use of culturally ‘offensive’ language in the United States. Ever since the Clarence Thomas affair of the early 90’s (or perhaps before it), we have been more conscious of language that makes others uncomfortable. Has this trend extended to the other side of the Atlantic?

In terms of overtly racist language, I’d hazard to guess things don’t differ that much. That’s not to say there aren’t segments of the populations in each country that still say horribly racist things, but rather that such sentiments aren’t part of polite conversation anymore.

Something I’m less clear on, however, is language that falls under the vague umbrella of ‘sexual harassment.’ I recall around 2004, when the original British version of the The Office had become popular in America, that an English coworker explained that the show worked well because ‘the sexual harassment concept never entered the British consciousness.’  I’ve never worked in Britain, so I can’t say if this is true or not.

Regardless, ‘Sexually harassing’ language arguably differs from racist language (for example), in that it can’t be boiled down to single, offensive words.  This type of offense is rather a matter of what linguists refer to as pragmatics, the context in which language is used.  Sexual harassment is about insinuations, hidden motivations, and ill-intentions. So it’s hard to ascertain people’s attitudes toward it.

As usual, I welcome answers to the question at hand: Is America more ‘sensitive’ about offensive language than the UK?  Or vice versa?

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