Teaching With a Kentucky Accent

[Millie Webb]

I have to admit, I have never considered that "Canadian" English could be
considered "network standard", in spite of the recent tendencies of certain
networks' news anchors to hail from the Great White North.  I can usually
hear in the first ten minutes of talking with someone, if they are from
Canada, at least from outside, say, Toronto.  And even in Toronto, there are
a lot of variations that shout "Canada".

In my own academic experience  of trying to label "network standard" as
being "from somewhere", it was said to be Chicago, because that is where the
radio networks all started in big.  And I was so thrilled to see someone
citing Rosina Lippi-Green's book!  She taught my own "Non-standard English"
course when I was in graduate school, and it was populated at least half by
junior and senior undergrads who were majoring in English, and were
tremendously prescriptivist.  We found it amusing though, to consider
ChicAH[+nasal]go to be the seat of broadcast English, given all the odd
vowel expansions and contractions they seem to show these days (at least
twelve years ago).  Those vowel shifts seemed to be related to East Coast
city shifts, or West Coast bumpkin shifts (in the class's estimation at the
time, that included "ValleySpeak", surfers, counter-culture Gen X
skateboarders, and other such stereotyped sub-groupings of Californians and
Oregonians.

Rosina, if you see this, know I am well and think of you often!! -- Millie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Irons" <t-irons at MOREHEAD-ST.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 5:44 AM
Subject: Re: Teaching With a Kentucky Accent



> BTW, I thought Network Standard was Canadian. Or Texan.  Or Nebraskan.
>
>
> **************************
> Terry Lynn Irons
>