Accents relevant to politeness?

yass67@poppy.ocn.jp yass67 at POPPY.OCN.NE.JP
Sun Jun 15 12:56:37 UTC 2003


Dear Linguists,



Would you mind my asking a rather odd question?



Is it 'politer' to say "Can/could you blah, blah, blah?" in General American
accent or Received Pronunciation (UK) than in New York's or London's local
accent when you speak to someone with a higher social status or your
superiors? Do you think that politeness or 'power relations' are relevant to
accents or dialects? In other words, when you have two people with two
different accents (one with a standard and another with a non-standard),
which person do you think respects you more?



I look forward to your comments. Thank you!



Yass Shoji



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