Northern Cities Shift in the movies

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 8/18/06, Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at missouri.edu> wrote:
>
> I hope you got some useful replies to this offlist.
>
> A couple of actors come to mind:
>
> Dennis Farina, who's currently on Law and Order and has done some movies, is
> a fairly shifty Chicagoan (at least for the low vowels in the NCS).
> http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001199/
>
> Robert Forster, who was in Jackie Brown a number of years back and in other
> stuff since, is also fairly shifty and IMDB tells me he's from Rochester NY
> http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001233/

And let's not forget Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue fame. Aaron Dinkin
recently posted this to alt.usage.english:

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http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/msg/46af8f3eb7f61f37

For what it's worth, Bill Labov uses Dennis Franz as his standard example
for telling journalists what a Chicago accent sounds like. (I have no
opinion on the matter, since I've never seen anything Dennis Franz was
in.)

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0506/feature4_2.html
"Tell me who doesn't fit in. It's Dennis Franz, who's from Chicago. He
has a very strong Northern Cities Shift. So when Dennis Franz says, 'What
he-appened?' Americans say, 'What's he doing in the New York City police
department?'"

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/travel/escapes/17accent.html
"If you're not sure what Chicagoan sounds like," he said, "watch old
episodes of 'NYPD Blue' and wait for Detective Sipowicz to ask, 'What
hee-appened?' Having Dennis Franz, a Chicago native, portray a New York
City cop is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole."
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--Ben Zimmer

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