Fwd: conversating

[Wilson Gray]

My guess is that they - ElimiDate's producers - purposely pick people
whose speech patterns and looks are more-or-less "standard" or
neutral, so as to draw a larger audience than they would if their
white participants looked and sounded like they had just come from the
holler or their black participants looked and sounded like they had
just come straight out of Compton. They want participants who are the
bland, all-American types that anyone can relate to.

OTOH, WRT to Maury and Jerry, the stranger their "guests" are, the
better, since the reactions of their semi-participating live audiences
are part of the show, as is also the case with the "Judge [Name]"
shows. On one such show, participants identified as being from
Franklin, NC, pronounced the name "Dawn" as "Doan," i.e. [do:n]. I was
surprised, though I shouldn't have been, given that I've been
accustomed to hearing, e.g. "on" and "Tom" falling together with "own"
and "tome," all my life.

-Wilson

On 10/22/06, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fwd: conversating
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> So what do you think is happening, Wilson?  Are the participants not =
> really in the stated settings, or are participants chosen who have less =
> prominent local dialects, or what?  It sounds like something interesting =
> may be going on; I'm curious as to what.
> =20
> John Baker
> =20
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Sat 10/21/2006 3:47 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Fwd: conversating
>
>
>
>
> FWIW, ElimiDate could give the naive watcher the impression that local
> dialects are on the way out. The setting is, e.g. Natchez,
> Mississippi, and the only thing clearly Southern about the speech of
> the participants is their use of "y'all"? Black participants sound
> like Tom Brokaw? To quote Richard Pryor, "Unreal! An' I ain' goin' fo'
> it."
>
> -Wilson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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