British accent stereotypes - 'news'

Charles Doyle cdoyle at UGA.EDU
Fri Apr 4 16:20:23 UTC 2008


Case in point . . . .

Just a few moments ago in class, mentioning some prominent imagery patterns in a Jacobean play, I pronounced the word "forehead" in my customary way, [farId] (the second vowel may be a barred-"i"). Half the students professed not to know what word I was uttering; the other half delicately referred to my pronunciation as "something out of _Deliverance_"). And this is in Georgia!

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:54:33 -0400
>From: Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject: Re: British accent stereotypes - 'news'
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject:      Re: British accent stereotypes - 'news'
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Gillian Kyles <vaggmk at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>  >Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  >
>>  >Forwarded from the forensic linguistics list.  (Pretty amazing that
>>  >research has actually shown that people form impressions of others
>>  >based on how they speak...)
>>
>>  The writer of the above should live in the South where until
>>  relatively recently a certain type of Virginia accent and most other
>>  rural southern accents were definitely associated with a certain
>>  perceived dimness of mind!
>
>Larry neglected to put in an explicit irony marker.
>
>--
>Mark Mandel
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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