~ (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Randy Alexander]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Scot LaFaive <slafaive at gmail.com> wrote:
>>There is a standard USA pronunciation.
>
> My vote for Tom's most incredible proclamation yet. Seriously, any bubble
> gum chewing freshman in Linguistics 101 could tell you differently. I'm not
> an elitist, but I have to ask Tom: have you ever taken even one course
> (college or otherwise) on basic linguistics? I'm not trying to be hurtful;
> I'm just in shock at the above statement.

I'm not sure that a statement like that is so incredible.  If one took
the stance that there is no such thing as a "standard" American
English, then wouldn't that preclude the existence of any
"substandard" forms?

Don't most people believe there is a "standard" American English?  If
most people didn't believe that, then why would there be "accent
reduction" classes, etc?

I think it's pretty well established that "standard" American English
(or General American, or Broadcast English, or whatever you want to
call it) is not very well defined, but that doesn't mean there isn't
such a thing.

I've often wondered how to go about defining it.  One strategy that
has come to mind would be to carefully examine the speech of Peter
Jennings, Tom Brockaw, and Dan Rather, as they, having been heard by
most Americans daily for over 20 years, perhaps are the considered by
most Americans as representative of this "standard" American English.

If I could make copies of myself, I would begin work on this right
now.  I think it would be of great importance to ESL students to have
a clear model.  Right now the only clear model for them is RP, which
by my estimation probably only has about 1 million speakers worldwide.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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