~ (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Paul Johnston]

I did a study a few years back (as yet unpublished, and preliminary)
actually looking at the pronunciations of national and local
newscasters and talk celebrities (local=Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids,
MI, an area where people think they speak with the Standard American
accent), and although my results are very tentative, found out that
there is quite a bit of  variation among newscasters, though all
could be looked at as koineized relative to the vernaculars of where
they really come from,, even localizable ones like even fairly
localizable ones like Larry King or Bsrbara Walters.  This is
obvious, as you have stated.  What isn't is that the tendencies
toward common features don't really equate to any specific accent,
Midwestern or otherwise, but rather a composite of the most widely
distributed features.  This is exactly how koine-Standards start out
(like 14th century Central Midland Standard, 15c. Chancery English or
Early Modern Standard English).  I'm always pointing out to my
students that most newscasters don't pronounce words like on (and its
rhymes) the way they do, but it extends to other features.  There are
exceptions, but most newscasters don't seem to have features like
raised /ae/, say, never mind raised and diphthongized /ae/, except
maybe before nasalls.
You're more likely to hear little bits of the New York or Southern
vowel shifts in their speech, than really shifted Northern Cities-
style vowels, if there is any shifting at all.  Nor does this have
anything to do with the early radio pronunciation guides, which may
give rules for phonemic pronunciations of words, mostly rare, learned
vocabulary, place names or personal names, but don't say anything
about fine detail, bar a few highly-localized stereotypes.  The model
is basically non-Eastern, non-Southern from the looks of things, but
otherwise, there's a lot of latitude.  So the idea of a Standard
American accent based on any one place is pretty much a myth, if
believed by many.

And, actually, I'm not sure our perceptions in our daily life of who
has a proper accent isn't more locally determined than we figure--if
someone speaks like prestigious people in our OWN community, they
will probably be judged positively, and this judgment may even show
signs of transferring to other communities more than it did, say, 50
years ago.  Bill Clinton wasn't as laughed at for his accent by
Northerners as Lyndon Johnson was, though both were recognizably
Southern.  I don't think Michiganders would be as ridiculed in New
Jersey as much as when I was a child, and the Michiganders would
expect that result; but neither is it so bad for transplanted
Jerseyites in Michigan.  As long as you don't sound like Tony
Soprano, you're fine.  So we really have a set up where there isn't a
national Std. accent, but a range of local Std. accents, all watered
down, maybe a compromise between local vernaculars and some "ideal"
made up of only the most widespread features that de facto, between
them serve as markers of education and prestige.  The influence of
dictionaries (through schooling) is there, but indirect, and the
influence of newscasters is miniscule, except among those of a
prescriptive persuasion who are into that sort of thing.

Britain itself, though they do have RP, is tending in this direction
of local Stds. of pronunciation too.  The Scots have been there all
along, and the Northern English, largely so.  But all the kafuffle
you get among Britishers about "Estuary English" concerns the rise of
a specifically Southeastern standard of pronunciation formed in the
same, compromised way, that upscale Scottish English or Northern
English is--a compromise between RP and Cockney and its relatives.
The people who think it's shameful are simply like those who can't
come to terms with a development like this.  But we Americans have
been doing this since we abandoned the Transatlanrtic accent so
prestigious in the early 20c --which, I suspect was OUR compromise
between our local speech habits and RP, or an 18c-early 19c.
predecessor.

Dictionaries can have localisms in them too.  One teacher of mine got
laughs when she insisted that cat and ask have two different vowels
because schoolroom dictionaries designated them by different
symbols.  But in Transatlantic speech (and even Noah Webster's), they
DID have two different vowels.  Makes no sense in suburban Chicago,
however.

Paul Johnston


On Feb 20, 2009, at 11:00 AM, Alice Faber wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
> Subject:      Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Amy West wrote:
>> My understanding is that a particular regional accent (Midlands?) is
>> taken to be the most neutral (most mutually intelligible?) and so is
>> used as the base for the "standard" American accent (for dictionary
>> prons, for broadcasting). Calling it standard doesn't change the fact
>> that it is in fact a regional accent that has been privileged by
>> being deemed the norm. Dictionary prons. list regional variants;
>> individual broadcasters vary from the "standard."
>>
>> My understanding is that just as in historical languages we recognize
>> that the languages of our edited texts are in fact a construct
>> reflecting a dominant dialect or reflecting aspects (there is no
>> manuscript recording Old Norse or Old English exactly as it appears
>> in our grammars), standard American English is a construct not spoken
>> perfectly by anyone individual, and the standard American accent is a
>> construct not spoken perfectly by anyone individual.
>
> Well, the thing is that a lot of Americans--at least those who think
> about these things at all--*believe* that there's a midwestern,
> broadcasting standard accent. However, if you actually listen to
> broadcasters given a national platform by the networks, there's very
> little commonality to their speech, except insofar as they speak a
> relatively educated variety of North American English. Peter Jennings
> was *obviously* from Canada, just as Dan Rather is *obviously* from
> Texas. Tom Brokaw might count as mid-western (let's not get into
> whether
> South Dakota counts as mid-west!); however, speech pathologists
> used to
> regularly criticize his being given a national platform, primarily on
> the basis of his overly dark /l/s. Going back a generation, I doubt
> there was much to Edward R Murrow's stentorian radio voice that most
> Americans would identify with. And Walter Cronkite was clearly
> western.
>
> --
> ======================================================================
> ========
> Alice Faber                                    faber at haskins.yale.edu
> Haskins Laboratories                           tel: (203) 865-6163
> x258
> New Haven, CT 06511 USA                        fax (203) 865-8963
>
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