Is my accent a crime?

Tue Aug 3 14:24:40 UTC 2010

By "accent" in these posts is taken to mean "foreign accent" from another language as a first language.  It doesn't mean dialect, I assume.  But I've heard some dialects (of English) in USA and UK that I could not understand.

One would assume that a teacher native to English would develop a good speaking "accent" for teaching English anywhere at least in their native country.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling

>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: Is my accent a crime?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Adding to the problem is the loose way inwhich nonspecialists, including
> bureaucrats, the indignant, and the media, use terms like "grammar" and
> "accent." As Demien and others observe, these may or may not be
> problematic. Language competence and effective teaching are the bottom
> line.
>
> It all depends on individual cases, and from what I can gather, the Arizona
> D of E is looking at cases individually.
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:50 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Damien Hall
> > Subject: Is my accent a crime?
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Bill Mullins said:
> >
> > > > Yet what is an accent?
> >
> > > If the original author doesn't know the answer to this question, then
> > > there are probably multiple reasons he/she shouldn't be teaching
> > > English.
> >
> > On one level, fair enough; but, on another, this is actually a very good
> > question and one which might have real consequences.
> >
> > The level on which Bill's comment is fair comment is probably that of the
> > language teacher him/herself: someone who hasn't investigated folk
> > linguistics in any detail, and takes 'accent' as meaning roughly 'mode of
> > speech which is identifiably non-native / not from around here'. For most
> > people who've never looked into folk linguistics, this may therefore
> > include any or all of phonology, phonetics, (morpho-)syntax, the lexicon,
> > pragmatics, and possibly other modules of linguistics too. If a teacher of
> > English as a foreign language can't tell when someone is 'getting it wrong'
> > in any of these modes, then they probably _shouldn't_ be a language
> > teacher.
> >
> > The level on which this is a good question, though, is the one which maybe
> > _has_ looked at some folk linguistics and does decompose these cues to
> > 'foreignness': the point of view of the academic linguist (the phonologist
> > and phonetician in particular), who probably uses 'accent' to refer only to
> > phonology and phonetics and would use another term for cues to
> > 'foreignness' in the other modules. (When I say 'foreignness' here I'm just
> > using it as a shorthand for any of the ways in which a speaker can
> > recognise that someone else speaks differently, whether they're actually
> > foreign, or simply from another part of the country, or whatever.) From the
> > point of view of this linguist, 'What is an accent' is a question worthy of
> > serious investigation. This serious investigation could have real
> > consequences for people who (rightfully) use the term 'accent' in its wider
> > 'speaking differently' sense. if we are able to pin down exactly what a
> > person means in a given case when they say that so-and-so 'has an accent',
> > we may be able to be more precise in areas where it matters (the law being
> > one of them), and we may be able to give more targeted help where it is
> > required. For example (and this example is constructed), someone whose
> > 'accent' in the ear of a native speaker relates mainly to phonology may
> > indeed be almost unintelligible to that native speaker, because the words
> > being said cannot be recognised. On the other hand, someone whose phonology
> > is closer to the native speaker's phonology, but whose syntax is noticeably
> > foreign-influenced, may be more intelligible to the native speaker. The
> > incompatibility of phonologies is possibly more likely to occur between
> > English-speakers and native speakers of a Romance language (Spanish, of
> > course, in the Arizona case); the syntactic incompatibility is possibly
> > more likely to occur between English-speakers and native speakers of
> > another Germanic language, for example. In theory, these could be two very
> > different kinds of 'accent', and yet both of them might simply be referred
> > to as 'having an accent'. (I grant that it is unlikely that the Germanic
> > speaker would have Germanic syntax and absolutely no trace of Germanic
> > phonology, but, for the sake of an example, this will stand here.)
> >
> > In any case, hence the question: in general terms, what is an accent? The
> > question may be easy to answer in specific cases, but it is not easy (is it
> > possible?) to arrive at an all-encompassing generalisation about it.
> >
> > Damien
> >
> > --
> > Damien Hall
> >
> > University of York
> > Department of Language and Linguistic Science
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