Singing in a dialect and "Authentic pronunciation" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Eric Nielsen]

I know this is almost a given in our video age, but...I'll bet he's cute,
too.
Eric
On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Singing in a dialect and "Authentic pronunciation"
>              (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
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>
> It must be pretty annoying, particularly since a cruder version of the same
> principle resulted in the rise of the minstrel show, but the linguistic
> silver lining is that it supports the idea that for many people the accent
> is inextricable from the sound.
>
> To white-boy me it isn't the imitation that bugs, it's the media gush. Is
> the kid being praised for his singing or for his Frank-Gorshin-style
> mimicry
> skills? And if I want to hear the songs of a fifty-year-old black bluesman,
> why shouldn't I listen to one instead?  (The late Clarence "Gatemouth"
> Brown
> would be a good choice.) They (or their heirs) need royalties too.
>
> BTW, the choice of "fifty" rather than "seventy" or "eighty" suggests just
> how "old"  the critic is.
>
> JL
>
>
>

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