Whither the southern accent?

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

And as I've said before, in many respects  the trend east of the
Atlantic is the opposite. Certainly we hear a much wider range of
accents from TV and radio presenters than used to be the case. The
expression 'accentless' or 'losing an accent' is also less common in the
UK than in the US. Because, as Ron says, it's very apparent that you are
ACQUIRING another accent.

Uninflected tone, indeed. As they say in Singapore, how can?

Anthea


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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
*     *     *     *     *
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu 
> [mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Kephart, Ronald
> Sent: 28 November 2005 16:35
> To: lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
> Subject: Re: Whither the southern accent?

> Why is second dialect learning nearly always framed as "getting rid" 
> of the first dialect? When we take Spanish in school, nobody talked 
> about "getting rid" of our English....
> 
> >...and replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the
> >uninflected tone of...
> 
> "Uninflected"? When do you suppose general knowledge of languages and 
> linguistics will progress to the point where educated people, as a 
> matter of course, will understand that "standard" is just another 
> dialect, albeit an important one?
> 
> Ron
> 
>