accent reduction

[jschlege at kutztown.edu]

In addition to socioeconomic status, there's immigration status to consider. Perhaps another layer is buying one's way out of 
discirimination: the simplistic notions that if one "sounds" American one probably "is" American and its converse are alive in 
well in the populace. Unfortunately, "sounding" American is all too limited. 

Truly, the English-Only people are really "English-Only with an American accent" people.

BTW - I'm always trying to weave Lippi-Green's work into my classes.

Jen 

Jennifer Schlegel, Ph. D.
jschlege at kutztown.edu
Department of Anthropology/Sociology
Kutztown University
P.O. Box 730
Kutztown, PA 19530
610.683.4724

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Friday, June 8, 2007 8:56 am
Subject: [Linganth] accent reduction
To: Ling-Anth Network <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>

> Susan Ervin-Tripp's mention of a French bilingual who "enriched" her
> French accent reminds me of something I observed when I lived in France
> for 2 years some 45 years ago. I noticed that Americans who spoke French
> often spoke with a "stronger" American accent when they were in mixed
> (French and American) company than when they were speaking to French
> speakers only. I concluded (after some smirking I picked up on (Who's 
> he
> trying to impress?)  when I didn't do this) that they wanted to convey 
> to
> their fellow Americans that they weren't giving something up (their
> American identity?) by cow-towing to French culture by trying to
> approximate a better French accent.  So it was clear to me that these
> folks could control their accents if they wanted to--speaking "better"
> French when they weren't being overhead by Americans, and worse when they
> were.  This despite the fact that a really bad accent in French earns 
> you
> nothing from French speakers but derision and even ostracism.
> 
> Hal Schiffman
>