Hating one's own speech

[Woolard, Kathryn]

I think Bill Labov may hold the copyright on "linguistic insecurity".  Here's a more recent (2010)  New York Times report and video on  stigmatization, which I don't think is rare (my own sociolinguistic experience is similar to Bourdieu's, except I wasn't so successful in changing my accent), and "accent therapy."   The online discussion of the NYT article has comments from the sociolinguist Michael Newman, among others.  I've found the article and video clip very useful in teaching undergrads, pairs nicely with Pygmalion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/nyregion/21accent.html?_r=0


Kit Woolard


From: Steve Bialostok <stevebialostok at YAHOO.COM<mailto:stevebialostok at YAHOO.COM>>
Reply-To: Steve Bialostok <stevebialostok at yahoo.com<mailto:stevebialostok at yahoo.com>>
Date: Friday, May 17, 2013 9:52 AM
To: "LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>" <LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Subject: Re: Hating one's own speech

This isn't research per se, but if you watch the film American Tongues (from the 80s but still quite good), there is one explicit example of "linguistic insecurity" (nice term, Galey, copyright it now!). In it, a white woman feels inferior due to her Brooklyn accent; she goes through speech training (to speech pathologist, Dennis Becker)  to “correct” her pronunciation. In a lighter scene, a group of young women from New Orleans claim they could attract men more easily if they didn’t speak with their "accents."

There is also a scene where a woman describes ending a relationship with Yale graduate because as they drove south toward his home in Georgia (to meet his parents), he suddenly began using what she called “hillbilly talk.” By the time they reached his hometown, she got a flight back to New Haven. She says something like, "I didn't want all those southern babies growing inside of me with their 'you alls'.

Steve