America is a multicultural society with an abundance of accents just as diverse as its people. The documentary American Tongues explores these differences in speech and how exactly they affect and shape the lives of American speakers. It does this through an social examination of a few American accents, accompanied by commentary from professional linguistic experts. The documentary emphasized that accents can either bring us Americans together or set us apart. The accent one has can reflect a person’s social status while also providing or limiting job opportunities. Because of how integral spoken communication is within our society, judgments of others’ accents can be taken quite personally and encourages those with socially-stigmatized accents
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Slang consists of passing fad expressions or words. One’s age can be differentiated by their word choices since popular slang words differ from generation to generation. At the same time, accents of those in the upper class can be just as noticeable as those in the working class. In the documentary, for example, two men spoke with the Boston Brahmin accent whose prestigious sound can be likened more to British English than it can to any American English accent. And just in the city of Boston, there are a multitude of accents that differ between social classes, including the blue-collar accent whose harsh pronunciation of words like “pahk the cah” (park the car) differ greatly from the smooth and elegant Brahmin accent. The documentary also discussed the way of speaking shared by a majority of African Americans known as “Black English” or Ebonics. Its nature differs so greatly from other American English accents that its sound alone lets one identify the speaker’s race. Although accents can bring people together, they can also be used to isolate and stigmatize minority …show more content…
This is because our social and racial attitudes mix with how we feel about accents, so the way a minority group speaks will become stigmatized. Their accents do not cause their stigmatization, but it is the other way around. In fact, if those same minority groups became the majority, their way of speaking would become normalized and the previous majority’s speech would be stigmatized. Particularly for comedic purposes, movies and television seem to capitalize on the way people view accents; a slow, southern accent used to portray a dumb person while a nasal, Long Island accent may be used to portray a snotty or materialistic person. In my own experiences as a drama student, I find that adaptations of different ways of speech to portray certain character traits is very often utilized. Even racial accents, like Indian American accents or Vietnamese American accents are used to help the audience associate characteristics based on racial stereotypes—like stinginess or even what kind of job a person has—with the character that is being played. Despite the many types of accents America houses, there is but one accent that everyone can
Slang consists of passing fad expressions or words. One’s age can be differentiated by their word choices since popular slang words differ from generation to generation. At the same time, accents of those in the upper class can be just as noticeable as those in the working class. In the documentary, for example, two men spoke with the Boston Brahmin accent whose prestigious sound can be likened more to British English than it can to any American English accent. And just in the city of Boston, there are a multitude of accents that differ between social classes, including the blue-collar accent whose harsh pronunciation of words like “pahk the cah” (park the car) differ greatly from the smooth and elegant Brahmin accent. The documentary also discussed the way of speaking shared by a majority of African Americans known as “Black English” or Ebonics. Its nature differs so greatly from other American English accents that its sound alone lets one identify the speaker’s race. Although accents can bring people together, they can also be used to isolate and stigmatize minority …show more content…
This is because our social and racial attitudes mix with how we feel about accents, so the way a minority group speaks will become stigmatized. Their accents do not cause their stigmatization, but it is the other way around. In fact, if those same minority groups became the majority, their way of speaking would become normalized and the previous majority’s speech would be stigmatized. Particularly for comedic purposes, movies and television seem to capitalize on the way people view accents; a slow, southern accent used to portray a dumb person while a nasal, Long Island accent may be used to portray a snotty or materialistic person. In my own experiences as a drama student, I find that adaptations of different ways of speech to portray certain character traits is very often utilized. Even racial accents, like Indian American accents or Vietnamese American accents are used to help the audience associate characteristics based on racial stereotypes—like stinginess or even what kind of job a person has—with the character that is being played. Despite the many types of accents America houses, there is but one accent that everyone can