Shaping Our Accents
“Oh, you betcha!” Being from Minnesota people get labeled with the stereotype of talking like lumberjacks. Many factors can shape the way that people speak, whether it’s where they are from or where they have originated, or even their social interaction, such as peers and parents. These factors supposedly give people accents, which they are unaware about because they have talked that way their entire life. Peter Trudgill’s thoughts on the way people speak are based off of two main factors, social location and social interaction. In Trudgill’s book, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, he talks about the importance of how your social group and interactions can affect the way you speak and pronunciation …show more content…
Features of British Isles speech have been lost and preserved in white and African American dialects, as well as some independent innovations: “These independent innovations have been facilitated by the relatively small amount of social contact between African Americans and whites in many parts of the USA” (Trudgill 52-53). By losing social contact with different social groups, our language can change or be altered because our interaction changes from old groups to possible new groups. For a more modern example, parents are the first teachers of language to their children and they spend a lot of time with their child teaching them the proper ways to speak according to mom and dad. Once that child is old enough, they will attend school where mom and dad are no longer present all day. The child will begin to speak differently because they will be influenced more by their peers then their parents. This isn’t an extreme case because the child will still spend a good amount of time being taught by their parents but they become more influenced by their other peers because they learn with them …show more content…
These two types of dialects are growing apart due changes that are taking places within each group. “The implication is that these linguistic divergences are taking place because of a lack of integration between black and white communities in the USA, particularly in urban areas” (Trudgill 60). This change has brought up a lot of attention in the United States because since these languages and groups are starting to separate, so could the entire population of the United States causing a racially divided society. Even though some American linguists do not think that the changes will get this extreme or cause a big divergence, they have started to see the beginnings of these slight changes occurring, such as vowel changes and word
“Oh, you betcha!” Being from Minnesota people get labeled with the stereotype of talking like lumberjacks. Many factors can shape the way that people speak, whether it’s where they are from or where they have originated, or even their social interaction, such as peers and parents. These factors supposedly give people accents, which they are unaware about because they have talked that way their entire life. Peter Trudgill’s thoughts on the way people speak are based off of two main factors, social location and social interaction. In Trudgill’s book, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, he talks about the importance of how your social group and interactions can affect the way you speak and pronunciation …show more content…
Features of British Isles speech have been lost and preserved in white and African American dialects, as well as some independent innovations: “These independent innovations have been facilitated by the relatively small amount of social contact between African Americans and whites in many parts of the USA” (Trudgill 52-53). By losing social contact with different social groups, our language can change or be altered because our interaction changes from old groups to possible new groups. For a more modern example, parents are the first teachers of language to their children and they spend a lot of time with their child teaching them the proper ways to speak according to mom and dad. Once that child is old enough, they will attend school where mom and dad are no longer present all day. The child will begin to speak differently because they will be influenced more by their peers then their parents. This isn’t an extreme case because the child will still spend a good amount of time being taught by their parents but they become more influenced by their other peers because they learn with them …show more content…
These two types of dialects are growing apart due changes that are taking places within each group. “The implication is that these linguistic divergences are taking place because of a lack of integration between black and white communities in the USA, particularly in urban areas” (Trudgill 60). This change has brought up a lot of attention in the United States because since these languages and groups are starting to separate, so could the entire population of the United States causing a racially divided society. Even though some American linguists do not think that the changes will get this extreme or cause a big divergence, they have started to see the beginnings of these slight changes occurring, such as vowel changes and word