RE: watch your language! (or don't)

Subject: RE: watch your language! (or don't)
From: "Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- Users -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 13:24:41 -0400


Actually, I always thought -- and other people have observed -- that I
tend to pick up speech mannerisms of people I'm trying to be friends
with, or at least get along with. So I'm not imagining things.

(Regarding the claim that "I don't speak with an accent," perhaps folks
will remember that running joke on the TV show GET SMART where somebody
reveals themselves to be a foreign spy by switching from their former
American accent to a foreign accent. Max says, shocked, "You're
speaking with an accent," to which the foreign spy replies, "Before, I
vas speaking vit accent. Now, I'm speaking right.")

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin G. Lim [mailto:Kevin -dot- Lim -at- plumtree -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 4:37 PM
Subject: watch your language! (or don't)


Actually, what you are describing is well known to Psycholinguists
(Psychology: Psycholinguistics/Sociolinguistics: Language Attitude).
Speech is socially motivated, so people either thicken or lighten their
accents according to their goals. (Everyone has an accent. People deny
that they have an "accent," when what they really mean is that they
don't have an accent that diverges from a particular social reference,
such as middle-class, college-educated Californian.)

If two participants want to communicate, their accents will converge. If
both participants don't want to communicate, their accents will diverge.
For example, an English man who wants to be left alone by American
tourists may intensify his British accent and start using culturally
specific words (local slang).

Speech accommodation extends beyond accents. One could also alter syntax
(simpler or more convoluted), word usage (culturally pluralistic or
specific), and articulation (mumbled and harried or clear and
deliberate).

So when you notice your accent and speech pattern converging towards
your listeners, you are being nice. :)

Anyway, you are very observant for noticing changes in your speech
pattern.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: watch your language! (or don't)
From: Liz Goodwin <Liz -dot- Goodwin -at- ametek -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 08:44:59 -0400




diotima wrote:

<english is my native language, and I've been learning spanish and
french
over the past few years, in addition to a smattering of other languages.
<i've noticed a very interesting thing that i wonder if anyone else can
relate to. i've had a number of french friends, some of whom had only
<rudimentary english, or good english that was thickly accented. over
time,
i started to realize that whenever i spoke to french people in english,
<i'd unconsciously start speaking english as if i were a french person
speaking english! i was unconsciously adopting their accent, their
patterns, <their word choices, their syntax. i would find myself making
the
same mistakes that they tend to make, but i just let it pass. and why
not?
they <could see, if only subconsciously, that i was moving over into
their
world, communicating with them in their frame of reference.


My husband tells me that when we go back to my hometown in central
Pennsylvania (which is an old coal mining ethnic region), I adopt the
accent and language of my relatives when speaking with them. I use the
same
expressions, cadence and ungrammatical structure and sometimes
mispronunciation. I seem to do it without thinking. I finally realized
that I do it so that I don't make the people that I love feel
uncomfortable
and so that I feel like I "fit in". It makes me feel closer to my roots
and
warm and fuzzy and I'm smiling now even just thinking about it. As soon
as
we're in the car on the way back home, I'm back to speaking correctly
adding all the proper "ings" to the end of my participles.

Liz Goodwin
Technical Writer, Process Instruments
AMETEK, P&AI
liz -dot- goodwin -at- ametek -dot- com
412-826-2427

There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but the cat
just lies there, dozing; and the world quietly reshapes itself to suit
his
comfort and convenience.
--Allen and Ivy Dodd
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