watch your language! (or don't)

Subject: watch your language! (or don't)
From: "Kevin G. Lim" <Kevin -dot- Lim -at- plumtree -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 13:36:30 -0700



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.


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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
mispronounciation. 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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