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November 13, 2005
Dialect
I grew up in South Africa, in Port Elizabeth which is in the Eastern Cape province. My family's heritage and my education were all steeped in British heritage and so impacted the way I learnt to speak. I also took theatre (Speech and Drama) classes from a young age which naturally had an impact on my awareness of speech sounds. At the same time, the Eastern Cape is not, historically, an intellectual centre in the country but an industrial one and regionally its English speakers are known to have "flatter," more nazalized tones probably assimilated from working alongside speakers of other more guttural languages. I sometimes recognize these tones in my otherwise probably rather uncharacteristically "Standard (British) English" South African English accent. Now that I've been in the US for almost five years I can see a new influence on my dialect - my pronunciation of vowels is often far more relaxed/medial and I assimilate far more.
I think the concept "social group" is entirely on the right track as being the best determinant of our dialects. As social creatures we are naturally adept at immitating and our desire to identify with a particular social group will make us likely to try to talk similarly. For many people, their different social groups are all homogenous but I would pressume that with the efficiency of world travel alone, this is not the case for a growing number of people who are likely to talk differently in their different social climates with, for example, employer & colleagues, close friends, new acquaintences, customers, family, neighbors, and sporting buddies. I am very aware that my accent changes slightly depending on who I am with and for how long and to what extent I feel comfortable with the particular group or to what extent I may wish to integrate or create a positive impression. All these factors have a measurable impact on the way I portray my person verbally.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at November 13, 2005 01:11 PM
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