Dude, this British Library site is completely and totally awesome. I've been just listening to it for about half an hour already. I wish there were longer voice samples!
I often grieve that I don't have much of a regional accent. I have more on the phone or when I'm talking about particularly southwest Virginia things, but my parents do not speak at all regionally (except my mother on the phone), and so neither, for the most part, do I. People often ask me accusingly "how come you don't have a southern accent? You're not really from Roanoke, are you?" And I have to say, woefully, "yes, I am. I just don't sound like it." Sometimes I feel as if, actually, I'm being accused of being too Jewish -- a carpetbagger and a Jew, you know. Of course, there were Jews in the south from pretty much the beginning of the south, but no, my father's family were none of those. My mother's family, on the other hand, came straight to Virginia from Scotland (well, by way of a one-generation detour in Ireland, like a lot of Scots), and are genuinely southern. (You will not hear a more genuine educated Virginian accent than my grandfather's.) I regret that my voice doesn't reflect either that heritage or my father's parents' wonderful Newark accents.
Every one of the accents on the British Library page is beautiful, because it indicates a particular groundedness (pun very much intended). These are voices that have a place, that are not detached, aetherial (as in the aether of television, of delanded speech). My regional accent is largely nonexistent not because I or my parents strove for some kind of RP (though that did to some extent happen a couple generations back), but because our peers are largely those people we see on television, and those people have basically no accent -- a generic, a wash of American vowels, that's all. It isn't political necessity that has deprived my generation of regional speech, but mass communication. That's unavoidable, of course (and also of course there still _are_ plenty of people, many of them poorer, with regional accents), but it still makes me sad.
Recently I heard a dialect coach on the radio. He said "you know, a Southern accent is actually an asset in a lot of situations. People tend to identify it with trustworthiness, honesty, down-to-earth-ness." I think that's true. Something more suburban -- television English, American RP -- sounds simply blank. Sure, it's the language of authority, and for a college professor I suppose it's still dominant.
But it isn't personal. Precisely its authoritarian ring makes it distanced, potentially oppressive or depersonalizing. I wonder if some of that is why I have a much greater pitch variation than most speakers of standard American English. I want my voice to convey, to carry, not in terms of volume but in terms of emotion, connotation, image. And since my accent will not do that for me, I use pitch. The thing is, I guess, I want voices to come from bodies, and bodies to ome from places. That's something a lot of recent thought has been focused on – the voice and its place. Is my longing for a regional accent merely nostalgia – or worse, minstrelsy? I hope not. I hope what I'm expressing is something more positive (even if it is tinged with dangerous regret). I hope what I'm expressing represents a desire to connect representation with community, to join or rejoin physical presence with cultural presence. But that is, in some sense, always already a nostalgic proposition. As our increasing need to create new subcultures indicates, regional culture is something that is fading fast – and, too bad, most new subcultures don't reflect themselves through accent. Oh well.
I often grieve that I don't have much of a regional accent. I have more on the phone or when I'm talking about particularly southwest Virginia things, but my parents do not speak at all regionally (except my mother on the phone), and so neither, for the most part, do I. People often ask me accusingly "how come you don't have a southern accent? You're not really from Roanoke, are you?" And I have to say, woefully, "yes, I am. I just don't sound like it." Sometimes I feel as if, actually, I'm being accused of being too Jewish -- a carpetbagger and a Jew, you know. Of course, there were Jews in the south from pretty much the beginning of the south, but no, my father's family were none of those. My mother's family, on the other hand, came straight to Virginia from Scotland (well, by way of a one-generation detour in Ireland, like a lot of Scots), and are genuinely southern. (You will not hear a more genuine educated Virginian accent than my grandfather's.) I regret that my voice doesn't reflect either that heritage or my father's parents' wonderful Newark accents.
Every one of the accents on the British Library page is beautiful, because it indicates a particular groundedness (pun very much intended). These are voices that have a place, that are not detached, aetherial (as in the aether of television, of delanded speech). My regional accent is largely nonexistent not because I or my parents strove for some kind of RP (though that did to some extent happen a couple generations back), but because our peers are largely those people we see on television, and those people have basically no accent -- a generic, a wash of American vowels, that's all. It isn't political necessity that has deprived my generation of regional speech, but mass communication. That's unavoidable, of course (and also of course there still _are_ plenty of people, many of them poorer, with regional accents), but it still makes me sad.
Recently I heard a dialect coach on the radio. He said "you know, a Southern accent is actually an asset in a lot of situations. People tend to identify it with trustworthiness, honesty, down-to-earth-ness." I think that's true. Something more suburban -- television English, American RP -- sounds simply blank. Sure, it's the language of authority, and for a college professor I suppose it's still dominant.
But it isn't personal. Precisely its authoritarian ring makes it distanced, potentially oppressive or depersonalizing. I wonder if some of that is why I have a much greater pitch variation than most speakers of standard American English. I want my voice to convey, to carry, not in terms of volume but in terms of emotion, connotation, image. And since my accent will not do that for me, I use pitch. The thing is, I guess, I want voices to come from bodies, and bodies to ome from places. That's something a lot of recent thought has been focused on – the voice and its place. Is my longing for a regional accent merely nostalgia – or worse, minstrelsy? I hope not. I hope what I'm expressing is something more positive (even if it is tinged with dangerous regret). I hope what I'm expressing represents a desire to connect representation with community, to join or rejoin physical presence with cultural presence. But that is, in some sense, always already a nostalgic proposition. As our increasing need to create new subcultures indicates, regional culture is something that is fading fast – and, too bad, most new subcultures don't reflect themselves through accent. Oh well.
I've heard a few times that some places send American news people to my part of Canada, because the regional accent, such as it is, is so remarkably bland. Don't know if it's true or not, but almost everyone I see on American tv sounds like they could be working in my office. Er, well, the people from Newfoundland would still stand out no matter what, but you know what I mean.