Arya, Week #4 - How Accents Change Our Perception of People
Image Credit: English Like A Native
Accents are a notorious way of humor, it’s a quick and easy joke about a group of people or topic that unites not only the group being made the joke, but also everyone else. But why is that? Because of the underlying context people already have about someone with that particular accent. Like if someone was trying to make a joke about being privileged, they would do a proper, posh, British accent that communicates that class and status on a deeper level than just saying it. This, of course, has a lot of bias and personal opinions along with it, but it also doesn’t really do anything seriously negative because a posh Britain and their accent already conveys educational and financial benefits. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why accents exist in the first place: to differentiate the standing or region of a particular group from the rest without having to explicitly say so.
Continuing this proper British accent example, it’s actually called "received pronunciation” or even the “Queen’s/King’s English”, signaling that someone with this dialect has a very high socioeconomic status similar to royalty. Imagine being a regular British citizen and using the “Queen’s English”! But in order for someone to be posh, someone has to be shabby. Consider a country or hillbilly accent, which usually gives the assumption of someone uneducated and poor. Both of these create a specific perception of someone, just one is more harmful than another.
Foreign accents also play a part as they change how people see a situation in accordance with “the values of the foreign culture”, according to The New Republic. For bi-cultural Americans, someone with a foreign accent in English made them switch to that accent’s culture, while mono-cultural Americans hearing this foreignness actually reinforced an American identity. Now there’s a new factor based on our foundation: these differences can evoke different feelings, one being more diverse and the other being more patriotic.
These jokes can either signal that a certain dialect is either good or bad in a given situation, ultimately diminishing someone's identity to a stereotype based on how other people view it. Accents vary greatly, and so do their effects on preconceived ideas. Comedy has been a part of society as a way to highlight and poke fun at issues for hundreds and hundreds of years. Am I saying we just forbid accent jokes forever? No, I would never say that because it can communicate complex history and society through its existence in a witty way. Cheerio!
I really liked your point about accents and the underlying connotations of social class, the balance of power, race, etc. It’s pretty fascinating to deconstruct what makes something “funny”. In fact I’m repeating stuff in different accents right now to understand what’s making my brain find each one funny. And I think a common theme is teasing something different from me, which almost feels like a coping mechanism of not understanding the deeper facts about each place. But I think we can take it further and make a claim that what makes accents funny is not just the difference between our vernacular and theirs or the association of certain tropes, but active recognition of tropes. It would explain why an individual of Indian descent might find a stereotypical Indian accent really inaccurate or humorless while another person may automatically associate the Indian accent with tropes of poverty, pollution, and overpopulation, making it funny to them. Once the stereotype is established, it becomes almost seamless for the vice versa: attaching a personality, background, or set of values given an accent. It really highlights how harmful accent stereotypes can be, but I also totally agree with your point of how these accents can provide us a window into how stereotypes are constructed, so together society can become more accepting of different linguistic and cultural differences.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how some accents sound appealing to people, or beautiful or dignified, like how lots of Americans find elegance in a British accent. I've always wondered what our friends "across the pond" think about American accents, and in what types of situations they might pull one out!
ReplyDeleteSometimes on my feed, British and Scottish and Welsh videos pop up, and the people in them speak to each other with those regional accents. I find it very hard to understand, even though it's all in the same language we speak, English, but I'm sure the people in the video could understand each other even if they were half asleep! That's so cool how they've grown up around that and gotten so used to it. Meanwhile, someone unfamiliar with that, like me, has to pay very close attention to get details, like when I have to listen to an audio excerpt for world language class.