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[theinevitable]

that is completely insane. As if people don't look down on low social class accents of all stripes.

I guess the issue is that there isn't really an upper-class NY accent anymore? No one has a mid-atlantic accent. I miss that accent.

[wombat]

There isn't an upper class NY accent anymore because the upper class NY accent became the lower class NY accent, at least to some extent. It used to be the posh people who dropped their Rs.

And yeah, I can't see why you'd claim the NYC accent was more stigmatized than say a Southern accent. I think it's still true that in movies they basically give a character a Southern accent to show the person is stupid.

[littlefallsmets]

Some of the richest people I knew in New York City affected the fuck out of "street" New York accents to create the illusion of toughness and authenticity.

[pmcd9]

But I don't think mine is half as sexy as RG's.

He wasn't wearing a shirt.  Just sayin'.

[robot_god]

He wasn't wearing a shirt.  Just sayin'.

or #####

[greenkoolayd]

He wasn't wearing a shirt.  Just sayin'.

get out of my brain, dude.

[Nabubrush]

There isn't an upper class NY accent anymore because the upper class NY accent became the lower class NY accent, at least to some extent. It used to be the posh people who dropped their Rs.

And yeah, I can't see why you'd claim the NYC accent was more stigmatized than say a Southern accent. I think it's still true that in movies they basically give a character a Southern accent to show the person is stupid.

In my singles linguistics class I seem to remember them saying that this has happened in the UK as well.

[wombat]

In the UK it is still the posh accents that drop postvocal R and also insert Rs between words in some cases. It's a very neat proof that what is stigmatized or admired is not actually something about language (like that dropping Rs is "lazy" or "ignorant"), but it's how people feel about the group that speaks that way, and the accent is just how the group is identified.

What's also funny of course is that Americans basically think nearly all British accents sound fancy. People who speak horribly stigmatized British accents can come here and have everyone think that how they speak is totally cool.

[jay-ell]

Yes, I think Southern US accents are often used as shorthand for "uneducated" in film, absolutely. One of Pedro's favorite games, when he has to call and order theater tickets, for instance, is to adopt his best Good Ol' Boy voice and say something like, "Hey, y'all, I'm thinkin' I wanna come see that ol' Oprey y'all have goin,' do y'all have any tickets left for that there show?" He can lay it on pretty thick. Once, he had to call tech support, and he did the whole thing in Southern, asking more and more difficult technical questions until it became clear that the service rep didn't know jack about the product he was trying to sell. The tech didn't know what to do with this hick on the phone who sounded like the cast of Deliverance but seemed to really understand the ins and outs of jailbreaking a cell phone.

I don't recall the specifics and I'm not doing it justice here, but it was clever and funny, IMHO.

In the UK it is still the posh accents that drop postvocal R and also insert Rs between words in some cases. It's a very neat proof that what is stigmatized or admired is not actually something about language (like that dropping Rs is "lazy" or "ignorant"), but it's how people feel about the group that speaks that way, and the accent is just how the group is identified.

What's also funny of course is that Americans basically think nearly all British accents sound fancy. People who speak horribly stigmatized British accents can come here and have everyone think that how they speak is totally cool.

Maybe I watch too much BBC, but I don't think East London cockney accents sound particularly intelligent, even to most Americans. Fun to listen to and perhaps even "exotic" in a mundane kind of way, but I think most Americans with half an ear could hear the class difference between cockney and RP.

For my part, I love listening to accents in general, but my favorite lately has been Welsh. When I was watching a lot of Torchwood I loved having those sounds sloshing around in my head all the time. Apparently a lot of English speakers think it's ugly and hard to understand, but I think it's glorious. But, then, I also love listening to working-class New York accents, so what the hell do I know? 

[wombat]

You may have a good ear, JL, but I don't think that is typical.  Here are two real life examples that come to mind. One is that a few years ago around here there were some burglars breaking into people's houses, sometimes when they were home, and the victims reported that they spoke with British or Australian accents. First of all they couldn't tell the difference, and second, it turned out they were faking the accents and no one reported "guys speaking with obviously fake foreign accents."

Second, I knew a zookeeper from London Zoo who did a job exchange and was here for a year who had the most extreme Cockney accent you ever heard. When it was time for her to go home she was really depressed and she said it was largely because at home, every time she opened her mouth people looked at her like she was trash, but here, everyone thought it was so cool that she had a British accent and were really nice to her, because they had no idea of the significance of her particular accent.

If you start looking out for the southern accent thing, you'll see it used when it doesn't even make sense geographically, like the people aren't even in the south.

[theinevitable]

I meet lots of people with "Southern" accents in St Louis. Turns out Southern Illinois is pretty damn southern.

[side_show]

get out of my brain, dude.

Nothin' at all!

In my singles linguistics class I ...

They combined dating and linguistics?  Word word word, cunning linguists!  Word, word.

[pmcd9]

Maybe I watch too much BBC, but I don't think East London cockney accents sound particularly intelligent, even to most Americans. Fun to listen to and perhaps even "exotic" in a mundane kind of way, but I think most Americans with half an ear could hear the class difference between cockney and RP.

Anybody who has watched Mary Poppins knows this.

[miles]

They combined dating and linguistics?  Word word word, cunning linguists!  Word, word.

Ha! I was trying to figure out how to make this joke work.

I know this has come up before but the single linguistics class I took was taught by David Bowie, who learned at the feet of Professor Wombat.

Also, because the class was at BYU where you basically are expected to get a marriage license in addition to a degree, it kind of was a singles linguistics class.

[wombat]

I had forgotten that! How could I forget that? It is such a wondrous coincidence.