Leslie Milroy has pointed out that an important difference between
"standard" in British and American English is that while in the UK
standard is identified with RP, the minority dialect of the royal
family, Oxford, Cambridge, the social elite, and BBC announcers,
standard in the US refers to a majority, unmarked dialect.  Speaking RP
says something about the speaker that speaking American Broadcast
English doesn't.  We tend to look at American Broadcast English as
neutral, not as socially or regionally marked.  Remember the mustachioed
guy from Ohio in American Tongues who refers to the English of the
Midwest as "in the middle ... bland"?  Milroy goes on to argue that
while important dialect differences are defined by class in the UK, they
are defined much more by race and region in the US.  I suspect that the
notion of not having an accent is a much more American than British
sensibility.

Herb  

Rather than the media reinforcing or eroding dialect variation, media
may simply be largely irrelevant to the changes going on. Media
representations certainly affect (and even effect) the kinds of
stereotyped social judgments people make about the dialects themselves,
but viewers/hearers may not incorporate many features from whatever
"standard" forms they're exposed to via television or radio. The key
point is that you can't interact with the television or the radio; you
can't really socialize with people on a screen. Even those poor souls
who fanatically follow the daily travails of Brad Pitt and Angelina
Jolie (sp?) probably don't view themselves as being part of the same
group as those two (and linguists certainly wouldn't view them as being
in the same speech network, except via very long-distance connections).
What the talking head on the screen thinks of your speech is always
going to be less important than what your neighbor thinks, or your
teacher, or -- especially-- your loved ones. Dialect variation may
indeed decrease among that segment of society that moves a good deal and
has a vested interest in not being discernibly from anywhere in
particular, but that segment has always existed to some extent, and it
has never been the majority of the population. 

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wollin, Edith
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 2:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Civility

I guess the best that we can do is use our knowledge of the history of
language change and variety to discuss these variations in
pronunciation. I think that it is really interesting that we are talking
about so many differences when I have heard people lamenting the loss of
dialect variation, what with the power of the media to make us all
conform to the "standard." Perhaps the media are now reinforcing dialect
variation.
Edith  

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