Country Speakin': The Southern Accent in a Professional Nation
In today's age, we can see an increase in professionalism; whether on the radio or the television, there seems to be a push for a society that is more articulate. The southern accent has long been scrutinized as a sign of ignorance and lack of culture, but in a nation with a high ratio of southern speakers to not, it seems fairly reasonable to ponder the perception of the idiom. James Tuten, assistant professor of history, speaks out on the topic.
Question
You are originally from the South, what happened to your accent?
Answer
My accent actually changed before I moved north. When I went to college, I was studying vocal music that dealt a great deal with diction and phrasing, and all of my professors were from the North. For them it was a big goal to get people to sing in proper English and not any of the southern varieties.
Q
How is the southern accent perceived in academia?
A
: I haven't reached any conclusion on that. There are certainly those who are skeptical of you if you have a strong southern accent. It is still possible to prove your worth despite that, but it is more difficult. This basically depends on where you are; if you are in the South, you are less likely to be scrutinized, but academia is national, not regional, so prejudice can still occur.
Q
How do you feel about politicians changing their accent to suit their listeners?
A
The question is whether or not this is dishonest. That case can certainly be made, but one of the things that you do if you want to win people over is you try to communicate in the idiom that your audience is used to. This is probably intuitive for politicians as it is for most of us. If, however, it is the doing of some advisor, I'm less sympathetic to the act.
Q
With so many covering their accent, is the Southern accent on the decline?
A
There has been a theory in the South that with media saturation, and its avoidance of accents, the southern accent would decline. This is the kind of question you would like to have a quantifiable answer for, but we just don't know. All I can say is that my cousins' kids, who live in the South, are exposed to the media daily, and they still have wonderful strong southern accents.
Q
In regards to popular southern comedians today, have they served to give a sense of southern pride, or strengthen stereotypes?
A
This approach to humor is old and done before with all ethnicities of comedians; they often make fun of the stereotypes that surround their ethnicity. I'm not terribly bothered by this because it is presumed that the people that love the jokes are the ones that the jokes are about. What is more bothersome, however, is that those not of the group miss the satire and then it actually strengthens the stereotype. Today most folks are smart enough to differentiate and not buy the stereotype.
- Chris Bender '10, student reporter