I am visiting New Orleans, Louisiana, and it struck me how people tend to speak and communicate depending on their cultural origins. My mother was born in Louisiana of Red Neck and Cajun (and other ethnic) origins and when she was in her twenties she moved to New York city to work. In New. York she was laughed at for her ‘Southern” accent that was - to their ears - a sign of backwardness. My mother was a genius, able to do square roots in her head, she learned hot to fly and was accepted in a Military program for woman pilots, so she was not backward. On the contrary she was ‘sharp as a whip’. But her accent did not fulfill the requisite of intelligence to ignorant ears; most people judge a book by its cover or its accent. Even today I often hear people say someone is from the ‘South’ based on their accent. In England, where class snobbery is very important, someone who pronounces the word ate in the wrong way is also branded as inferior, i.e. a lower class uneducated twat. Most people outside the south of the United States aren’t able to distinguish where the ‘Southern’ accent hails from. I can.
How are we influenced by hearing someone speaking with an accent that is different from our own? Studies show that we do; an article from researchers at McGill University askse. "Do we trust people who speak with an accent? We tend to believe speakers who sound the same as us, though much depends on their tone of voice.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180918082049.htm
In fact there are a myriad accents in the South and Southwest. Over the years I have heard people try to imitate a southern accent, and it is pretty easy for me to know if it is real or an imitation because an accent is just one part of how a person embodies their culture. There are different ‘Meta-languages’ that distinguish cultures. It is subtle. Edward T. Hall was an anthropologist who came up with a theory of cross cultural communication. https://halltheory.fandom.com/wiki/Hall%27s_Cross-Cultural_Theory_Wiki
Hall proposed that different cultures use time and space differently. In language, the same kind of thing happens with how fast or slow words are pronounced, the rhythm, how the cadence varies; all of these subtle things overlay the ‘accent’. Yesterday I walked into a store and I immediately recognized a ‘New York City” accent, almost before the woman spoke, her bearing, the fast delivery of the words in a snappish way gave her away. If I had spoke with her longer, I might have been able to even tell what Burroughs she came from. I still remember hearing a “Yonkers” accent spoken for the first time in Yonkers New York by two women who I had asked directions to a gardening shop. Their accents were very pronounced to the point where I had trouble not laughing at them. They reminded me of the actress Fran Dresher.
When the movie “Gone with the Wind” was in production they brought in a speech coach to make sure each actor’s character had the right accent. They were supposed to speak in accents from the Tide water Carolinas, Deep South Louisiana and New Orleans Creole, Irish Canal New Orleans (more on this later), and even the slave accent that has its own various regional accents. In the South there are many kinds of ‘twangs’ from Texas Twang to a Tennessee twang which are two different animals. A Maryland border state accent vs an Alabama accent varies as well. Cajuns from Acadiana Louisiana also have a distinct accent. But most people can’t tell the difference. I can.
The reason I am able to hear and see the difference is because my mother who taught me my ‘mother tongue’ which is Southern English. Over the years she traveled and lived outside of the South, and suppressed her native accent because she had been humiliated in New York city when she worked there in the early 40s. She also transferred her shame into hate for the Northerners calling them all nasty and impolite. Of course they are and they are not - each culture has its norms. To a Southerner someone from the North is too fast, too abrupt, and doesn’t respect the social forms.
Social forms; in most of the Southern states there is a meta language of how you interact with other people. Southerners are for the most part slower in speech, they are not slow in intellect, in fact if you listen to them, their language is richer and funnier than other parts of the US (I have lived in most parts of the US and I know the difference). Politeness is paramount in the South, and the forms must be respected. A New York Minute is offensive to a Southerner, it means you don’t have the time to take to know the other person. You don’t listen to them, and you don’t respect their time or effort they are making to talk to you.
I was made aware of the respect and politeness years ago in France when I barged into a store and asked very briskly for some product, and the sales person looked at are and said, “hello, how are you” and then waited for the right response, and I asked again for something and he repeated himself, looking at me pointedly as if I was just off the boat.
This morning at a café on Magazine street in New Orleans I committed the same faux pas. Other costumers came in and asked politely, ‘how are you? or how you doing?’ The back and forth of the interaction was 4 times longer than what I usually would do in my café in the North. My approach was too fast with the result that I felt they were shocked by my aggressive approach. My usual way of asking for a coffee and croissant is very fast, faster than what a southerner does. I have a good rapport with my barristers in the North, and we often kid, back and forth, but I find there is always a disconnect (probably due to my lacking of social skills, my lack of a true accent, and my approach) because I am not truly part of their culture.
I also lack the metalanguage that makes the interaction smooth and comfortable in the North. But I see that Northerners have an added language that only they understand. Because I have lived in the South I possess this understanding. This of course is the “meta-language” of a culture. One of the biggest insults a Southerner can say of someone they don’t like is , “I don’t know them.” Which means I don’t care to know them because they are impolite, they are rude, of a different race or class or whatever (the politeness is the most important of the reasons).
In Savannah Georgia I was walking around and encountered a black lady who was taking care of the garbage at the Savannah College of Arts. We had a long conversation, that began with ‘how are you’ and she responded, and then we began a word play, of joking and smiling and finally she invited me to come visit the college, but I declined because I knew she would get into trouble, but she understood that I was a “southern gentleman” therefore was to be trusted. Walker Percy (from Louisiana but who studied medicine in the North) wrote a text of a conversation between a white and black man, he wrote it down verbatim, and then translated what was said, and what each meant. No one listening who was from outside the cultural and linguistic frame work would have understood.
Meta language is also ‘body language’ of how a person walks and talks, how they enunciate, how they linger on certain verbs and expressions, because they also reveal if they ‘belong’ to the tribe. Some people can mimic a Southern accent, but the give away is when the other person feels that the mimic is not real. Like a dog who can smell danger or a stranger, most people can pick up on this. In Japan the men speak differently from women. I know because I had a Japanese woman friend who told me she couldn’t teach me Japanese because she spoke ‘female’ Japanese. It is flowery, more verbose, and is punctuated with signs of submission such as covering the mouth when a Japanese woman laughs. A Japanese man follows the art of ‘bushido’ or Samuri, and his speech is short and harsh.
A friend who had studied in Holland told me there were two different accents in that country and during the war they would test any would be spy by making the speak certain words, if they couldn’t pronounce them correctly (even if they were fluent) they shot them. Accent abound in all countries. Years ago I was told that in the city of Paris, each arrondissement had its own accent, and you could tell where that person was from by the accent. Now the variety of accents in France are more homogeneous, except for a few regions that still keep their unique accent because the French school system has teachers from different regions who come and teach the students a ‘standard’ French accent (even in Colonial French Africa the French taught the africans that their ancestors were from Gaul, according to the standard text books. Again the culture seeps through and a Senegales speaks French in his own style, sometimes to the amusement of the French, but always beautifully elaborate.
Outside influences can impact a culture and a language. In Megrabian Africa , the French infuence is still present in their language that can be a mixture of French and Arabic. In Prague, the presence of American soldiers in WWII left an impression and an expression, To this day a beautiful woman is called a ‘Lookatdat’ meaning Look at That beautiful woman.
o come back to New Orleans, which has its accent, a section of the population kept its origins and pronunciation of English. When I was in premedical studies in Lafayette Louisiana, my biology lab teacher introduced me to his girl friend. I asked him later if she ws from Boston because of her accent. No, he told me she hailed from the ‘Irish Channel’ area of New Orleans where the Irish had settled and kept an Irish Brogue. I was walking around during the St Patrick’s day parade yesterday hoping to catch the accent but most if not all of them had a typical New Orleans accent, but slurred by drink, and happiness.
N.B I am not a linguist and what I have written is base on my own opinion and experience. Thank y’all for reading it.
