Aside from looks and clothing, the most "revealing" of a person's background is their accent. After you speak, your hometown, your family situation, and even your personality may be quickly captured by others. When "class" and "accent" are bound together, it's no wonder that people are so obsessed with the standard "words and accents".
Why do we have such a chain of contempt? Why are people obsessed with accents? How does the English accent change? And how did Hollywood and pop culture shape it?
Can't hide the accent
The author of "1984" and left-wing novelist George Orwell, before he officially embarked on the road of literature, was once at the bottom, wanting to understand the sufferings of the people and gain social experience. Orwell himself came from a middle-class family. His father was an official of the Indian colonial government. It is exaggerated to say that Orwell belongs to the ruling class.
In order to mix with the migrant workers as much as possible, he deliberately kept his name incognito, changed his image, kept the flat hair of a worker, and wore a shirt that is common among workers. When he was too poor to eat, he wandered the streets of London with a group of homeless people, from shelter to shelter. The pseudonym George Orwell was taken when he was working hard at the bottom. This name is not his real name.
Even with such a careful disguise, there were still a few times when he was exposed because of his accent. Orwell studied at Eton College, the top aristocratic school in the UK, and speaks with an Etonian slur. A veteran with rich social experience, a few words with him will reveal that Orwell is not our working-class brother.
Orwell, who pretended to be a poor beggar, lived in a workhouse, and the officials in charge of the workhouse, through his accent and other characteristics, judged that he had once belonged to the "high class", possibly a hapless child living on the streets because of the bankruptcy of the family. , so the officials gave Orwell special care and arranged an easy job.
For the Chinese, there seems to be only one kind of English, the kind of English used in the listening test in class, "how much is this shirt" and "the price of the shirt is nine pounds and fifteen pence". However, the English spoken by foreigners in daily life is much more complicated than the English in textbooks. Within the international student community, there are many anecdotes about dialect accents.
A big V on Zhihu shared his experience of studying abroad. He studied in Texas for 6 years. After a summer vacation, he went to California for an internship. He just joined the company to chat a few words, and was asked by a Californian, "Are you from here?" State", because I heard the accent. It is equivalent to a Henan student working and studying in Beijing, "I think my Mandarin is very standard Zun, why do you straight up say that I am from Henan?"
The internal division of English is very great. British English is different from American English. British English is divided into varieties with Scottish and Irish accents. New Zealand students have encountered English with Maori accent, like another alien language. In general, the international student group has reached an unofficial consensus: the dialects of the northern countryside of the UK are the most deadly, that is, the unfamiliar languages that Orwell had encountered in those days.
Accent is a major obstacle to communication. Americans have different accents in the south and north. It is fine in big cities like New York, but it is difficult to understand the local accent in some state universities in the Midwest and the South. So don't ask Chinese students on the Internet why they can't integrate into Western society, the concubines really can't do it.
Not to mention Chinese, Americans themselves are troubled by dialect accents. JD Vance, the author of "The Elegy of the Countryman", took his own experience as an example. He was born in Ohio, and was used to the Ohio native dialect since he was a child. He only heard the standard English of the news host on the TV station. Until his mother was involved in a civil dispute, when he went to court, when he heard the judges and lawyers speak, there was no hint of dialect. In real life, I heard this tone for the first time. Country kids call the standard English spoken by judges, social workers and TV hosts a "television accent".
This is also the first time in JD Vance's life that class differences have been felt. Relatives wear sweatpants, elastic pants and T-shirts in court, and their hair is also tousled, while lawyers and judges are dressed in formal clothes and meticulous. Later, JD Vance was admitted to university, found a decent white-collar job, and completed the class leap. The Ohio accent was no longer heard in his living environment, only a "television accent".
The accent of speaking can express a person's social status. A new employee, chatting with colleagues and getting along for a long time, can reveal his class background: which class he was born in and what education he received can often be learned from the conversation. judged.
Some young people in the inland areas of the United States go to big cities, and go to big and bright companies and government agencies. Be a country bumpkin.
The movie "Silence of the Lambs" also touches on this. The first time Hannibal talks to the heroine, he can hear her West Virginia accent and show a look of disdain.
"Accent" unifies North America
Standard American English is, by its origins, a mixed bag. Americans come from all parts of the UK. After the immigrants arrived in the New World, English speakers of different dialects merged. With the development of the West, the integration of languages was further deepened. So the further west you go, the more standardized the English becomes, and today's standard American English is based on the Midwestern accents from west of Illinois to Nebraska.
Because of population mobility, the English of North Americans is more uniform than that of home countries. The native English in England is very diverse, and there are obvious accent differences in different counties next door. It is a bit like Cantonese in China, and the pronunciation is different in different cities next door. The isolated British dialects came together in the New World, and people had to communicate with each other and standardize their grammar.
Travelers in the 18th century found that the people of North America spoke very uniformly, that people of different classes spoke the same English, and that even the black people on the plantation spoke without an accent. The Reverend John Witherspoon, who came across the ocean from England to serve as president of Princeton University, was keenly aware of this linguistic phenomenon.
He pointed out: "Americans speak English more authentically than British people, and the reason is obvious, that is, people here are very unstable, and they often move from one area to another, so they are in pronunciation and vocabulary. On the other hand, it is not so easy to be contaminated with local colors, and the dialect difference between a county in the UK is much greater than the dialect difference between a state and another state in the United States.”
Some politicians even Feeling that American English is more authentic than that of his home country, Robert Carter pays attention to the pronunciation of English and hires a native North American tutor for his children, rather than an English tutor.
But in general, Americans maintain respect and admiration for Britain, after all, they are a young country, and the ancient glory comes from across the Atlantic. In the 19th century, American elites were keen to study in England, and industrialists married their daughters to British aristocrats. Even aristocrats who were already down and heavily in debt, Churchill's mother came from the rich American class.
The love for British culture is also reflected in the admiration for the British accent. People feel that the British accent is superior, and when they hear the British accent, they immediately emerge from the style of life in "Downton Abbey". In the 1990s, the University of Otago in New Zealand conducted an experiment in which Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Britons were asked to read the same passage aloud, and then the recordings were played to American college students and asked for their first opinion of the speakers. impression, assessing the speaker's wealth, education, and social status.
As a result, as soon as the students heard the English accent, they felt that the person was Gao Fushuai. The American speakers were rated as friendly, humorous and amiable. Research by linguist Chi Luu has come to a similar conclusion that British high-society accents make speakers appear "better educated, smarter, more capable, more attractive, and generally of a higher socioeconomic class".
When you watch Hollywood movies and American TV dramas, you can see the way from your accent even in non-realistic fictional themes. In "Game of Thrones", the nobles of King's Landing have a standard English accent, especially the old-fashioned aristocratic style of Tywin. The Starks of the North had inserted Scottish accents, while the Iron Island group spoke country dialect.
Even the villain, once the lips reveal British English, the aura is obviously different, more mysterious, evil and elegant. This principle is similar to "Don't be afraid of the bad villain, just be afraid of the handsome villain".
Coupled with cultural differences, the British tend to be euphemistic and reserved, which is different from the outspoken and dull personality of the old beauty. The New York Times has reported on the elite working across borders, a British executive working in the United States, who commented on a proposal "That's interesting." American employees take the word "interesting" literally. However, in British culture, this sentence means "a proposal is a piece of garbage." The British speak a bit like our Chinese everyday politeness: come to my house for dinner when you have time. The task is done now. You are really kidding.
So Americans feel that British culture is both elegant and hypocritical. The British villains in the movie are also more refined. Before the conspiracy is carried out, they have to read a statement full of philosophical speculation, imitating the style of Shakespeare's play, and they are forced to come up all at once.
Marvel deliberately let British actor Tom Hiddleston, also known to Chinese audiences as Hiddleston, to play Loki, making Loki look noble, while Thor actor is Australian. As a result, Loki and Brother Hammer, obviously brothers, were raised in the same family, but they had two different accents.
Marvel also tried to get Doctor Strange actor Cumberbatch to speak British English to make Doctor Strange appear even more strange, but Cumberbatch refused, "Doctor Strange is American and he lives in New York."
Americans subconsciously feel that the British accent is superior. Even cartoons like "The Lion King" for children have hidden mysteries. When linguist Calvin Gidney was watching the movie, he heard that the protagonist Simba's father, Mufasa, speaks American English, while Mufasa's younger brother, Scar, the villain of the film, speaks English. If you listen carefully, the hyenas under Scar have a black American accent, or a Spanish accent, which just corresponds to the identities of various ethnic groups in the United States.
Therefore, "The Lion King" ostensibly talks about the animal world, but is actually a true portrayal of the differences in human social hierarchy. The black accent sounds like either the villain's little brother thug or the funny pistachio. Cartoons often find black actors to match comedy roles. Star Eddie Murphy matches the ass of "Shrek" and "Mulan". Mushu Dragon.
The Chinese Mandarin community has a similar impression of the dialect, with the Shanghai dialect having a status close to that of British English, and the speakers are either refined or wickedly elegant. Speaking Shanghai dialect generally appears in two scenarios: rich wives play mahjong, and the youth gang of the Republic of China plots a conspiracy, "Nai Yi is special".
However, with a careful and in-depth understanding, the superstitious illusion of British pronunciation can be dispelled. British English is not completely high-level, it is all matched with handsome British men like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Britain also has a rough and noisy northern country dialect, and even the capital "London accent" is not advanced, because London is A city of the industrial and commercial class, the background color is flat-headed people. In Sherlock Holmes, the detective uses accents to judge each other's background many times.
The aristocratic clergy lingered in Oxford, Eton College, and a wealthy area in the west of London (Belgravia and other areas). The elite, including Churchill, speak this British English.
Margaret Thatcher entered politics and entered the Conservative Party, which was not well-received at first. Because she comes from a merchant family in North Lincolnshire, she doesn't fit in with the old-school Conservative aristocracy. Political opponents would also sneer at her raspy Lincolnshire dialect, speaking like "a cat sliding off a blackboard".
As a last resort, high-level officials hired drama actors from the Royal National Theatre to train Mrs Thatcher. After a few years, she changed her native dialect and spoke an upper-class British accent. Considering that Mrs Thatcher was over fifty at the time, it was not easy.
Some working-class children in England today practice accents from an early age. In 2018, New York Times columnist Richard Reeves told the story of how he was born in rural Peterborough, where his mother wanted him to take special speech classes, practice Way of speaking. Reeves was too scared to go. Later, he was admitted to Oxford, where after three years of living, he changed his accent abruptly, leaving no trace of a countryman. “My wife says my accent comes out when I drink, but what does she know—she’s an American.”
Language is two-way, though, and the lower classes export their culture to the upper classes. The Beatles came from blue-collar working-class families and had a different accent than the standard British accent; the Animals, with a heavier dialect accent, sang with a Newcastle upstate accent and conquered the music world.
In the classic movie "007", the casting also avoided the standard British accent, making the audience feel friendly. The first Bond actor found Sean Connery, a Scotsman. Subsequent Bond actors also have a variety of accents, including an Irishman.
In the era of popularization, there are fewer and fewer people who stubbornly adhere to the so-called authentic and noble accent. Even Queen Elizabeth II has to keep up with the times. Take her annual Christmas speech as an example. From the 1950s to the 1980s, she spoke with a typical British royal accent. After that, turning to the "London accent", the vowel of the word trap was originally /?/, and later [a]. The former is a noble speech tone, and the latter is a commoner.
The United States is showing the same trend. Former President George W. Bush was originally a member of the Boston Brahmins. In order to create a friendly image, he gave up the accent of his ancestors, spoke in a Texas accent, and portrayed himself as a southern country cowboy.
Today, some parents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou enroll their children in English classes and spend a lot of money to practice authentic accents. In fact, there is no need to pursue authentic English, because English is constantly changing. India is currently the second largest English-speaking country in the world after the United States. In 2012, India's English-speaking population reached 125 million. According to this trend, India will one day become the number one English-speaking country. Maybe, at that time, a curry-flavored "Hinglish (Indian English)" may become the purest English in the world.
