What is "Proper" English?

After all of the research I have conducted, I have come to the conclusion that what is considered proper in the English language - speaking without an accent and with the most clarity - is what people consider correct in the workplace that you are currently in. No matter where you go, the vocal patterns will be different, so there will always be an accent. It's like fashion. Someone's attire may be appropriate for one setting but inappropriate for another. Someone from Detroit may speak completely different there than they do in Houghton.

We can't argue accents anymore than we can argue which food is best or what car someone is supposed to buy. We can, however, teach the structure of words and understand where the different dialects originate from. But even the greatest writers have used improper grammar before. "Much was said, and much was ate, and all went well." This sounds like something written by an amateur, right? However, it's right out of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Language is constantly changing, so we cannot argue what is correct or what is incorrect. We can, however, follow what the norm is. Like fashion, we know what is appropriate or inappropriate based on what the majority does. You may think that you are going to change the norm or break barriers, but when it comes to grammar, unless you know the rules first - you are going to look like a complete quack and no one will listen to your words anyway. 

Which Type of Speech is Considered Best in the Workplace?

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association defines "accent" as a "phonetic trait from a person's original language that is carried over to a second language". Basically, aspects from another language carried over into English when descendants of those countries speak it. They define "dialect" as "sets of differences within English that are rule-governed phonological, morphological, or grammatical changes".

In reality, though, everyone speaks with an accent: the definition of that accent depends on who the listener is. We can try to fix some of the imperfections in vocal patterns, however. For instance, those from the South can learn to speak more through there mouth and rely less on their nose to prevent the nasal sound. They can also focus on the length of their vowels and make sure that they are no longer than the consonants.

Corporate leaders consider those who have the most clarity in their voice (i.e. the words are the most distinguished from each other) to be the best speakers. Those who do not speak too slow or too fast, those who do not slur their words together, and those who do not mumble tend to be the best public speakers and thus the most valuable in a corporate setting.

Sources
Sikorski, Lorna. "Regional Accents: A Rationale for Intervening and Competencies Required ."Seminars in Speech and Language . (2005): 118-125. http://www.ldsassoc.com/accent/trainer/news/articles/journal/RegionalAccentsArticle-May05.pdf (accessed December 16, 2013).

Speech Classes Imposing Biases?

I took a lot of speech classes at a very young age to correct what they said up here in the Midwest was a "southern accent". I never really new what was so wrong with my speech patterns compared to other children, but everyone else seemed to notice - so I didn't question my teacher's motives. I know that I will be moving back to the South shortly, so the chances of those vocal patterns returning are large anyway. 


I did some research, and it turns out that several decades ago, non-native English speakers in corporate settings began contacting speech language pathologists to help with their English communication. Over the years, this practice started becoming more common among those who were from the United States and were native English speakers - but from a different region than the one that they would be working in. 


These speech language pathologists were positioned to be the best instructors - but concerns have arisen as to whether or not they were experienced enough to take on the corporate culture. Doing so would have required changes in their communication style and business practices and the way that they deal with their patients. Instead of acting as a teacher for their clients, they would be acting as more of a supervisor. However, they have proven themselves over the years because of their extensive experience in clinical work and human resource training which is typical in corporate America. 

It seems as if speech language pathologists are just following what corporate leaders want today in a business setting and making sure that generations entering the corporate world are adhering to these speech guidelines. 



Sources
Feinstein-Whittaker, Marjorie, Lynda Katz Wilner, and Lorna Sikorski. "A Growing Niche in Corporate America." The ASHA Leader (blog), March 13, 2012. http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2012/120313/A-Growing-Niche-in-Corporate-America.htm (accessed December 16, 2013).

What's So Perfect About the Midwest?

When trying to research about where the accent that is in the Midwest originated, it was very hard to find anything - mainly because most people believe that those who live in the Midwest do not have an accent at all. However, it is possible to find distinct characteristics of the Midwestern accent.

For instance, the words "caught" and "dawn". The vowel sound at the beginning of these words are pronounced with the tongue low and back in the mouth - while the vowel at the end has a slightly higher tongue position and a rounding of the lips. For those in the Midwest, caught would sound like cot and dawn would sound like don - but the rest of the country would say that they are missing a vowel in their pronunciation.

This phenomenon is known as the "lower back vowel merger" or the "Northern Cities Shift". It basically means that the two vowels are mixed together and somewhere one of them is lost in the process. Mergers are fairly common in the history of English and many other languages. It has been around the Pittsburgh and New England area for a long time as well as parts of Canada, but is fairly new to the Midwest.

Although there may not be as much of an accent as other areas, there is still one. Remember, accent is all up to perception - so it may not seem as if the people that you see every day have an accent - but those in other regions may think so.


Sources:
Gordon, Matthew. "The Midwest Accent." Do You Speak American? (blog), http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/midwest/ (accessed December 16, 2013).

About This Blog - The Origin of Southern English

As a Southern native, naturally I have always had a large interest in the speech patterns in the Southeast of the United States and figuring out exactly where the accent comes from. This blog for my Grammar class at Michigan Tech has finally given me that opportunity to look into this passion and finally figure out exactly why I talk the way that I do. More importantly, it has given me a chance to raise a question that has been bothering me for quite some time: the speech biases that have been imposed in the schooling systems in the United States. This will look into exactly what is considered "proper" English today and how people are expected to speak when finally entering the corporate world. 

The Southern accent started appearing when Puritan dissenters were fleeing oppression from Charles I in East Anglia. They brought their distinctive "twang" to Massachusetts (“Linguistics 201: The Dialects of American English” 2) . Eventually, their decedents began to migrate south, and thus, the Southern vocal patterns were born. Today, the 16 million or so descendants of these Puritans and many of their neighbors still speak with some form of this derived speech with a flat sounding, nasal lengthening of vowels along the Southeast corner of the United States. Northern speech came mostly from the less-educated, poorer classes from the South (as those were who eventually colonized the northern states). The use of double negatives and other slang terms that are still used today. “Aint” is the older, “correct” version of English which was avoided by the upper classes who chose the innovative single negatives preferred by British upper classes. So, in a way, the speech of the poorer classes are what influenced how those in the North speak.

Decreolization (the speech of African Americans gradually becoming more like their southern white neighbors) became more prominent between 1619 and 1808 when slaves were being brought over from West Africa. Upper-class white children raised by slaves began to take on an English form of the slave’s drawl. They also started disregarding the use of the to-be verb and emphasizing aspect rather than tense as West African languages typically do. As Steven Pinkner states in “The Language Instinct”, “Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture.” Language is something that is learned from those who raise you. As the slaves spent more time with the children than children’s parents usually did, it was evident that the children would eventually start to speak like them.

Later in history, the speech patterns continued to stay similar to these Western African language characteristics, but started to mix with Dutch influence. Miller 1972, describes a series of examples where there is an absence of copula in the language (a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate). The first instances of this are found in a Ku Klux Klan pamphlet describing, “Look out liberals: Wallace power gonna get you”. Other main features of this derived speech from the Dutch include diphthongalization; or more pronunciation of the [o] in words such as caught and bought, and a low fronted [a] in words instead of a back [A]; this develops that classic “twang” that southern accents are known for. 

Several different slang terms have derived from the South over the years as well. The word “cuss” formed from “curse” which originally had a high class, [r]-les pronunciation. Other words came about such as conniption fit, scrimp, pesky, snicker, tacky, and varmint (from vermin). They also developed their own words and phrases for things such as bucket for pail, “sitting image of”, and y’all for you all.  In the eighteenth century, contradictions of which language of the world was to be dominant expanded and intensified. With England’s union with Scotland in 1707 and Ireland in 1799 increased the cultural authority of the English language and increased the pressures of linguistic unification.