Re: Subtitutes for English /T/ and /D/

On Jul 22, 3:17 pm, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Please note that I was not making any value judgement myself. I was
not denigrating one of my own native accents. I was merely warning
that others do. Those who read my warning can choose whether they
care about the matter. Is Britain the only country that has dialect
snobbery? I don't think so. Is America immune? I doubt it. Is any
country immune? I would be interested to know.

If America had "dialect snobbery," would it have elected a whole raft
of presidents with funny accents ([radio was not a major factor in
1932, so we begin with] Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton,
Bush43)? Interspersed among them were presidents with standard
accents, from either the Midwest or California: Eisenhower, Nixon,
Bush41. (Ford doesn't count because he was never elected.)

In a democracy (the USA is one, isn't it?), this is not incompatible
with dialect snobbery. The simplest explanation is that the snobs are
a minority. Another explanation is that the snobs do not agree on
which are the prestige accents and hence don't vote as a bloc. Yet
another is that even the snobs may regard other attributes of the
candidates as more important.

Ok, let's just say that "dialect snobbery" has never been reported/
discussed for the US, and if it existed, it certainly would have been
part of the "bilingual education" debates.

I am more familiar with the Philippines, there are certainly dialect
snobs and presidents with non-prestige accents. This is a case of the
simple explanation, the snobs exist but are a minority. There is not
just dialect snobbery but language snobbery. I have met Filipinos who
look down on their own indigenous languages and claim to only speak
English and Spanish. Speaking only English is not a barrier to a good
job. Speaking only Tagalog is. Speaking only one of the smaller
local languages would be an even bigger barrier. For the best jobs, a
foreign education and a native English accent is an advantage over a
typical Filipino English accent.

Negotiating languages in a multilingual society is very, very
different from "dialect snobbery," and there's a huge sociolinguistic
and political literature on the topic.

.

Relevant Pages

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