A recent post by Kelsi earlier got me thinking about dialects. In my Linguistics class last semester we did a little study aside from class.We had to pick a family member or a friend to listen to recordings from people all over the United States. The family member or the friend then had to guess where the person was located. So for example, I had a friend do the study with me. He picked ten recordings and they ranged from both southern and northern regions. It was interesting to hear my friends guess after he was done listening to each recording. I have to admit that some of them were fairly hard and I would never have guessed the particular region. After the study I came to the conclusion that we only know of a few dialects that vary between each other. My friend picked a person from Brooklyn and within ten seconds he was able to distinguish where he/she was located. He also did the same with someone from the South. In all I just thought it was worth noting that we only are aware of just a few dialects. In turn, we are so quick to judge someone based on their dialect. We seem to stereotype based on different dialects as well.
Where or why do we come up with positive/negative outlooks on different dialects?
For example, Do you think someone that has a southern accent is less intelligent than other people from different regions?
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With having different dialects in our country, I think we have a multitude of preconceived notions in possible literacy or education behind those dialects. For example, a small part of my extended family is from West Virginia. A long time ago, when I thought of West Virginia, I would associate southern accents, coal mines, trailer parks, and lack of education to the region. Now, understandably many other of my peers would have the same thoughts. I would then associate all of those regional thoughts to the dialect from the area. Therefore, anyone with a southern dialect, no matter where they were from, I would believe these assertions. Also, throughout my life, these assertions were reinforced by family & friends, literature, and media. Furthermore, my personal belief regarding this, is a very slighted and biased view. I have been exposed to people who have not been educated regarding the people or state of West Virginia whatsoever. They are simply drawing on the preconceived notions that they believe without strong evidence, like I once did.
Now, given my ability to become educated and self-aware, I wanted to be able to understand the concept that I once believed. Notably, I found that my assumption was neither true or false. Education does lack specifically in the state. But cities like Charleston, Huntington and Morgantown thrive in business, as well as the local colleges and universities that surround the area. With that said, many areas are depressed due to, once, being dependent on, now shutdown, coal mines.
In summary, I believe very strongly that we do associate positive and negative outlooks on regions because of their dialects. We simply cannot be ignorant to this and need to educate ourselves to the culture around us. Thus, diminishing distorted belief or bias and helping our own literacy, as well as those around us.
It's true that we make a lot of judgments about someone's education based on their dialect. Obviously, the further that the dialect deviates from standard English, the lower our expectations are about the person's level of education. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm making these assumptions. Different forms of media definitely help to force people into believing these notions though.. whether it be a movie, TV show, etc. These are assumptions that should really be avoided though because there is no correlation between intelligence and a dialect.
An interesting fact I learned somewhere in my educational career is that Pittsburghese is the only dialect in the country that resides only in one city, every other dialect has a region of states. Being from Pittsburgh I can testify as to how ridiculous it is. My friend went into the army and his recruiter was not from the area. The recruiter told my friend he has a hard time following him in a conversation due to Pittsburghese. My friend sounds normal to me, but people with other dialects are easy to pick out as different. I think this is where bias comes into play. We fear people and things that are different than what we are used to and this pertains to language as well. Also, I think that we associate accents and dialect with popular conceptions of such people. For instance, we might associate people with a thick Southern accent as unintelligent because the popular conception of these people is that all they do is drink and shoot, at the same time of course. While this is obviously not true we subconsciously make these connections.
I definitely think that people are judged based on their dialects. People who are considered to sound like a "hillbilly" are usually regarded as far less intelligent than someone with a different dialect. Like Kyle, I am from the Pittsburgh area and, while I don't speak "Pittsburghese" as fluently as most people from the area, my dad could teach a course in it. One word in particular that always produces confused looks when used around people not from the area is "yinz." In Pittsburgh, this is similar to saying "ya'll." However, people who aren't from "The Burgh" look at you like you have an extra arm growing out of your forehead when you use it. Because I've seen this, I can say that people with strong dialects that others aren't used to are definitely regarded as less intelligent.
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