New York
This essay will present the negative attitude New Yorkers seem to have towards their own accent. I have based my essay on William Labov's work from 1966, The Social Stratification of English in New York. New York has an accent that is recognized by many Americans. The accent has frequently been used for comic effects on radio and television. Words like dem and dose, boid and shoit have amused both New Yorkers and other Americans.
According to Labov's studies on the subject, it seems that it is the New Yorkers themselves who have the most negative attitude towards New York City speech. Labov talks about a "linguistic self-hatred" (p 489) which is shown in the negative statements the New Yorkers make when asked their opinion of their accent. In Labov's study people describe their New York accent with words like; "distorted", "sloppy" and "horrible" (p 489). Furthermore most of the informants used in the study think that people who live outside New York have a negative attitude towards New York speech. This concept among the New Yorkers is expressed by an old Irish man who in Labov's study says that "They think we're all murderers," and a middle-class woman who says that it would be a terrible slap in the face to be recognized as a New Yorker (p 486). Unfortunately, considering the middle-class woman's words; most New Yorkers are recognized as -New Yorkers. The remarkable thing is that even people who have not been outside the city think that people living outside New York have a more correct speech than those living in the city. Despite this negative attitude among New Yorkers, Labov's study shows that the majority of the people living outside the city like the New York City speech or at least feel neutral towards the accent. The rule seems to be that the upper-middle-class in the city and outside the city has a negative or less favorable attitude towards New York speech. The upper-middle-class people who live in the city often make an effort to change their accent towards a more correct English. The lower-class and the working-class, on the contrary, have a more positive attitude towards the accent. This positive attitude could be for several reasons; one may be that people from the lower-class and the working-class feel that the city is an exiting place where they want to be and therefore do not mind speaking the accent of the city. Another reason may be that the lower-class and working-class traditionally have a more rough accent and therefore do not see any reason to change their accent towards a more correct English. The reason why the upper-middle-class want to change their accent to a more correct English may be because they want an accent different from the working-class, an accent with more prestige. Furthermore the fact that the accent is used for comic effects may as well have and importance to the linguistic self-hatred among New Yorkers.
A simplified example of the New York accent is the word thirty-third which in New York speech is pronounced toity- toid. A special feature of the New York accent is the lack of non-prevocalic /r/ in casual speech; oil and earl are pronounced identically (no /r/) and so also are voice and verse (no /r/). The pronunciation of /r/ in words such as beard and cured is a feature that the inhabitants of New York find a correct pronunciation. The non-prevocalic /r/ is a sign of prestige and is, by most New Yorkers, adopted in formal speech.
The special characteristics of the New York accent are limited to the city, New Jersey and the adjacent area of New York State, which in turn implies that the accent has no prestige outside the city limits. This lack of prestige in the accent is also reflected in the fact that no phonological innovations, such as sound changes, radiate from the city. In his book Labov writes that: "as far as language is concerned, New York City may be characterized as a great sink of negative prestige". Labov explains his statement with some evidence, for instance the fact that the speech patterns of New York do not expand like speech patterns of other cities. Speech patterns of cities like Boston, Philadelphia and Richmond have, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, expanded to a radius of 75 to 150 miles around each city while the expansion of the speech patterns of New York is more or less non-existant. I believe that the negative attitude among New Yorkers, towards their accent, may well be a considerable factor to the failure of the expansion of New York speech. If a person feels ashamed of his or her accent, and leaves the origin of that accent (in this case New York) this person will not bother to keep the features of the accent but instead change his or her speech according to the rules of the new speech environment. In short: a New Yorker, dissatisfied with his or her accent, who moves to another part of America will happily adopt the new accent.
To summarize these facts presented in Labov's study from 1966, New Yorkers find no prestige in their accent. There is a will however, in the inhabitants of the city, to strive towards a more correct speech, which I think is shown by the use of non-prevocalic /r/ in formal speech. Moreover the New Yorkers think that New York speech is regarded negatively in general by the upper-middle-class and not by the great mass of the lower-classes.
Written by Jenny
A link to a site with sound samples on dialects of New York: http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html Note! Use the menu on top of the page to navigate to Dialects/Accents of North America, and then click on the New York link to find the samples.
Links to other sites on New York City speech: http://www-nw.uni-regensburg.de/~.kuf14327.7.stud.uni-regensburg.de/NYC.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Bungalow/2375/woids.html