Accent in TV

curious   Sun Jun 28, 2009 7:56 pm GMT
What is the accent used in most American TV?
In series such as Lost, ER? And in England like The Office?
Or is it a mixture of different accents?

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If you have patience, please correct my mistakes
American   Sun Jun 28, 2009 9:11 pm GMT
Lots of different accents. Many people that have strong accents try to minimize them and try to speak as close to a standard as possible.
Kitsch   Mon Jun 29, 2009 6:45 am GMT
That’s a very good question, curious. I agree with American’s post above. Traditionally speaking, people on American television speak “General American” (check out the article on Wikipedia for more specific information). This is supposed to be a neutral sounding version of American English that has no specific accents or peculiarities in it associated with a specific location (such as the southern states or New England). However, in more recent times, American television shows are showing a slight slant towards local dialects that fit in with the series’ setting. Due in part to reality television, most common is the shift towards California English (again, see the so titled Wikipedia article for some interesting specifics). People like Paris Hilton and scores of other reality television stars (mostly on channels like VH1 and MTV) are making a young generation of Americans talk this way, regardless of where they are from. And, not only are many television series popular across the entire country set in California but, being that Hollywood/Los Angeles are both film and television capitals, the actors and actresses who live there and are employed for television often have the accent themselves. To use one of your examples: ER is set in Chicago, Illinois. While some of the characters might sound vaguely authentically Chicagoan, I think that most of the characters still sounded pretty neutral.
In England, I have no idea. I watch a lot of BBC programming and it sounds to me that things like the news are still very standardized but shows like The Office seem to reflect, again, local and class speech patterns for the setting of the series. Again, I’m not too sure about English programming, though I would be really interested in hearing what someone with the know would have to say.
Robin Michael   Mon Jun 29, 2009 11:21 pm GMT
One of the criticisms of 'The River' a soap opera set in Glasgow, to rival 'Eastenders' set in London, is that 'River City' uses a complete mish mash of Scottish dialects.

BBC - TV - River City
River City is BBC Scotland's soap, set in the fictional area of Shieldinch.
www.bbc.co.uk/rivercity/ - Cached - Similar


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x921qc_river-city_shortfilms
Milton   Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:17 am GMT
I guess the new ''tv'' (sitcoms/soap operas) accent is the Western US one, Southern Californian accents (both the traditional one and the Cali-shifted one) being most ''influential''. I don't know about the national news accents, we don't watch ABC/CBS/NBC here in Europe...

Lady Gaga was born & raised in NYC, but she sounds Californian (not Valley girl tho'), she has the consistent low back merger to /A/, and uses /A/ even between L (this is normal in Denver, Tucson, Phoenix, St. John's NF, but also in Chicago/Detroit, even tho' it's phonologically a different accent)...Listen to the way she pronounces the word BALL in the song ''Disco Heaven'' dancing: ball [bAl] rather than ball [bQl].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Wu3m8IB6c


Brooke Shields too, likes saying ''I was born & raised in NYC'', yet she sounds nothing like a NewYorker, she sounds like a random woman from Denver or Phoenix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O2UG7JnJTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBaF_ZqGztE
But, it sure is one of the sweetest accents.

It must be that in those East Coast acting schools Western accent is seen as the new tv/acting ''standard'', fully low back merged and consistently merged to /A/.

So, yes, Western US is the new standard, you can see/hear more and more people on the East coast pronouncing ''awesome'' , ''lost'' or ''dog'' with /A/ instead of local /Q/ or /o/...

In Atlanta Georgia, Central Ohio, Florida the accent is moving from the transitional (partially cot/caught merged) to the fully merged accent...
In Atlanta, [A] is preferred even before L: all [Al], doll [dAl] (like in Denver), in Florida they like L-influenced rounding: all [Ql], doll [dQl], like in Seattle or San Francisco.

You can preview pronunciation of some words here:

ALL
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/research/gsound/Eng/Database/Phonetics/Englishes/ByWord/Word_001_all.htm

DAUGHTER
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/research/gsound/Eng/Database/Phonetics/Englishes/ByWord/Word_013_daughter.htm

LONG
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/research/gsound/Eng/Database/Phonetics/Englishes/ByWord/Word_052_long.htm

SALT
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/research/gsound/Eng/Database/Phonetics/Englishes/ByWord/Word_078_salt.htm
American   Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:54 am GMT
However, Midwesterners that lack the c-c merger do not add it into their speech when doing newscasting.
Travis   Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:20 am GMT
One thing that should be noted is that it does not seem that we here in the Midwest who lack the cot-caught merger actually really notice it when it involves merger to [ɑ], as such is close enough to [a] to not stand out as distinct from our historical /ɑː/ while being close enough to [ɒ] to not stand out as distinct from our historical /ɔː/. I myself at least only really notice the cot-caught merger when the merged vowel is [ɒ], as that is far enough from [a] to make historical /ɑː/ to seem somewhat off to my ears.
Kelly   Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:42 am GMT
However, Midwesterners that lack the c-c merger do not add it into their speech when doing newscasting.
//

But they don't round their A's in ''lost, dog, song'' either, at least those coming from Chicago, Detroit or Buffalo don't
So, they pronounce Don [dan] ~ Dawn [dɑn].

Westerners with no Californian vowel shift won't hear/notice the difference at all, particulary those with a more central realization of the merged vowel (found in Tucson AZ for example)...So [hatdɑg] will be acceptable but [hætdag] or [hætdɑg] won't... Westerners don't object to Midwestern [ɑ], as in ''Dawn, all, song, lost, cost, stalk'', but to Midwestern [æ] in ''Don, cot, mom, dollar'' and [ɛ] in ''flash, last, Zack, bad''...
Travis   Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:50 am GMT
>>However, Midwesterners that lack the c-c merger do not add it into their speech when doing newscasting.
//

But they don't round their A's in ''lost, dog, song'' either, at least those coming from Chicago, Detroit or Buffalo don't
So, they pronounce Don [dan] ~ Dawn [dɑn].

Westerners with no Californian vowel shift won't hear/notice the difference at all, particulary those with a more central realization of the merged vowel (found in Tucson AZ for example)...So [hatdɑg] will be acceptable but [hætdag] or [hætdɑg] won't... Westerners don't object to Midwestern [ɑ], as in ''Dawn, all, song, lost, cost, stalk'', but to Midwestern [æ] in ''Don, cot, mom, dollar'' and [ɛ] in ''flash, last, Zack, bad''...<<

To be exact, there are definitely Midwestern dialects which preserve the rounding of historical /ɔː/, such in most of Wisconsin aside from the very southern (as in Kenosha, which patterns with Chicago in this regard) and western and northern extremes (which are cot-caught merged). Actually, here in Milwaukee historical /ɑː/ is normally [a], but adjacent to /r/ it is either [ɑ] or [ʌ] and after /w/ is [ɑ] in most words (but [a] in a limited number), while historical /aʊ̯/ may also become [ɑ], particularly when less stressed.
Kelly   Tue Jun 30, 2009 8:00 am GMT
I agree with Travis,
Chicagoans will find speech from people coming from Pittsburgh, Boston, Calgary or Vancouver accented because of frequent rounded realizations of the LOT vowel, for example:

dollar ['dɒlər]
concert ['kɒnsərt]
lot ['lɒt]
mom ['mɒm]

People from Denver, Phoenix or St. John's (NewFoundland) won't find these pronunciations strange (altough they never use the rounded vowel there) because the accents are similar PHONOLOGICALLY.

On the other hand, most people outside the US GreatLakes region will find the Midwestern accent ''accented'' if a person consistently pronounces /æ/ as [ɛ] because it can lead to a confusion: FLASH or FLASH, BAD or BED???
And this is even without the [æ] confusion:

[ə'dæpt] ''adopt'' by many Chicagoan white women; ''adapt'' in General American
not true   Tue Jun 30, 2009 6:33 pm GMT
>> People from Denver, Phoenix or St pronunciations strange (altough they never use the rounded vowel there) <<

Never? According to Labov's Atlas, the Canadian shift exists *all* over the Western US. It's simply that far fewer speakers have it, and it is not as strong as in Canada. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I've heard plenty of people from the West, even in Denver that had the shift. So, it's not even possible to distinguish Californian speech from the rest of the West regarding the merged vowel, or even use it as a Shibboleth.
Kelly   Wed Jul 01, 2009 1:04 am GMT
According to Labov's Atlas, the Canadian shift exists *all* over the Western US.
//


It does not. For example, Tucson AZ is in the zone of the ''low central merger'' with [ä] being the merged vowel. You should have read prof. Labov's Atlas more carefully.

Californian and Canadian shifts are very diffferent, try these pages to compare:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~robh/files/asa150.pdf
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~robh/files/CEGC%20handout.pdf


An example of Reno English, no traces of Californian shift at all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjjlAOPxQts
not true   Wed Jul 01, 2009 1:30 am GMT
Look at the map of the Western US and Canada. You'll notice that scattered around the Western US are red dots--speakers that do not satisfy the criteria of the Western US dialect, but instead satisfy the criteria for the Canadian shift. Therefore, the shift does affect Westerners.
Kitsch   Wed Jul 01, 2009 6:25 pm GMT
I agree with not true from experience. A large portion of Montanans have VERY Canadian speech patterns (being on the border and everything). People I know from Idaho can sound the exact same as well as people from Washington, and, to a lesser extent, Wymoning (they tend to sound a bit...almost Southern). And, of course, the Dakotas might sound the most Canadian of them all. I would say that's about as far as large concentrations go, though, as my distant cousins in Utah sound different and someone form Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico or California sound different and have their own Southwest sound.