April 17

I will start with what I thought was an interesting quote from Lippi-Green, “…a spoken standardized language can only be understood as an abstraction.” The quote goes on to state that this abstraction is useful constructed and reconstructed all the time because it serves a number of functions. I think that “standard” English is determined in the eye of the beholder. Depending on who you are talking to, each person is going to have a slightly different idea of what Standard English sounds like. For example “most of the announcers on BBC speak standard English” (p.54). I don’t think that BBC announcers sound standard at all. I think that quote just goes to show that the standard is really whoever’s point of view we are discussing.
I find the list of Standard English attributes on page 58 of Lippi-Green’s chapters interesting. This list is very narrow and probably encompasses a small percentage of the US population. The Midwest is seen as the crux of Standard English whereas other regional areas are seen as speaking sloppy or uneducated English. English with an accent falls under the category of sloppy English, but really, don’t we all have an accent? I’m not aware of my own accent but, when I lived in the south people knew of course that I wasn’t one of their own. My accent stuck out like a sore thumb. So, is a Midwestern accent the accent of choice? Should I have told them, I was the standard?
Accent is a topic of Lippi-Green’s chapter 2. In this chapter accent is explored. “L1 accent is then, the native variety of US English spoken: every native speaker of US English has an L1 accent no matter how unmarked the person’s language may seem to be.” This quote further supports the opinion I expressed above about how everyone has an accent. Each regional area has a set of words or rules with their language that everyone understands. It is not until an outsider comes into the conversation that you are made aware of the differences. The age old debate of pop or soda within the Midwest is just a small example of how this is applied to real life. Another example would be the vowel sound on the word bag for Chicagoans or Wisconsin dwellers.
I have been in situations with British friends when I have not understood a word of the conversation and I speak the same language. Between the accent and different vocabulary the message is lost in translation for me. I have to be a careful listener in order to pick up context clues and piece together the message. When I find myself in situations such as these being an active listener is exhausting.