America’s Loveliest Accents: Minneapolis

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One concept that I’ve found extremely valuable in recent years is the notion of “punching up.” I first encountered it in the context of rape jokes, but it applies to jokes about race and ethnicity, and really any joke that affects different groups of people disproportionately. Towards the end of the post, the author summarizes the concept:

The questions then become, ?Who are you challenging and why?? Are you trying to challenge an established power structure, or are you going after people who are already mistreated on a regular basis? Are you trying to poke holes in a pristine facade that is carefully maintained or are you just recycling stereotypes like a shadow puppet Punch and Judy show?

Josef Fruehwald makes a strong case that accent shaming is almost always punching down, and Dayna Evans’s “America’s Ugliest Accent” tournament is no exception.

Want to see a tournament that punches up? For the last two years one of my favorite blogs, Streetsblog, has run a Parking Madness tournament. Readers submit aerial photos of cities that have large parking lots where they used to have vibrant, walkable town squares, shops and offices. These “parking craters” sabotage the working of the city and privilege driving, suburban elites over transit-riding, taxpaying citizens who tend to be poorer.

The practice of replacing walkable downtowns with parking is a shameful act deliberately performed by a city’s elite. It is perfectly appropriate to shame the elites of Rochester for what they chose to do to their city. This is criticism and ridicule targeted at conscious decisions made by an irresponsible, faddist elite. This is challenging the established power structure. This is punching up.

The only Minneapolis native I can think of off the top of my head is Prince. Prince, of course, has a tremendous singing range, and his speaking voice is pretty good too.

In terms of other Minnesota accents, I’ve been listening to Garrison Keillor for years. My friend Jeff laughed at how low Keillor’s KIT vowel was in one story about a chicken, but to me it’s just part of that Lake Wobegon charm.

More recently I’ve been listening to Chuck Marohn of the Strong Towns podcast. Chuck is a native of Brainerd, Minnesota, and he has all the famous Northern Minnesota features, especially the raised MOUTH vowels. Everybody likes listening to Chuck talk.

This is part 7 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Providence. Nextly: Chicago.

America’s Loveliest Accents: Providence

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As Josef Fruehwald pointed out, attitudes towards language often are proxy for the attitudes towards the people who speak those languages. This is a case of what John Earl Joseph termed “prestige transfer,” and it makes sense. If you have negative feelings about your interactions with a group of people – for example, if your typical interaction with them consists of them giving you unreasonable orders, or harassing you on the street – you will tend to associate those negative feelings with their speech. Conversely, if you associate their voices with good times or your aspirations for prosperity, you will tend to associate those positive feelings with their accents.

Providence

Unlike Scranton, I’ve actually been to Providence, and even tried coffee milk, but I don’t have a strong memory of the accent. My wife is from just over the state line in eastern Connecticut, though, so I have positive feelings about that accent. I remember when we were first dating and she told me over the phone that her cats were playing in boxes. That fronted short /a/ in “boxes” reminded me that New England and New York are in different dialect regions, no matter how much else we may have in common. She also doesn’t lower the “o” in “frog,” and says “are you done your dinner?”

This is part 6 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Philadelphia. Nextly: Minneapolis.

America’s Loveliest Accents: Philadelphia

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Science is objective, but scientists tend to like things they study; in a notable scene from the 2008 adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the characters emerge into a cave. One exclaims, “Diamonds!” another “Emeralds!” And then Trevor the geologist (played by Brendan Fraser) remarks, “Feldspar!”

It?s natural for geologists to delight in rocks, and it’s natural for linguists to delight in languages. This is why it’s not hard for me to come up with something nice to say about almost any accent.

Philadelphia

Ah, Philadelphia, the gateway of the American Midland dialect! David Hackett Fischer tells us how Philadelphia was the landing point for the Quaker migration from the British Midlands to the Midwest, and also for the later Scotch-Irish migration from the Borderlands and Northern Ireland to the Appalachians and the Ozarks. My ancestors, the Dowdles, were part of that later migration. In my lifetime, several of my Jewish cousins from New York have moved to the area as well.

When I think “Philadelphia accent,” there’s one name that comes to mind, and that’s the Dead Milkmen. A friend gave me a tape of theirs in high school, and I was particularly intrigued by the boyish, melancholy voice of Joe “Jack Talcum” Genaro, who sang lead on a number of their songs, including their biggest hit, “Punk Rock Girl.”

I was fascinated by the accents of both Joe Jack and the band’s other lead singer, “Rodney Anonymous,” particularly what I would now refer to as the raising of the PRICE vowel (which you can hear in “wild” and “child”) and the fronting of the GOAT vowel (in “although” and “know”). These guys were from England? No, that’s just the Midland accent undergoing the same shift as in the southeast of England.

A few months ago I discovered this 2002 interview with Joe Jack, where he discusses what it was like to be a gay man in a macho punk band. What about the “Punk Rock Girl”? “With the Dead Milkmen I was collaborating with three guys who were not gay, so I did not feel comfortable writing anything from an obviously gay point of view. ‘Punk Rock Girl’ for instance was written with Dave [Blood], who sings backups.”

The late eighties was not a great time to be queer, especially in the punk scene. “I can honestly say that for part of the time with the Dead Milkmen I was making an effort to not be queer, though it did not work,” Joe Jack told Mark Prindle. When I was most listening to the Dead Milkmen I was also most conflicted about my own queerness, and it didn’t work with me either. I’m glad to know that Joe Jack Talcum made it through too. And just so you know he’s done other stuff, you can also hear him playing the Guitar Song.

This is part 5 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Pittsburgh. Nextly: Providence.

America’s Loveliest Accents: Pittsburgh

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I think it was an important move for linguists to divorce our field from aesthetics. There can be a science of taste, but science itself is not the arbiter of taste. It is not the place of linguists to judge accents or languages. Just as biologists study animals and plants that many people consider repugnant, linguists may study words and phrases that alarm or disgust people.

That said, objectivity doesn?t mean you have to like everything. Linguists have the right to our own personal tastes about languages. For example, I think German can sound very cool at times, but there are other linguists who disagree with me, and that?s okay.

Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh dialect, with its Northern Cities-shifted vowels, is pleasant enough, but what I really love about it is its grammar. They have their own second person plural pronoun, ?yinz,? from ?you ones? ? it?s like our ?you guys,? but shorter. (Some of my neighbors have ?youse,? but I never heard it in my family.) Their “an ‘at” corresponds to our ?and stuff.?

The best thing about the Pittsburgh dialect, though, is that they drop the useless ?to be? from certain phrases, notably ?that coat needs washed.? When I visited Pittsburgh, the friendly bus driver was chatting with me on the way in from the airport. We passed a bus stop with some people sitting on a bench, and she said, ?Oh, they don?t want picked up.? I wish my dialect had that! Who needs that “to be,” anyway?

Musician and comedian Mark Eddie, a native of nearby Steubenville, Ohio, plays up all these features of the Pittsburgh dialect except the ?needs washed? construction in an adaptation of “Downtown,” the song made famous by Petula Clark. There are a couple of objectionable lyrics ? objectifying “Shadyside chicks” and referring to transgender people as “trannies” ? but beyond those you see that there’s nothing mean in his teasing; you hear a real affection for Pittsburgh and its dialect.

This is part 4 of a series where I say nice things about all of the accents that Gawker’s Dayna Evans nominated for “America’s Ugliest Accent.” Previously: New York City. Nextly: Philadelphia.

America’s Loveliest Accents: New York

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One thing I have to mention at this point: It?s okay to not like an accent. This is a matter of taste. You like what you like, and you dislike what you dislike. If you think an accent is ugly, or lovely, that?s completely your prerogative.

On the other hand, patterns of likes and dislikes can be telling. If all the accents you dislike are from cities, maybe you?ve got something against cities or the people who live in them.

New York City

This one is very personal for me. My family has lived in New York for over a hundred years. My grandfather talked about ?turlet seats? and putting ?earl? on his salad. I was born in New York City, and I live here now. Many of my close friends have New York accents. My son has one. I could write a book about this accent.

New York accents are used in movies and television as shorthand for thugs and con artists and Jewish Princesses. They?re used in cartoons for villains and comic relief (I?m lookin? at you, Gilbert Gottfried). What?s worse, New Yorkers have internalized this hate, as William Labov documented extensively in his dissertation. Alan Chartock, in a pathetic display of this self-hate, regularly suggests that Andrew Cuomo will not win the presidency without taking ?elocution lessons.?

My mom received a steady drip of criticism and mockery for her accent until one day she snapped and said to her boyfriend, ?You know, I speak very good Bronx.? New Yorkers are smart, funny and creative. There are so many great New York voices, it?s hard to choose just one. Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov, Lenny Bruce, the Shangri-Las, Salt-n-Pepa, Paul Simon, Lou Reed and Alan Alda all come to mind. But for this post, I?m choosing Washington Heights?s own Lin-Manuel Miranda to represent the New York accent, teaching children about language on public television:

Previously: Scranton. Nextly: Pittsburgh.

America’s Loveliest Accents: Scranton

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In his post about Gawker?s “America?s Ugliest Accent” series, Joseph Fruehwald notes, “Predictably, the kinds of accents and languages which get dumped on the most, and get branded the ‘ugliest,’ always wind up being spoken by socially disadvantaged people.” And that?s really the ugliest thing about this Gawker gimmick: it?s pretty much the epitome of punching down. In particular I noticed that while linguists find accents in cities, suburbs and the country, all the accents that Dayna Evans chose are urban accents. On the plus side, it means that we?ll be spared the racist comments about inbreeding and Deliverance that always pop up when rural Appalachian accents are mentioned. On the minus side, it means lots of racist comments about inner-city black people. Is it a way for Evans, a native of Leicester in the British Midlands, to impose English class-consciousness on the American people? Or just an effort to mimic the championship sports brackets, which are usually filled with teams named after cities?

Scranton

I have to be honest with you: I?ve never been to Scranton, and I haven?t met too many people from there. Off the top of my head, the most famous people I?ve heard of from Scranton are Joe Biden and Jane Jacobs, who are both known for their ways with words. The right likes to portray Biden as a ?gaffe machine,? in the words of Brian Williams, but he does have a certain wit and sass.

Even though I haven?t been to Scranton, I did go to college in Binghamton, about sixty miles to the north. From what I understand, the culture and language in the two cities are not that different. The area is influenced by both the Appalachian mountains and the Rust Belt. I had two classmates at Binghamton with two different accents. One sounded like most of the SUNY students who weren?t from the city or Long Island; the other could almost have come right out of a West Virginia farmhouse. These women were best friends, and they had grown up down the road from each other in a subdivision on the outskirts of Binghamton.

All that is a long way of saying that I don?t really know what a Scranton accent sounds like, but it can?t be that bad. I bet most of the people voting up Scranton for “Ugliest Accent” haven’t heard anyone other than the Vice President. And I don?t know what a small city like Scranton is doing on Gawker’s list of sixteen accents, while there?s no Dallas or Houston. I guess Evans didn?t want to mess with Texas.

Previously: Boston. Nextly: New York City.

America’s loveliest accents: Boston

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Josef Fruehwald has some well-thought-out criticism of Gawker?s latest hate-fest, “America?s Ugliest Accent.” He concludes: “At the risk of coming off as a slacktivist, I’d encourage you all to be the change you want to see in the world, and say something nice about an accent today, even if it’s just your own.” I was actually thinking, as I looked at the Gawker bracket, how much I like some of these accents. So I?m going to try to say something nice about all sixteen of the ones they chose, with some of my thoughts about the whole shebang, and maybe throw in a few more accents at the end.

Boston

There are lots of voices you may hear when you think of a Boston accent: President Kennedy, Mayor Quimby, ?Park the car in Harvard Yard.? I think of Philip from American Tongues, but mostly I think of Tom and Ray Magliozzi, also known as ?Click and Clack, the Tappit Brothers,? from National Public Radio?s Car Talk. They are masters of the Boston accent, which is sort of a Bizarro version of my family?s New York accent with a lot of the same dropped ?r?s, but we raise the ?o?s in some places where they don?t, and they front the ?a?s in some places where we don?t. It?s all good.

You might be one of those who think Tom and Ray are annoying, and their banter can be hard to listen to if you?re not in the mood for it. I suspect that for years someone has been editing in extra chuckles to pump up the jolly mood, and it?s unnecessary. You might dismiss them as a pair of know-nothing car mechanics with working-class accents, but they?re actually well-educated technophiles, and they do great things with language and sound. I don?t own a car, and I don?t much like cars, but I listened to their show regularly for years. Just their fake end credits, like Statistician Marge Innovera, are worth tuning in for. And they sound better in a Boston accent.

Nextly: Scranton.

Know your topics

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There were a couple of years when I was tremendously confused about pragmatics and information structure. I learned a lot from reading Knud Lambrecht’s 1994 book Information Structure and Sentence Form. And one of the most useful things I learned was that people use the word “topic” to mean several different things, some of which are mutually exclusive.

Here are the words and definitions that Lambrecht used instead of “topic” for these concepts, along with some commentary:

  • topic referent. “A referent is interpreted as the topic of a proposition if in a given situation the proposition is construed as being about this referent.”
  • topic expression (also known as topic NP, topic pronoun, topic phrase, topic constituent). “A constituent is a topic expression if the proposition expressed by the clause with which it is associated is pragmatically construed as being about the referent of this constituent.” Topic expressions are what the speaker/author produces; topic referents are the actual topics that the topic expressions refer to.
  • topic-announcing expression. An expression used to announce a topic shift or promote a referent to topic status. Topic expressions simply signal what the sentence is about, while topic-announcing expressions mark a change in the topic referent.
  • subject. A syntactic role describing an argument of a verb, often referring to the agent of an action. “Subjects are unmarked topics.” In traditional rhetoric, subject (also called psychological subject) meant something very similar to Lambrecht?s topic referent: “The thing which the proposition expressed by the sentence is about.”
  • agent. A semantic role describing an active participant in an action. Agents are often topic referents.
  • theme. The element which comes first in the sentence. A Prague School term, which is also called “topic” by some. Lambrecht?s topic expressions often come first in a sentence.
  • old information. Presupposed propositions. All topic referents must be in the presupposition, but not all referents in the presupposition are topics.
  • topicalization (also called fronting). A syntactic construction where a noun phrase that is normally integrated into the argument structure of a sentence instead appears at the beginning of the sentence, before the subject. Often used as a topic-announcing expression, but also for contrastive focus.
  • left-dislocation (also called left-detachment). Like topicalization, but with a coreferential pronoun integrated into the sentence. Often used as a topic-announcing expression, but also for contrastive focus.
  • “Chinese-style” topic. Where the normal sentence structure has a place for topic-announcing constituents that are not necessarily arguments of the verb. Lambrecht?s topic expressions include these and others.
  • discourse topic. What the entire discourse is about. Lambrecht?s topic referent typically covers only a particular sentence, not the entire discourse.
  • topic/comment. One of Lambrecht’s possible sentence types, discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. Necessarily includes a topic expression.
  • antitopic (also called right-dislocation and right-detachment). A construction similar to left-dislocation, but where the noun phrase appears at the end of the sentence. Lambrecht analyzes antitopics as unaccented topic-announcing expressions.
  • contrastive topic. A construction that contrasts two propositions based on their topic referents. Typically has two accented topic expressions.
  • focus. “The semantic component of a pragmatically structured proposition whereby the assertion differs from the presupposition.” Topic expressions and focus expressions are both sometimes accented, and it?s hard to tell whether a particular accented constituent is a topic expression or a focus expression.

Hope this helps!

Gatekeeping the creepers

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I’ve told you about one kind of category fight, accusing someone of a bait-and-switch and this week I came across an excellent example of another one. A blogger who goes by the alias of Doctor Nerdlove wants to protect the category of Socially Awkward Men from incursions by people who are just assholes.

In this case, the Socially Awkward Men have established themselves as a disabled class and asked for accommodation. They argue that they are less capable of recognizing boundaries set by potential dating partners, and request additional clarity when those boundaries are communicated. What is key here is that they also ask for understanding if they unwittingly overstep those boundaries.

Nerdlove identifies another group of men who claim this accommodation. He argues that these men are not true members of Socially Awkward Men, but instead “creepers” who can recognize boundaries and don’t care. As Nerdlove tells it, these men do not deserve the accommodations offered to Socially Awkward Men, and their dishonesty and their abuse of dating partners has the potential to besmirch the reputation of all Socially Awkward Men.

This gatekeeping argument has close parallels with the watchdogging against Tyson Farms’s abuse of the Natural Chicken category. In both cases, a dishonest actor is claiming membership in a category in order to obtain something that they are not entitled to. The main difference between the free-riding alleged by Nerdlove and the bait-and-switch alleged by the Truthful Labeling Coalition is that the “creepers” are claiming a right to benefits based on their supposed category membership, while the seaweed-injecting chicken manufacturers are claiming to provide value based on their product’s category membership.

One key difference between the two allegations is that bait-and-switchers almost always know what they’re doing, but free riders may sometimes truly believe they are members of the deserving class. In this case there may be some creepers who pose as Socially Awkward, but I think most of the ones who claim the status of Socially Awkward truly believe it.

The besmirching is an added wrinkle to this, and probably deserves its own post. In a besmirching argument, the gatekeeper does not necessarily claim that the intruders are undeserving of the benefit, but rather that they are somehow undesirable, and that their association with the true members will ruin the high esteem that the class is held in. Nerdlove does this when he says that excusing creepy behavior as Socially Awkward “end[s] up continuing the idea that being socially awkward is inherently creepy.”

So there you have an example of the gatekeeping accusation of free riding, and its differences from the watchdogging accusation of bait-and-switch.

I personally agree with a lot of Nerdlove’s argument, but not all. In particular, Nerdlove says, “Here?s the thing about the socially awkward: they don?t want to trip over people?s boundaries.” But as my wife pointed out to me, it’s possible for a guy to be Socially Awkward and still be creepy. He can be unaware of where others are setting their boundaries and not care about them even if he finds out. But Nerdlove’s overall point still stands: there are many Socially Awkward Men who want to learn how to read feedback from others and respect their boundaries. They should be given that feedback, and a chance to learn from it.

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Not a real screwdriver? Frames and ambiguity

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Charles Fillmore died in February. I only met the man once, briefly, but his work has been a great inspiration to me over the years, particularly frame semantics. Last week I came across this sign above, advertising a bar.

The word “screwdriver” is ambiguous, because it can mean a hand tool to turn screws, or a drink made with vodka and orange juice. Fillmore’s frames help us to explore and understand that ambiguity. In practice we rarely encounter that ambiguity, because they appear in different frames. We would use the tool sense of “screwdriver” in an equipment repair frame, but the drink sense in a cocktail party frame.

If we are talking about something that is happening in the present, there are visual cues to set up the frame. In this case, the picture of a drink and the design cues of a bar facade set up the “bar” frame, and we would be surprised to find hand tools for sale inside. The linguistic cues of other drink names also evoke the bar frame.

Often, when we are speaking about things that are not in the here and now, we evoke the frame with particular words, for example, “I had to open up the back of the stove, so I opened my tool bag and rummaged around for a screwdriver.”

It is possible for frames to overlap, for example if a table leg needs to be tightened at a cocktail party. Someone may say, “can you get me a screwdriver?” and another person may bring them the wrong kind. The comedic possibilities are endless but in reality, with “screwdriver” the frames overlap so rarely that there is hardly ever a chance of confusion.

One thing I’ve been fascinated with lately are category fights – where someone tries to eliminate or suppress a particular kind of ambiguity. For example, Erin La Rosa argued that the new Waffle Taco is “not a f*cking taco.” The use of the word bothered her in a way that doesn’t seem to happen with the alcoholic screwdriver. I believe that this is because people don’t fear the possibility of a bait-and-switch with the screwdriver. The frames are so far apart that nobody worries about a frustrated carpenter getting sold the wrong screwdriver.

Another naming conflict is when a person argues against the extension of a term out of fear that the new referent will besmirch the respectability of the category. Or if the expansion appears to be a done deal, they may argue for the abandonment of that term. In the case of “screwdriver,” nobody seems to worry about the cocktail sullying the tool’s reputation, even though a screwdriver isn’t as classy as a martini, or scotch on the rocks.

To make a case that one sense of a word threatens another, either through bait-and-switch or free riding or besmirching, it appears that it is not enough to have a negative consequence to any potential confusion. There also has to be a reasonable likelihood that confusion will in fact occur. That in turn seems to require a minimum overlap between the frames. And that in turn is one of Fillmore’s contributions to our understanding of category fights.