{ and so is kin to you. }

[delga]

Made the mistake of listening to the voice posts I made at the weekend and realised that the less I pay attention to what I'm saying, the more horribly I speak. In my day-to-day I have an English accent that is standard southern English with occasional northern borrowings and a RP twist to long A sounds. Sometimes I sound very, very London or - even worse (!) - very Estuary. I try not to do that so much, but when I'm around Londoners, it's hard to fit in if it sounds like you were grown in a grammar school. Which: I actually was grown in a grammar school.

Obviously, I speak more clarly with adults than my peers, and then every now and then I speak the way I did in those posts: harsher on the RP twist, a bit nasal, and terribly, terribly clipped. I wasn't sure what I was saying, I think is most of the problem. Anyway. For the most part (emphasis most), I don't actually sound like that. ("Becahse?" What the hell? "Muhhst"??? However, I do actually use words like 'propensity'. It's a good thing I got cut off.)

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Tomorrow I'm at work in the morning, and then I need to get my haircut so hopefully there'll be a space (forgot to book an appointment today; will try in the morning). After that, I'm taking a direct to London, navigating the tubes, and staying at my gran's house. Wednesday is (hopefully) about meeting people and seeing The Misanthrope. I was going to go home on Wednesday but I've decided to stay at my gran's again because it will be easier than lugging my crap around London. Heading straight to work from London on Thursday (half day, whoop!) which is better than it could be because the admin team are lurvely.

Ex-ciiii-ting!

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Shit, Being Human was on, wasn't it? Bollocks.

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Work today was fine enough, mostly because I had two months' worth of deceased papers to sort through. Most of those are boxed now and ready to be verified/sent to the teams. RE will be covering for me on Wednesday so she will hopefully send those and try to make calm from the chaos that is my desk.

Comments

[zeitheist.livejournal.com]

Going through my flist backwards: text me and let me know about times / locations for Wednesday? I'm both excited and nervous. But that's because I'm a dork. Have a safe journey and good luck navigating the tubes! ♥

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Actually, was about to ask you about that - will email. x

[wliberation.livejournal.com]

Your analysis of your own speech makes me all geeky. Especially since I'm currently into phonetics and especially accents of English, and especially because the sociological aspects of language are hella fascinating.

Generally, automatically adjusting your speech to the surrounding is what we do: it's code switching, and even when we don't acknowledge it as such or might be embarrased or disgruntled by our own tendencies to do so because of some personal or communal preference of how we should speak, this code switching (or accent switching, in this case) is actually a tremendously important social skill without which we would probably end up being complete social numpties. Like in any other aspect of communication, we must find the appropriate discourse/register for the context, and we do do that - automatically based on our cultural knowledge. /geekramble

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know about code switching; I'm very, very aware of when I do it, too, because it's very noticeable. But there are times when I do it when it's not necessary (the crassitude of my Estuary accent is painful) because those people know me and I'm not socially rejected for being a little clearer. My everyday speech/idiolect is a mish-mash of regional colloquialisms and Standard English. I only really get RP when I'm bored/not paying attention/listing things or when I'm deliberately patronising someone. Not nice!

But I am aware of it. I think because the differences are quite strong and because I slip between a lot of different social groups. What's more interesting to me is when I choose not to switch and how people react to that - whether or not they try to switch towards me, or if I get a negative reaction. (I have found that it depends on the group that I'm with.)

[wliberation.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying possible social stigma is the only prompt for code switching. An aspect of code switching - or perhaps, rather, a cousin to it, actually - is this tendency to drift toward accent that you hear a lot of around you for some reason or another, whether you're conscious of it or not. And Estuary English is a particularly interesting case in this respect because it's said to be the next Standard British(/English) English. So there's a major amount of input from media and probably just from people around you. Maybe your time in uni played into that, too, since isn't S in the "Estuary dialect area"?

God knows I'm sometimes hella annoyed by the changes my speech has gone through while living here. Partly since because of university and education, I have started to speak more 'literately' and rejected my regional dialect, but also because I have started to pick up features of the local regional dialect - some of which are fine, but some of which really, really bug me because... well, they are a bit horrible. Although the tiny wanna-be linguist in me tries to say that, hey, every dialect is good in its own right, there's still a part of me who hates myself when I hear myself using the local form of the past tense. *shudder*

Aaaanyway, why I'm insisting on this subject is because I just happen to be particularly interested in this aspect of code switching that is not exactly the traditional avoiding-social-stigma code switching but rather this automatised, location based adaptation into surroundings - sponge-like absorption, if you like. And on the whole, it's just bloody fascinating how quickly that change happens! *G* I mean, for me, it must have only taken a year before my native regional dialect was getting lost completely. Neat stuff.