Re: Language change among immortals

Tom Chappell wrote:
> > [snip]
>
> Ah heck, Roger, I should have read your post before I posted mine!
> You'd already said that -- I didn't need to say it again.
Oh well, that happens...

I wrote:
> > Personally I feel it takes quite a jolt for a person's language to
> > change noticeable within their lifetime. (Excluding emigration to a
> > foreign country, of course.) The principal factor would be exposure
> > to a dialect that is perceived as more prestigious than one's own.
>
> OK, here I quite disagree.
>
> (Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fuzzy question of whether
> moving from Texas to Michigan counts as "emigrating to a foreign
> country".)
Some would say...;-)))
In my reply to Dirk Elzinga, I amended that "prestigious" to "normative (for
a given region/occupation/status)"
>
> I agree that exposure to a dialect that, in some ways and in some
> circumstances, seems attractive, is either the "principal factor", or
> at least the biggest one I can think of.
>
> The thing is, "seems attractive" doesn't mean "is perceived as
> prestigious" -- not even if you vary who does the "perceiving" and
> what constitutes "prestige".
True enough. "Normative" I think fits better. No one want to stick out like
a sore thumb. The protruding nail gets hammered down. This would be the case
of PhD's brother who moved to Georgia (Yankee accents aren't popular down
there-- and vice versa too, or course).

In fact the particular exs. I had in mind when I used "prestigious" involved
the various Southerners I knew in NYC days, who were in high-status areas
like banking, publishing, and brokerage, almost all of whom, in short order,
had adopted (with varying success!) an upper-class "Larchmont Lockjaw"
accent.  Or even myself, nerdy midwesterner shipped off at age 15 to a
hoity-toity Eastern prep school, then Harvard-- at the end of which I had
something resembling the stereotypical Harvard accent (mostly lost now,
since I didn't stay in that environment, physically or mentally ;-)) ).
>
> If I suddenly find myself having to talk over a tinny intercom a lot,
> or over a staticky radio, I may find Sealane English or CB slang
> becoming very attractive, and using the "military alphabet", just
> because it is a very quick way to make myself clear without having to
> repeat (by the way, use "say again", not "repeat").
>
> If I suddenly find myself having to help a large number of just-
> toilet-trained and almost-toilet-trained post-toddlers negotiate the
> path to the bathroom, I will find it useful to adopt the vocabulary
> they use, no matter what vocabulary is used in the pathology lab in
> the hospital or the zoologists' office at the zoo.
Ah, but you wouldn't be likely to tell your urologist, "My pee-pee (weenie,
thingy etc.) hurts...."

These to my view, are exs. of _register_, which we all do, whatever our
dialect. Most of us probably write differently here than in a chatty post to
parents or friends. We don't talk to the repairman at the garage the same
way we talk to the mortgage banker, to a professional colleague, to the
doctor etc.

>
> It so happens that habits acquired in one environment will become the
> most accessible behaviors in another environment.  When I need to ask
> my daughter or my wife or my brother to repeat what they just said,
> I, now, always say, "say again?".  Also, certain "linguisticsisms"
> are finding their way into my daily speech now, even though I have no
> friends nor family with whom I can discuss this subject by voice,
> instead of in type.  And, long ago, mathematical, musical,
> scientific, and cybernetic terminology and ways of seeing things --
>  "sorry, my mind was paged out" -- were coming into my speech,
> although I made more of an effort to think of something else if I was
> sure my audience wouldn't understand.
To me, these are exs. of transferring "jargon" from some specialized area
into ordinary speech.
>
> These all apply to differences that would constitute "dialect",
> rather than "accent".  I change my "accent" just to be understood.
>
Casually meeting a southerner or a Bostonian, I don't change my
pronunciation for that occasion. OTOH, if I moved to Alabama or (back!!) to
Boston, (and were a lot younger :-(( ) I'd probably eventually adapt my
speech, to some degree at least, to the local norms.



> (and even if *these* folks call the Great Lakes "The 3rd Coast",
> people from Galveston and Noo Awlins know the Gulf of Mexico is the
> _real_ "3rd Coast".)
You may have missed the foofaraw a few years back, when the realtors out
here decided to call us "The White Coast". Lasted about a week, even after
they announced that they merely meant the color of the sand on our
beaches..........