Accent (linguistics)

In linguistics, an accent is a pronunciation characteristic of a particular group of people relative to another group. Accents should not be confused with dialects which are varieties of language differing in vocabulary and syntax as well as pronunciation. Dialects are usually spoken by a group united by geography or social status.

Development
Children are able to take on accents at a fast rate; children of traveling families, for example, can change their accents within a short period of time. This generally remains true until a person's early twenties, after which, a person's accent seems to become more entrenched.

All the same, accents are not fixed even in adulthood. An acoustic analysis by Jonathan Harrington of Queen Elizabeth II's Royal Christmas Messages revealed that the speech patterns of even so conservative a figure as a monarch can continue to change over her lifetime.

History
As human beings spread out into isolated communities, stresses and peculiarities develop. Over time these can develop into identifiable accents. In North America, the interaction of people from many ethnic backgrounds contributed to the formation of the different varieties of North American accents. It is difficult to measure or predict how long it takes an accent to formulate. Accents in both the USA, Canada and Australia are derived from the British parent accent, yet North American accents remain more distant, either as a result of time or of external or "foreign" linguistic interaction, such as the Italian accent. It could also be argued that the common characteristics of North American accents are more fairly consistent with the manner in which English was pronounced by people from Britain - most especially people from Western parts of England - during the 1600s and early 1700s which was presumably rhotic, at this time as it is to a large extent today. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (particularly among whites of British-settler descent) are more recent transplants to their destinations so their accents are more-or-less in sync with the way English is spoken in Britain.

In many cases, the accents of non-English settlers from Britain affected the accents of the different colonies quite differently. Irish and Scottish immigrants had accents which greatly affected the vowel pronunciation of certain areas of Australia and Canada.

Social factors
When a group defines a standard pronunciation, speakers who deviate from it are often said to "speak with an accent". However, accent is a relative concept, and it is meaningful only with respect to a specified reference. For example, people from New York City may "speak with an accent" from the point of view of people from Los Angeles, but people from Los Angeles may also "speak with an accent" from the point of view of New Yorkers. The concept of a person having "no accent" is meaningless.

Groups sharing an identifiable accent may be defined by any of a wide variety of common traits. An accent may be associated with the region in which its speakers reside (a geographical accent), the socio-economic status of its speakers, their ethnicity, their caste or social class, their first language (when the language in which the accent is heard is not their native language), and so on.

Prestige
Traditionally certain accents carry more prestige in a society than other accents. This is often due to their association with the elite part of society. For example in the United Kingdom, Received Pronunciation of the English language is associated with the Queen and the upper class.

Discrimination
According to some reports people can identify a persons ethnic group within a society by their accent, e.g. African-American people in America, British-Caribbean people with British accents. Some people have criticized this claim as a form of racism as it makes assumptions based on linguistic stereotypes.

Kentucky's highest court in the case of Clifford vs. Commonwealth held that a white police officer, who had not seen the black defendant allegedly involved in a drug transaction, could, nevertheless, identify him as a participant by saying that a voice on an audiotape "sounded black." The police officer based this "identification" on the fact that the defendant was the only African American man in the room at the time of the transaction and that an audio-tape &mdash; contained the voice of a man the officer said “sounded black” selling crack cocaine to a white informant planted by the police.

Acting and accents
In Hollywood, a common sign of great acting is the ability of an actor to imitate a foreign accent. Actors usually perfect this through exposure, which allows the brain to appreciate the subtle nuances that make the accent unique.

Criticism of this is that the perception of an accurate foreign accent are rarely considered accurate by the speakers of this accent. The perception or sensitivity of others to accents means that generalizations are passed off as acceptable, such as Brad Pitt's Jamaican accent in "Meet Joe Black." In recent cinema Angelina Jolie attempted a Greek accent in the film Alexander that was said by critics to be distracting.