Accents And Dialects

innerbrat:

kathryn-eliza:

gailsimone:

“ There’re accent variations within English, it’s not just an ESL thing. And having one character mention another’s accent is more awkward than some triggering grammatical idiosyncrasy within their dialogue.”

This is continued from the previous question about dialects, and I would agree with the first bit. No one really seems to get offended by a broad Boston accent, but attempts to portray some dialects are pretty horrible from the get go.

The second part I take a bit of issue with, because it’s just an example of a way to convey the information. And it depends 100% on execution. If it’s done clumsily, it will look awkward and obvious. Done well, you won’t even notice.

I would actually say that a big part of comics is compensation, we have to compensate and substitute for the lack of audio and movement (and other limitations of the form and individual artists). A good comic is usually full of such techniques. As I say, if done well, they are pretty unobtrusive.

Haha bad Boston accents are THE WORST and make us all sound incomprehensible.  It’s very rarely done right, most people in Boston don’t have heavy accents, and the stereotypical Boston accent is very tied to social and class issues.  (Watching most movies that are supposed to take place in Boston/have characters from Boston  is painful, especially Catch Me If You Can—ugh that accent was so embarrassing, NOBODY SOUNDS LIKE THAT IN NEW ENGLAND. Those movies are why people are so surprised I don’t have a “Boston accent”, because the accent they’re thinking of is a cartoon.)

 I mean, we definitely have Boston/New England accents, but there actually is a distinction between a Boston accent and a New England accent (which of course varies slightly by state; a Mainer sounds pretty different from a Rhode Islander), and most people the metro-Boston area don’t really sound stereotypically Bostonion.  Being from an upper-class suburb, I’ve internalized a lot of negativity towards heavy Boston accents, since they tend to be associated with people who are uneducated and working class, and I’ve been fighting to overcome that for years.  

My Language Acquisition class spent a lot of time examining people’s preconceptions and associations with regional accents, because when you’re in education you really have to work to make sure that you and the class as a whole affirms everyone else’s regional dialect and that nobody feels stupid or ashamed because of the way they speak. Accents and dialects are a huge part of a person’s identity and shaming someone for their speech and forcing them to only speak in “accentless” American English denies their identity in addition to forcing them to strive for something that doesn’t exist. It’s really difficult to identify the stereotypes you hold about people who speak in certain dialects (positive and negative, hi Americans who fetishize British accents and think people with Canadian accents are adorable and harmless), but I think it’s SO important just in general, especially when it comes to African-American Vernacular and, for us northerners, southern accents.  Debate was actually amazing in helping me learn to take people with heavy southern (and midwestern) accents seriously.  It’s hard to think someone with an obvious twang is a hick when they’re totally schooling you in a round. 

This whole conversation, agh.

Accents are not dialects. Dialects are not accents. They appear to have been used interchangeably and it bothers the heck out of me.
Dialect: a regional variation within a language.
Accent: The pronunciation of that language.

Everyone has an accent and everyone has a dialect. This is important.

Writing characters’ dialogue in a way that emphasizes accent are nearly always jarring, and seem to serve the purpose of othering the character. Emphasize a Briton’s dropped ‘H’s or a Southern American’s long vowels or a Brooklynite’s lazy ‘tt’s and what you’re saying is “the other characters in this book - the North Eastern or North Western US residents, usually - they speak PROPER English. This guy? What she’s saying isn’t NEARLY as important as how she’s saying it!” Because everyone has an accent, but you the writer have chosen to other this one person, you’d better have a reason for doing it.

Dialect is variations in language. It’s the words you say and the grammar around it, and in this case, it’s just as jarring to have a character not speak in the appropriate dialect for their background. If you want to be true to a character’s origins, pay attention to the idiosyncrasies of their dialect. The “y’all”s and the “bloody hell”s and the “standing on line” ness of the words. That should be all you need to mark a character’s origin.

And if it isn’t then you probably shouldn’t trust yourself to throw in accent markers.

TL;DR: Write in dialects, not in accents.

(And for goodness’ sake, if you’re writing a character with a dialect not your own, get a proof-reader. There are, I know for a fact, hundreds of Britons on the internet who have considerable experience in Brit-picking. We like it!)

Great points, and I am sorry if I used the two terms interchangeably, I was typing fast and could easily have messed up.

But I will absolutely guarantee you, having a native speaker proof your work, while a necessity and a good idea in general, is no proof against complaints of this nature whatsoever…I once had an Italian professor proof some dialogue and people still complained. People are sensitive about this stuff, you can’t blame them at all, because caricature is so dehumanizing.

It’s something you have to do your best at…the other choice is a lack of visibility, which is no choice at all.