If you look at an average family that has lived in the Boston area for multiple generations, chances are you’ll find that the oldest generation, the grandparents, have a strong Boston accent, the next generation, the parents, have a slight accent, and the generation who are kids, teenagers, or young adults now have pretty much lost the accent. The loss of the accent is not just in the Boston area, it’s widespread throughout the entire country. Each region has noticed a decline in their characteristic accents.
The loss of accents is mostly due to media. On television and in movies, people usually have a neutral American accent with no regional accent. The newest generation of Americans have grown up watching TV and movies, sometimes more than we heard our parents talk. Our parents and grandparents definitely heard their parents talking more than they watched TV and movies.
Now that almost every American has a car and plane tickets are more accessible to the public, it is much easier for Americans to travel. One hundred years ago, the public did not have access to planes. Now, not only does the public have access to planes but there are thousands of flights daily for people to travel for business or on family vacations. More access to travel has not only allowed different groups of Americans to mix, but brought in foreigners from all over the globe. New immigrant groups to America means less native Bostonians, New Yorkers, Texans, etc. Now America is more of a mixing pot. There aren’t a few distinct ethnic groups in each city. Now you can find representatives from all around the globe in one city. In our grandparents generation, there were the Irish and the Italians in Boston and those were the two distinct groups. Now you could probably find someone born in China walking on the same street as someone visiting for business from Germany. With all these groups in one area, it’s hard to keep one distinct accent.
With the way we’re going, it wouldn’t be surprising if in another one hundred years everyone not only had the same accent, but spoke the same language.
Hi Alanna,
ReplyDeleteI'll start by commenting on the good aspects of your post. The topic that you chose was an interesting one, and I agree with your point of view. The reasoning behind your opinion is valid, and very logical. I liked how you incorporated the effects of the standardization of the accent through the media.
For the writing, there were a few sentences on which I kind of "blocked" or "stuttered" on. One of these was your first, very long sentence. It's okay that the sentence was long, that wasn't the problem, but you write at the end of that sentence "and the generation who are kids, teenagers, or young adults." I don't actually know what the problem is, but the sentence rings wrong when I read it out loud, maybe it's just me. I would say " and the younger generation of kids, teenagers, and young adults..." In your next sentence, I would replace "is not just in" with "is not unique to." My major concern with the next paragraph is that you abruptly switch from "the newest generation of Americans"to "we" and from "the parents and the grandparents" to "our parents and grandparents." There is no issue with using "we" and "our," but try to incorporate these pronouns earlier on, or more gradually. You need a comma between "car" and "and" otherwise the sentence sounds strange.
The rest of your third paragraph is well written, and has a good argument.
I liked the way you ended the post, though I would like to argue that complete standardization is closer than you think, and that we may already be at the point where everyone speaks the same language.
Overall, the post was good, though I would work on rereading your prompt before posting it :)
Alanna, this is a super interesting topic - one I had never thought of. I had never thought that an increase in television viewing would eliminate regional accents. This is provocative. The trouble is, I'm not sure I believe you. Why should I? This is a super interesting idea, but with no evidence or research to support your claim, you might as well write that astronauts are starting to develop a space accent, because space travel is starting to become more popular. What you write is logical, but you have to earn your reader's trust. Unfortunately, you don't do that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Oceane's suggestions about the writing. I found your post pretty well written. Do be careful with your use of pronouns. You want to maintain "narrative consistency." I need to talk about this in class. I was actually faulted for this when I took the course for teaching this AP course. I wrote an essay, and the instructor deducted points because I switched the narrative perspective.
Bottom line is you have a really great idea, some solid writing, but weak evidence.