Snobby and tribal

[cosmolinguist]

lots of the stuff written is really snobbish or tribal, a friend of mine said on Twitter in response to an article about Americans adopting Britishisms.

I haven't read it. Because lots of the stuff written is really snobbish or tribal, and it makes me angry or upset. And I can be snobbish and tribal too.

It took me a long time to learn this. I love language; I love its depth and variety, its specificity and its commonalities, its dialects and accents.

I thought I should love articles about how it changes and why and where and for whom and what that means. But accent and history and differences and similarities are also laden with emotion: in-groups and outsiders, politics and geography and history, class and education and wealth, wars and discrimination, prejudice and pride. Language doesn't mean anything apart from the people who speak it, and people are complicated.

Eleven months ago I spent days on Twitter seeing very slight variations of this: Today/tomorrow/etc is 11/11/11, not 11/11/11. Bloody Americans. It started out not-funny, and only went downhill from there.

The way I write the date, or spell "color" or "realize," or say "sidewalk" instead of "pavement," doesn't mean I only eat at McDonald's and drink at Starbucks and support illegal wars or believe God wants me to have certain views on abortion, evolution, marriage or climate change. It doesn't mean I think America is the best country in the world. It only means that Americans are taught to write and speak a certain way.

England's imperial imagination sent its language all over the world, and then told us we were doing it wrong when America's cultural imperialism threatened the subtle and delicate British cultures. And because this sucks in an abstract way, it's much more satisfying to pick specific targets to take it out on... like people who say "movie" instead of "film."

"We're right and you're wrong," I am implicitly and sometimes explicitly told since I moved to this tiny island. And every time I say "This isn't a matter of right and wrong; these things are different but one's not better than the other," they say "Yeah, that's one of the things you're wrong about." Being the ex-pat, the immigrant, makes you vulnerable; you have to be willing to learn and to compromise and assimilate; your opponents don't. You learn that your language, your accent, your vocabulary, are suddenly imbued with signifiers of class, background, education, and a lot of other things that you might not even know are being assumed about you, much less know if the judgments are right.

No wonder I went to such lengths to change my accent and vocabulary when I moved here, to fit in with my workplaces and my husband's family. Especially in my hospital job, my goal was to be unremarkable. I consciously chose my clothes, my vowel sounds, my slang, even my lunch food, so as not to draw attention.

Now I don't know what I sound like. I heard myself on a radio interview last year and didn't recognize myself until I realized that I recognized the story that was being told as one that had happened to me. I go home and people tell me I have "the British accent" and I despair that I will never be able to explain how unhelpful I find that phrase.

When I go back I feel profoundly at home, I love the horizons and the smell of the topsoil and the Linder Farm Network (one of the stiflingly boring things of my childhood, I now absolutely adore it) and the food at the cafe my mom works at and everything. But I'm like a visiting UN dignitary to them; Angie in the post office loves to see me because it's such a novelty to see something mailed so far away, and if I go with my mom to church everybody wants to talk to me over coffee and cake in the basement afterwards, not to hear how I'm doing -- they already know that from my mom -- but just because it's so "neat" to listen to me talk. And then I would love nothing more than to fit in, but I can't. (I'd say "fit in again," but I'm not sure I ever did. I was kind of a weird kid. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised my life has taken such a weird trajectory.)

Last week was full of me meeting people and dealing with their surprise that I'm from the U.S. and how relatively little time I've lived here. It troubles actually; fellow U.S. ex-pat friends who've lived here a lot longer than me sound a lot more American. I can't summon a Fargo-esque accent even if I try...but then I never had that anyway. It's another cartoon stereotype (which is not to say people don't really talk like that).

And moving away means I've lost the necessary lack of self-consciousness that I think is essential to so many of the things I love about Minnesota.

I don't know what my point is here. But I do know that in the last few months I've swung back toward American words and spellings as much as I can (how much I "can" is a calculation not entirely on a conscious level of audience, context and how much it matters) and I'm not monitoring my accent quite as closely as I used to. I don't think it'll go "back" to the Fargo-esque thing it never was. I don't know what'll happen, I'm not even sure why I'm doing this -- a sudden backlash against assimilation? some kind of reaction to anti-Americanism, rife in this presidential election season? an improvement in my confidence leading to less desire to fade into the background?

I shouldn't be surprised that no one writes the articles about language that I'd like to read. It's starting to sound like they'd have to be me to write them.

Comments

[rmc28]

My 6-year-old was complaining about my pronunciation of dear, ear, here; I make them 2 syllables but he / his dad make them one. My attempt to explain that people say the same word slightly different ways depending on where they are from and they are both right is falling on, well, deaf ears.

[cosmolinguist]

Argh, that sounds frustrating and disappointing. And yeah, this definitely happens at levels much more local than nationwide -- I remember my dad, brother and I mercilessly mocking my mom for how she says some words, and I feel bad about it now that I have some empathy for how upset she clearly was by this.

[miss_s_b]

I was mocked at school for having a Stony Lane Estate accent because that marked me out as from a small set of streets which were definitely inferior to the other streets in Brighouse people could come from.

Humans like to divide the world up into us and them and mock Them to curry favour with Us. Accent/haircut/clothing/gender/nationality/food preferences/whatever, people will always find a reason to pick on other people.

Gosh, I'm depressing today, aren't I? Sorry...

[rmc28]

Charles at least isn't mocking me, he's just very earnestly correcting me, and not taking in the idea that I'm not wrong. But he is only six, I will give him time to learn.

I can say the words the same way as him if I concentrate, but I don't wish to.

[sfred]

Not=very-coherent thoughts:

I agree that there isn't a right and a wrong where an American spelling is different from a UK one.

I get wound up by some people who live in the UK telling me that American spellings/dialect are correct and UK spellings/dialect are wrong. This is exemplified to comic effect by a schoolfriend telling me when I was about 12 that I should refer to another (British) schoolfriend as "African-American" rather than "black" - but I've had experiences far more recently from adult Americans living here. It's important to me to distinguish between "that's wrong" and "that's different". My use of the word "pudding" to mean "dessert generally" is just as correct as the US use of it, but is more likely to be understood here because it's British. (N.B. I'm not aware of your having 'corrected' me when I use English English and it diverges from American English.)

I think it's fine for each individual to use the version of English that comes most naturally to them, except in formal writing where I think one should try to use the local formal version - if I was in the US I'd be careful to use local formal style for formal writing.

I've been teased (mostly gently) all my life in Yorkshire for sounding southern and in Greater London for sounding Yorkshire. I expected my accent to become more southern when I moved down here but it seems to be going the other way - I sound more Yorkshire to me than I'm used to me sounding. Of course, that could be partly relative to my surroundings, and I know it's only half my vowels to begin with (hence not sounding Yorkshire in Yorkshire). It might be a confidence and/or defiance thing too. (I'm now at the working-class and uneducated end of the spectrum of my social group, whereas I'm used to being somewhere in the middle and among the cleverest (and I know educated != clever really)).

[cosmolinguist]

some people who live in the UK telling me that American spellings/dialect are correct and UK spellings/dialect are wrong

I am naively shocked that this happens at all. I have noticed some kinds of British people using Americanisms themselves -- "soccer" or "movie" or whatever -- which Andrew seems to think of an annoying affectation of some kinds of middle-class British people, but I couldn't imagine them policing others' usage. ("African-American" is a particularly silly example of this, as the famous story about Kriss Akabusi illustrates: a reporter from the U.S. asked him after he won a race what it meant to him as a African-American and seemed nonplussed to be told that he's not African or American, he's British.)

I do certainly hope it isn't a thing I do to you and please do feel free to call me up on it if it happens. I think the closest I'd come to that is that I sometimes get upset if I say the American word for something and get mockery or fake-confusion in response. I know some words that differ between American English and British English are far more obscure than others, but unless there's a genuine lack of understanding over what I've said, I don't like my word-choices to be patronized or indeed commented upon in any way that disrupts from the conversation.

And I try to offer this to other people too -- I will say "oh that's a good way of putting it" or "I like that word for it" if I think it's not interrupting the conversation; I will do this for positive comments I might have but not negative ones, beyond "I don't understand that word/idiom/reference."

it seems to be going the other way - I sound more Yorkshire to me than I'm used to me sounding. Of course, that could be partly relative to my surroundings

It could be, but I think there is also an element of compensation; Andrew sounds very English when he visits my family, much more RP than he usually is. I don't hear it myself but it'd be understandable if he was using that means of asserting his identity when far from "home" (whatever that means!).

[andrewhickey.info]

"soccer" and "movie" are rather different from one another. "Movie" is a pure Americanism, and is pretty much only used by people trying to sound cool. I don't believe I've ever met a British person for whom it would be the natural choice of word -- any use of that by anyone from the UK is, in my experience, pure affectation.

"Soccer", on the other hand, is originally an upper-class term, from public schools, where it was used to distinguish asSOCiation football from Rugby football, which was called "rugger" or "ruggers" (in a lot of public schools in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, 'football' meant rugby unless specified). As such, there are all sorts of class-based things going on with the use of that word.

[sfred]

I don't think it's a thing you do. :-)

Yes to the compensation. I'm never going to sound local so I might as well sound more me, sort of thing?

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I can sympathise with this post. When I moved to America I didn't try to blend in; in fact I went to some effort to keep my accent (though my vocabulary Americanised very quickly and remains so to some extent - I still tend to automatically talk of dumpsters and liquor stores). But then I was lucky; a generic English accent is generally viewed as a positive in the US so the worst I had to worry about was the in-laws making redcoat jokes. I do remember what it was like to stick out as foreign, though, and it's weird to mostly no longer do so having moved back.

I suppose there is an element of threat behind the reaction to American English, and it's because, as the current world power and cultural centre, American English is slowly eroding British English. I don't mind what form of English Americans speak in America, but it irks me to see, for example, billboards in the UK for British shops with slogans such as 'Gap Kids Fall'. Were the situation otherwise, as indeed it was in the 19th century, you'd see a similar reaction in America to British cultural influence; after all, Noah Webster specifically and intentionally established America's variant spelling of the English language to set it aside from Britain's, and I imagine the reaction over here at the time was more one of bemusement than anything else.

Anyway, yeah. I'm rambling a bit too. Assuming an American accent means someone is a paid up Republican is a bit of a problem, and I strongly deplore such assumptions (especially given all the liberal lefty American friends I had and do have in the US). And I applaud your embracing your own (equally valid) dialect and accent.

[cosmolinguist]

I can understand that American English is perceived as a "threat" to British English, for all kinds of reasons -- I remember, when I first moved here, my dear husband railing at "middle-class tossers" on the TV saying "soccer" and "movies" and stuff. Though the ubiquity of the language has at its root English imperialism, it's easy to see how some people feel it's been a victim of its own success because so many people are getting it "wrong" now and crowding out the "proper" language. I'm wholeheartedly descriptivist in my attitude toward language, and it's easy to say "well English is always changing, it's one of its strengths as a language..." when I don't personally feel threatened (I was phasing out my native dialect, with its "supper" and pronouncing "milk" as "melk," as soon as I left home for college).

It's nice (in a way; I mean in another way it'd be nice if it wasn't really a problem and I was just oversensitive :p) to hear that someone else thinks that speaking or spelling like an American makes you the caricatured right-wing religious crazy...I spend a lot of time going "I'm not from that America and then feeling bad because I wish I was better at challenging the inaccurate and unfair stereotype rather than just trying to distance myself from it.

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Well...I don't claim that most British people think that American accent == Republican; but I do think there are a minority of people who tend to unthinkingly assume that any American must of course be an avatar for America's foreign policy (and of course it does tend to be more common/more of an issue during a Republican presidency).

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I first visited here in 2004, and it was not a great time to be an American in Britain :)

Although there was some (however misapplied, still heartfelt and appreciated) sympathy given to me, as if i were a political refugee and all halfway-sensible people had had to flee the country.

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Also, I might add; bear in mind that many Britons, both now and back in its heyday, didn't ask for imperialism to spread English anywhere. A lot of us, particularly the more leftwing variety, would quite happily have stayed back at home and not gone round conquering other poor sods in random parts of the world for the benefits of our ruling classes, and in times past have in fact agitated quite strongly against imperialism and colonialism. ;)

[cosmolinguist]

Oh of course; many now called Brits were colonised themselves and had the language forced on them and most others had nothing to do with it. The history of invasions and politics and misery fossilized in it is one of the things that makes discussions about language so emotive.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

I have experienced a little of that. My parents are from Birmingham but have a generic 'English' accent (I am not sure if they were 'educated out' of the local accent at their respective grammar schools or it gradually changed due to living away) and I mainly sound like them. I was always being told my accent was weird - I sounded utterly Scottish in England and utterly English in Scotland apparently (to the point of disbelief that anyone could hear the other accent in my voice.) I started hating my voice but I was too worried that deliberately 'putting on' a Scottish accent would result in trouble for taking the piss. Now the Scottish element has faded a lot and I would like to get it back but I have no idea how.

I can remember going home after a year in England at uni and suddenly feeling more relaxed when I got off the train in Edinburgh because all the background voices just sounded right.

[cosmolinguist]

...suddenly feeling more relaxed when I got off the train in Edinburgh because all the background voices just sounded right.

I do this when I'm waiting for the plane to Minneapolis -- usually in Amsterdam, and it's nice that when in a strange place and many miles/hours from "home," I start to feel like I am Among My People, because so many people on those flights sound like I think people should sound :)

It is relaxing; I liken it to a small sound in the background, some low buzzing or humming or whatever, sometimes more noticeable than others but always taking up a few brain CPU cycles, usually going unnoticed... until suddenly it's gone and the lack of it is a relief.

[quuf.livejournal.com]

I love this; it deserves a wider readership.

All I'll add, tangentially, is that I felt a kind of pressure (most of it self-imposed) to be the all-American boy when I spent summers in England as a kid. And I just wasn't.

[cosmolinguist]

The self-imposed is the worst; I think I struggle with that both places, to be either more or less where I am or where I'm from, as is one (and only one!) of them is "really" me.

And thank you, but the world seems overfull with musings on language and the Special Relationship between the U.S. and the UK, and of course the only bit of the U.S. I know anything about is rural Minnesota which, beloved though it is, even I admit is kind of a niche market :) Feel free to disseminate it, if you wish, though!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this.

I'm inclined to think that people are a public hazard.

Excuse me if you know this already, but "gotten" is mostly an Americanism-- a word that fell out of most British English, but was retained here.

[cosmolinguist]

people are a public hazard.

Ha, I like that. I may find it a useful mantra :)

"gotten" is mostly an Americanism

Yeah, "I always preferred "gotten" -- and especially "forgotten," which is similarly anachronistic and which I must like more, because I know at least sometimes I'll say "got" instead of "gotten," but "forgotten" still comes readily to my lips :)

[cosmolinguist]

I shall tell that to the people who make faces at me when I say it! (I think British people just blame most words they don't like on the Americans, though, fairly or not.)