Accent prejudice and multiple hyphens

Time to recap my recent posts for Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Anti-multiple-hyphen tendencies considers the strangely common aversion to ‘hyphenating up’ such compounds as self-driving car fantasists and anti-water protest groups:

The potential for ambiguity varies. The capitals in Paris Principles-compliant mechanism mean the phrase is unlikely to mislead, but in anti-social justice websites the familiarity of anti-social compared to social justice could make readers hesitate. Hyphenating the full compound solves this. . . .

[Washington Post copy editor Bill] Walsh writes that ‘what you must not do is arbitrarily decide to disconnect the unit by using only the most obvious hyphen and ditching the rest. Hyphenation is often an all-or-nothing proposition.’ I tend to agree. Hyphens misused can misdirect. But even when their presence or omission is trivial and non-life-threatening, getting it right (or as right as possible; there are grey areas) matters as a courtesy to readers. It gives them confidence in the writer-editor-publisher team.

The post has further discussion of the problem along with opinions from other editors.

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Accent prejudice in the mainstream was prompted by two items: an article by Dr Katie Edwards in the UK Telegraph about the appalling extent of accentism in the academic world; and a Channel 4 quiz show on which a participant had his Scottish accent mocked.

[A]s we grow up we get used to hearing other accents, some like our own, some not, and we see nothing to gain by making fun of them. Quite the contrary: phonetic diversity can be a source of cordial fun and interest regardless of any background in linguistics or dialectology. . . .

Criticising someone’s speech, whether it’s the sound of their vowels or their use of ‘improper’ regionalisms, is often a socially sanctioned way of expressing distaste for their socio-economic status, educational history, or area of origin. It says nothing about the person with the accent except bare facts or probabilities about their background. But it says a lot about the person making the criticism, none of it favourable.

You can read the rest for more on accent prejudice in different domains, or browse older articles in my archive at Macmillan.

Update:

Lane Greene at the Economist follows up on what he calls ‘the last acceptable prejudice’.

Southern Irish accent judged ‘most attractive’

A couple of days ago I tweeted this:

Irish accent voted most attractive in British Isles + Ireland (n=2018) https://t.co/smOb8i5oQI via @VoxHiberionacum pic.twitter.com/bYgHnOsiQx

— Stan Carey (@StanCarey) December 9, 2014

Below is the image included in the tweet, in case it doesn’t appear above. It’s from a recent poll by UK research firm YouGov in which 2018 people in Britain were asked how attractive or unattractive they found 12 accents in Britain and Ireland. In this post I want to address the poll and some of the responses to it.

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Signing and sociolinguistics in Ed McBain’s ‘Axe’

I went on a binge of Ed McBain’s crime fiction recently, enjoying his keen ear for language and tight storytelling style. Below are three language-themed excerpts from Axe, written in 1964, which features detectives Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes investigating a grisly murder.

First, to continue the theme of whom usage, is a doorstep encounter the detectives have with an old woman of unsound mind:

‘We’re detectives,’ Carella said. He showed her his shield and his identification card. He paused a moment, and then said, ‘May I ask who I’m talking to, ma’am?’

‘Whom, and you may not,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Whom,’ she said.

‘Ma’am, I . . .’

‘Your grammar is bad, and your granpa is worse,’ the woman said, and began laughing.

The ellipsis in Carella’s last line, which shows he’s being interrupted, is a stylistic device known technically as aposiopesis. An em dash is also commonly used in this context.

Carella later meets his wife, Teddy:

Teddy Carella watched his lips as he spoke because she was deaf and could hear only by watching a person’s lips or hands. Then, because she was mute as well, she raised her right hand and quickly told him in the universal language of deaf mutes that the twins had already been fed and that Fanny, their housekeeper, was at this moment putting them to bed. Carella watched her moving hand, missing a word every now and then, but understanding the sense and meaning, and then smiled as she went on to outline her plans for the evening, as if her plans needed outlining after the kiss she had given him at the front door.

‘You can get arrested for using that kind of language,’ Carella said, grinning. ‘It’s a good thing everybody can’t read it.’

Leaving aside the naive reference to the “universal language of deaf mutes” (signing, far from being singular, comprises many languages and dialects), it struck me as a laudable description, presenting signing as a normal activity and showing its potential for humour and seduction. I don’t read enough such accounts in fiction.

The final excerpt has Detective Hawes visiting an accountancy firm where he talks to Mr Cavanaugh, a portly businessman “born in Philadelphia and raised on that city’s brotherly South Side”, about someone previously employed by the firm:

‘We’re investigating a murder,’ Hawes said flatly.

‘You think Siggie killed somebody?’

‘No, that’s not what we think. But certain aspects of our information don’t seem to jibe, Mr Cavanaugh. We have reason to believe Mr Reuhr is lying to us, which is why we felt we should look into his background somewhat more extensively.’

‘You talk nice,’ Cavanaugh said appreciatively.

Hawes, embarrassed, said, ‘Thank you.’

‘No, I mean it. Where I was raised, if you talked that way you got your head busted. So I talk this way. I got one of the biggest accounting firms in this city, and I sound like a bum, don’t I?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then what do I sound like?’

‘Well, I don’t know.’

‘A bum, right?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Okay, we won’t argue. Anyway, you talk nice.’

I liked this exchange a lot too. That McBain, he writes nice.

Link love: language (60)

It’s been almost three months since the last collection of language links: definitely time for another. There are lots, so get comfy and don’t read them all at once.

The Historical Thesaurus of English is now online. Bookmark this one.

A lovely language family tree.

The outstanding Psycho Babble blog winds down.

How to draw syntax trees.

16thC manuscript of very ornamental calligraphy.

Family communication.

Bats jam each other’s sonar.

The improbable muses of 18thC poets.

To Siri, with love. From the mother of an autistic boy.

Ireland’s Book Show meets Clive James.

The rapid evolution of emoji.

Begging the question of acceptability.

Language features that English could do with.

The role of language in the Hong Kong protest movement.

Korean is diverging into two languages.

Get one’s goat is an etymological mystery.

Linguists’ thoughts on vape.

The purposes of language.

An antidote to terrible grammar quizzes.

A comparative library of Beowulf translations.

Search word use and trends in thousands of films and TV shows.

What happens in the brains of simultaneous interpreters.

Why we have so many terms for ‘people of colour.’

Inversion and fronting in English syntax.

Nigga? Please.

The history of the chapter.

In praise of mechanical pencils.

Notes on translation.

US/UK English ‘untranslatables’.

The dangerously dull language of TTIP.

On accent diversity in the UK, and the status of RP.

How prehistory  – the idea and the word – developed.

Swedish Sans, a new national typeface.

The history of football’s rabona.

11 facts about the umlaut.

An interview with Steven Pinker on style.

The art of theatre captioning.

The internet is no barometer of illiteracy.

Words for book around the world.

Chirping, popping, humming, blaring. The sounds fish make.

A linguist decodes restaurant menus.

Affirming the origins of yes.

A brief history of typeface naming.

Language is fundamentally communal.

The languages shaping the world’s economy.

A new database of Saints in Scottish Place-Names.

Language use is gloriously complex, not gloriously simple.

The acronyms that aren’t.

How -isms became -phobias. On the framing of oppression.

A history of women changing their names, or not, in marriage.

What’s wrong with ‘America’s Ugliest Accent’.

The secret life of passwords.

The etymology of allergy and related words.

Research suggests the sleeping brain can understand words.

A brief bibliography of -ass as a colloquial intensifier.

Slang often has old and venerable roots.

How English became the language of science.

A new living dictionary for British Sign Language (BSL).

Finally, a short animated video on language evolution:

Want more? I’ll try not to wait so long till the next batch. In the meantime, you can always browse the language links archive at Sentence first.

Mergers and minimal pairs: a survey of accents

Warren Maguire, a linguist lecturing at the University of Edinburgh, has told me about a survey he’s conducting into accents of English in Britain and Ireland. It’s been running for a few years, and you can see some preliminary results mapped here.

Maguire is looking for more respondents, especially from Ireland, but you don’t have to be from Ireland or Britain to take part: though other varieties of English aren’t the main research focus, all information will be gratefully received. The more data, the better.

So if you have time, do answer the survey here. It’s not a test, and there are no wrong answers (so long as you’re honest!). It took me about 10 minutes, and it was fun. You’ll be given pairs or sets of words and asked if you pronounce them the same, or if they rhyme to you.

The survey is expected to be completed next year, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for the results.

There’s nowt wrong with children’s dialects

A minor linguistic storm arose in the UK last week after a Teesside school principal asked parents to “correct” their children’s informal speech – phrases such as it’s nowt (it’s nothing), I seen (I saw, I have seen), and gizit ere (give us it here = give it to me). Dan Clayton alerted me to this story, and provides additional insights and links on the unfolding debate.

As Dan points out, the extent and passion of the responses – in online comments, follow-up articles and discussion elsewhere – “[show] what a live issue” it is. People have very strong feelings about correctness in language, but unfortunately this strength of feeling isn’t always matched by tolerance and understanding.

Irish Folk Furniture, a stop-motion documentary

Irish Folk Furniture is a stop-motion documentary, 8½ minutes long, that won an award for animation at the Sundance Film Festival last month. Director Tony Donoghue thought it might be too specialist to appeal widely, but it has charmed its way around the festival circuit. I recommend it warmly.

The film celebrates the tradition and use of farmhouse furniture in Ireland, with 16 items restored to a functional state. This is furniture not usually seen as beautiful – or starring in a film – but whose appeal lies in its very ordinariness and utility, and in the history it amasses over generations of use.

It’s a quiet gem in both form and content: as if Jan Švankmajer had rambled down a boreen in Tipperary. Dressers and flour bins wheel around the countryside while their owners chat away. The film is gently funny, beautifully shot, and features some lovely rural Irish accents and syntax, e.g. done as preterite in “we done a good bit on ’em”.

I wanted to link to the original on Donoghue’s YouTube page, but that video has since been set to private, so here it is from another page:

Edit: I’ve removed the video after seeing a comment on YouTube from Tony Donoghue saying his film was only meant to be online for the two weeks of Sundance, and that its continued online presence may undermine its film festival run.

If it reappears legitimately, I’ll reinstate it here.