Chapter 1. Communication Across Cultures: You Sound Like You’re From . . . .

English may be a common language, but each of us actually speaks it somewhat differently. A southern drawl, for example, sounds markedly different from the rapid clip of a native New Yorker, and neither accent sounds much like the Midwestern voice of the anchor on the nightly news. For better or worse, our dialects carry with them certain baggage. When we open our mouths to speak, we are conveying not only the specific message we intended to share, but often also a wealth of information about who we are.

Whether we recognize it or not, most of us speak with some sort of regional accent that is intrinsically tied to the place where we live. Our speech is also affected by ethnic background and socioeconomic status — what linguists call social dialect (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 2006). In any case, we might be judged harshly based on the way that we speak: Americans, for example, tend to perceive their own regional accents as the most “pleasant,” but they also see a “correct” American accent that cannot be connected with any particular region in the United States (Devlin, 2017). Similar judgments are common in almost every culture. In the United Kingdom, former BBC business reporter Stephanie McGovern notes that her northern accent, which is perceived in England as being “common” or “working class,” elicits a negative reaction from viewers and others in the industry. They question whether she actually has a university education, as they assume she would have lost her accent if she did (Duell, 2013). That is why many people whose jobs require public speaking go to great pains to shed their regional accents. Many of them head to speech coaches to unlearn their hometown accent — or learn a new one (Woo, 2011). But even speakers without strong regional dialects adapt their accents toward the norms of the particular audiences they are facing.