Dumping your Appalachian accent

by Sapphire (February 4, 2005)

Here’s an article that got me thinking, and not just about what it discusses: CNN.com - Class seeks to rid kids of Appalachian accents - Feb 4, 2005

It’s about a theater class in Kentucky where kids are being taught to speak without the mountain accent. I see no controversy there: if kids want to get into acting, it’s to their advantage to be able to speak in many accents. On stage. What bothers me is this nagging feeling that if they pursue acting, they’re going to have better luck if they dump the accent whenever they’re talking to people in the biz - and not just when they’re playing a character.

While I think people with Appalachian accents may get some of the worst stereotypes, we think of people with many accents as dumb and only suited to the locality in which they were born. A New Jersey accent, for example, doesn’t get you taken much more seriously than a Southern belle drawl.

And yet an English accent - so close to the Southern that Vivien Leigh didn’t have to work very hard to sound Georgian - smacks of high-breeding and good class, and most importantly, someone who knows what all those obscure bits of silverware are for.

Are we really that easily programmed? Are we so thoughtless that we make assumptions of people based on accent? Because I suspect there are a lot of us who would never think of judging someone on skin color who would make a judgment based on accent.

Posted in The BS Files
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