Accent and Environment

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 417, 20 June 1947, Page 32

Accent and Environment

The second of a series of four articles, written for "The

Listener" by

A. R. D.

FAIRBURN

HERE is undoubtedly a very close link between the social and economic status of people and their way of speaking. This applies in a number of ways. Let me try to illustrate some of them. The French demographer Arsene Dumont, who died in 1902 after a life of obscurity, came to the *conclusion, having investigated closely the structure of the society in which he lived, that the process he called "social capillarity" had much to do with the decline in the birth-rate in modern democracies, He remarked that fertility is high in countries that have a rigid caste sys-tem-where people are born, live, and die in a caste from which it is impos-

sible to climb upwards, "Dumont held that im a modern democracy, which is essentially a society with political equality but social and economic inequality, the more intelligent and alert members of the community tend to rise in the social scale as oil rises in the wick of a lamp, and that social capillarity is the expression of a ‘toxic principle’ which in-

variably appears in such a society. The toxie principle is the cult of individual self-seeking leading to the dissolution of social solidarity. Working through social capillarity it results in numerous phenomena, the most ‘important of which are depopulation, increasing urbanisation, the breaking-up of family life, and the decay of patriotism." (I quote from G. F. McCleary’s book ‘Population: To-day’s Question.) Whatever effect the "social capillarity" associated with individualism may have on vital statistics, I am sure it has a close connection with the development of certain of our class-dialects. Accent and Emphasis |. The regional dialects of England were natural growths.. An obyious reason for their divergence from one another was the inability of the common people to travel far. Their betters went to London or Bath for "the season," but there was a rigid. dividing-line between the upper and lower classes. My knowledge of rural dialects is too inadequate for me to make any strong assertions. I imagine, however, that there must have been a merging..of one dialect with another, from village to village; and, on top of that situation, some development of group consciousness that caused a cerdening of the dialect-pattern. A an .who lived near Wiltshire would re 1¢ natural way ‘probably speak very much like his neighbour across the border. But he might, on becoming conscious of himself as a Somerset man, a member of a regional group, bend his speech towards some. conventional Somerset style of speaking, which | would in time ‘become: recognisable as a distinct diatects 894, 2** = If not just that, se very like it must have happened, if we are to

account for the emergence of different rural dialects. The point I wish to stress however, is the element of assertiveness -the deliberate acceptance and emphasis of a dialect by a regional group, or by its members, as an act of allegiance to one another. The more clannish people are, the more they are aware of ties of blood and soil, the ‘stronger will be their tendency to cling to a native dialect. I know Scots ahd Irishmen who have been in New Zealand

for several decades, and who still speak with an accent like a suit of -checkcloth. _ Englishmen, who have left the tribal pattern of society maNy more centuries behind them, tend to be much more adaptable to new social habits. The sophisticated life of the Capital produces. a fairly definite speech-con-vention among the "ruling class." In

earlier centuries, with caste barriers still firm, there would be a strong tendency, but not a pressing need, for people to use speech-man-nerisms to help them to maintain the "class front." Class-Consciousness But when those barriers began to crumble under’ the earthquake shocks of the Industrial Revolution, and "social capillarity" began to take effect, classconsciousness became more acute. There were people who belonged to the upper classes through family tradition; there were others, the. ‘"newly-rich," who climbed up through the social hierarchy and maintained their position by their money and the skin of their teeth. And there were the "lower orders," who for the most part accepted class-@visions as being decreed from On High, but began to breed a few revolutionaries _ to threaten the whole elaborate classstructure. In this flux, I imagine that the use of class-dialects became more and more self-conscious. A family of low birth that made money and climbed into the company of the aristocracy would take care to ape the speech of its betters. It would probably go further, and become very high-falutin’ indeed, just to leave no room for doubt. Some of the resentful aristocrats, needing no flamboyant badge of speech to assert their status, would perhaps go to the other extreme and wilfully drop their h’s and g’s, just to distinguish themselves from the climbers. The village girl who went into service in an upper-class establishment would to bend the native speech of the village in an upward curve, as witness of her connection with the "nobs," thus providing raw material for the comie speech of stage-servants. (continued on next page) .

(continued from previous page) Somewhere in this strange jungle full of: apes and parrots and hyenas is to be found the shapely animal called standard English. The plea for its acceptance implies an attack, not so much on regional dialecis, as on the extraordinary pattern of class-dialects that has come into being after a century and a-half of class disruption and "social capillarity." Standard English speech is one of the several pillars of a democratic com-munity-and by that I mean a community in which democracy has come to be, not a destructive and, anarchic fotce, but .a norm of social living based on the notion of spiritual equality. Language is the matrix of our conscious" in the Marxist sense, a different means by which we recognise ourselves" as members of a community, and ex-| press ourselves as individuals. It is the link between man and mankind. In that sensitive medium we shall expect to find reflected, not only the subtle inter-rela-tions between social groups and classes, but also the attitudes of individuals towards the society to which they belong. | The English working-class girl who | takes a job as a parlourmaid, and begins to sprinkle aspirates liberally through | her speech, is trying to conform to the | social structure. She is not attempting to climb on to the same level as her. employer. In dealing with other girls who work for employers who are slightly inferior socially to her own she will be extremely haughty, and import a much greater degree of snobbishness into the situation than that which exists at the top. By trying to speak in what. she imagines to be a genteel manner she is making a ceremonial gesture of loyalty to the class-structure of which she is a part. Because she accepts her position willingly she has no oppressive feeling of social inferiority. If, however, she becomes "class-con-scious" in the Marxist sense, a different situation arises. She may sulkily assent to her condition of servitude-in which case she will probably drop any attempts to "improve" her mode of speaking. Or she may become aggressive about it, and deliberately roughen her speech in various ways, so that it becomes cruder than that of her parents. In theorising about these matters there is, of course, the danger of becoming fanciful. But I think the pace at which people speak cften has a significant bearing on their social position. ountry people generally speak slowly. They belong to a pattern of life that is more leisurely than that of the hectic city. | The American drawl probably has some | connection with the easy, slow-moving | life of the early colonists and settlers. | People in hot countries tend to speak more slowly than those in cold climates. And people who have to get a great deal of work done in a very short time tend to speak quickly and jerkily. At the more highly-sophisticated levels of society there is often something close to a conscious intention in the way people regulate the pace at which they speak. The Services usually speak crisply, to convey the idea of efficiency. The Mayfair lady of ostenta‘ious leisure drawls, as if to show that she has plenty of time to say what she has to sayeven if it is not worth saying. Her servants probably speak with that quick rattle of Cockney English one hears in East End pubs. I am generalising, of course-throw-ing out suggestions rather than trying to lay down the law. In my next article I shall have something to say about New Zealand speech.