Talk:Mid-Atlantic accent

Sociolect?

The entry on the Canadian counterpart of Mid-Atlantic English, namely Canadian English § Canadian dainty, describes it as a sociolect. So, my question is, can Mid-Atlantic English also be described as such? If it is (the use of it by the entertainment industry potentially makes this questionable), I'd like to add a wlink to 'sociolect' in the lede of this article.

Thoughts? Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 22:44, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Geoff Lindsey video

This article is mentioned as containing incorrect information by Geoff Lindsey, one of the leading scholars on phonetic variation in English, in a video which dropped yesterday. We probably need to add his point of view and correct this. Even though this video is not peer-reviewed content, it is expert opinion. Boynamedsue (talk) 06:28, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Strong agree. A lot of the commonly-circulated false information Lindsey discusses is so easily and patently debunked that it is remarkable this has flown under the radar for so long. —AddieMaddie ^{talk | contribs} 07:37, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I think the article doesn't actually include much inaccurate information, but the way the article is arranged can easily lead to mistakes. For instance, the opening paragraph calls it a "consciously learned accent" only to backtrack this at the end of the introduction. 73.170.84.123 (talk) 07:58, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it is a case of WP:DUE. The attention given to Lilly Tilly and his disciples was (prior to @Wolfdog:'s edits) probably very excessive, and there is still a lot there. I've tweaked the lead to avoid suggestions that the accent was always consciously-learned, but I think more work is needed there. We also have the problem that there was an "American Theatrical Standard" which was more British than the Mid-Atlantic accent which someone like Kathryn Hepburn used. This article is mixing the two up, I think.Boynamedsue (talk) 08:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

This phrase in particular presents difficulties for us: Specifically, it blended features from both prestigious coastal Northeastern American English and from Received Pronunciation, the standard speech of England. As I understand it, the accent is in effect "the prestige dialect of Northeastern American English" so it can't also be a blend with RP?Boynamedsue (talk) 08:49, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I think you've got it backwards. The Mid-Atlantic accent, as the name implies and as far as it can be said to have existed, is the continuation of an "American Theatrical Standard" and Hepburn just spoke an upper-class East Coast accent. Nardog (talk) 08:55, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

That's the problem we've got then, because a lot of the article is talking about people like Roosevelt and Hepburn, who just spoke with an Eastern accent/sociolect.--Boynamedsue (talk) 09:18, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

So, the video states at 7 minutes that the native accent is "Northeastern elite", and this was definitely the native speech of most of the people we list as being speakers of "mid-Atlantic English". There can be no basis for leaving "consciously-learned" in the text.--Boynamedsue (talk) 12:46, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

That's because they didn't speak the Mid-Atlantic accent. It's the list that's wrong, not the definition. Nardog (talk) 12:52, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, when people use the term "Mid-Atlantic accent" today, they are often including the native accent. This whole thing is real mess, as there is not actually that much written by serious linguists on this topic. There are only about 500 hits on google scholar, and most of them aren't talking about this accent, and those that do are largely throw-away mentions and BA/MA theses.Boynamedsue (talk) 13:42, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Lindsey's recent video, IMO, is both excellent at pointing out some nuances but, at the same time, overlooks other nuances. It's not that the WP article is deeply inaccurate but that MANY content-creators have slightly misrepresented and simplified info from our article. Myself and others have endeavored to use credible sources here, such as the Knight source, which seems to be this topic's main scholarly source of info. As Boynamedsue points out, I did in fact make a couple changes based on Lindsey's video: Tyrone Power spoke with a rhotic accent, so I deleted his name from the page. Let's take another point Lindsey asserts: Katharine Hepburn developed her accent before she entered the film industry in the 1930s, and Skinner only published her famous book in 1942, so any claims that people like Hepburn were learning this accent in the 1930s or 1920s is false. While that's true for Skinner, Margaret McLean (and likely many other forgotten coaches) were indeed working in those earlier decades; McLean published her book in 1928, and I've since edited the page to reflect that. This keeps the "World English influence in Hollywood" argument on the table. (Also, Hepburn self-admittedly learned her speech style at her Pennsylvania college and why would a New England accent be taught there? This seems to contradict Lindsey's basic thesis. It's also quite the jump for me, as a native Connecticuter who's studied its historical dialects, to believe Hepburn's accent on-screen is a natural New England OR Pennsylvania one.)

The main argument of this page is not that Tilly and the gang invented this accent (since a variety of roughly RP-inspired accents were used by earlier Americans like President McKinley and the Roosevelts), but that they codified a fairly phonetically consistent version for the first time, which got big in the the acting world probably as early as the 1920s, declining in the mid-20th century.

Although Lindsey is right to attack the idea of a straightup "fake accent", there is indeed a kind of "respectable and briefly-trendy but contrived accent" drilled into wealthy people of this time (again, yes, predating Hollywood) which people from that era (including Hepburn in Lindsey's own video) readily admit to in interviews. FDR does not speak with the natural features known to be used by New Yorkers in his era any more than Hepburn speaks with natural Connecticut features from her era. Is it possible that FDR and Hepburn are both using an upper-class Northeastern accent? Absolutely. But that alone doesn't assure it is a naturally acquired accent.

Since this is getting a bit long, I will give two specific speakers to consider: Aurelia Plath versus her daughter Sylvia Plath, both from money in Eastern Massachusetts, and so a very easy comparison to make... yet they have two different accents. Aurelia has the Boston Brahmin accent (presumably more natural/local among the New England elite) with unrounded LOT, fronted START, a flap for intervocalic /t/, [ɛə] for BATH, and a GenAm-style THOUGHT of the type [ɒ~ɔə]. Sylvia, on the other hand, shows RP influences in all these same features, suggesting a more acquired-later-in-life Transatlantic accent: rounded LOT, backed START, a sometimes plosive [t] for intervocalic /t/, [a] (the "intermediate A" as I think Skinner calls it) for BATH, and an RP-style THOUGHT of the type [ɔː~oː]. You might even expect the older woman to have the more RP-like sound, but this just isn't the case. Wolfdog (talk) 14:25, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I think the next moves we want to make here on WP (if any), are RELIABLE SOURCES. Good news: we do already have some. What are further sources that Lindsey can point to? There's not a lot of solid scholarship out there. I really don't think Lindsey's video is a decisive takedown of our page as much as it is of his fellow Youtubers. Wolfdog (talk) 14:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Lindsey is, in and of himself, a reliable source, being a subject expert. Anything he writes or says on English phonology is reliable per WP:RS: Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. We could argue about WP:DUE, as this is not peer-reviewed, but reliability is not an issue. Boynamedsue (talk) 16:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

That's fine. But we should all keep in mind that he is ONE source of the several reliable ones we already have on the page. I don't think the basic content of page is in any danger of being toppled by his video. I'm fine with leaving "consciously acquired accent" to simply "accent", though I and certain mentioned scholars have our doubts. (By the way, the DARE interviews at UW-Madison's website are great for examples of more "natural" older speakers of American English from around the country, including the Northeast around the relevant time. Wolfdog (talk) 18:56, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The point is there was no fake, or acquired, accent. Wealthy people in the Northeastern USA spoke that way naturally. As those people tended to control many areas, including Hollywood, that accent was over-represented on screen and radio.

As people from other regions(eg. Midwest) started entering areas like film, the dominance of Wealthy Northeastern accent started receding.

Again Nobody created an artificial hybrid accent. That was the way people in one region spoke naturally. And Hollywood was founded, and controlled by people with that accent.

And, just as Princes William and Harry have a different accent to the late George VI, so the Wealthy Northeastern US accent has changed over the years.

The idea that anyone created a phony hybrid way of speaking is untrue. It WAS an actual regional(and wealth-based) accent that, for a while, was very common in many public areas — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 (talk) 13:26, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

In fact, it would be interesting to see where and when the idea of people deliberately creating a hybrid of RP and NEUS, and schools teaching this new creation originated.

EDIT: The Original, totally unsourced, article was created on 30 June 2004 by an IP from Atlanta GA.

FURTHER: First source added 2005. Up until late 2007, it was the only source. Namely the 2004 "Do You Speak American?" by Robert MacNeil and William Cran. Does anyone have access to a copy of this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 (talk) 15:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

It's all well and good for you to have your opinions. But do you have SOURCES? Certainly, Lindsey agrees with you. However, evidently several other sources don't (Knight, Labov perhaps, and actors). Wolfdog (talk) 16:17, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Lindsey cites two concrete examples of Americans speaking with what sounds to be a British-influenced accent: Burton Holmes born 1870 in Chicago, and an unnamed member of the 9th New York Infantry Regiment, veteran of the civil war. He also quotes approvingly Dudley Knight writing that American actors doing Shakespeare in 1900 were speaking (i.e. acting) with British accents. Knight was an actor and dialect coach, a competitor with Edith Skinner with a different approach focusing on being true to your heritage rather than imitating an artificial norm. Knight wrote that Tilly and his students were careful not to describe 'World English' and 'Good American Speech' as British accents. The idea was that this was "cultivated" American speech.

You can watch William Labov et al in the three part 'Do you speak American?' PBS specials on Youtube. Labov uses the word "Mid-Atlantic" to refer to area on the coast just south of New York City. Labov did research that suggested that pre-1950, many New Yorkers did not pronounce r-sounds after vowels, but after 1950, upper middle class New Yorkers or people speaking carefully started saying their r's after vowels again. In Labov's 1966 Social Stratification thesis/book he does mention the possibility that US English became more prestigious in the wake of WWII compared to the UK.

I think it is Trey Taylor in the Atlantic in 2013 who first claims that Katharine Hepburn's accent is "fake," but I'm not sure if that really qualifies as a reliable source. Knight notes that Tilly and his students' systems were not based on an accent spoken by real people. It was their picture of how people should speak. One actor that Knight mentions is Charles Grodin who apparently didn't like Skinner's teaching style so much.Dongord (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Labov is from 2006, ie. Just after MacNeil and "Do You Speak American English?".Could Labov have used MacNeil as his sole source?

Also, MacNeil's book only mentions a "mid-Atlantic" accent once, saying that American actors playing urbane or sophisticated roles "spoke with what some called a mid-Atlantic accent".

The same chapter points out that cities like New York and Boston were settled by English people, and they brought that speech with them. Philadelphia meanwhile was closer to modern American.

Thus, the "British-sounding" speak of Old Boston, Old New York etc. predates the idea of Tilly manufacturing it.

The fact is, people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson etc. would have sounded much more like Hugh Laurie in Blackadder The Third than like Hugh Laurie in House.

People TODAY apply the idea of "American accent" to 100, 200, 300(?) years ago.

Could the 2004 Wiki article, made out of whole cloth, actually be the beginning of the idea that the accent was artificial, and not just an American accent "that some called the mid-Atlantic accent"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 (talk) 20:26, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Noah Webster writing in the 1820's was somewhat suspicious of people who dropped their /r/'s after vowels. Webster was not so keen on British English generally, and changed the spelling in his dictionaries, honor instead of honour, center instead of centre.

Hans Kurath started gathering data for the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States in 1933, and published the Handbook of Linguistic Geography of New England in 1939. The sociolinguist William Labov's thesis was completed in 1966, and released as a book, The Social Stratification of English in New York City. He compared his own observations that young upper middle class New Yorkers were no longer dropping their /r/'s after vowels in careful speech with Kurath's data which he wrote shows all New Yorkers dropped their /r/'s after vowels pre-war. Labov offhandedly suggested that WWII resulted in a "radical shift in the relative power and status of Britain and the US" as one part of the explanation as to why New Yorkers were starting to say /r/.

I have to say that just because a speaker drops their /r/'s doesn't necessarily mean that they have a British accent. These New Yorkers who say /boid/ for "bird" don't sound particularly British.

Robert Hobbs came out with a book called Teach Yourself Transatlantic in 1986, mentioned by Knight.

In 2006, Labov, Ash and Bobert used the word "Mid-Atlantic" to refer to the Middle Atlantic States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware.

Robert MacNeil was a newscaster for PBS. He interviewed Labov in the "Do You Speak American?" TV specials.Dongord (talk) 21:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

What do those sources say about it though? The main issues are:

A) Nobody disputes that there was an American accent that shared various features with British RP. The problem is the idea that it was an artificially-created accent that had no natural origin.

B) Tilly did not create it.

C) Skinner's book only came out in 1942. The idea that Skinner could be influential on the way that FDR spoke is absurd.

D) Hollywood was NOT all "Mid-Atlantic accent". Some of the most famous movies about mobsters, Midwestern families, Southern families etc. came out during the alleged "Fake Accent Era".

E) People may indeed have been persuaded to speak with the Mid-Atlantic Accent in certain movies... if the characters they were playing on screen were the type of people who would have spoken with a MA accent. someone playing a wealthy New England businessman would indeed be encouraged to speak with MA> Just as someone playing A Mafia Don would have been persuaded to speak with a Sicilian-like accent.

F) Many of the people that are today said to have used the "fake Mid-Atlantic accent" never actually did. The "experts" include a variety of American AND non-American accents under this umbrella term.

To summarise then, there was indeed a certain accent used by many (though certainly not all) people in the US Northeast (as well as other areas across the US). It was a natural accent, derived from Southern English that had evolved naturally in America. People doing plays, movies etc. about those sort of people would have been encouraged to speak like those people they were playing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 (talk) 15:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you. As far as I can tell the Teach Yourself Transatlantic book is the first salvo in this discussion, and then Knight's article. Knight is unhappy with Skinner because she is a prescriptivist. I think all these articles in the Atlantic are mainly reactions to Knight's chapter. Nosowitz, the author of the Atlas Obscura article, actually emailed with James Stanford, a linguist who wrote a book on New England English. “There’s a long history of dialect features of Southeast England in Eastern New England dialects, tracing back directly to the colonial era,” writes James Stanford, a linguist at Dartmouth College, in an email. “European settlers throughout New England on the east side of Vermont’s Green Mountains tended to stay in closer touch with Boston, which in turn stayed in touch with Southeast England through commerce and education.” Dongord (talk) 19:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

The problem is inaccurate modern perceptions. As an example, the article states that during the 19th century Americans on the East Coast "adopted British speech"(or words to that effect). Which is alarmingly ignorant.(And unsourced.) The problem comes with the bizarre modern belief that Benjamin Franklin, John Adams would have spoken like modern Americans. Nope. The Founding Fathers' speech would have been indistinguishable from the British. During the 19th century this wouldn't have altered much. If 19th century East Coast Americans used "British speech"... it is because that is the way they had always spoken. By the late 19th century, the 2 accents(NE USA, and RUKP) were different enough so that one could easily tell them apart, but not so different that there were not still clear and obvious similarities/common features.

Today, Elite Northeastern American and Upper Class Southern English are 2 distinct accents. Neither resembles the way people from their respective regions of a century ago. But the "Mid-Atlantic accent" captured a pocket in time when Elite Northeastern American speech was in the process of evolving away from British RP. It is/was a clear evolutionary link between Classic British RP and modern Elite American. It is only people who believe that accents in America have always sounded like they do in the 21st century(or late 20th century) who could believe that British colonists, and the children of British colonists, would not sound British. If there had been audio recordings since 1776, we would hear every generation of New Englanders sounding slightly less like England, until in the 20th century we hit modern American. And, as demonstrated, the Yankees during the Civil War still spoke with "British" accents. Modern Hollywood is partly to blame by having famous Americans from 18th/19th centuries speaking with modern American accents in modern movies, television series etc... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 (talk) 07:12, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Dongord's edits

@Dongord: I will respectfully ask you to stop editing the page at this point and to instead engage with a discussion with me here until we can get some disagreements sorted out. I also ask that you please stick to the topics at hand to avoid the discussion becoming too huge and unwieldy. I've reverted all your recent edits for the following reasons: some of your syntax is overly informal or contains typos like "not pronouncing your R's" or "as the year went by" or "McKean" (rather than McLean). Please point me to the source (and page, if relevant) saying that Tilly taught only summer sessions at Columbia; that may be true, but a source is needed. You are also steamrolling my edits/reverts without explanations as to why, so that we are verging on an WP:EDITWAR. At this time, please discuss any other changes you want to implement here before enacting them. Thank you. Wolfdog (talk) 19:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with using the word non-rhoticity if that's what you prefer, but I was trying to make it clearer. There are a number of articles about Tilly on the web. Tilly was an older gentleman (born 1860) who'd lived in Germany for a long time. Linguists such as his colleague at Columbia Krapp, Jones in England, Kenyon who wrote a pronouncing dictionary took exception to Tilly's prescriptivism. The main stream of linguistics in both England and the U.S. is towards descriptivism. In Tilly's own chapter, he doesn't write much about his system, but he does mention Krapp (who proposes multiple standards) and McLean. McLean makes a call for making the language cultivated speakers use the basis of her system, but then turns around, and recommends r-dropping, pronouncing the h in "who" and pronouncing "happy" with a short i at the end. I don't think Tilly or McLean got quoted much, but Skinner's book made more of a splash, being revised and reprinted many times.

Dudley Knight was teaching in southern California where people pronounce their R's, cot/caught are merged, there is no lower front a distinction as there is in New York. He taught a sort of do it yourself approach to phonetic notation, and was seemingly bothered that Skinner had ensconced herself at Carnegie Mellon and Julliard. His article is an attack on her and her approach. He may have dramatized the extent of her influence, but it is clear that her work continued to be influential within Carnegie Mellon for a long time. We have a lot of quotes from actors who don't like Skinner's approach, but it is unclear if any Hollywood actors liked her approach. Actresses such as Hepburn may have picked up their accents at private schools in New England they attended.

I don't think that the word "mid-atlantic" was used for an accent until Knight's article, so it is unhistorical to claim that early scholars were defining a mid-atlantic accent. Labov and perhaps most travel guide writers use "mid-Atlantic" to mean Pennsylvania and neighboring states.

New York, Boston and the large cities of the tidewater south are all nonrhotic. Plainly linguists who worked on New York in the 1930's were encountering some people who said "toidy-toid street", a nonrhotic accent, but this is probably not a British accent. Dongord (talk) 19:22, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the conversation, but my main points weren't addressed, so let me reiterate: please stick to the topics at hand to avoid the discussion becoming too huge and unwieldy; 2) Please point me to the source (and page, if relevant) saying that Tilly taught only summer sessions at Columbia; and 3) please discuss any other changes you want to implement here. Most importantly, be transparent about the sources you're basing your info on. Wolfdog (talk) 12:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Tilly?

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoDsZFwF-c) downplays Tilly's role in Hollywood Accent, giving audios that predate him as evidence. Kdammers (talk) 21:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment: partial split or total merge?

Should certain relevant content here on the page "Mid-Atlantic accent" 1) be moved/split off to this section on Elite Northeastern American English (or perhaps even an entirely new page Elite Northeastern American English); or, 2) should we go in the other direction and totally merge from the aforementioned section over to "Mid-Atlantic accent"? Wolfdog (talk) 17:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Requester's rationale

British linguist Geoff Lindsey has recently dropped a YouTube video that has blown up this talk page (see the previous three sections above). Lindsey claims that the Mid-Atlantic accent once employed by certain famous actors a) is not "contrived" or "consciously learned" (or, the word in his video title, "fake") in an attempted emulation of British RP as so often described in the media, and instead b) is, in fact, basically the same thing as a naturally-acquired upper-class Northeastern U.S. accent whose heyday existed about a century ago. I've studied about this for years and the confidence of Lindsey's claims shocked me. After reacquainting myself with the admittedly scanty scholarship on the topic over the last few days, I'm content that the following reliable sources do not agree with Lindsey. (His confusion though is quite understandable; there's a lot of minutiae to unpack.) With regard to a), sources that I list below contend that this is in fact an accent actively learned and taught in elocution classes rather than a native accent. As for b), sources also contend that there are in actuality two distinct accents (the learned classroom accent versus the natural regional sociolect), with general agreement that the two are indeed quite phonetically similar but not the same.

See an overview of the relevant sources

Here is an overview of the relevant sources (the Wikipedia page has others too, but these seem to be the most reliable):

• Knight's Standard Speech: The Ongoing Debate published by Vocal Vision 1997 and later reprinted by Taylor & Francis 2013: this is the main source of these arguments which can be found already heavily cited on the Wikipedia page.
• Boberg's Accent in North American Film and Television published in 2021: "Beyond its traditional connection with New England, broad-a has an obvious association with the high prestige of Standard British English, so it is not surprising to find it in several of the earlier performances studied here, and not just those of New Englanders. In fact, it was one of several high-prestige features associated with what is sometimes called a 'Mid-Atlantic' stage accent, used by some actors in early- to mid-twentieth century theater and film... Though its features vary somewhat from one actor to another, it generally took /r/ vocalization, preservation of vowel contrasts before /r/ and sporadic use of broad-a from British English, and flapped /t/, palatal glide deletion after coronals and unrounded /o/ (lot) from American. [Certain actors] came by [their] high prestige speech honestly... For other actors, Mid-Atlantic speech was an artificial accent learned in drama school." (Thanks to Nardog for this source.)
• Elliott's "Sociolinguistic study of rhoticity in American film speech from the 1930s to the 1970s" published by the University of Oregon: Mid-Atlantic theatre speech "partly follows a New England accent as its norm and partly follows the British standard"; "the target area for the prestige form apparently is intended to be New England"
• Hubbell's Pronunciation of English in New York City published by Columbia University Press in 1950: certain New York City natives' " 'eastern' patterns, to be sure, are not infrequently acquired ones, carefully drilled into the speaker in college or in finishing school"; and "The types of metropolitan pronunciation that bear any marked resemblance to the speech of eastern New England... are spoken only by a small minority of New Yorkers. So far as the other dialects of the city are concerned, divergences from the New England pattern are far more numerous than similarities".
• White's You Talkin' to Me? published by Oxford University Press in 2020: "The cultivated accent that children learned in schools would have overlaid the native New York accent, already somewhat British in its features, with a layer of further Briticisms"; and "There was a time when cultivated American speech had a New York sound. If you grew up in New York or New England in (say) the 1940s, you would have learned, either in public school or in a private or finishing school, a cultivated accent... To contemporary listeners, it actually sounded rather British, as though the speech of Southern England had been brushed over the top of New York speech. While some people disliked the artificiality of this school-taught accent, they agreed that it was pervasive; as late as 1952, a linguist could take for granted the “ ‘elocutionist fiction’ which prescribes for cultivated usage a mixture of eastern New England speech and Southern British English."
• Urban's "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American Theatre Standard" published by Jagiellonian University Press in 2021: This is particularly fascinating because it actually is looking into the specific question: Is the Northeastern century-old sociolect distinct from the Mid-Atlantic American Theatre Standard (ATS) accent? Some snippets: Since ATS promoters wanted ATS modeled on cultivated accents, "the north-eastern upper-class standard and the theatre standard are occasionally equated". Also: "to the extent that FDR’s accent is a good illustration of the north-eastern standard, the latter was certainly not identical to ATS"; "The main reason for the discrepancies between FDR’s pronunciation and ATS is that the former is a spoken variety, whereas the latter is a prescriptive construct"; and "British influences are obvious in both [FDR's speech and ATS], but ATS is far closer to its elder overseas sibling both in systemic and phonetic terms".

Lindsey also makes other claims that these sources would regard as contentious, but back to my Request for Comment. Does it make more sense to split along the lines of the two accents (one theatre-based Mid-Atlantic accent page and one Elite Northeastern accent page/section); or, to simply merge everything here into one "Mid-Atlantic accent" because the two accents are so commonly (if somewhat mistakenly) equated? Wolfdog (talk) 17:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Survey

• Split. Even if the two are very similar and related, interleaving information on a naturally acquired accent with info on an invented theater standard is really confusing, and can lead to people confusing the two. Erinius (talk) 13:38, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: My current feeling is that despite the two being distinct, they are both widely called by the same name "Mid-Atlantic/Transatlantic accent": #1) the upper-class sociolect and #2) the theatre-school accent. Even if we were to split, with the name most commonly used for #2, I don't think #1 has any great alternative name to send it to. (I'm already a little hesitant about having the Elite Northeastern American English section currently at Northern American English, since the latter is defined in part by rhoticity, which the Elite dialect lacks.) Wolfdog (talk) 01:00, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

This article perpetuates a myth

See this youtube video to see how this article perpetuates incorrect myths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoDsZFwF-c Opiononator (talk) 22:02, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

See literally everything above this post. Wolfdog (talk) 21:15, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Tom Lehrer / Fight Fiercely Harvard?

The accent Tom Lehrer uses in Fight Fiercely Harvard is not this accent. It is just Lehrer's normal speech with exaggerated, effete diction and word order. It's main claim to being mid-Atlantic is that it's non-rhotic, especially in "fiercely" and "Harvard", and, possibly "our". I think it should be removed from this page.

Compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNQAFm2OYXQ&t=59 and https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/2-05_Fight_Fiercely%2C_Harvard.mp3 (at 1:21) Mgolden (talk) 16:35, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I can't say I agree. In the song, he's affecting a tapped or trilled R, avoiding happy tensing, and lampooning other features that are clearly not part of his normal accent (which seems largely rhotic to me). Wolfdog (talk) 21:04, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

The Mid-Atlantic article itself says that the tapped R (not trilled, which Lehrer does not employ) was _not_ a standard part of the Mid-Atlantic accent, except in early recordings of a few speakers. (Yes, Lehrer has a rhotic accent as can be heard here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-10_New_Math.mp3) The article notes that that tapped R is an affectation, which one of things I referred to as "effete diction".

Regarding the happy tensing - At 1:51 we have "How Jolly!", which seems middling tense, and at 2:19 there is "Peachy" and "Oh Goody!", which aren't relaxed at all. (For reference, here's Queen Elizabeth with some really untense words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkkZdeAoF9A&t=102 ) Mgolden (talk) 04:59, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm getting "middling tense" or even "barely tense" for all of these (also the last "fiercely" is not tense). Certainly non-rhotic (as opposed to his rhotic natural accent). And listening carefully now, yes, a tapped R. There's no "standard part of the Mid-Atlantic accent". It's a constellation of a variety of features that some people perhaps attempted to standardize in the theatre world. Doesn't the fact that Lehrer employing the tapped R help confirm that he is aiming for a Mid-Atlantic stereotype (however ludicrously or hyperbolically)? Wolfdog (talk) 20:16, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Still too much Skinner

Despite all the discussion above, anyone reading this article will still come away with the impression that Edith Skinner was the arbiter of what and what was not the Mid-Atlantic accent. There are no less than 11 places where the article describes what Skinner advocated or discouraged, essentially by way of defining the Mid-Atlantic accent itself. Particularly in light of Dr. Lindsay's critique of the importance attributed to Skinner's work on Hollywood, I think this needs further de-emphasis. (WP:DUE again)

Along these lines, the article claims that Skinner "rose to prominence" in the 1930s and 1940s, in contrast to Dr. Lindsay, who says that Skinner's influence on movie accents in the 1930s was "precisely zero". In fact, it seems that The Vocal Vision, given in footnote 9 to support this date range, actually supports Lindsay. (https://archive.org/details/vocalvisionviews0000unse/page/174/mode/2up) It states that Skinner's reputation was "gradually established" when she taught theater at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University). Her Wikipedia biography states that she only finished university in 1931 and was hired at CMU starting in 1937, staying there until 1974. It seems unlikely that she was noteworthy before her book was published in 1942.

I don't see anyone responding to the Survey posted above. I think that if people feel there's need for an article on speech in theater and movies, it should be separated from this one. If such an article is needed, it should be more careful than this one regarding the importance of the dialect coaches. Mgolden (talk) 06:28, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi, maybe you can provide a specific action you'd like to take on the page re:Skinner. Just remove Skinner's name a bit more from the article? Look at my writing above that starts Lindsey's recent video, IMO, where I already address some of your concerns. A lot of the areas suggesting what Skinner advocated/discouraged is because, in the past, those descriptions were given on the page as divine law but my further digging revealed in fact that some scholars (like Skinner, who admittedly has written extensively on such phonetics) used one pronunciation while other more "natural" speakers of the accent (like FDR, whose accent we now have a study on) used some other pronunciation. So there's a lot of comparing/contrasting going on. All this helps show, by the way, how "Mid-Atlantic" is a kind of catch-all term for accents perceived by Americans as posh and somewhat British, rather than a single phonetically exact or consistent accent. There's a lot of variation. Pointing to Skinner a few times, who codified a lot of this (certainly including what people before her were doing), is merely a practical strategy. Wolfdog (talk) 20:26, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

There are two sources provided for when Skinner "rose to prominence" in the 1930s: the Knight article and the Mufson article. You're right that perhaps Knight does not explicitly say the 1930s but says Tilly and followers like Skinner promoted their Mid-Atlantic transcription in the official IPA journal in the 1930s. The Mufson article meanwhile, on its first page, says "Starting before World War II, Skinner began training a phalanx of followers that filed forth from her classes to dominate speech training at MFA and non-degree programs". So, the 1930s, right?

As for the splitting of the article, that is a move I feel alright about, though we would need to figure out what to name each article. Both topics are generally called "Mid-Atlantic/Transatlantic accent". i.e. laypersons hear it all as the same. And they're not entirely wrong that the two are fairly deeply conflated due to perceptual, historical, and class-based reasons. Wolfdog (talk) 20:45, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Wolfdog, I appreciate the careful reply. My apologies in advance for the length of my comment here.

Here's the main point first: Skinner was not a linguist, someone who studied the accent and described it as it existed in various locations and social classes. Hers was a prescriptive project, teaching stage actors how she thought they should be speaking. This article numerous times states or implies that whatever she said was the way people _should_ speak is in fact the way people with the mid-Atlantic accent _were_ speaking. All the evidence is opposite. She was training people on the stage in how she thought they should sound on the stage.

But this article is about an accent that people in the real world spoke, and as such referring to Skinner or Tilly is completely inappropriate for those purposes. Given that there is a lot of confusion about this point in the world (which Dr. Lindsey suggests may have been partially caused by earlier versions of this article), I think it should be made absolutely clear that the accent was a real thing, entirely separate from anything on a stage or screen, and that Skinner et al, did not study it or advocate it as it was actually spoken.

Dr. Lindsey cites a podcast from Mo Rocca in which the linguist John McWhorter and Skinner's student Jessica Drake were interviewed. (https://www.mobituaries.com/news/death-of-an-accent/) I listened to it after writing my last comment, and it has clarified my view.

Drake in particular sheds considerable light on these matters. (Her section of the show begins about 25 minutes in

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-mobituaries-with-mo-rocca-30398541/episode/death-of-an-accent-126586987/?position=1482) I suggest anyone interested in this subject listen to the whole show, especially Drake's part - which is quite informative. Here's the critical relevant part for this discussion:

Rocca:

One piece of misinformation you'll find online about this accent is the notion that it was taught to Golden age Hollywood actors by a woman named Edith Skinner, a speech teacher best known for writing a book called Speak With Distinction. Jessica Drake was one of Skinner's students at New York's famed Juilliard School, and she wants to set the record straight about her late mentor.

Drake:

Edith Skinner was really dedicated to the theater more than anything else. The theater. She is responsible definitely for training a whole generation of regional theater actors.

Rocca:

But Jessica says Skinner couldn't have coached those old-timey Hollywood stars because she never once worked in Hollywood.

How did she become associated with this accent?

Drake:

Misinformation is the simplest answer. Unfortunately, there have been things put into print that have claimed that she was in Hollywood teaching in the thirties, or that actors were running around the studio lots carrying her book under their arms. This is all complete and total fabrication.

Rocca:

In fact, her book wasn't published until nineteen forty two, and then it was only available in the bookstore at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech, where she taught at the time. Now, Skinner did teach a later generation of actors something that would come to be known as Good American Speech.

Drake:

So the sound that she came up with, the Good American speech, is certainly based on what we've been talking about - that Northeastern accent.

...

So, here Drake makes it crystal clear: Skinner _came_up_with_ the accent she was advocating. She was not trying to teach people to speak the way a certain group of people _did_ speak. That would make no sense anyway - sounding like real people wasn't even particularly a goal of acting until the 1950s (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strasberg#Actors_Studio).

To go back the relatively minor point of when Skinner became "prominent". As I noted, she started at Carnegie Tech in 1937. That is consistent with the sentence you quote: "Starting before World War II, Skinner began training a phalanx of followers that filed forth from her classes to dominate speech training at MFA and non-degree programs." But that is not evidence that she was "prominent" at that time - as I said, it seems unlikely she was prominent just after she started. Given how confused people are about this matter, it's best if this article avoids dating her notability to "the 1930's", because that includes the time when sound movies started, which is quite misleading. If there's a need to discuss her career, it would be better to say what the sources say, which is she became prominent gradually starting after she joined Carnegie Tech in 1937.

If Wikipedia is to have an article on the subject of what Dr. Lindsey referred to as "American Theater Standard" (or "Good American English"), then it would be appropriate to delve into the various versions of it as it existed over time, and what its different exponents believed was the proper way to execute the accent. Such an article would doubtless refer to this one, because American Theater Standard was based on this accent. It's best if Skinner and the others aren't in this article at all. Mgolden (talk) 04:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly, here's an article comparing FDR's speech to the Theater Standard (and noting the differences)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357134848_Franklin_D_Roosevelt_and_the_American_Theatre_Standard_The_low_vowels Mgolden (talk) 05:43, 30 December 2024 (UTC)