|
Standard Midwestern or General American is a notional accent of American English based on speech patterns common in the Midwest of the United States and those used by many American network television broadcasters. The Standard Midwestern pronunciation and dialect is not thought of as a standard pronunciation, but is used because it is perceived as accentless by most Americans. The idea of a uniform media American accent has declined in popularity since the late 1960s.
Individuals from the Midwestern US sometimes have difficulty understanding other dialects of English, because most other dialects, both in other parts of the US and abroad, place less stress on consonants and on syllables in the middle of words. Since Slavic languages stress consonants even more heavily than does Standard Midwestern, a Russian who learns English extremely well often sounds almost Midwestern (cf. Vladimir Posner). This is especially noticeable in the speech of interpreters for important Russian officials.
Like the British Received Pronunciation, standard Midwestern was never the accent of the entire nation. Rather, it was derived from a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters, in part because the national broadcasters preferred to hire people who spoke in this way. The famous newscaster Walter Cronkite popularized this dialect as a newsanchor. Since Cronkite was from Missouri, some assumed that Standard Midwestern was the regional dialect of the state. It is sometimes promoted as preferable to other regional accents; in the U.S., classes promising "accent reduction" generally attempt to teach this accent. As the well-known television journalist Linda Ellerbee, who worked
hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas accent, has said, "in television
you are not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere."
While there is and can be no single formal definition of "Standard Midwestern", various features are considered to be "Standard", including rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the postvocalic /r/ in words like pearl, car, and court. Because this is a generalized accent, certain vowel mergers, including the cot/caught vowel merger between /A/ and /O/, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varieties; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving phonemic distinctions.
Within American English, standard Midwestern and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like Ebonics.
See also
|
