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ISSN: 0043-7956 (Print) 2373-5112 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwrd20

Accent, Pattern, and Dialect in North American

English

Marshall D. Berger

To cite this article: Marshall D. Berger (1968) Accent, Pattern, and Dialect in North American
English, Word, 24:1-3, 55-61, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1968.11435513

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1968.11435513

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lv!ARSHALL D. BERGER - - - - - - - - - -

Accent, Pattern, and Dialect in

North American English 1

In his functional approach to linguistic analysis André Martinet caUs

attention repeatedly to the fact that linguistic structures contain so many
redundancies that mutual understanding among the various speech types
of a language is rarely impaired. Deviations from the expected or from
the familiar are apt to be lumped under the heading of "accent." 2 Lin-
guists tend to ignore this term as imprecise and confusing. Yet, examination
of sociolinguistic reality shows the term to have important meaning not
necessarily covered by the more technical terms dialect and pattern. The
latter, the very handy English term for any complex of interrelated and
functioning parts, is well established in the social sciences as well as in
linguistics in such phrases as behavior pattern, cultural pattern, and speech
pattern. Dialect, although familiar to Iinguists and nonlinguists alike, is
used in severa! senses which make it ambiguous-hence potentially con-
fusing-in sorne contexts. As Martinet points out, dialect as understood
in Europe refers to the vernaculars used by members of smaller provincial
communities within a larger national community, whereas in the United
States dialect refers to any variety of English set off from other varieties
of English, phonetically, morphosyntactically, or Iexically.3 Dialects of
the first type are frequently not mutually intelligible, whereas dialects of
the second type always are. One can then contrast the terms accent,
speech pattern, and dialect in the following manner:
1. Accent. This word refers to the speaker-hearer relationship, com-
prising tho se elements of pronunciation which are audible and identifiable.
1 This is an expanded version of a paper presented before the Thirteenth Annual
National Conference on Linguistics sponsored by the Linguistic Circle of New York,
March 9, 1968.
2 A. Martinet, A Functional View of Language (London, 1962), pp. 104-113.
3 A. Martinet, op. cit. and Elements of General Linguistics (Chicago, Ill.: 1964), pp.
146-147; Raven 1. McDavid, Jr., "The Dialects of American English," in W. Nelson
Francis, The Structure of American English (New York, 1958), p. 480.
55
56 MARSHALL D. BERGER

ln English the hierarchy of featurcs of "accent" is: vowds, prosodie and

rhythmic features, consonants, and certain vocal qualities. The layman
may also use the word flavor to indicate an accent of lesser degree. In
sociolinguistic reality the role of "accent" is vital.
2. Speech pattern. This phrase signifies the equivalent of langue on the
phonological leve!, the underlying system of internai relationships, the
code. Accent, viewed dynamically, constitutes the parole which mani-
fests the pattern or langue.
3. Dialect. This word denotes a complex of interwoven subsystems of
pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Renee, a speech pattern
constitutes only the phonological part of a dialect; it could be called a
phonolect. American scholars, as mentioned earlier, generally use the
term to designate any variety of English, whether social or geographie.
The European type of dialect is little known in the United States and
Canada. There are, to be sure, specialized vocabularies among certain
occupational groups and social classes, and highly differentiated forms
of folk speech may be found here and there in continental North America
and the West Indics. On the whole, however, the American situation is
historically different from that of the Old World, which dates back to a
medieval past with its centuries old fragmentation of the social, linguistic,
and cultural landscape.4 Moreover, American economie and political
sectionalism, urban-rural conflict, and ethnie pluralism play havoc with
sociogeographic models inspired by European circumstances.
In order to illumina te the problem of regional accent and speech pattern,
one need only cite the case of mid- and low-back vowels and their phono-
lexical incidence in the English of the United States and Canada, a prob-
lem which scarcely exists in other types of English. In England, for
example, traditional short o words such as cot, don, sad, and stock are
sounded with a more or less rounded low-back vowel [o], while caught,
dawn, sawed, and stalk have a much more rounded low- or mid-back
vowel [J]. In a few cases where there is little or no functional load,
vacillation is common: off, loss, elath, false, and Austria may be sounded
with either vowel. Furthermore, want, wash, and watch behave like the
words of the short o group; only water with [J] stands apart from the
rest.5 By contrast with this rather simple situation, that of North America
is maddeningly complicated. There is, first of ali, the fact that various
distinctions between low-back vowels have disappeared entirely from
most categories of words in four regions of the North-American English

4 A. Martinet, "Dialect," Romance Plzilology, VIII (1954), 1-11.

s Daniel Jones, An Outline of Englislz Phonetics (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 77-81.
 ACCENT, PATTERN, AND DIALECT IN NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH 57
speech community: most of eastern New England, a good part of Central
and Western Pennsylvania and parts of adjoining Ohio and West Virginia,
a Rocky Mountain-Pacific Coast area with ill-defined boundaries, and
most, if not ail, of English-speaking Canada, together with certain United-
States border areas. In these regions cot-caught, don-dawn, sod-sawed,
and stock-stalk are homophonous pairs. The phoneme used in these
words may range from a very clark [a] to a weil-rounded [;:,];the average
timbre is [o]. In the rest of the North American speech area, i.e., in most
of the United States, where ali patterns distinguish rounded mid- and low-
back vowels of the [;:,] type from unrounded low-back vowels of the [a]
type, these phonemic types do not occur in the same words; wherever
minimal pairs do not exist in the lexicon or where the functional load of
such pairs is slight, either type of vowel may occur in certain classes of
words. 6 Thus,
cot [kat] caught [bt]
don [dan] dawn [d;:,n]
are consistently distinguished from
sod [sad] sawed [s;:,d]
stock [stak] stalk [st;:,k]
But log [lag] [l;:,g]
gong [gaiJ] [g;:,IJ]
scoff [skaf] [sk;:,f]
may be either or [fl;:,r:}d:}]
Fior ida [flar:}d:}]
wash [waJ] [w;:,J]
golf [galf] [g;:,lf]
Close examination of these and similar examples reveals that the
vacillation occurs predominantly before the dorso-velars fgf and fiJf, the
voiceless fricatives fff, fsf, and f9f, and the sonorants frf and flf, as weil
as after fwf. For a very long time dictionaries made little attempt to
record the various pronunciations of these word types. It has now become
common practice to list the most widespread variants in the body of
each dictionary with more detailed explanation of diversity in usage in the
front matter sections.7 However, neither from the pronunciation entries
nor from the articles in the front matter would one be able to derive the
understanding that there are patterns of phonolexical incidence and that
these patterns are associated in most cases with specifie regional corn-
6 Charles K. Thomas, An Introduction to the Phonetics of American English (2nd ed.;
New York, 1958), pp. 117-119,200,203-206, and 216 ff.; McDavid, op. cit., p. 515 ff.
7 Reference is made here to the various unabridged and desk dictionaries published
by such reputable American firms as the G. & C. Merriam Company, Funk & Wagnalls,
Random House, and the World Publishing Company.
F.TI-3
58 MARSHALL D. BERGER

plexes centering about important cities. The few handbooks of American

English phonetics and of dialect geography that have broached the subject
have not been of much help either. Table 1 gives the normal pattern of
phonolexical incidence for a small but very significant list of "short o"
and wa-words in the urban and suburban-rural hinterlands of ten North
American cities.
Note that these listings represent only the basic patterns of low- and
mid-back vowel distinctions and paradigms of phonolexical incidence of
the indicated communities. As mentioned earlier, such patterns manifest
themselves through complexes of vowel qualities, consonant articulations,
prosodie features, and certain vocal qualities. Metropolitan New York,
for instance, is known for its strongly rounded, raised mid-back centering
diphthongindog, water, dawn, and so on: [d2.L;:~g], [W2.L;:~t;:~], [d2.L;:~n]; frequent
dental articulation of apical consonants; frequent absence of final and
preconsonantal r; and foreign intonations and cadences in the speech of
many persons of eastern and southern European background. 8 Within
the New York metro poli tan area there are many "accents" but relatively
little pattern variation of the type being discussed here. In a similar vein,
the normal pronunciation of the rounded mid-low-back vowel of the
Great Lakes area including Buffalo and Chicago may vary in quality
from a well-rounded but lax [;:>] to a lax slightly rounded [o], while its
unrounded low vowel counterpart ranges from a somewhat back [a] to a
strongly fronted or centralized [a]. This latter vowel is particularly
noticeable as a characteristic of regionally specialized Great Lakes speech:
Don got on top of the cot [da:n ga:t a:n ta:p ;:~o;:~ ka:t]. In addition, many
individuals nasalize sorne or aU of the stressed vowels.9 Those speakers
whose accents do not indicate their provenience, in the present instance
whose [;:>]and [a] vowels are neither strongly rounded nor strongly fronted,
as the case may be, can be said to possess regional/y generalized speech. In
the field of radio broadcasting the absence of obvious regional accent is
an essential part of the professional equipment of the commercial radio
announcer. At the same time the absence of "pattern" would be impos-
sible, although there is no doubt that persons who have traveled widely
especially during the formative years of childhood and early adolescence
usually develop hybrid patterns, if not hybrid accents as weil.
Close examination ofthreefold division of the United States into Eastern,
Southern and General American speech area shows that it is based on
sAllen F. Hubbell, The Pronunciation of English in New York City (New York, 1950),
pp. 82-83; Louis Levy, Edward Mammen, and Robert Sonkin, Voice and Speech
Handbook (New York, 1955), p. 99 tf.
9 Thomas,op.cit.,pp.117,23û-231.
 >
n
Q
z
~
;;....;
....;
TABLE 1 ~
::<:!
z
Key
Words Boston Providence New Haven New York Philadelphia Baltimore Albany Buffalo Chicago 1 Toronto ~
tl
tl
011 on on on on ;:m ;m on on on on ;;;:
d;>g d;>g d;>g d;>g d;>g d;>g d;>g d;>g dog r
dog dog ~

log log log log log log l;>g l;>g l;>g l;>g log n
....;
fog fog fog fog fog fog [;>g fog f;>g [;>g fog
cog kog kog kog kog kog kog kog kog kog kog
z
F/orida flor:>d:> flor:>d:> ft;>r:>d:> flor:>d:> flor:>d:> flor:>d:> ft;>r:>d:> ft;>r:>d:> ft;>r:>d:> ft;>r:>d:> z
c
sorry sori sari sari sari sari sari sari sari sari s;,ri ::<:!
....;
wash woJ w;>J W;>J woJ woJ woJ woJ w;>J w;>J woJ :r:
water wot:> w;,t;:, w;>t:>(r) w;>t:>(r) w;>t:>r w<Jt:>r w<Jt:>r w;,t;:,r w;,t:>r wot:>r >
watch wotJ w;>tJ wotJ wotJ wotJ wotJ wotJ wotJ W;>tJ wotJ s::m
::<:!
n
>
z
~
zCl
r
üi
:r

V1
10
60 MARSHALL D. BERGER

features which are clearly perceived by the alert layman-r coloring,

certain well-known regional vowels, intonation, rhythms and cadences;
in other words, the dialect map reproduced in many speech textbooks is
better described as an "accent" map.lO This simple trifurcation serves
very weil the purposes of speech teachers who are concerned largely with
the teaching of voice and diction and other speaking skills. It is inade-
quate for other purposes. Detailed discussion of areal classifications
based on sound phonological analysis would be out of place here, but the
work of Thomas, Kurath, McDavid, Smith, and others clearly points
the way, however crudely and tentatively.u
Few commentators on the problem of phonological diversity in the
English-speaking world have called attention to the need to distinguish
accents from dialects, let al one speech patterns. A pro minent exception is
David Abercrombie wh ose writings make clear the inadvisability ofreferring
to ali speech differences as dialectal, lumping ali varieties together re-
gardless of their internai structures and their function in the social world.
Abercrombie, however, does not discuss accent versus pattern; perhaps
the British situation, both socially and linguistically, does not easily
lend itselfto such an analysis.tz
The clearly overlooked fact is, as Martinet almost alone stresses, that
some features of speech are blatantly outstanding and others are pain-
fully subtle. The significance of these features varies correspondingly;
in sorne contexts the clearly noticeable sounds are of sociolinguistic
importance. Though the subtle ones may play no obvious role in the
interplay between speech and social setting, they may be of overriding
importance in geographie, social, and linguistic analysis of a higher
order. Linguists who put ali features of a distinctive nature into one
basket of "total accountability" or "explanatory adequacy" only succeed
in confusing what ought to be kept apart-the scholar's idealized, uni-
dimensional techniques of formulation, tabulation and notation and the
speaker's multidimensional responses to the pressures of social corn-
10 Arthur J. Bronstein, The Pronunciation of American English (New York, 1960), pp.
43-44.
11 Bronstein, pp. 45-51; Thomas, op. cit.; Hans Kurath and Ra ven I. Mc David, Jr.,
The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States (Ann Arbor, 1961); and Henry Lee
Smith, Jr., whose radio program in the early 1940's both instructed and entertained
the public through the skillful analysis of the speech patterns of persons selected from
the studio audience. In terms that have become familiar to us in recent years, Dr.
Smith employed analytic techniques which were at once phonemic and phonetic. He
has since produced an educational film illustrating his approach, but no published
findings have appeared.
12 David Abercrombie, "English Accents," The Speech Teacher, IV (1955), 10-18.
 ACCENT, PATTERN, AND DIALECT IN NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH 61
munication. The functional approach of Martinet teaches us how to deal
with sociolinguistic reality as weil as how to utilize our perception of
phonetic substance in arriving at a fuller understanding of phonological
systems. Yet, the concern with patterns and systems does not preclude
the concern with "accents" which involves the interrelationship of both
patterns and substances.

The City College of the

City University of New York