Why We Talk Funny
The Real Story Behind Our Accents
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A fun, smart and surprising dive into the past, present and future of accents – and the enduring power of sounding different
Accents have long held our fascination. As far back as the 7th century BCE, Egyptian pharaohs experimented with babies to test out theories about the “original” accent and the Old Testament relays how a small difference in the pronunciation of “s” became a fatal litmus test of tribal belonging. Still today, from dinner parties to job interviews, you’ll find people kicking up dust about things like where and how to pronounce a ‘t,’ as in, never in “often,” but with proper British poshness, as in “t(y)une.”
In Why We Talk Funny, linguist Valerie Fridland unlocks the secrets of what linguistic science, psychology and history can tell us about the evolution of human speech, why accents develop, and how they shape our professional and social lives. With a healthy dose of her signature humor and captivating anecdotes, Fridland explores how the twin forces of physiology and psychology along with the need to fit in changes the trajectory of speech over languages and lifetimes, diving deep into the history and social forces driving the way people talk. Along the way, she emphasizes that accents don’t always set us apart, they can also bring us together. Whether it's the accent that hints at your hometown, your group, your social status or your ethnicity, the sounds we say reveal a lot about who we are and where we’ve been – even for those who might think they have no accent at all.
The story of language is the story of humanity, and as Fridland reminds us, the funny sounds we make – whether from the mouths of ancient ancestors or the tongues of screenbound teens – all come from the same powerful desire to communicate and belong. Why We Talk Funny will change the way you think about your own accent – and transform the way you listen to the sounds of others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this wide-ranging account, linguist Fridland (Like, Literally, Dude) surveys cutting-edge sociological, psychological, and historical explanations for why accents exist and what effects they have on society. As she touches on everything from the spread and evolution of Indo-European languages to U.S. accents influenced by the Great Migration, she repeatedly probes at the role that accents play in race and class, from the way that workplace advancement is hindered or helped by accents to the concept of the shibboleth, a "mispronunciation" that reveals someone as an outsider—an idea presented in the Old Testament but put into practice as relatively recently as the mid-20th century, when Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's militias sought out Haitian Creole speakers to execute by forcing people to pronounce the Spanish word for parsley. She notes that linguists have shown that accents develop naturally, along fairly robust and definable paths, as groups of people drift away from one another socially; she also explores how, as children acquire language, the mental process is deeply linked to categorization, which can include categorizing the types of people speaking. In short, she argues, accent and sociality are deeply intertwined, and addressing things like social inequality will always require people to think about what they think about how other people speak. Fast-paced and cheerily written despite sometimes heavy subject matter, this is a delightfully easygoing linguistic romp.
