Let's take a walk...

On Race

I think you become an adult when you reach a point where you don’t need anybody underneath you. When you can look at yourself and say I’m okay the way I am. I don’t need anybody underneath me. One of the things that keeps my class of people from having any vision is race hatred. You’re so busy hating somebody else, you’re not gonna realize how beautiful you are and how much you destroy all that’s good in the world.

Peggy Terry in Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession, by Studs Terkel

Changing Accents

My first year as an undergraduate, I did a class presentation on the effect of geographic mobility on the retention of a local dialect. I had just moved to St. Augustine, Florida from Kings Ferry, Florida—only an hour and a half drive away, but worlds apart. Kings Ferry is rural; St. Augustine, I suppose could be classified as urban. It had a much higher population density, and it was both a college town and a tourist town. With exposure to new accents, mine began to change. I lost some of the sing-song-iness, the extra syllables, and double negatives too (although I can call them forth when I choose to).

I moved away from home about nine years ago. After college, I moved to Richmond, Virginia, an even larger urban place. I went to graduate school, where I continued to be interested in geographic mobility and how it changes you. My accent is for the most part homogenized. The slowness remains.

I just came across the note cards I used for reference during the undergraduate presentation.They’ve made me realize that ever since the beginning of my journey from home, I’ve been trying to make my way back somehow—by trying to make sense of displacement.

1. The effect of geographic mobility on the retention of a local dialect.

2. Language Acquisition—

Across all cultures, language is acquired by trial and error methods by approximately age 5. This period when language immersion is very important is known as the “critical period.” After approx. age 5, the language acquisition device, or LAD, shuts off.

3. Since accents are a part of the language we acquire as young children, we assume that accents are acquired as well.

4. The question then becomes “how do we explain accent change in a person who migrates out of the region of his or her native accent?”

5. I’ll present an example. We have a small town. In this town, most of the people (people who have lived in the town since birth) share the same accent.

6. Let’s say 2 best friends who share basically the same accent graduate from H.S., and one (whom we’ll call migrant) moves away to college in a different accent region, while the other stays in the town.

7. A year later, the friends reunite and notice differences in their accents. The migrant’s accent has changed, though features of the native accent remain.

8. According to our rule regarding acquisition of language, it’s not possible that the migrant acquired the second accent, but rather, it was consciously learned.

9. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania did a study that shows that adult migrants make changes in their linguistic production and perception upon constant exposure to a 2nd dialect, though not all features change.

10. The changes a migrant makes involve both accommodations to the new dialects they are surrounded by as well as changes that don’t involve such accommodation.

11. So basically, we all retain our native dialect, but are able to make changes in social situations or upon constant immersion into a second dialect.

The evolution of suburbs

“The history of suburban construction can be understood as the evolution of seven vernacular patterns. Building in borderlands began about 1820. Picturesque enclaves started around 1850 and streetcar buildouts around 1870. Mail-order and self-built suburbs arrived in 1900. Mass-produced, urban-scale “sitcom” suburbs appeared around 1940. Edge nodes coalesced around 1960. Rural fringes intensified around 1980. All of these patterns survive in the metropolitan areas of 2003. Many continue to be constructed.”  —Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000

“Recently, I drove around some of the subdivisions on State Road 54, as well as in other parts of Tampa Bay and in southwest Florida. A friend from Tampa, who accompanied me on one outing, called them ‘ghost subdivisions’.”  —George Packer, “The Ponzi State: Florida’s foreclosure disaster,” The New Yorker, Feb. 9 & 16, 2009