Mid-Atlantic accent explained

The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent,[1] [2] is a nickname for various accents of English that are perceived as blending features from both American and British English. Most commonly, it refers to accents of the late 19th century to mid-20th century spoken by the Northeastern American upper class, as well as related accents in the early half of the 20th century taught at American schools of acting and performed onstage for classical plays,[3] which incorporated features of Received Pronunciation,[2] the prestige variety of British English. This speaking style also became associated with certain Hollywood actors in that era.[4] [2]

A Mid-Atlantic accent was never the widespread or typical accent of any region; rather, according to voice and drama professor Dudley Knight, "its earliest advocates bragged that its chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it unless educated to do so".[5] The late 19th century first produced recordings of and commentary about such accents associated with the Northeastern elite and their private preparatory school education.

A similar accent that resulted from different historical processes, Canadian dainty, was also known in Canada, existing for a century before waning in the 1950s.[6] More generally, "mid-Atlantic accent" may refer to any accent, including more recent ones, with a perceived mixture of American and British characteristics.[7] [8] [9]

Elite accents

History

In the 19th century and into the early 20th century, formal public speaking in the United States focused primarily on song-like intonation, lengthily and tremulously uttered vowels (including overly articulated weak vowels), and a booming resonance.[10] Moreover, since at least the mid-19th century, upper-class communities on the East Coast of the United States increasingly adopted many of the phonetic qualities of Received Pronunciation[11] [2] —the standard accent of the British upper class—as evidenced in recorded public speeches of the time. One of these qualities is non-rhoticity, sometimes called "R-dropping", in which speakers delete the phoneme pronounced as //r// except before a vowel sound (thus, in pair but not pairing), which is also shared by the traditional regional dialects of Eastern New England (including Boston), New York City, and some areas of the South, although precisely how varied by exact location, social class, and other demographic factors. Sociolinguists like William Labov describe that non-rhoticity, "following Received Pronunciation, was taught as a model of correct, international English by schools of speech, acting, and elocution in the United States up to the end of World War II".

Early recordings of prominent Americans born in the middle of the 19th century provide some insight into their adoption (or not) of a carefully employed non-rhotic Mid-Atlantic speaking style. President William Howard Taft, who attended public school in Ohio, and inventor Thomas Edison, who grew up in Ohio and Michigan in a family of modest means, both used natural rhotic accents. Yet presidents William McKinley of Ohio and Grover Cleveland of Central New York, who attended private schools, clearly employed a non-rhotic, upper-class, Mid-Atlantic quality in their public speeches that does not align with the rhotic accents normally documented in Ohio and Central New York State at the time; both men even use the distinctive and especially archaic affectation of a "tapped R" at times when R is pronounced, often when between vowels.[12] This tapped articulation is additionally sometimes heard in recordings of Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley's successor from an affluent district of New York City, who used a cultivated non-rhotic accent but with the addition of the coil-curl merger once notably associated with New York accents.[12] His distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt also employed a non-rhotic Mid-Atlantic accent,[13] though without the tapped R.

In and around Boston, Massachusetts, a similar accent, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, was associated with the local urban elite: the Boston Brahmins. In the New York metropolitan area, particularly including its affluent Westchester County suburbs and the North Shore of Long Island, other terms for the local Transatlantic pronunciation and accompanying facial behavior include "Locust Valley lockjaw" or "Larchmont lockjaw", named for the stereotypical clenching of the speaker's jaw muscles to achieve an exaggerated enunciation quality.[14] The related term "boarding-school lockjaw" has also been used to describe the accent once considered a characteristic of elite New England boarding-school culture.

The prestige of Mid-Atlantic speech had largely ended by 1950, presumably as a result of cultural and demographic changes in the United States in the aftermath of the Second World War.[15]

Example speakers

Wealthy or highly educated Americans known for being life-long speakers of a Mid-Atlantic accent include William F. Buckley Jr.,[16] Gore Vidal, H. P. Lovecraft,[17] Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Averell Harriman,[18] [19] Dean Acheson,[20] George Plimpton,[21] [22] John F. Kennedy,[23] Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (who began affecting it permanently while at Miss Porter's School),[24] Louis Auchincloss,[25] Norman Mailer,[26] Diana Vreeland (though her accent is unique, with not entirely consistent Mid-Atlantic features),[27] C. Z. Guest[28] Joseph Alsop,[29] [30] [31] Robert Silvers,[32] [33] Julia Child[34] (though, as the lone non-Northeasterner in this list, her accent was consistently rhotic), Cornelius Vanderbilt IV,[35] and Gloria Vanderbilt. Except for Child, all of these example speakers were raised, educated, or both in the Northeastern United States. This includes just over half who were raised specifically in New York (most of them New York City) and five of whom were educated specifically at the independent boarding school Groton in Massachusetts: Franklin Roosevelt, Harriman, Acheson, Alsop, and Auchincloss.

Examples of individuals described as having a cultivated New England accent or "Boston Brahmin accent" include Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.,[36] Charles Eliot Norton,[37] Samuel Eliot Morison,[38] Harry Crosby,[39] John Brooks Wheelwright,[40] George C. Homans,[41] Elliot Richardson,[42] George Plimpton (though he was actually a life-long member of the New York City elite),[43] and John Kerry,[44] who has noticeably reduced this accent since his early adulthood toward a more General American one.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came from a privileged New York City family, has a non-rhotic accent, though it is not an ordinary New York accent but rather a Mid-Atlantic one. One of Roosevelt's most frequently heard speeches has a non-rhotic pronunciation of words like assert and firm, along with a falling diphthong in the word fear, all of which distinguishes it from other forms of surviving non-rhotic speech in the United States.[45] "Linking R" appears in Roosevelt's delivery of the words "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; this pronunciation of R is also famously recorded in his Pearl Harbor speech, for example, in the phrase "naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan".[46]

Decline

After the accent's decline following the end of World War II, this American version of a "posh" accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes, as Americans have increasingly dissociated from the speaking styles of the East Coast elite;[13] if anything, the accent is now subject to ridicule in American popular culture.[47] The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples.[48] Marianne Williamson, a self-help author and a 2020 and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, has a unique accent that, following her participation in the first 2020 presidential debate in June 2019,[49] [50] [51] was widely discussed and sometimes described as a Mid-Atlantic accent.[52] An article from The Guardian, for example, stated that Williamson "speaks in a beguiling mid-Atlantic accent that makes her sound as if she has walked straight off the set of a Cary Grant movie".[53]

Theatrical and cinematic accents

According to the vocal coach and drama professor Dudley Knight, when the 20th century began, "American actors in classical plays all spoke with English accents",[15] due to the high prestige of English Received Pronunciation (RP). Early in this century, the wealthy Brahmin accent of Boston, Massachusetts, a subset of Eastern New England English, had already absorbed notable features from RP such as non-rhoticity and the trap–bath split, when Boston was the American center for training in elocution, public speaking, and acting.[54] Therefore, this upper-class Boston accent also may have contributed to the sound then becoming popular among the wider Northeastern elite and in the American theatre.

Furthermore, the popularity of a Mid-Atlantic sound was indirectly inspired by the Australian phonetician William Tilly (né Tilley), teaching in Columbia University's extension program in New York City from 1918 to around the time of his death in 1935, who championed a version of the accent that, for the first time, was standardized with an extreme and conscious level of phonetic consistency. Calling his new standard "World English", Tilly mostly attracted a following of English-language learners and New York City public-school teachers,[55] and his goal was to popularize his standard of a "proper" American pronunciation for teaching in public schools and using in one's public life.[56] While he did not specifically work with actors himself, some of his prominent students ending up doing so. Linguistic prescriptivists, Tilly and his adherents emphatically promoted World English, and its slight variations taught in classes of theatre and oratory, helping to eventually define the Mid-Atlantic pronunciation of American classical actors for decades. According to Dudley Knight:

From the 1920s to 1940s, the Mid-Atlantic accent was a popular affectation onstage and in other forms of high culture in North America. According to Knight, Americans had the tendency to perceive World English as sounding British, which Tilly's students sometimes acknowledged and other times denied.[57] The codification of such an accent particularly for theatrical training is credited to several disciples of Tilly, notably including Margaret Prendergast McLean and Edith Warman Skinner.[2] McLean, by the late 1920s, was one of the most influential speech teachers for East Coast actors, publishing her text on the accent, Good American Speech, in 1928.[5] Edith Skinner rose to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s, best known for her own instructional text, Speak with Distinction, published in 1942. These speech teachers referred to this accent as Good (American) Speech, which Skinner also called Eastern (American) Standard and which she described as the appropriate American pronunciation for "classics and elevated texts". She vigorously drilled her students in learning the accent at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now, Carnegie Mellon) and, later, the Juilliard School. As used by actors, the Mid-Atlantic accent is also known by various other names, including American Theatre Standard or American stage speech.[58]

American cinema began in the early 1900s in New York City and Philadelphia before becoming largely transplanted to Los Angeles beginning in the mid-1910s, with talkies beginning in the late 1920s. Hollywood studios encouraged actors to learn this accent into the 1940s. For instance, in the 1952 movie Singin' in the Rain, the Skinner-like elocution coach who entreats Lina Lamont to use "round tones" is attempting to teach her American stage speech.

Examples of actors known for publicly using this accent include Bette Davis,[59] Katharine Hepburn,[60] [48] Laird Cregar, the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, Sally Kellerman, Tammy Grimes,[61] Fred Astaire,[62] William Powell,[62] Orson Welles, and Westbrook Van Voorhis.[3] Despite the accents of their native regions, Grace Kelly, Norma Shearer, and Ginger Rogers developed a Mid-Atlantic accent, including (variable) non-rhoticity and a trap–bath split, likely due to its high prestige in their era and their formal dramatic schooling.[63] Roscoe Lee Browne, defying roles typically cast for black actors, also consistently spoke with a Mid-Atlantic accent.[64] Vincent Price often used the accent in his performances, being from Missouri but attending elite Northeastern schools for high school and college, and also being British-trained.[65] Patrick Cassidy noted that his father, actor and performer Jack Cassidy, affected the Mid-Atlantic accent, despite having a native New York accent.[66] Alexander Scourby was an American stage, film, and voice actor who continues to be well-known for his recording of the entire King James Bible completed in 1953. Scourby was often employed as a voice actor and narrator in advertisements and in media put out by the National Geographic Society with his refined Mid-Atlantic accent considered desirable for such roles.[67]

Humorist Tom Lehrer lampooned the accent in a 1945 satirical tribute to his alma mater, Harvard University, called "Fight Fiercely, Harvard".[68] Cary Grant, who arrived in the United States from England aged 16,[69] had an accent that is often popularly described as "Mid-Atlantic", though his specific accent was a more natural and unconscious mixture of both British and American features.[70]

Performed examples in 20th-century media

Performed examples in 21st-century media

Although it has disappeared as a standard of high society and high culture, the Transatlantic accent has still been heard in some media in the 21st century for the sake of historical, humorous, or other stylistic reasons.

Phonology

The Mid-Atlantic accent was carefully taught as a model of "correct" English in American elocution classes before 1945 and it was also taught for use in American theatre into the 1960s, after which it fell out of vogue.[81] It is still taught to actors for use in playing historical characters.

A codified version of the Mid-Atlantic accent for the American theatre, advocated by voice coaches like Margaret Prendergast McLean and Edith Skinner ("Good Speech" as she called it), was once widely taught in acting schools of the early mid-20th century.

Vowels

English diaphonemeMid-Atlantic accentExample
According to Skinner[82] According to McLean[83] Franklin D. Roosevelt's realization
Monophthongs
pronounced as //æ//pronounced as /[æ]/pronounced as /[æ]/trap
pronounced as /[æ̝]/pan
pronounced as //ɑː//pronounced as /[a]/pronounced as /[a], [ɑː]/[84] pronounced as /[a]/bath
pronounced as /[æ̈]/dance
pronounced as /[ɑː]/pronounced as /[ɑə]/father
pronounced as //ɒ//[ɒ]lot, top
pronounced as /[ɔə]/cloth, gone
pronounced as //ɔː//pronounced as /[ɔː]/all, taught, saw
pronounced as //ɛ//pronounced as /[e]/pronounced as /[e̞]/dress, met, bread
pronounced as //ə//pronounced as /[ə]/about, syrup
[o̞]no dataobey, melody
pronounced as //ɪ//pronounced as /[ɪ]/pronounced as /[ɪ]/hit, skim, tip
response
/i/city
pronounced as //iː//pronounced as /[iː]/beam, fleet, chic
pronounced as //ʌ//pronounced as /[ɐ]/bus, gus, coven
pronounced as //ʊ//pronounced as /[ʊ]/book, put, would
pronounced as //uː//pronounced as /[uː]/glue, dew
Diphthongs
pronounced as //aɪ//pronounced as /[aɪ]/shine, try
bright, dice, pike, ride
pronounced as //aʊ//pronounced as /[ɑʊ]/ouch, scout, now
pronounced as //eɪ//pronounced as /[eɪ]/lake, paid, pain, rein
pronounced as //ɔɪ//pronounced as /[ɔɪ]/boy, moist, choice
pronounced as //oʊ//pronounced as /[oʊ]/goat, oh, show
Vowels historically followed by pronounced as //r//
pronounced as //ɑːr//pronounced as /[ɑə]/pronounced as /[ɑː]/pronounced as /[ɑə]/car, dark, barn
pronounced as //ɪər//pronounced as /[ɪə]/fear, peer, tier
pronounced as //ɛər//pronounced as /[ɛə]/[ɛə]fare, pair, rare
pronounced as //ʊər//pronounced as /[ʊə]/sure, tour, pure
pronounced as //ɔːr//pronounced as /[ɔə]/pronounced as /[ɔə~ɔː]/[ɔə]torn, short, port
pronounced as //ɜːr//pronounced as /[ɜː~əː]/burn, first, herd
pronounced as //ər//pronounced as /[ə]/doctor, martyr, surprise

Like contemporary RP, but unlike conservative RP and General American, Theatre Standard promoted that the words in the lexical set use the vowel rather than the vowel. However, speakers trained before the Theatre Standard, like Franklin Roosevelt, indeed show a - split, with the latter aligning to the vowel.[86] The vowel is also used before pronounced as //l// in words such as "all", "salt", and "malt".

KEYWORD! colspan="2"
USMid-AtlanticUK
General AmericanBostonReceived Pronunciation
TRAP/æ//æ//æ/
BATH/a/~/æ//a/~/ɑ/~/æ//ɑ/
PALM/ɑ//a//ɑ/
LOT/ɒ//ɑ/~/ɒ//ɒ/
CLOTH/ɔ/~/ɑ//ɒ/~/ɔ/
THOUGHT/ɔ/

Vowels before pronounced as //r//

In a Mid-Atlantic accent, the postvocalic pronounced as //r// is typically either dropped or vocalized. The vowels pronounced as //ə// or pronounced as //ɜː// do not undergo R-coloring. Linking R is used, but Skinner openly disapproved of intrusive R. In Mid-Atlantic accents, intervocalic pronounced as //r//'s and linking r's undergo liaison.

When preceded by a long vowel, the pronounced as //r// is vocalized to pronounced as /[ə]/, commonly known as schwa, while the long vowel itself is laxed. However, when preceded by a short vowel, the pronounced as //ə// is elided. Therefore, tense and lax vowels before pronounced as //r// are typically only distinguished by the presence/absence of pronounced as //ə//. The following distinctions are examples of this concept:

Other distinctions before pronounced as //r// include the following:

Consonants

A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below:

Labial! colspan="2"
DentalAlveolarPost-alveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasalpronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
Stoppronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
Affricatepronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
Fricativepronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
Approximantpronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/

Other pronunciation patterns

ExampleMid-Atlantic
military-arypronounced as /[əɹɪ]/
bakery-ery
inventory-ory
Canterbury-burypronounced as /[bəɹɪ]/
blueberry-berry
testimony-monypronounced as /[mənɪ]/
innovative-ativepronounced as /[ətɪv ~ ˌeɪtɪv]/

See also

General bibliography

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Drum . Kevin . Oh, That Old-Timey Movie Accent! . . 2011.
  2. Book: LaBouff, Kathryn . Singing and communicating in English: a singer's guide to English diction . . 2007 . 978-0-19-531138-9 . 241–42 . New York.
  3. News: Fallows, James . That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away. Is your language rhotic? How to find out, and whether you should care . The Atlantic . 7 June 2015 . Washington DC.
  4. Boberg, Charles (2020). "Diva diction: Hollywood’s leading ladies and the rise of General American English". American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 95(4), 441-484: "Kelly was from Philadelphia. Rogers, from Independence, Missouri, and Shearer, from Montreal, are about half R-less. Adoption of /r/ vocalization by these actresses from r-ful regions presumably reflects both formal dramatic training and the generally high prestige of this feature in the early twentieth century" (455); "Rogers, Kelly, and Shearer produce an [a:] quality in words out of respect for the British or Boston standard" (465).
  5. Knight, Dudley. "Standard Speech". In: Hampton, Marian E. & Barbara Acker (eds.) (1997). The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice. Hal Leonard Corporation. pp. 174–77.
  6. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadian-dainty-accent-canada-day-1.4167610 "Some Canadians used to speak with a quasi-British accent called Canadian Dainty"
  7. Web site: Mid-Atlantic definition and meaning – Collins English Dictionary. www.collinsdictionary.com.
  8. Web site: mid-Atlantic (adjective) definition and synonyms – Macmillan Dictionary. www.macmillandictionary.com.
  9. Web site: mid-Atlantic accent – meaning of mid-Atlantic accent in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English – LDOCE. www.ldoceonline.com.
  10. Knight, 1997, p. 159.
  11. White, E. J. (2020). You Talkin' to Me?: The Unruly History of New York English. Oxford University Press.
  12. Metcalf, A. (2004). Presidential Voices. Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 144–148.
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  26. http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-11-11/news/17268120_1_barbary-shore-american-letters-norman-mailer With Mailer's death, U.S. loses a colorful writer and character – SFGate
  27. http://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/lapl-reads/review/empress-fashion Empress of fashion : a life of Diana Vreeland
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  31. https://www.c-span.org/video/?124869-1/washington-politics Joseph Alsop
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  34. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/07/her-voice-sounded-like-money/3848/ "Her voice sounded like money ... "
  35. News: Greenhouse . Emily . The First American Anti-Nazi Film, Rediscovered . The New Yorker . May 2013 . 1 April 2014.
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  55. Knight, 1997, pp. 157–158.
  56. Knight, 1997, p. 163.
  57. Knight, 1997, p. 161.
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  62. Tham, Su Fang (2018; updated 2021). "From the Archives: Behind the Accent with Dialect Coach Jessica Drake". FilmIndependent.
  63. Boberg, Charles (2020). "Diva diction: Hollywood’s leading ladies and the rise of General American English". American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 95(4), 441-484: "Kelly was from Philadelphia. Rogers, from Independence, Missouri, and Shearer, from Montreal, are about half R-less. Adoption of /r/ vocalization by these actresses from r-ful regions presumably reflects both formal dramatic training and the generally high prestige of this feature in the early twentieth century" (455); "Rogers, Kelly, and Shearer produce an [a:] quality in words out of respect for the British or Boston standard" (465).
  64. Rawson, Christopher (28 January 2009). "Lane, Hamlisch among Theater Hall of Fame inductees" . Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2011-06-18.
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  66. Web site: Riedel . Michael . 2010-12-10 . You don't know Jack (yet) . 2022-05-17 . New York Post . en-US . My dad was born in Queens but affected this mid-Atlantic accent. The old neighborhood accent only came out when he got mad at us..
  67. Anderegg, Michael. “Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture.” Columbia University Press. New York. 2015. (p. 15)
  68. Web site: Tom Lehrer Is Not Dead! He Just Wants You to Think He Is. | The American Spectator | Politics Is Too Important To Be Taken Seriously.. The American Spectator.
  69. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/feb/15/cary-grant-screen-legend "Philip French's screen legends: Cary Grant"
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