so how do speech accents pop up in subcultures?

So I always thought accents were tied pretty much strictly to how a society speaks its native language(s) from its ethnic heritages and family customs, more specifically how families in a given geographic area raise their offspring to speak -- so you hear a lot of the Scandinavian-influenced accents in places like Wisconsin and North Dakota, a lot of the Italian accents in New York, etc.

But those are cultural accents. And I was just wondering how deliberate or not it is when subcultures adopt accents wildly different from cultural accents.

To name a few -- hippies, surfers, goths, gays, and other subcultures and types of groups of people seem to have their own way of speaking vocally, generally speaking of course. I'm not painting everyone with one brush stroke, but a substantial noticeable amount of people in any particular subculture seem to speak outside of the societal cue, and I'm not even certain it's deliberate or not.

Hippies, for example -- a lot of them carry that Tommy Chong voice, the kind of stuffy-nasal, drowsy voice. Does that come from too much cocaine in the sinuses? There's this radio commercial on the classical music station I listen to here in Seattle for some place that sells trees, and god damn if the owner of that place doesn't sound exactly like Tommy Chong. "Buy two trees, get one tree free, man!"

That surfer accent? Where did it come from? It sounds vaguely Australian if you try to mimic it and do it wrong -- try it! Were there a bunch of Australians hanging around the original groups of people who made surfing popular, and then other people who wanted "in" on the surfing thing adopted that "dude, bra, whoa" way of talking to fit in? But why would that accent pop up over what amounts to a hobby? Did this accent exist long before the "surfer bro" type of person existed? If so, who used it prior? It wouldn't be Australians -- Australians wouldn't talk with a badly-done Australian accent, they'd speak with a real Australian accent. Or is there some population within Australian who, like the American South in America, has a significantly different Australian accent than the rest of Australia?

When gay people (and I'm not saying all of them do this, but a lot of them do) talk with a lisp and/or that use drawled-out, somewhat-androgynous voice with a hint of coffee-shop-liberal-smugness in their intonations -- who are they mimicking? The closest "real" accent that sounds similar is the German accent -- when you hear German people speak English it's usually very effeminate sounding.

Have any studies been done on what I'm talking about, at all?

the gay accent or queer lisp or whatever is actually done deliberately in order to fit into what remains of gay culture. believe me i've known people who one day are totally normal human beings then the next the day BLAM: full blown flaming cliche-ridden queen including the lisp. i really don't get it either, and i think it has something to do with popular media consistently promoting a certain image of effeminate gay males and gay people seeing all this stuff and having to adopt all these ridiculous traits including the lisp in order to fit in and 'be gay' because they think it's what all gay people are like. and that if you are something outside the norm then 'you aren't really gay'. i know certain people who do it on purpose. it's pretty fucked up how all these subcultures have rules, there aren't any real answers to your question sorry

edit - with what their mimicking, it's just trying to sound and be as effeminate as possible. most gay people just have a naturally high voice and then with the lisp added onto it, it goes into overdrive. also sorry not trying to offend anyone here, just have had some really bad experiences

The field studying this kind of phenomenons is called sociolinguistics, which is the study of the interactions between social and linguistics facts. William Labov was the first to lead such studies, mainly focusing on phonologic facts. For instance, he went on some island i can't remember the name, and he managed to find out that people wanting to stay pronunced [r] in a different way than the people wanting to leave. more

Most of time, an accent rises among a specific linguistic community as a way to distance itself from the general linguistic group.

To summarise:

  Quote

On Martha's Vineyard a small group of fishermen began to exaggerate a tendency already existing in their speech. They did this seemingly subconsciously, in order to establish themselves as an independent social group with superior status to the despised summer visitors. A number of other islanders regarded this group as one which epitomised old virtues and desirable values, and subconsciously imitated the way its members talked. For these people, the new pronunciation was an innovation. As more and more people came to speak in the same way, the innovation gradually became the norm for those living on the island.

But it's not just about accents, but also syntax, lexicon, etc... For instance here in france we received a lot of immigrates from north africa during the 50s. We decided to stock them into ghettos. Thus their offspring grew up with the feeling of not being french, and started inventing their own way of speaking french. It's called verlan (litterally 'wardback') : it simply consists of speaking backward, and it quickly spread to some other layer of the population (i myself use some words from it though i've developped my own kind of verlan wich is basically a consonatic-only verlan)

I think some of what you're talking about comes down to sets of emotions that are being expressed, not accents. Like you could have a hippie and a (very nasaly) news reporter with the same accent, but there's a different logic and attitude to how they talk which is more of a tone or cadence thing.

slightly ot but what is kode 9's accent associated with? other than Ali G.

  On 9/1/2009 at 3:26 AM, chax said:

also sorry not trying to offend anyone here, just have had some really bad experiences.

like an experience in the ass ?

  On 9/1/2009 at 3:41 AM, Babar said:

  On 9/1/2009 at 3:26 AM, chax said:

also sorry not trying to offend anyone here, just have had some really bad experiences.

 

like an experience in the ass ?

hahah, i meant just dealing with people who are like bruno level flaming gay, who are basically caricatures of human beings yet think they're the center of the universe and are just obnoxious and bitchy as possible. also i'm not trying to derail your thread but you asked about it so

what are sun-dollops?

every once in awhile i say "aboot" instead of "about". drives me nuts

  On 9/1/2009 at 3:39 AM, spraaaa said:

slightly ot but what is kode 9's accent associated with? other than Ali G.

well, he sounds Scottish (which would be right, as I believe he's from Glasgow originally)

People usually have friends that are in the same group or have similar interests, and usually end up doing things together. So wouldn't this really be a "when in Rome" thing that just became habit after awhile?

  On 9/1/2009 at 9:30 AM, Stoppit said:

  On 9/1/2009 at 3:39 AM, spraaaa said:

slightly ot but what is kode 9's accent associated with? other than Ali G.

 

well, he sounds Scottish (which would be right, as I believe he's from Glasgow originally)

yeah his accent is associated with scotland.

i think we're talking about communities rather than just hobbyists...

surfers, gay, heads, street or whatever communities adopt the common language and way of life of their peers, especially when growing up surrounded by it. this new london/street accent is an example... ya GET me!?

the surfer thing has elements of californian(dude) and hawaiian(bra)influences, where surfing communities settled in the early years. now if you're born into this community you'll struggle not to be a part of it.

sort of.