Modulating the Accent Is an Unconscious Act (Which Means It Is Not Fake)
This article is not sponsored by Meghan Markle (I wish it was)
If you have never stepped out of your region, chances are, you would find it hard to believe what I am going to say.
We change our way of speaking depending on whom we are talking to. And it all happens beneath our awareness, without us even realizing.
Was the Duchess faking it?
The internet went bonkers when this clip of Meghan Markle surfaced.
Meghan Markle Seemingly Debuts British Accent -- Watch!
Many took to the comments section to point out the apparent hypocrisy of the newly-wed. People were irate and claimed that the suits actress was faking her accent to try to appear more royal like her in-laws.
I couldn’t decipher the accent, though. I diagnose those keyboard warriors as stupid.
But the theme of people going “HEYYYYY!!” whenever a celebrity sounds a little off their native accent is omnipresent, nonetheless.
The Cannes of controversy
The Indian actress Kiara Advani faced a similar heat at the Cannes Film Festival 2024. Accused of faking her accent, she was bombarded with comment after comment, trolling her pretentiousness.
Kiara Advani trolled for her fake accent
Why this rage?
And why the change in accent?
Turns out, it all goes back to the time when Homo sapiens decided to live in groups.
Fear is at the heart of prejudice
“Tuck tuck toh toh”
“Tstick tstick tak tak”
Just two hunter-gatherers from different tribes talking to each other. Most probably, followed by abductions and a massacre.
You see, humans have always been wary of someone who is not their own. Be it a different species (sorry, Neanderthals) or even a different tribe, we are biologically designed to hate others.
Now, my favorite part of the discourse: Evolutionarily speaking, an individual from a different tribe was a potential source of an illness or a malicious intent. It was better to maintain distance.
Studies have shown that the Caucasian subjects who were shown images of African-Americans, and vice-versa, exhibited greater amygdala (a region in the brain responsible for processing fear) activation and an enhanced startle response.
And although it takes approximately 500 milliseconds for a visual stimulus to reach our conscious awareness, information about race is encoded during the earliest stages of visual processing, well before the conscious perceptions of who is being seen. The rapidity of this ‘race response’ results in an instantaneous and automatic registration of all the past biases into our experience.
However, studies have also proven that Caucasian subjects who are shown faces of well-known and well-liked African Americans, show an absence of amygdala activation. This strongly suggests that childhood exposure to people of different races, and related positive experiences can negate the effects of cultural prejudice, and the evolutionarily ingrained ability to hold biases against people of different races.
Now, do you know what is the most important indicator of ‘oneness’ ?
What is that one thing which has the strongest influence on our feeling of togetherness?
Yep! Language.
I’m your own. I speak the way you do.
What you speak and how you speak has always decided whether a population will stick together or say, “Eww at them”. It is what sets international boundaries and carves nations out of a landmass.
Even different dialects or accents of the same language have a tremendous role in differentiating ‘them’ from ‘us’.
It is no wonder then, that your accent decides your status in society. And this is why the elites have always wanted to have a euphemism for the ‘down-market’ vocabulary.
And this is why the salespeople of the posh stores in New York City try to not drop the ‘r’ while the ones catering to the poor people do (fouRth flooR vs fawth flaa).
How The Word ‘Lesbian’ Came Into Being
Discussing the obsession of elites with having a euphemism for the ‘down-market’ vocabulary medium.com
The science behind accents: the Communication Accommodation Theory
Howard Giles, a social psychologist, developed this theory to describe how we alter our speech when interacting with others.
By modulating different variables of a language, like, accent, pitch, volume, word choice and syntax, we either converge towards the language variables of the other person or diverge from it. In the case of linguistic security, we may neither converge nor diverge and continue with our own style regardless.
Like in the case of the salespeople of the posh stores, they converged towards the speech of their clients (fouRth flooR).
But we also have an example of a community diverging from the language of a certain group, in order to project their indigeneity.
Off the coast of Massachusetts, is an island called Martha’s Vineyard, populated by the English.
Now, the English have a certain way of pronouncing things. The difference is most conspicuous in the way they pronounce a ‘diphthong’ (a combination of two vowels).
For example, in the word ‘house’, the diphthong is /aʊ/, made of two vowels /a/ and /ʊ/.
In the word ‘night’, the diphthong is /aɪ/, made of two vowels /a/ and /ɪ/.
(Don’t go by the spelling. In linguistics, it is the sound that counts)
Now, in the standard American dialects, these diphthongs are pronounced with the jaw down and the tongue set low in the mouth.
In English, however, the trend is more towards centralizing the diphthongs — beginning with the jaw set up and also moving the tongue up slightly, sounding more like ‘huwse’ and ‘nueet’.
The general trend of speech in Martha’s Vineyard was gradually approaching that of the Americans until the boom in the tourism industry (the tourists being the Americans) in the 1960s. The natives then started diverging from the standard American dialect and resorted to their indigenous tongue instead — full of centralized diphthongs.
Research showed that the ones who diverged the greatest were on the island year-round, had traditional occupations and were in their thirties and forties.
The divergence closely correlated with expressions of strong resistance to the incursion of the tourists.
It was found in the younger lot who were determined to stay on the island itself and weren’t ambitious enough to seek job opportunities elsewhere.
The divergence was an indicator of loyalty to the Vineyard, and authenticity. It was a loud and clear “I am not a tourist!!” to the incomers.
Thus, it was an instance of differentiation rather than an effort to mix in.
And the important thing to note is that the difference may be glaring in the face of a linguist, but to the speakers, it was an unconscious act. The natives weren’t putting a conscious effort to sound more indigenous. It was all beneath their awareness.
Language is a mere part of the whole system of social signaling — the others being body language, expressions and behaviors. Just like these subtle mannerisms, language too is manifested unconsciously.
The chameleon effect: It’s not just lizards who blend in
A few cases of divergence notwithstanding, human beings mostly engage in unconscious mimicry of all the social signals described above, when interacting with someone.
Their behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of the others in their social environment.
This is what gives rise to the perception that a certain celebrity is faking their accent.
Nope. They are just being human.
“After years living in Britain, Madonna ended up sounding more Downton than Downtown.”
— David Shariatmadari, “Don’t Believe A Word”
Similarly, Britishers who move to America, switch to “tomayto” and “croissant” instead of “tomahto” and “croissant”.
But why does the chameleon effect exist?
Worry not, you know how I love to explain things.
Why sounding “too different” can be risky
An inability to converge might lead to a lot of stress. That is to say, if you are lucky enough. The unlucky ones invite death.
If a stigmatized ethnolinguistic group fails to converge on the more accepted language, it may attract negativity.
For example, the judiciary may be already biased against the African-Americans and if the accused speaks the African-American Vernacular Language (AAVE), aka Ebonics, it may do more harm than good.
This way of speaking, associated with the working-class black people, is something you would want to stay away from.
So, a fellow black might say, “You don’t wanna be out there lookin’ like you fakin’, tryna stunt on folks like you ain’t just like the rest of us”, but his advice may land you in a prison.
Parsley and pronunciations: A deadly history lesson
In 1937, Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican President, wanted to wipe out Haitians from his country.
The ethnic cleansing worked on the principle of divergence. In Dominican Spanish, the word for parsley, perejil, is pronounced with a rolled ‘r’. Haitians, on the other hand, spoke French or Creole, and found the rolled ‘r’ pronunciation quite difficult.
Soldiers walked with sprigs of parsley in their hands, asking the confused civilians to tell them what it was. The moment they pronounced with a French ‘r’, they were shot dead, assuming that they were Haitian.
Thousands died and the incident came to be known as the ‘Parsley Massacre’.
That’s why the ‘chameleon effect’ is second nature to us — we adapt our signals to fit in, not just to survive, but to navigate social circles and build a sense of belonging.
Pick up any of your favorite British bands, say, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, and listen to the way they pronounce words in their music. It’s perfectly American.
No wonder they went on to top the charts on the world stage.
Humans are hard-wired to blend in.
Because we are also hard-wired to discriminate against those who don’t.
We sophisticated apes are social chameleons, doing what we do best — adapting.
So, the next time someone accuses someone of faking the accent, remember that it’s not pretense; just biology — helping us to camouflage ourselves in the colors of the social fabric, subtly saying, “I’m one of you. Please be gentle!”
TheUnknownDoktor
References:
“Don’t Believe a Word — The Surprising Truth About Language” by David Shariatmadari
Kaplan and Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry 10th Edition
Does Duchess Meghan Have a British Accent Now?
Celebs Who Have Been Accused of Faking Accents
Cannes Film Festival 2024: Kiara Advani trolled for her fake accent