Jen Doll, “Are You an Anglocreep?” (The Atlantic Wire, Oct. 11, 2012)
I checked in with American linguist and language columnist Ben Zimmer, who explained that “the use of British English as a prestige model has come in waves over the course of American history.” In the old days, though, the accent was the source or reflection of the prestige (that to some extent explains why rs were dropped in certain Boston, New York City, and Southern dialects, and also is part of why old Hollywood stars had that affected way of speaking we call the mid-Atlantic accent—oh, dahling!). But we’ve moved from accent to word: “The British influence that Ben Yagoda and others have been discerning lately is strictly lexical,” he says. “British pronunciation rarely enters into it. These Britishisms, like the older pronunciation patterns, do serve as status markers to delineate an in-group. The nature of the prestige may have changed: it’s not so much about sounding aristocratic as sounding ‘smart,’ perhaps.”
Read the rest here.