Uncovering the Obvious: Dialect Quizzes' Impact on Identity

By Gillian Steeno

 

    The way you talk says a lot about you. Even from the first few seconds of a conversation, someone will make judgements and assumptions about who you are. Conclusions are drawn, not only from how you look and how your body language is, but also how you pronounce certain words or phrases. Different accents and dialects are defining features that characterize members of a region or state. Especially in the United States, there are accents that are specific to certain regions of the country that are widely recognizable regardless of where you are from. Even those from certain areas are cognizant of the fact that they don't sound like other people across the U.S., or they have a schema of what a "classic" accent from their area or state sounds like. The video below shows residents of each state using this archetypal accent most commonly associated with that region.

     Largely based on data collected from the Harvard Dialect Survey, the New York Times released an American dialect quiz back in 2013 that is still being shared on Facebook and other social media sites today. This specific quiz goes through 25 questions that ask you about how you define different concepts that, they claim, will help pinpoint, down to the city, where you are from. However, this isn't the only dialect or accent quiz out on the internet. Buzzfeed and other websites have allowed others to make their own quizzes on the topic. Inherently, the word quiz connotes a right and wrong answer that can be achieved by answering questions about one's knowledge of a topic or subject. In this case, these dialect quizzes attempt to classify a person based on their knowledge of certain words or phrases that are present in a certain area. There is no inherently right or wrong answer to these questions in an objective sense, but why do people feel the need to take these quizzes in the first place? You know where you're from. You know how you sound and what you say. Why do you need a New York Times Quiz to affirm this?

These are maps from the New York Times Dialect Quiz "How Y'all, Youse and You Guys Talk" reflecting four distinct results from questions. Red shaded areas are most similar to how the quiz-taker answered, and darker blue shaded areas are those that are least similar.

     A driving force behind quizzes like these is the sense of their results providing affirmation or insight into a person's identity. Because a person sounds like they're from Boston or Houston doesn't evoke standalone emotions or responses. It's because of the geography, landmarks, events, and ways of life associated with these places that evokes emotions, questions, and associations that are related to that place. This helps to further cement a person into their geographical identity that others put them in and they also put themselves into. One might argue that this is done unconsciously and encourages others to conform to these same pronunciations once indoctrinated into a region and its way of life. These quizzes also prompt its participants to think critically about the way they pronounce words and form phrases. For example, in the New York Times quiz mentioned above, the program prompts its takers to answer how they pronounce the words "cot" and "caught" on a daily basis. Asking them to provide an answer to this question, encourages quiz-takers to reaffirm their beliefs about how words should be pronounced and solidifies their own identity that's attributable to their personal dialect or accent. Each answer contributes to the overall classification of the person's accent; therefore, people attribute these pronunciations to reflect their regional identity. At the conclusion of the quiz, it shows a specific area of the U.S. that the participant is from based on the answers they have given. Whether it aligns with how they personally believe they answered to fit their desired region predicts whether the participant will view the quiz as accurate or not.

This is a sample question that was taken from the New York Times Dialect Quiz mentioned above. Quiz-takers click which option most closely resembles their way of speaking and will click the corresponding box to move to the next question.

     Many people believe that they don't have an accent or that they pronounce things the "correct" way. A main reason people turn to these quizzes is to see if, even though some might have a "neutral" or "standard" accent, the quiz algorithm will still be able to accurately pinpoint their place of origin. Just as there is not an absence of culture, there is no absence of an accent when it is compared to the auditor's own accent. Of course, the context of the speaker's location during these interactions is important as well. If someone is not in their home region, in a different country or just visiting someone across the country, their way of speaking is more likely to be classified as different or strange according to those in the foreign region. On the other hand, someone participating in daily life and interacting with others who sound like them, that accent difference is eliminated. Interestingly enough, this inattention to people who sound like them in their own environment could be classified as "a byproduct of attention or its failure" (Larkin 2014:1006). As Larkin describes, this ability to mediate other sounds allows people to focus on new information that requires more cognitive processing; naturally then, new and strange accents would occupy more of a speaker's attention than those of the people who sound like them (2014:1006-7). Since people in different regions of the U.S., and all over the world, are usually surrounded by people who speak in the same dialect as them, they become more attuned to accents that sound out of the ordinary because their accents are more likely to stand out against the sea of aural normalcy.
     However, dialect and accent quizzes seem to only function to pinpoint where their way of speaking originated rather than how it evolved or the other factors that have gone into influencing it. How accurate are these tests for non-native English speakers? How accurate are these for people who grew up in one place, but now live in another? These people also contribute to the spoken American sound. So, do quiz options encompass enough choices to represent where American newcomers now reside and how they've adopted the American language and dialects? The one potential danger of these dialect quizzes is the silencing of minority groups that also participate in the aural soundscape of American culture. Although it is unfeasible for research groups and those making these quizzes to collect every dialect and/or accent practiced in the U.S., those taking quizzes like these must be aware that the accents represented are not exhaustive. However, some dialect quizzes and studies use the "Standard American" or "General American" accent as a label, magnifying the absence of underrepresented dialects and accents in the U.S.

     

     To analyze an outsider's experiences with American dialects, the video above details a British man's experience taking an American English dialect quiz after having lived in the U.S. for a few years. Even though he doesn't have words for many of the expressions listed, he is able to answer a majority of the questions using words and phrases he has picked up from living in the U.S. His dialect most closely reflects that of an American Southern individual based on the responses that he gave, but as we can tell that his actual way of speaking is completely far from it. Nevertheless, it does bring up the topic of context that is central to understanding the value of dialect and accent quizzes. As Emily Thompson details in The Soundscape of Modernity, acoustics rely on and are "inseparable" with the practice of culture in a society (2002:9). To understand dialects and how they operate in practice, we must extrapolate the results of these dialect quizzes. Yes, they function to reaffirm one's identity through their way of speaking; however, this cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. The sonic environment and daily experiences one encounters directly influence how people speak. For example, someone in the city might speak more quickly or use shorter forms of words to emphasize urgency or save time in their fast-paced life. On the other hand, someone in the countryside might contribute more to the sonic environment by talking to more people since they have more time to converse and interact with neighbors during their daily activities. These types of values and mannerisms are just two examples of mediating factors that are not revealed in a dialect quiz that reflect aspects of someone's identity.

     Although they do provide interesting insights into how people can reevaluate their own dialects and how others could hear them differently, it cannot provide every single detail of one's regional identity. Especially for those like me, who have moved a handful of times throughout their childhood, your identity consists of many places that could not fully encompass who you are and how you sound. Possibly, more could be heard from the stories you tell and the things you say rather than the different ways you pronounce the words that compose them. This character, emotion, and feeling can also be heard more completely when spoken and taken in aurally as opposed to reading written word that leaves more room for personal interpretation and the reader's biases. There is a danger of misinterpretation when speaking with someone whose accent is unfamiliar, but part of fully understanding them and how their regional identity influences their lives could be found in learning these different expressions and pronunciations. Accents and different dialects can provide an immediate insight into a person's origin; however, a lot more can be uncovered from their experiences and stories that tell more about their linguistic and personal identities.