Good American Speech

No consistent label exists for this type of speech, particularly in its own era. It has increasingly become known as a Mid-Atlantic accent, Its promoters variously called it World (Standard) English, Good (American) Speech, Eastern (American) Standard, or simply Standard English. == History ==

Origins According to the vocal coach and drama professor Dudley Knight, in the 19th century through the early 20th century, formal public speaking in the United States primarily focused on song-like intonation, lengthily and tremulously uttered vowels (including overly articulated weak vowels), and a booming resonance. He also asserts that, when the 20th century began, "American actors in classical plays all spoke with English accents", due to the high prestige of English Received Pronunciation (RP), with features such as non-rhoticity, or R-dropping: in spoken English, the deleting of the phoneme everywhere except before vowel sounds. A study coauthored by linguist William Labov describes that non-rhoticity, "as a characteristic of British Received Pronunciation, was also 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. It was the standard model for most radio announcers". Linguist Geoff Lindsey argues that another major contribution to the RP elements in early Hollywood sound films is the simple fact that many of the actors themselves originated from around the British Commonwealth. therefore, these Northeastern-originated accents also likely contributed to the sound then becoming popular in the American theatre. A proponent of precise phonetic transcription, Tilly was perhaps the most influential speech instructor in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. Calling his new standard World English, he mostly attracted a following of English-language learners and New York City public-school teachers. Ordinary Americans have the tendency to perceive World English as sounding British, which Tilly's students sometimes acknowledged and other times denied. According to Dudley Knight: Popularity in American entertainment Linguistic prescriptivists, William Tilly and his adherents emphatically promoted his World English (and their slight variations on it) in their courses. While Tilly did not specifically work with actors himself, several prominent students of his ended up doing so, establishing this type of pronunciation among classical actors in the U.S. for roughly three decades. Among Tilly's several disciples who popularized Mid-Atlantic accents in the American theatre were, most prominently, Windsor Daggett, Margaret Prendergast McLean, and Edith Warman Skinner. Daggett viewed the accent, which he simply called Standard English, as neither regionally American nor an "affected ultra-British class dialect" but rather a cultured, intelligible, transnational accent of English that avoided all features that could identify its speaker's upbringing. Margaret Prendergast McLean from Colorado became one of the most influential speech teachers for East Coast actors by the late 1920s, distinguished for her work at Boston's Leland Powers School and New York's American Laboratory Theatre. She published her text on the accent, Good American Speech, in 1928 and later taught in Los Angeles, California. Canadian-born Edith Skinner, brought to the Laboratory Theatre by McLean, rose to prominence by the 1930s, best known for her own instructional text Speak with Distinction, published in 1942. These Tilly-trained speech instructors 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. Decline From the 1920s to 1950s, the Mid-Atlantic accent was a popular affectation onstage, in many New York City schools, and in forms of high culture in North America. 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. Hollywood over time became less of a New York City-influenced enclave as it grew and attracted actors from everywhere, plus the film industry moved away from studio control over its artists, causing Mid-Atlantic speech to fall out of fashion by the mid-20th century. Since then, the majority class of rhotic accents, General American English, has dominated the American entertainment industry. == Examples of performers==

Examples of actors known for publicly using this accent include Laird Cregar, Sally Kellerman, Tammy Grimes, Fred Astaire, William Powell, the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, Some actors like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn 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. 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. Cary Grant had an accent that is often popularly described as "Mid-Atlantic", though his specific accent more naturally and unconsciously mixed British and American features, because he arrived in the United States from England at age 16. 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. • Elizabeth Banks uses the Mid-Atlantic accent in playing the flamboyant, fussy, upper-class character Effie Trinket in the Hunger Games film series, which depicts enormous class divisions in a futuristic North America. • Mark Hamill's vocal portrayal of Batman villain the Joker adopts a highly theatrical Mid-Atlantic accent throughout the character's many animation and video game appearances. • Evan Peters employs a Mid-Atlantic accent as James Patrick March, a ghostly serial killer from the 1920s on American Horror Story: Hotel, as does Mare Winningham as March's accomplice, Miss Evers. • Catherine O'Hara used a unique, comedic accent as the character of Moira Rose in the Canadian sitcom ''Schitt's Creek'', which the press has sometimes labeled "Mid-Atlantic". == Phonology ==

Phonetic transcriptions for the Mid-Atlantic theatre accent were published by voice coaches like Margaret Prendergast McLean and Edith Skinner ("Good Speech" as she called it). These were once widely taught in Northeastern American acting schools of the early mid-20th century. Vowels • Trap–bath split: The Mid-Atlantic accent commonly exhibits the split of RP. However, unlike in RP, the vowel does not retract and merge with the back vowel of . It is only lowered from the near-open vowel to the fully open vowel . It was most consistently a feature of the New England upper class, the Boston Brahmins, but also promoted by theatrical teachers like McLean and Skinner. • No /æ/ tensing: While most dialects of American English have the vowel tensed before nasals, the vowel is not necessarily tensed in this environment in Mid-Atlantic accents. Skinner and other theatrical teachers intensely discouraged tensing. • No father-bother merger: The "a" in father is unrounded, while the "o" in bother may be rounded, like RP. Therefore, the father-bother distinction exists. The bother vowel is also used in words like "watch" and "quad". • No cot–caught merger: The vowels in cot and caught (the vowel and vowel, respectively) are distinguished, with the latter being pronounced higher and longer than the former, like RP. • Lot–cloth variability: 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. The vowel is also used before in words such as "all", "salt", and "malt". • Lack of tensing: Like conservative RP, the vowel at the end of words such as "happy" (), "Charlie", "sherry", "coffee" is not tensed and is thus pronounced with the vowel , rather than the vowel . like in conservative and Northern varieties of American English; the latter two are also similar to conservative RP. • No weak vowel merger: The vowels in "Rosas" and "roses" are distinguished, with the former being pronounced as and the latter as either or . This is done in General American, as well, but in the Mid-Atlantic accent, the same distinction means the retention of historic in weak preconsonantal positions (as in RP), so "rabbit" does not rhyme with "abbot". • Lack of mergers before: Mergers before , which are typical of several accents, both British and North American, do not occur. For example, the vowels in "hull" and "bull" are kept distinct, the former as and the latter as . Vowels before Mid-Atlantic accents are non-rhotic, meaning the postvocalic is typically dropped. The vowels or do not undergo R-coloring. Linking R is used, but Skinner openly disapproved of intrusive R. Generally, Skinner advocated for articulating with some degree of aspiration in most contexts. • Resistance to yod-dropping: Dropping of only occurs after , and optionally after and . Mid-Atlantic also lacks palatalization, so duke is pronounced rather than (the first variant versus the second one ). All of this mirrors (conservative) RP. • A "dark L" sound, , may be heard for in all relevant contexts, more like General American than RP. However, Skinner explicitly discouraged darker articulations for actors. • A tapped articulation of post-consonantal or inter-vocalic is heard in many of the very earliest recordings of formal performative or theatrical speakers born in the mid-19th century, likely a dramatic effect employed in public speaking then. However, it was rare in speakers born after that time, and Skinner disapproved of its usage. Other pronunciation patterns • Skinner approved of the -day suffix (e.g. Monday; yesterday) being pronounced as or as ("i" as in "did"), without any particular preference. • Instead of the unrounded vowel, the rounded vowel () is used in everybody, nobody, somebody, and anybody; and when stressed, was, of, from, what. This is more like RP than General American. At times, the vowels in the latter words can be reduced to a schwa. However, "because" uses the vowel. • Polysyllabic words ending in -ary, -ery, -ory, -mony, -ative, -bury, -berry: The first vowel in the endings -ary, -ery, -ory, -mony, -ative, -bury, and -berry are all pronounced as , commonly known as a schwa. Thus inventory is pronounced , rather than General American or rapidly-spoken RP . == See also ==

• • Deacon, Desley (2007). "World English? How an Australian Invented 'Good American Speech. Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity. • • • == Further reading ==