anyone using NLP to speak English better?

Travis:

For a native speaker, the speaker with an accent might not like his own accent. This is true for me; I have a mixed Inland Southern/Western accent. Having lived in the west for 27 years, my Southern accent just doesn't project who I am, besides the fact that I find it unpleasant. A person from the Midwest might also want to rid themselves of their accents because they're mocked to a certain extent.

African-Americans would also want to rid themselves of their accents so that they can code-switch; I've met at least one girl who has done this.

Let's be honest: people who have no accent are perceived in a more pleasant light that people who have certain accents.

<<Let's be honest: people who have no accent are perceived in a more pleasant light that people who have certain accents.>>

Everyone has an accent. :-)

>>For a native speaker, the speaker with an accent might not like his own accent. This is true for me; I have a mixed Inland Southern/Western accent. Having lived in the west for 27 years, my Southern accent just doesn't project who I am, besides the fact that I find it unpleasant.<<

Why do you think it doesn't project who you are, exactly, and why do you find it to be unpleasant? Do you think it is too associated with the South and other things associated with such, and you don't identify with the South or like?

>>A person from the Midwest might also want to rid themselves of their accents because they're mocked to a certain extent.

The thing is that while they may sound silly to some from outside the Midwest, here they really have nothing negative associated with them at all, when people even realize that they don't speak "Standard English" in the first place. Here in Milwaukee there is some awareness that there is a specific dialect here that differs from other ones, but I have not seen any negative attitudes towards such at all here. The closest to such is hearing that people from Chicago think we sound funny up here, but that is a wholly different matter unto itself. (And honestly, I don't care one bit what they think.)

>>African-Americans would also want to rid themselves of their accents so that they can code-switch; I've met at least one girl who has done this.<<

Yes, AAVE is very often quite marginalized and deprecated, but the thing is why don't people try to fight such for once rather than simply accepting such? Why not try to raise it to the level of "minority language" (in the European sense of the term) rather than simply having it be regarded as "bad English" or like?

(And I'm serious when I say "minority language" - even though I understand AAVE-like speech in media content without any problems, I very often have little understanding of the AAVE that I hear spoken here in Milwaukee... and even when I do understand it it often seems like there's a lot more being said that I am missing.)

>>Let's be honest: people who have no accent are perceived in a more pleasant light that people who have certain accents.<<

There's no such thing as "no accent". For instance, to me, General American most definitely does sound accented (particularly in its lack of Canadian Raising of /aI/); accent is subjective, not objective, one must remember.

<<There's no such thing as "no accent". For instance, to me, General American most definitely does sound accented (particularly in its lack of Canadian Raising of /aI/); accent is subjective, not objective, one must remember.>>

Quite so!

I was just speaking of the term "no accent" as is commonly accepted. Not by you, or not by me, but by the "people". I hear on a regular basis by Westerners that they have "no accent", but remember my field work? (Man, that was FUN!) I found quite a bit of variation in speech; only one speaker, in all those samples, would have fallen under the strictest definition of GenAm speech.

About my accent? I just don't like it, Travis. I've lived in the West long enough to develop some Western "ears", and I can hear just how horrible Inland Southern really sounds--particularly the more extreme varieties. I love Paula Dean's show, but her accent makes me wince--Inland Southern just sounds too country. My opinions, interests, outlook on life is thoroughly Western now; it's a culture thing. My accent really doesn't reflect who I am now, which is a Westerner, not a Southerner.

When it's all boiled down, I believe accent reduction has a social/psychogical aspect that is probably beyond the purvey of this forum.