Does the concept of an elite accent exist in the US?

29 comments

1. There’s not an elite accent per se, but there are some that are seen as lesser than the standard.

2. Maybe the general American accent that every news anchor uses.

3. No not really, there is a lot of say “lower-class” accents, which are basically the different big city accents you hear, but there’s no elite high class accent.

4. There are accents, like the Boston Brahmin, the Locust Valley Lockjaw, and the Planter class accent, that were considered more elite, but they’ve largely faded out.

5. The trans-Atlantic accent.

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

6. Not really anymore, but I think there used to be. The richer people would take elocution classes and the way of speaking was seen as a higher class way of speaking. However, what being eloquent meant by region very likely differed so you’d have a range of accents that fit into the category of eloquence that meant you were high class.

7. Not very much anymore. There used to be the upper-class MidAtlantic accent like William F Buckley had and the high Boston like Robert Kennedy but almost nobody speaks like that any more.

8. Not really anymore, mid-Atlantic accents were definitely posh and upper class in, like, the first half of the 20th century but that accent has basically disappeared. Nowadays I’d say any identifiable regional accent (southern, Philly, New Yawk) is probably viewed less favorably than a general American accent. Maybe not less favorably, but maybe less educated/cultured. Or in other words if someone wants to pick up the accent that they’d need to blend in inside the world of high finance, business, politics etc, it would just be a general American accent.

9. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, was an accent taught to the early 20th-century American upper class and actors and actresses in the entertainment industry. It’s quite rare today, although sometimes used in the entertainment industry to make a character seem pretentious, as with Mr. Burns in *The Simpsons*, or authoritative, as with Darth Vader in *Star Wars*.

   The most famous example outside of the entertainment industry was President Franklin Roosevelt, who came from a patrician New York family.

   If you ever watch the musical *Singing in the Rain*, or just see the musical number “Moses Supposes,” you’ll see Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor making fun of the diction experts who taught the Mid-Atlantic accent to Hollywood actors in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

10. Kind of? My one buddy came back from college one summer with a girlfriend to visit and at a bonfire she was telling us how her family summers in France, but the way she said it was so stuck up, like “frahnce”. She was from the NY/CT border.

11. Kinda, like the sort of valley girl accent, you’d be hard pressed to find someone with that accent who isn’t absolutely rolling in it

12. Feels like the stronger the accent the less elite it sounds.

    Boston, Southern, Midwestern, California…

    The only “elite” sounding thing here is proper pronunciation, no regional slang, and annunciating clearly.

13. It used to. Mid 20th Century I’d picture the elitist New England accent – like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island.

    Nowadays every billionaire wants to paint himself as an everyman so they’ve adopted a more silicon valley approach. Dressing down, using a more regional yet TV-friendly accent, etc.

    In general it’s more a game of neutralizing your specific regional accent to sound *less* low-class. There really isn’t a way to speak that would make you sound high class by today’s standards.

14. Having a neutral, difficult to place accent could be considered elite or posh, while some regional accents were considered “backward.”

    However, nowadays regional accents and dialects are becoming more celebrated, especially if they’re quirky and a bit impenetrable. Give a look into Bawlmerese.

15. Idk if it is elite in the business world, a but a strong southern drawl wins big with the ladies

16. Yes. It depends on region.

    In the south they are usually white people who talk like the sterotypical “southerner” you see on film. Usually they come from old money families.

    Im other parts of the nation white people people who are upper class usually talk extremly proper.

    Accents for black people doesnt happen. But are usually distinguished by fashion. If you see someone wearing designer like gucci or louie voutoin they are usually poorer. Black people with real money usually dress fashionable but lowkey. Youll see lots of suits and golf wear.

    Most rich asians are forgieners. They are incredibly well dressed. Most asians here are actually poorer. The asian success thing you see in media is over blown. I grew up around asians amd even dated an asian chick for a while. Alot of those resturants are struggling.

17. Not really, and certainly not anymore.
    The mid-Atlantic/transatlantic thing was a WASP-y inflection amongst actors and rich boarding school types decades ago as a way to ape the British Received Pronunciation style, but was never a universal rich-person standard and has been basically extinct for years.
    The foghorn leghorn/southern gentry accent was another rich-person accent that is also out of date and also region-specific.

    In short: your average politician, lawyer, and car dealership owner is going to go for the median accent for their area, as it’s been proven to engender trust with the locals. This is true even if they graduated from Harvard.

    Perhaps the closest we’ve got now is Newscaster Voice – meant to have the ‘standard’ pronunciation for any given word and built to be widely understood everywhere. Wouldn’t say it has major class connotations though.

18. The most elite accident is seen as the most normal accent, which is the traditional TV or stage standard dialect.

19. You know it when you hear it.

20. No elites, just regional but those are often looked down upon.

21. If you speak the way they speak on the news, you are elite. Basically Connecticut.

22. There are accents that are associated with upper classes but they’re very localized.

23. Whenever I picture the elite accent I picture Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island.

24. Generally accents spoken by historically oppressor/powerful groups are seen as elite.. for example the British RP, a generic French English accents, the New England old money accents.

25. No but southern accents are usually the opposite

26. The non-rhotic (english-derived) Southern “plantation” accents (think Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, or Lindsey Graham occasionally when he gets riled up about something) definitely have a class connotation.

    The transatlantic accent has mostly died out now, but it did too

    The California girl accent is a little connotated with being at least upper-middle clads

27. No.

    The artificial Mid-Atlantic accent and the old high society Southern accent occupied that role at one point, but they’re both pretty much extinct nowadays.

28. I’d say mannerisms and sayings more than accent.

29. Not anymore. Although there is a negative stigma in some parts of the US about southern accents