Essay: The Hollywood Hypothesis
Exploring sociology is on my list of important "To Dos". I don't think that the Effective Education Project will be able to build a more effective school system without the builders of that system having a good grasp of both psychology and sociology. And I have yet done much formal study of either.
But I have thought quite a bit about them, and specifically about beliefs that get passed from people, and end up being societal beliefs, or even world wide beliefs. Some of these beliefs, in and of themselves, may not necessarily be important, but understanding how they came to be, often is. One that is fascinating to me, is that Californians don't have an accent. Now, before I state my hypothesis, I must admit, that as a Californian myself, I of course would not think that I have an accent, because the way I speak is the way nearly everyone else speaks. But I still think that most of the world recognizes differences in the way that most people speak based upon region and/or class, but not so much about those in California.
In reality, the English really are the ones without accents, because English comes from them! Although it is interesting to note that such a small geographic area can have so many different accents, with each being based more upon social class as much as geography, so there isn't just one correct English accent.
Yet in California and the western USA, we all nearly speak identically. (Actually, this isn't true, as the whole Ebonics idea in Oakland can show, but we won't go into that at the moment) And I think someone in another country will usually hear a Californian and say that we don't have an accent. Yet in the movement of the English language, California ended up being one of the later places to really receive it. I believe that Hollywood is the reason the world thinks we don't have an accent. Most movies and TV shows have primarily Californians in them, and most movies have come from Hollywood. With a global distribution of these, it is only natural that people get the notion of this accent being "correct".
I think this underscores the power of media, and the the ability for us to unconsciously have things enter our mental models (or maybe I should word it in the negative, and say our lack of ability to conciously see more accurate mental models.)
Of course, to really see if my hypothesis is correct, a good experiment would need to be made to see if people really do think that Californians don't have accents, as that is a major assumption I'm making (especially since I have a major bias) Also, I would not be surprised if someone else has already come up with this hypothesis, and has done research on it. (I haven't researched the research, I'm just posting my initial thoughts)
But I have thought quite a bit about them, and specifically about beliefs that get passed from people, and end up being societal beliefs, or even world wide beliefs. Some of these beliefs, in and of themselves, may not necessarily be important, but understanding how they came to be, often is. One that is fascinating to me, is that Californians don't have an accent. Now, before I state my hypothesis, I must admit, that as a Californian myself, I of course would not think that I have an accent, because the way I speak is the way nearly everyone else speaks. But I still think that most of the world recognizes differences in the way that most people speak based upon region and/or class, but not so much about those in California.
In reality, the English really are the ones without accents, because English comes from them! Although it is interesting to note that such a small geographic area can have so many different accents, with each being based more upon social class as much as geography, so there isn't just one correct English accent.
Yet in California and the western USA, we all nearly speak identically. (Actually, this isn't true, as the whole Ebonics idea in Oakland can show, but we won't go into that at the moment) And I think someone in another country will usually hear a Californian and say that we don't have an accent. Yet in the movement of the English language, California ended up being one of the later places to really receive it. I believe that Hollywood is the reason the world thinks we don't have an accent. Most movies and TV shows have primarily Californians in them, and most movies have come from Hollywood. With a global distribution of these, it is only natural that people get the notion of this accent being "correct".
I think this underscores the power of media, and the the ability for us to unconsciously have things enter our mental models (or maybe I should word it in the negative, and say our lack of ability to conciously see more accurate mental models.)
Of course, to really see if my hypothesis is correct, a good experiment would need to be made to see if people really do think that Californians don't have accents, as that is a major assumption I'm making (especially since I have a major bias) Also, I would not be surprised if someone else has already come up with this hypothesis, and has done research on it. (I haven't researched the research, I'm just posting my initial thoughts)