General American English

"General American" redirects here. For other uses, see General American (disambiguation).

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
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An example of a White man from Pennsylvania (Bradley Cooper).
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An example of a Black woman from Georgia (Alice Walker).
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An example of an Asian woman from Illinois (Michelle Wu).
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General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent.[1][2][3] It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education,[4] or from the (North) Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as using General American speech.[5][6][7] The precise definition and usefulness of the term continue to be debated,[8][9][10] and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness.[8][11] Some scholars prefer other names, such as Standard American English.[12][4]

Standard Canadian English accents may be considered to fall under General American,[13] especially in opposition to the United Kingdom's Received Pronunciation. Noted phonetician John C. Wells, for instance, claimed in 1982 that typical Canadian English accents align with General American in nearly every situation where British and American accents differ.[14]

  1. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 123.
  2. ^ Kövecses (2000), pp. 81–82.
  3. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 34, 470.
  4. ^ a b Kretzschmar (2004), p. 257.
  5. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 128–9.
  6. ^ Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (1997). "A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English" and "Map 1". Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. "The North Midland: Approximates the initial position|Absence of any marked features"; "On Map 1, there is no single defining feature of the North Midland given. In fact, the most characteristic sign of North Midland membership on this map is the small black dot that indicates a speaker with none of the defining features given"; "Map 1 shows Western New England as a residual area, surrounded by the marked patterns of Eastern New England, New York City, and the Inland North. [...] No clear pattern of sound change emerges from western New England in the Kurath and McDavid materials or in our present limited data."
  7. ^ Clopper, Cynthia G.; Levi, Susannah V.; Pisoni, David B. (2006). "Perceptual similarity of regional dialects of American English". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 119 (1): 566–574. Bibcode:2006ASAJ..119..566C. doi:10.1121/1.2141171. PMC 3319012. PMID 16454310. See also: map.
  8. ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 118.
  9. ^ Van Riper (2014), pp. 124, 126.
  10. ^ Kretzschmar (2004), p. 262.
  11. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 263.
  12. ^ Wells (1982), p. 34.
  13. ^ Boberg (2004a), p. 159.
  14. ^ Wells (1982), p. 491.