Talking Like Home
On varieties of American speech
Haley Stevens set tongues a-wagging, on account of her tongue. She is a congresswoman from Michigan—a Democrat—and she is running for her party’s Senate nomination. On July 11, she gave a campaign talk that went viral. You can find it here.
Its “virality” did not come from what she said; it came from how she said it. Stevens spoke in a strong, strong accent. A Michigan accent? Well, more on that in a moment.
Across the nation, the congresswoman was mocked. One headline read, “Michigan Democrat Goes Viral for ‘Weird AF’ Campaign Speech—and Is Promptly Roasted.” (The article is here.)
A friend of mine at the Washington Post asked me to write a little piece about all this, which I have: here. Today, I’d like to “revise and extend my remarks,” as they say in Congress. For your entertainment? I hope.
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In that “viral video,” was Haley Stevens, in fact, speaking in a Michigan accent? This is what I said in my Post piece:
To my Michigan-born ears, she was more idiosyncratic and personal than regional or local: a combination of the Upper Midwest and Betty Boop.
Some “roasters” online compared the “viral video” with other videos of Stevens, speaking less flamboyantly. But in those other videos, the “normal” ones? She still speaks in a markedly Michigan accent.
For example, on the word “economy.” How she pronounces the second syllable. I find it impossible to render this pronunciation in print, my apologies.
How do we Michiganders, when piqued, say “Dammit”? Again, I find it impossible to render in print. If you wanna hear it, call me up.
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When I was growing up, I wasn’t aware that Michiganders had an accent. I thought we spoke a neutral American English—anchorman English! But when I moved around a little …
In my Post piece, I mentioned Tom Price, who was a congressman from Georgia. In the first Trump administration, he served briefly as the secretary of health and human services.
One day, I was sitting with a group of journalists questioning Price. As I listened to him, I felt strangely homesick. He was talking pure Michigan.
When I got back to my desk, I Googled him. Yes, Price was born and raised in Michigan. Went to Atlanta to begin his career (in medicine, then politics).
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In the summer of 2024, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, went on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. A clip is here.
Being me, I could not help commenting on this in my column:
The content is not what I wish to discuss. It’s the speaking—redolent of Michigan. More than redolent, it screams, “Michigan!” Give particular attention to the words “actually,” “colleagues,” and “tie.”
Of course, we Michiganders have no accent at all (or so I thought until I got around a little).
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Let’s move a little south and west for a minute—to Chicago. I remember Lynn Martin, a congresswoman. In the administration of Bush 41, she was labor secretary. One thing that was distinctive about her: a full-out Chicago accent.
Which I liked.
Barack Obama is an interesting case. He was born and raised in Hawaii, but he made his home and career in Chicago. He sometimes sounds like a Chicagoan—particularly when saying a plural word. Bear with me for a second.
And stick with the word “bear”—or rather, its plural. There was a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live in which men said “da Bears.” (Here is a sample.) These guys were die-hard fans of their city’s NFL team, the Chicago Bears.
When I say “bears,” it comes out “bairz.” When a Chicagoan says it, it may well rhyme with “scarce.”
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Over the years, American speech has homogenized. This is the result of several things: television, prosperity, mobility. People move around. They marry people from elsewhere, their children speak differently …
This is a big topic.
In my Post piece, I wrote,
Regional distinctions persist, thank goodness. But, to a large degree, our speech has been put into a blender.
Let me quote a little more:
By the time I moved to New York in the late 1990s, traditional New York accents were thin on the ground, certainly in Manhattan. No more “Toidy-toid and Toid”—a cabbie’s way of saying “Thirty-third and Third.” Still, you could find some senior citizens who were New Yorky.
One was Gene Genovese, the historian. Another was John Sweeney, the labor leader.
Maybe I could quote some more:
At a conference, I encountered John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO. I couldn’t place his accent. Smiling shyly, he told me, “I’m from the Bronx.” He was born in 1934, to Irish immigrants. He spoke in a rather lovely, almost musical way. That accent has died with him, I think.
Who has the New Yorkiest voice in American politics today? Well, a senator from (“from”) Vermont: Bernie Sanders, who was born in Brooklyn in 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor.
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Move up from New York to Boston for a minute. In my lifetime, I have seen Boston accents virtually disappear. When I first knew Boston, in the mid-1980s, grandparents had accents. (You should have heard my landlady, Miss Marguerite Sugrue!) Their children had traces of accents. Their grandchildren, pretty much none.
And now …
Listen to clips of President Kennedy. He is shockingly regional, or local—especially for so worldly a man. Shockingly. That does not exist anymore.
***
Back to Miss Marguerite Sugrue, for an aside. She was not an actual grandparent, as the “Miss” has told you. She was what in former times was called a “maiden aunt.” Miss Sugrue was looked after by a nephew. She was a wonderful, unforgettable woman. She had a Boston-Irish accent for the ages.
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Oh, we have a lot more to discuss, my friends. I think I should knock off for today and give you a Part II tomorrow. You know “code-switching”? Speaking in different modes to different people or audiences? Sometimes that is calculated and unnatural; other times it is perfectly human, natural.
We’ll get into that. Thanks and see you.
I have a number of cousins in Michigan, and none of them speak like Haley Stevens.
Regional accents seem to be disappearing, replaced by what Jay has described as "anchorman English." His explanation for their disappearance omits one important factor, which is socioeconomic class. Strong regional accents persist largely among the poor and uneducated. The upwardly mobile train themselves to avoid them because of those associations, while politicians often affect them in order to seem as if they are one with the plebs.
The same phenomenon now manifests itself in Great Britain, and has a long history in other countries. Both the pronunciation and orthography of French changed after the French revolution. For example, verbs such as connoître and paroître (pronounced "connwaitre" or "parwaitre") became connaître and paraître, with both pronunciation and spelling changed. The former pronunciations were considered aristocratic and therefore avoided.
A friend who is fluent in Russian once told me that the speech of the old Russian aristocracy had a French accent, because French was the language of diplomacy and of the cultured. Lenin, who was a member of the minor nobility, is supposed to have spoken Russian with such an accent. It is now extinct.
The speech of America's historic patrician classes, I suspect, would now be deadly to a politician's prospects. Can you imagine someone who spoke like FDR or W. Averill Harriman could be elected to any public office today?
Great article in the Wash. Post, Jay. Fun, interesting. Michiganders indeed have an accent. The farther north you go in the state, the people can sound like Canadians, where the "o" is very rounded, and "about" sounds like " a boot."