The Ridiculously Interesting World of American Accents

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When your family is from a place with a distinctive, often-mockable accent, and you don’t have that accent but can (and do) readily fall into it as soon as you get around anyone who does their vowels like a Minnesotan, you learn to love accents. And then, as soon as you take any class (or read any text) in the anthropology/sociology/cultural analysis realm, you start thinking about accents as signifiers: of place, of race, of social status, of education, of insider/outsider status… the meanings feel endless.

I’m SO thrilled to have Dr. Nicole Holliday on this week’s episode to go deep and nerdy on all of your very complicated (or, sometimes, deceptively simple) questions about accents — most of them American, but we’ve got a few Canadian questions in there, too. And I can pretty much guarantee: you’re going to absolutely devour this episode. It’s the platonic ideal of a Culture Study ep, and I can’t wait to discuss it.

Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode!

Zbiotics Sugar-to-Fiber: Go to zbiotics.com/CULTURESTUDY and use CULTURESTUDY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics. ZBiotics has a 100% money-back guarantee, so if you’re unsatisfied for any reason they will refund your money, no questions asked.

Article: Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit ARTICLE.COM/culture and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

Head to moshlife.com/CULTURE to save 20% off plus free shipping on the best sellers trial pack or the new plant-based trial pack

Head to Ollie.com/CULTURE, tell them all about your dog, and use code CULTURE to get 60% off your Welcome Kit when you subscribe today

Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world. If you're already a subscriber-- thank you! Join us in the discussion thread for this episode! Got a question or idea for a future episode? Visit culturestudypod.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit culturestudypod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Anne. So once a month, we pick an episode to make free for everyone. Normally, that would include the Ask An anything segment, but this episode, which is amazing, went long because it's so good. So we're just going to skip the Ask An Anything segment and not put any of the conversation behind the paywall. But if you want to support the show, paid subscribers get perks like
0:21.3	discussion threads for each episode, which have gotten really good lately, and an ad-free experience.
0:27.4	So if you always want to get the full episode, including the SK-99th segment, which is reliably
0:32.2	very juicy, head to culturestudypod.substack.com and become a paid subscriber. And if you already subscribe to
0:39.0	the culture study newsletter, which I know a lot of you do, you get a big discount on the podcast.
0:44.4	You can find a link to that in the Substack post for this episode. Okay, thanks, everyone. Enjoy the show. This is the culture study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Nicole Holliday. I am
1:03.1	Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. All right, Nicole, we're going to start
1:07.9	by having you help us issue a correction for an episode
1:11.6	on Boston that I did with Josh Gondelman. So you wrote in with a few things you noticed from the
1:16.1	episode. I love it when people do this. I really do. And this inspired this entire episode.
1:21.7	So I'm going to read you the bullet points and you can tell us where we went wrong.
1:26.3	One, we wondered, our regional accents disappearing.
1:29.7	Two, we speculated on whether Massachusetts has an unusually high number of, Melody, how do I say
1:36.4	this word? Shibbolists. That is a word that you do. I've seen a billion times, and I've never had to say
1:43.3	out loud. Place names. Basically, to me, that's place names that you do I've seen a billion times and I've never had to say out loud place names.
1:45.1	Basically, to me, that's place names that you say it completely different than how it looks
1:50.5	on the page. Is that right? No, there's chibolice because the pronunciation tells you whether
1:55.3	someone is from there or not. Oh, they're like giveaways. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. And then we wondered about the ways in which
2:02.3	regional markers indicate class or race. So can we go through these? Are regional accents disappearing?
2:11.2	Okay. So I did not want to be a hater and I love the podcast. I'm like first time color,
2:16.6	long time listener, love the podcast. And I love Josh Gondleman. But I was hearing that episode and I love the podcast. I'm like first time color, long time listener, love the podcast, and I love
2:19.2	Josh Gondelman, but I was hearing that episode and I was like, but a slightly incorrect. So,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 4 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Anne Helen Petersen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Anne Helen Petersen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.