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Culture Study Podcast

The Ridiculously Interesting World of American Accents

Culture Study Podcast

Culture Study Podcast

Society & Culture, Arts

4.5789 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🧾️ 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 packHead to Ollie.com/CULTURE, tell them all about your dog, and use code CULTURE to get 60% off your Welcome Kit when you subscribe todayShow Notes:Find out more about Dr. Nicole Holliday’s work hereFollow Dr. Holliday on TikTok (where I first started watching her!)If you haven’t heard GloRilla’s Memphis accent, here you go:Taste of the Yinzer Accent:Okay one more:We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:Birding Culture!Running a Small Business — and How to Make It Sustainable & Survivable (with Jen Hewett!)Hoarding Culture / How to Navigate Hoarders in Your LifeDifferent Modalities of Hanging Out (aka, best ways to hang out with different people) with Mary HK ChoiFood Trends (like, what are you seeing on the menu in all the restaurants? Why are people pushing this particular ingredient or prep in their recipes???)Baseball Culture (with Ali Liebegott and Melody as additional co-host!!!)Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) hereFor this week’s discussion: How did this conversation make you rethink an accent (or many accents) in your life?

Transcript

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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,

...

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