How much inflluence does the media really have on the way we
speak? Apparently, almost none. |
Talk the Talk? Dialect differences will never die no matter how much TV we watch. |
![]() The
Vanishing Verb |
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Groups such as inner-city African-Americans, with an average daily media exposure of eight hours, use dialects and accents that are becoming less like the standard accents heard on TV. Language changes spreading rapidly around the globe are in fact way ahead of the mass media, to be heard only later when sitcoms and movies catch up.
Deaf parents with hearing children maximize their children’s exposure to television in hope of giving them verbal stimulation — only to discover that children do not gain any language skills from talking heads. To acquire language, children need face-to-face stimulation with real people. If they are deprived of that stimulation beyond their first few years, their speech will be profoundly impaired.
The idea that TV and other mass media shape language probably comes from the easy observation that the media are very good at spreading buzzwords. Someone says, “You got punked if you sent your credit card number to that e-mail address,” and suddenly almost everyone in earshot thinks of punk’d, the now-cancelled TV series in which celebrities were suckered into embarrassing situations as hidden cameras recorded their embarrassment.
Our implicit assumptions about
media and language overrule common
sense when the facts show that the media only spread words and phrases,
but do not invent them. Learn More
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