The Accent Code
Unlocking the Mysteries of How We Talk and What It Says About Who We Are
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The Accent Code
Pre-order Now for $34.40
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Narrated by:
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Written by:
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Erik Singer
Why do so many movie villains have British accents? Why do some New Englanders say “carr” and others “cahh”? Why does Alaskan Sarah Palin sound like she’s from Minnesota?
Where do accents come from, and why do people speak with different accents in the first place? Dialect coach Erik Singer has spent decades training Hollywood actors in the nuances of accents. How we pronounce our words isn’t just a matter of how we move our mouths. Accents come with a host of associations—geography, class, intelligence, attitude—that influence how we express our identities and how we perceive those of others. In The Accent Code, Singer offers an irresistible guide to how accents work and what they mean, revealing the hidden ways accents shape our lives.
Language never stops changing: it reflects the churn of human striving and conflict, from sweeping developments like migration and war to the more quotidian intrigue of the high school cafeteria. With wit, erudition, and inexhaustible curiosity, Singer leaps across time and geography to bring a symphony of past and present accents to life. Along the way, he examines what accents might have to do with political polarization, deconstructs the dangerous biases we apply to the ways people speak, and spotlights the ingenuity of the linguists who documented language change in real time. Armed with a dialect coach’s grasp of language from the inside out, we come to understand that an accent says so much more about us than where we’re from.
Drawing on history, linguistics, and pop culture, The Accent Code is an exhilarating tour of the rich variety of human communication and identity.
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What the critics say
“The Accent Code is a work of remarkable insight into not only our accents, but the human stories behind them. It will keep you constantly sounding out different vowels while questioning your underlying assumptions about language itself.”
—Adam Aleksic, New York Times bestselling author of Algospeak
—Adam Aleksic, New York Times bestselling author of Algospeak
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