Local dialects, or “accents” as they are usually called, can lead to an array of assumptions by listeners. To someone from Alabama, a nice southern drawl sounds warm and inviting. Maybe reminding the listener of childhood weekends spent at their grandparent’s home, overhearing late night conversations spoken in a near-melodic tone. This same conversation heard by someone who speaks a different dialect can sound completely different, and lead to a set of assumptions that are completely opposite. Hearing someone speak like a “hillbilly” may lead the listener to assume the speaker is ignorant and uneducated; overstressing odd syllables, and drawing out vowels to nearly torturous lengths. A listener’s place of origin and previous life experiences greatly dictates how they interpret the way a speaker sounds, and the assumptions they create in their mind based on these interpretations.
People often stereotype when they hear a person with a specific dialect. There can be many reasons for this. In our current time, the media has a huge role in these stereotypes. Southern people are often shown in the media as stupid and slow. Characters in such movies such as Sling Blade are hard to forget, especially if the listener has no other exposure to the dialect. Stereotypes from media can also be positive. Hearing a English accent usually instills calm and comfort in a listener. If they were to meet a fairly-well dressed man on the street with an English accent, they may never dream him to be a serial killer, even if that is what he is. Simply hearing the way he talks leads to a specific image in their head of who the person is and what kind of life they have lived.
Another way people learn stereotypes is experience. This could come as meeting a few people throughout their lives with the same dialect who have certain characteristics in common, or from overhearing family member’s stereotypes of a certain group. If you grow up hearing that Australians are criminals who were outcast from Britain years ago, you will probably have a very different view when meeting someone with and Australian accent, than someone who may have vacationed in Australia as a child, equating the accent with happy times.
I have a personal experience in meeting people and learning not to judge a book by its cover, and in this case, its voice. A number of months ago on vacation I met a couple from South Carolina. They both had extreme southern accents and even seemed to over-exaggerate their accents even more than normal. Since they were just wearing jeans and t-shirts I automatically assumed they were low class, probably from somewhere in the mountains (does South Carolina even have mountains?). Later, upon sitting down at dinner with come, to my surprise, she worked as a paralegal, and he was attending graduate school for chemistry. I quickly remembered that I shouldn’t be so hasty in my assumptions. Just because people sound a certain way means nothing. They could be the nicest people, or the worst people in the world, accent has nothing to do with character.
