Introducing English Linguistics

Teresa B.
Teresa B. lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Unlike most cities in the United States,
the majority of residents in Atlanta (61 percent) are, according to 2000
census figures, of African-American origin. While Atlanta has many of the
problems associated with most urban areas in the United States – 21 per-
cent of its population lives under the poverty level and 39 percent of
households are headed by a single female – it has a range of social classes
and a well-established African-American middle class, of which Teresa B.
is a member. Although neither of her parents went to college, they were
able to open their own business, move out of a poor inner-city area of
Atlanta, and thus provide themselves and their daughter (their only child)
with a comfortable middle-class existence. Teresa B. went to good public
schools and attended Emory University, where she received an accounting
degree and ultimately an MBA. She speaks a variety of English that is com-
monly referred to as General American (GA).
General American is an accent that does not associate an individual
with a particular region of the United States, ethnic group, or social class.
In the movie American Tongues, Ramona Lenny defines this accent by
describing why people like her had to speak it when they recorded num-
bers to be used in directory assistance calls:
They [telephone company officials] were looking for generic speech. Or
some people call it homogenized speech. Speech that would float in any