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Can we say it as we feel it, fwaaa?!

8/16/2017

4 Comments

 
Picture
Photo cred Florence Kakatshozi - Twitter: @Kakatshozi / www.ugandanstoryteller.wordpress.com
We finally reached Ibanda at 2am, a road journey long enough that we could have flown to England. That’s another story, from which the lesson I picked was to communicate better - like ask the driver “is this your first time driving to Ibanda?” before you fall asleep. I wasn’t asleep, I just lost my phone so wasn’t checking Google maps as I would usually, and I may have been the least qualified in the car to know where I was, but anyway… we arrived with five hours to go until we were to be on the job running a workshop, training trainers for Project 500K. I spent most of that time thinking about a conversation I had at 2:30am with my colleague, Shakib Nsubuga.
 
I asked Shakib, if he went to school in the UK, why didn’t he have a British accent? He said it was his choice not to change his accent in a way that could seem unauthentic, though there were times when adaptation was needed to be appropriate for the audience he was communicating with. We agreed that accents can naturally be fluid. He reminded me of a lot of reading I did in grad school about Accommodation Theory and how communication style adapts to the audience, group, and culture. I read studies showing that people change the way they speak to mimic the person they’re speaking to, even subconsciously. From childhood, we pick up on our friends’ slang. We also modify the volume of our voice, the speed, enunciation, tonation, pronunciation, and diction or use of language.
 
What causes this communication of accommodation? The most obvious reason is the desire to fit in with your people. Usually, we pick up on manners of speak from our friends. In secondary school, I used to say Brutal all the time, like exams and social blunders and everything was Bruuutal - because that’s what my friends said, and that was our worldview in the Canadian education system, free and relatively high quality though it was, in retrospect. Now, I am conversant with the meaning of Blessers and what it is to just do things Fwaaa! Again, something in this use of language reflects the culture of my friends now in Kampala, Uganda. I am sure anyone can name similar manners of speaking that they have picked up from their social groups throughout their lives.
 
The other side of being like your group, though, is not being like ‘the other.’ This can be problematic for anyone who communicates outside of one homogenous group. Trevor Noah wrote in Born A Crime that it’s easier to be an insider as an outsider than an outsider as an insider. Shakib suggested that it’s more acceptable to adapt as a minority toward the majority than the other way around, and that sounded sensible to me. Shakib and I both experienced coming back from somewhere else to our people from before, and being changed. Coming back with an accent can be suspicious. Where did you get that accent from? Is it fake? We judge, though we do not really know other people’s experiences.
Google defines “accent” as “a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class.”
It is easier to communicate in a British accent to British people, because they’re more likely to understand. Similarly, when I was a regular on Ugandan radio in 2010, my manner of speaking became more Ugandan to be better understood, then I learned that it can be offensive to simplify your English as if assuming that the person you are speaking to is not capable of understanding you as you are.
 
This conversation has continued among our traveling group, with my teammates criticizing certain Ugandan media personalities and Kampala socialites for modifying their accent in a way that seems artificial, when it is known that they have not left the country for long, or ever at all. Some thought that news anchors were trying to show off how they’ve travelled, or just wanted to be perceived as superior.
 
This begs the question: why is it wrong to consciously develop an accent that does not reflect your upbringing? Digging deeper into this question, my colleagues suggested that in Uganda, people believe that foreign-sounding English is superior to a local accent, which is the result of a widespread inferiority complex. More generally, there is an insecurity within people about how their voice reflects their identity. This train of thought leads to a larger discussion of social stratification, people’s aspirations and the offence of cultural appropriation, which I’ll leave for another day.
 
But what do you think? To what extent is our own manner of speaking unconscious? How much of our communication style is a choice, and are there moral guidelines we should apply to these choices? Oba we just say it as we feel it, fwaaa?!
4 Comments
Komusana Fionah link
8/16/2017 12:08:07 pm

Interesting thoughts. It reminds me of Ifemelu in Americanah when she says that living in the US & getting an American accent is a choice.
In Uganda we can always identify which region a person is from by their accent. It's one of those unconscious biases.
I remember when I moved to the central region for school in primary school, actively unlearning my western Uganda accent because I was made fun of whenever I attempted to say something in class.
The need for my 11 year old self to belong overrode my identity.
I know I have succeeded because last week a police officer in Kampala told me, I don't sound like my surname.
But I also learned within the first 2 minutes at a US airport, from the number of times the airport official begged my pardon that if I had to get around for the duration of my trip, I had to speak slower with a bit of an accent but at the back on my I prayed that I don't become those people who spend 2 minutes "outside countries" & come back with an accent for days.

In a lot of ways, language and communication is how we survive.
Of course everything linked to abroad is treated with a superiority & we can forever blame colonialism, racism & all their cousins, but sometimes putting up a fight for your accent is not worth the sweat.
Have an accent, or two or 6, as long as you keep it to the target your audience.
Which is my precise problem with radio & TV people.
Why exactly are you using a foreign accent in a country that doesn't have a specific accent affiliated to it?
I rest my case.
These conversations must be had. Thank you for writing this.

Reply
Claire
8/17/2017 05:51:48 am

As you mentioned, there are larger "social stratifications" at play and there's you're answer right there. Always be aware of your social location (white, female, straight, etc) as you will always carry that with you and it will influence the power you represent and influence how people interpret your attempts at speaking a language or dialect. Just like your example of how you used an accent on the radio and it was taken as offensive. This is in no-doubt because of your social location as a white person from English-speaking Canada (one of many white, american/canadian people who have made assumptions about another country's ability to understand english in an american accent). I think it's always good to ask these questions about ourselves especially when we're not in our inner circle, but suddenly the "outsider"..what kind of outsider are we? how are our social locations related to those of the people around us now? what do we represent to them in terms of power or lack-of-power in this setting?

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@CharlieBeau Diary of a Muzungu link
8/25/2017 03:50:04 am

My sister is deaf so I have spent my whole life keenly aware of how people understand me and the best way of communicating with each person. Most of us adapt the way we speak. It is quite normal. When my sister and I were growing up, it was really important to me to be sensitive to vocabulary that I knew she was familiar with. Big sister's job was to introduce and explain new words to her. I also learned to speak clearly and enunciate well. (I often wonder whether my early exposure to the intricacies of language helped shape my passion for writing).
As a marketing manager, I always start with the fundamentals: know your audience. You have to be cognizant of their linguistic abilities, amongst other aspects. Nobody wants to be patronised but you have to engage your audience's understanding and pitch at a level where the majority will understand. There is no point speaking at your normal everyday speed of English if you're going to leave most of the room behind. That's just wasting everyone's time.
As for accents, I think we can all spot the fake ones! However, it can be too easy to judge. Few of us are aware of other people's insecurities and desire to fit in.

Reply
Arinaitwe Rugyendo link
12/26/2017 10:11:40 pm

Anne,

This is awesome. It reminds me a of a Nigerian Novel, 'Nolonger At Ease' by Chinua Achebe. Find it and read about this similar sentiment amongst the Igbo people.

I think language evolves with environment and different cultures. Accent is a reflection of this. I love UGLISH. The BBC website recently added Pidgin English on its menu. This goes to prove that English is evolving. It is the very reason you have American English. Why then shouldn't ee have African English?

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