Sociolinguistic Artifacts

Philadelphian and self-proclaimed “accent nerd” Sean Monahan makes Youtube videos about the accents in the Mid-Atlantic region. In this video he talks about representations of the Philadelphian accent in movies and TV (or lack thereof), then it cuts to a montage of Philadelphians speaking to hear the difference between actors and native speakers. This video is a great example of indexicality and language ideologies at play. Sean is very proud of the accent that indexes him as a Philadelphian but aware that the lack of accurate representations of the dialect makes it hard for outsiders to recognize it. In the beginning of the video he even mentions people on the west coast though he had a speech impediment – this reveals a language ideology they have about how English “should” sound.