I’m listening to a B.B.C. programme on public radio and this reporter Emma Joseph has the most annoying delivery. She keeps emphasizing the ends of words
– NintenDO, SoNY, video games indusTRY, marKET
– Who are these new players who are being targeTED?
– has sold two million coPIES
– AnaLYSTS point out that the market is still groWING.
- No wonDER Hollywood itself is starting to sit up and take noTICE.
It’s really jarring and it’s driving me bonkers. Why don’t they give her some broadcast training?
‘Broadcast training’? By which I presume you mean ironing out any trace of her Caribbean accent?
No, not any trace. The flow of emphasis on syllables in a sentence can be modified without affecting the pronunciation rules in an accent.
Why should a broadcaster on the World Service (which is the only place I’ve heard her) be expected to obey particular ‘pronunciation rules’ rather than others?
I don’t know. That’s why I’m not saying that she has to change them (I was referencing the pronunciation rules in her own accent).
I’m just talking about the emphasis placed on particular syllables in a sentence. While Standard English can be spoken in any accent, the emphasis issue plays an important role in givingcues to meaning. Monkeying with the emphasis so radically has a jarring effect on me as a listener, because I keep getting the wrong cues.
And if the fact that she’s broadcasting over B.B.C. World Service is the key, then why is she otherwise speaking in Standard British English rather than in Carribean dialect?
From what little I can find about her online, she’s lived in the UK for at least a decade. And we’ve no idea what her family or educational background is. Suffice to say she’s picked up a multitude of influences on her accent.
Oh, that’s odd. Was it on NPR or CBC? I heard the same story driving home from work tonight, but I was flipping through the stations, and don’t recall which radio station it was on…
Anyway, I noticed the accent too, but thought it was probably Carribbean in origin, via the UK. That was my guess, anyway.
I don’t know who distributes the programme, whether my local public radio station gets it directly from the B.B.C. or through another distributor like C.B.C., N.P.R., P.R.I., or A.P.M.
This kind of style was dubbed the plonking style way back when. I think it’s linked to the hack’s sense of importance, which tends to run far higher than warranted.