Pjen, I think you’re off on a couple of points. In my experience, people tend to draw their accents from their peer groups, not their grandparents. And your argument does not allow for the influence of Ulster Scot immigrants, slave dialects, and Native American influence. By Washington’s day, Americans had been separated from Britain by a great wide ocean for over 150 years. Plenty of time for development of a distinctive Southern accent. What is more likely, that the accent developed in the
What is more likely, that the Southern accent gradually developed over the 167 years between colonization and the Revolution, or that it quickly emerged over the “four score and seven years” between the Revolution and the Civil War?
Well, thank you all for your answers. I really wasn’t expecting so many responses. When I first heard what I stated in the OP, I was pretty young, and I took it at face value. But recently I’ve rethought it and it seemed too simplistic. Guess it was. So thank you for giving me, as the board name says, the straight dope on the subject.
Oratory, especially that of someone trained in rhetoric and speaking without electronic amplification.
It is hard to overstate the impact the PA system had on politics - it completely eliminated this form of political address, and made politicians who skillfully exploited this new technology much more influential.