I’ve been dealing with the public for 7 years now, and while I do not mimic accents, I apparently repeat a caller’s mannerism’s when listening to a phone message.
Recently, a long winded guy left a message for me. “This Joe Blow, and uhhh, I had a question, and uhhh, I tried to install a widget, and uhhh, it’s not working, and uhhh, etc., and uhhh…”.
I’d been listening for about 5 minutes when I started repeating every “and uhhh” out loud, drawing out the “uhhh”.
The receptionist thought that I was a Zombie.
The Accountant thought that I was having sex with my chair.
I don’t so much do this with accents (although I love hearing them), but with peoples’ word choices, mannerisms, etc. It’s really subtle and I think it’s what makes my psychotherapy patients achieve rapport quickly. They can’t figure out why they feel so comfortable with me and why they trust me right away…
I have done this and it has been mistaken for mockery, but not often. It is terribly embarrassing. I am tone deaf, and may be worse than average at imitation, so that may be the reason it was taken for mockery. It is bad enough if you do it all all, but to do it badly could make it worse.
Glad its not just me. I most often find myself slipping into Scots accents when speaking to a couple of friends of mine. One fellow came over to me in a pub and asked if I was from Aberdeen. He had a bit of a shock when I explained where I was from as I smoothly slipped into my “real”* accent.
My friends have never mentioned it, in fact I think I pointed it out to them causing some raised eyebrows but not a lot else.
I was born in London, moved to Essex, then down to Brighton, so my accent should be shocking! Fortunatley (I believe subconciously but maybe I’m deluding myself) I have refined the accent such that I actually pronounce words properly rather than dropping t’s, etc. e.g. “down the road” instead of “dan the road”.
The more I think about it, the more interesting I find it. Good question.