人人都有口音

JANET HANSEN

（本文發表於時報觀點與評論網站，作者是ROBERTO REY AGUDO。）

I have an accent. So do you.

我有口音。你也有。

I am an immigrant who has spent nearly as much time in the United States as I have in my home country, Spain. I am also the director of Dartmouth』s language programs in Spanish and Portuguese. Both facts explain, but only partly, why I feel a special fondness for the FX drama 「The Americans,」 in which Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, a husband-and-wife team of undercover K.G.B. agents living in suburban Washington. I can』t be the only one who nodded approvingly when they were both nominated for Emmys last week.

我是移民，住在美國的年頭快趕上之前在祖國西班牙的時間了。我還是達特茅斯學院的西班牙語和葡萄牙語教學中心主任。這兩個事實說明了（但只是部分解釋了）我為什麼喜歡FX台的電視劇《美國諜夢》(The Americans)，在劇中，凱麗·拉塞爾(Keri Russell)和馬修·瑞斯(Matthew Rhys)扮演的伊麗莎白和菲利普·詹寧斯夫婦是生活在華盛頓郊區假扮夫妻檔的兩名克格勃特工。上周他們獲得艾美獎提名時，我不會是唯一一個點頭叫好的人。

What interests me as a linguist is that the Jenningses are, as the pilot tells us, 「supersecret spies living next door」 who 「speak better English than we do.」 Even their neighbor, an F.B.I. agent on the counterintelligence beat, suspects nothing.

作為一名語言學家，我感興趣的是，正如該劇第一集告訴我們的，詹寧斯夫婦是「住在隔壁的超級間諜」，他們的「英語說得比我們還好」。就連他們的鄰居，一名從事反間諜工作的FBI探員，也沒有懷疑。

Living as I do, deeply immersed in the work of teaching and learning second languages, it was fun to watch a TV series in which the main characters』 aptitude for them was so central to the plot. Nonetheless, the premise that you can speak a language without any accent at all is a loaded one. You can』t actually do this.

像我這樣一心撲在第二語言教學的人，看一部主角的語言天賦對情節的發展至關重要的連續劇，是一件很有意思的事情。儘管如此，說話完全不帶口音這樣的設定存在問題。你其實是不可能做到這一點的。

Worse, when we fetishize certain accents and disdain others, it can lead to real discrimination in job interviews, performance evaluations and access to housing, to name just a few of the areas where having or not having a certain accent has profound consequences. Too often, at the hospital or the bank, in the office or at a restaurant — even in the classroom — we embrace the idea that there is a right way for our words to sound and that the perfect accent is one that is not just inaudible, but also invisible.

更糟糕的是，當我們喜歡或者討厭某些口音時，會導致在工作面試、績效評估和獲得住房方面出現真正的歧視，這裡列舉的是具有某種或者沒有某種口音會產生深遠影響的幾個領域。很多時候，在醫院或者銀行，在辦公室或者餐館，甚至在課堂上，我們都相信存在一種讓我們所說的話聽來正確的方式，相信完美的口音不僅是聽不見的，也是看不見的。

If you look at the question from a sociolinguistic point of view, having no accent is plainly impossible. An accent is simply a way of speaking shaped by a combination of geography, social class, education, ethnicity and first language. I have one; you have one; everybody has one. There is no such thing as perfect, neutral or unaccented English — or Spanish, for that matter, or any other language. To say that someone does not have an accent is as believable as saying that someone does not have any facial features.

如果你從社會語言學的角度來看這個問題，沒有口音顯然是不可能的。口音不過是一種受到地理、社會階層、教育、種族和第一語言等因素合力影響的說話方式。我有口音，你也有口音，人人都有口音。沒有完美的、中立的、不帶任何口音的英語、西班牙語或者任何一種語言。說某人沒有口音就像說某人沒有五官一樣不可信。

We know this, but even so, at a time when the percentage of foreign-born residents in the United States is at its highest point in a century, the distinction between 「native」 and 「nonnative」 has grown vicious, and it is worth reminding ourselves of it again and again: No one speaks without an accent.

我們很清楚這一點，但即便如此，在外國出生的美國居民的比例達到世紀最高點的時候，「土生土長」和「外來」之間的分野所滋生出的惡毒，值得我們一再提醒自己：沒有誰說話是不帶口音的。

When we say that someone speaks with an accent, we generally mean one of two things: a nonnative accent or a so-called nonstandard accent. Both can have consequences for their speakers. In other words, it is worth acknowledging that people discriminate on the basis of accent within their own language group, as well as against those perceived as language outsiders. The privileged status of the standard accent is, of course, rooted in education and socioeconomic power.

當我們說某人說話帶口音時，通常指的是這樣兩種情況中的一種：不是本地口音或者不是所謂的標準口音。兩者都會對說話者產生影響。換句話說，值得承認的是，在自己的語言群體內部，人們根據口音來做區分，同時歧視那些語言上的外人。當然，標準口音的特權地位植根於教育和社會經濟力量。

The standard accent is not necessarily the same as the highest-status accent. It is simply the dominant accent, the one you are most likely to hear in the media, the one that is considered neutral. Nonstandard native accents are also underrepresented in the media, and like nonnative accents, are likely to be stereotyped and mocked. Terms like Southern drawl, Midwestern twang or Valley Girl upspeak underscore the layered status attached to particular ways of speaking.

標準口音不一定與社會最上層的口音相同。它只是最主流的口音，是你最有可能在媒體上聽到的口音，被認為是中性的口音。非標準的母語口音在媒體中也沒有足夠體現，而且像非母語口音一樣，可能會遭到刻板印象歸類，或是遭到嘲笑。南方拖腔、中西部鼻音或山谷女孩升調等詞語強調了與特定口音相關的社會分層狀態。

Such judgments are purely social — to linguists, the distinctions are arbitrary. However, the notion of the neutral, perfect accent is so pervasive that speakers with stigmatized accents often internalize the prejudice they face. The recent re-evaluation of the 「Simpsons」 character Apu provides an important example of how the media and popular culture use accents to make easy — and uneasy — jokes.

這種判斷純粹是社會性的——對於語言學家來說，這種劃分方式很武斷。然而，中性的完美口音這個觀念是如此深入人心，說話者如果帶有令人羞恥的口音，往往就會認同和接受他們所面對的偏見。最近對《辛普森一家》(Simpsons)中的角色阿普(Apu)的重新評估提供了一個重要的例子，說明媒體和流行文化如何使用口音來創作廉價和令人不安的笑話。

When you are learning a language, a marked accent is usually also accompanied by other features, like limited vocabulary or grammatical mistakes. In the classroom, we understand that this is a normal stage in the development of proficiency. My family back in Madrid would have a hard time understanding the Spanish of my English-speaking students in my first-semester classroom.

學習語言的時候，明顯的口音通常伴隨著其他特徵，例如有限的辭彙量或語法錯誤。在課堂上，我們明白這是語言熟練程度進步的正常階段。我那些母語是英語的學生們在第一學期課堂上說的西班牙語，我在馬德里的家人肯定很難聽懂。

Later, these same students study abroad in Barcelona or Cuzco or Buenos Aires, and often struggle to make themselves understood. But such is the privilege of English — and this is key — that nobody hearing their American accents presumes that they are less capable, less ambitious or less honest than if their R』s had a nicer trill. Yet this is exactly the kind of assumption that a Spanish accent — and many, many others — is likely to trigger within the United States.

後來，這些學生去巴塞羅那、庫斯科或布宜諾斯艾利斯留學時，也往往很難讓別人聽懂他們說話。但英語就是有這樣的特權——這是關鍵所在——沒有人聽了他們的美國口音，就覺得他們能力較差、缺乏抱負或是不誠實，只會覺得他們應該把「R」的顫音發得更好。然而，在美國，西語口音——以及許多其他口音——很可能引起對說話者的看法。

It』s certainly true that a marked accent can get in the way of making yourself understood. E.S.L. learners and others are well advised to work on their pronunciation. As a teacher, I do try to lead my students toward some version of that flawed ideal, the native accent. One of the ironies in this is that I — along with most of my fellow teachers from the 20 countries (not counting Puerto Rico) where Spanish is an official language — long ago shed the specific regional, class-shaped intonations and vocabulary that are, or once were, our native accents. My point is not that we need to forget the aim of easily comprehensible communication — obviously, that remains the goal. But we do need to set aside the illusion that there is a single true and authentic way to speak.

毫無疑問，嚴重的口音會妨礙自己被他人理解。ESL學生和其他初學者被建議注重發音，這是正確的。作為教師，我的確試圖帶領學生追求那個有缺陷的理想，即本土口音。這其中有點諷刺的是，我——以及我的大多數同事，來自20個以西班牙語為官方語言的國家（不算波多黎各）的老師——很久以前就擺脫了特定的，由區域和階層所決定的語調和辭彙，也就是（或者曾經是）我們的本土口音。我並不是認為我們要忘記方便溝通這個目的——顯然，這仍然是我們的目標。但我們確實需要拋棄那種錯覺，好像真正、真實的說話方式只有一種。

English is a global language with many native and nonnative varieties. Worldwide, nonnative speakers of English outnumber natives by a ratio of three to one. Even in the United States, which has the largest population of native English speakers, there are, according to one estimate, nearly 50 million speakers of English as a second language. What does it even mean to sound native when so many English speakers are second-language speakers? Unless you are an embedded spy like the Jenningses, it is counterproductive to hold nativelike pronunciation as the bar you have to clear.

英語是一種全球語言，有許多母語和非母語變種。在世界範圍內，非母語的英語使用者人數是英語母語者的三倍。即使在擁有最多英語母語人口的美國，根據一項估計，也有近5000萬人將英語作為第二語言。如果這麼多說英語的人都是把英語作為第二語言，那麼聽起來像本地人究竟是什麼意思呢？除非你是像詹寧斯一家那樣的潛伏間諜，否則將你的母語發音視為必須清除的障礙，只會得不償失。

Accent by itself is a shallow measure of language proficiency, the linguistic equivalent of judging people by their looks. Instead, we should become aware of our linguistic biases and learn to listen more deeply before forming judgments. How large and how varied is the person』s vocabulary? Can she participate in most daily interactions? How much detail can he provide when retelling something? Can she hold her own in an argument?

口音本身就是衡量語言能力的淺層標準，在語言的世界裡，就相當於通過外表來評判他人。相反，我們應該警惕我們的語言偏見，在形成判斷之前學會更深入的傾聽。這個人的辭彙量有多大、有多豐富？她可以參加大部分日常互動嗎？在複述某些事情時，他能提供多少細節？她能在辯論中堅持立場嗎？

Language discrimination based on accent is not merely an academic idea. Experiments show that people tend to make negative stereotypical assumptions about speakers with a nonnative accent. The effect extends all the way to bias against native speakers whose name or ethnicity reads as foreign. Studies show that when nonnative speakers respond to advertisements for housing, their conversations with prospective landlords are more likely to be unsuccessful, on average, than those of callers 「without accents.」

基於口音的語言歧視不僅僅是一種學術觀念。實驗表明，人們傾向於對具有非母語口音的說話者做出負面的刻板印象假設。這種影響一直延伸到那些名字或種族特徵看上去像是外國人的母語人士。研究表明，當非母語者回應租房廣告時，平均而言，他們與未來房東的交談比那些「沒有口音」的致電者更容易失敗。

So I hope you like my accent as much as I like yours.

所以我希望你喜歡我的口音，就像我喜歡你的口音一樣。

本文作者Roberto Rey Agudo是達特茅斯學院的西班牙語和葡萄牙語教學中心主任，也是OpEd項目的輿論研究員。

翻譯：晉其角

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