Word: ebel
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...Inman-Ebel is careful to say there is nothing wrong with sounding Southern -- just that it may not be the most suitable sound for the business world. "You dress well to go to work, and you put your jeans on when you go home," she says, and you ought to be able to choose the way you sound as well. The problem with sounding Southern, she says, is that it suggests certain stereotypes. A lot of outsiders have formed their ideas about the South through prolonged contemplation of Hee Haw and The Dukes of Hazzard. These ideas tend...
Steven Brooks, a client of Inman-Ebel's with his own direct-mail company, says some customers tell him his accent is cute, which is hard for a 28-year- old entrepreneur to stomach. "We have a designer for our ads, and that's image. We have a WATS line, and that's image. Then they call up and hear some hillbilly talking." Speech therapy costs him $45 a session, but Brooks believes it is an investment that will pay off for the rest of his life. He's been wanting to tone down his accent since high school...
...placed tongues, Brooks sits in front of a mirror. He puts a button-size plastic ring on the tip of his tongue, draws it into his mouth, and presses it up against the ridge behind the front teeth. It is an exercise against the tongue-lolling tendency that Inman-Ebel says characterizes 70% of Southern speakers. She says many Southerners suffer not just from forward tongue carry but also from unwanted "nasal emissions" (or twang), "restricted mandibles" ("a big phrase for talking with your mouth closed") and "oral-facial muscular imbalance...
...Inman-Ebel's clinical tone enrages some people. "What's wrong with forward tongue carry?" says John Tinkler, who teaches history of the English language at the University of Tennessee. "It doesn't sound like Indy-goddam-ana." Tinkler is a vast, round man with silver hair, dark skin and flashing, protuberant eyes. He describes his accent as "educated rural Southern," the language college graduates in his family have spoken for generations. He wishes Inman-Ebel would attack the stereotypes and the attitudes, instead of the accent. "She's teaching people how not to talk like folks," he says. "That...
...Inman-Ebel's view, people who talk like folks put stress in the wrong place (cre-ate for cre-ate), mispronounce vowels (rine for rain), draw monosyllables out into diphthongs (hay-ul for hell), and let their pitch glide, usually upward, as in "Y'all come back now, ya hear?" Some of them talk so slowly "you want to get inside and move the tongue yourself to get it over with." It does not add up to standard American speech...