Taking on the Accents of the People Near Us

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Aubrey. I’m calling from Jacksonville, Florida. So nice to meet you, guys.

So my question was this. I am a nurse. I’ve been practicing for a little over a year now.

And up until this time, I had been, you know, more or less speaking the same way I ever had.

But ever since I started working, I would come home and my parents, they’d tell me, you have a different accent that we have never heard from you before in your life.

You know, why are you suddenly sounding different?

And I hadn’t even noticed it because who notices those kinds of things.

But it wasn’t until I put some thought into it that I realized that a lot of the patients that I would see, the hospitals that I worked in, they were in a very specific area.

And a lot of the folks around this part would have a similar sounding dialect.

And so I had a moment of clarity, like, oh, my gosh, I’m kind of picking up their dialect.

And I didn’t even realize that was a thing you could do at, you know, a later age in life.

You hear about those kinds of things in children.

But, you know, I’m 23.

So it’s kind of a surprise.

And so all this is to say is, you know, is this something you’ve heard about among nurses or any other kind of people-focused profession?

Maybe it’s just a me thing.

I care a lot about connecting with my patients and building relationships during, you know, what is more often than not one of the most challenging and hard periods of their lives.

And so, you know, being able to form those connections with my folks matters to me.

So maybe that’s why I’m doing it.

I don’t know, but I thought it was interesting and I wanted to bring it up.

Oh, this is so good.

I’m so excited to talk to you about this just to get on a good start here.

It’s not a me thing.

It’s not a you thing.

It’s a we thing.

We all do this to some degree or another.

It’s natural.

It’s really common among all people to varying degrees to take on the language attributes of the people around them so that they fit in.

And it particularly makes a lot of sense in your kind of work where you have to engender trust really, really quickly, right?

You have to make a connection with these people you’re working with one-on-one, right?

Yes, ma’am.

It’s so well-known, in fact, that sometimes it’s taught in sales or customer service training where they explain mirroring someone’s voice, not just their accent, but their mood, their tone, their emotions, helps the other person to like you.

Of course, they also talk about mimicking body movements.

So like if they cross your leg, you cross yours.

If they stand up, you stand up.

If they smile, you smile.

But this is an unconscious, so it’s usually unconscious, mimicry that we have as humans when we’re speaking or interacting with someone else.

We want them to know that we’re like them and they want the same.

So we do it kind of without thinking because it’s built into the societal training that we have.

This natural glue of people who are like us are safe is what we’re taught.

And people who are different from us are not.

Of course, this is the source of bias and prejudice and racism, but it’s in there.

It’s hardwired to agree that we imitate the people around us to fit in.

It’s fundamental, like that animal part of us that we can’t shake.

That makes sense.

It’s funny because, you know, you mentioned subconscious.

Even consciously, you know, something I try to do when I’m trying to get to know a new patient I haven’t met before is I would, you know, try to talk a little bit about myself, ask questions about their lives, try to find common interests and, you know, keep that discussion going over the course of my shift.

And that’s something I am actively thinking about.

But I guess I got so focused in that, assessing medications, all of the things that go with being a nurse that I didn’t even stop to consider all of the unconscious things that go into connecting with people too.

It’s even about how you face them, right?

Are you facing them head on or from the side?

When you reach for stuff that’s near them, how do you reach?

Do you reach hand up or hand down?

Palm up or palm down?

There are a lot of different ways that you can show friendship or that you’re not threatening.

And also the volume of your voice.

You may lower it to match the other person or the pitch or how fast you’re talking.

And your accent as well, to some degree.

So you’re very astute to notice this, Aubrey.

And in fact, linguists study this kind of linguistic accommodation.

There have been studies of retail workers who unwittingly adopt the pronunciation of the people that they’re trying to serve.

Yeah, that’s the famous study by linguist William Lebov in the 1970s, where he interviewed people in a department store.

And people from the working class neighborhoods took on the tones and accents of the people from the wealthy neighborhoods in order to sell them things.

There’s a book I want to recommend to you if you want to read more about this.

It’s called Language and Nationality by Pietro Bortone.

And this book, while it’s talking about language identity on a national level, it has a very good chapter, chapter three, called Preference for the Linguistically Similar, where he describes exactly what you’re talking about and how it works with us when we begin to sound like someone else.

He talks about when you talk like somebody else, you’re perceived as cozy or more expressive, more colorful, more flavorsome, and as having immediacy and emotional charge.

It’s just a really very good book on the topic.

I think it’s approachable by anyone in post-high school.

Chapter 3 of Language and Nationality. I’ll look it up. Thank you so much.

Yeah, by Pietro Bartone, B-O-R-T-O-N-E.

Understood. I’ll write it down.

Thank you so much for the hard work that you do as a healthcare professional.

Yeah, you sound like you’re really good at what you do, Aubrey. I can tell just from the way you talk.

Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you guys for what you do.

You know, more often than not, being in healthcare in any aspect, it leaves you exhausted.

I would be too tired to talk to people, but I still wanted to have a sense of connection.

So on my drives home, I’d turn on NPR, and it would make me feel a little bit less alone.

And that alone has done so much good in my life.

So thank you guys, too.

Oh, thank you so much for the kind words.

Give us an update at some point, and let us know how it’s going.

Will do.

I’ll write down your recommendations.

Take care.

Have a great day, y’all.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Aubrey.

Bye-bye.

Well, we love getting these reports of the language that you use in the workplace or the way you speak in the workplace.

We’d love to hear from you.

So call us 877-929-9673 or send your stories to words@waywordradio.org.