The Effects of Globalisation on Accented Speech

Meryem Şen (Kocaeli University, Turkey)

Email: meryem.sen@isbank.net.tr

 

ABSTRACT:

The obvious power of globalised capitalism is to distribute and promote its cultural goods everywhere in the world. For this it uses all devices and puts them in service including language as well. Although the policy of globalisation requires a common platform for economical issues in order to realise a mutual and comprehensible interaction among world nations, it is the fact that globalisation has not always been perceived in a positive manner. It has often been associated with the destruction of cultural identities, victims of the accelerating encroachment of a homogenized, westernized, consumer culture (Tomlinson 2003).

On the other hand, it is also believed that local cultural and linguistic diversity has been promoted by globalisation. The media organs, specifically, have been the medium of globalisation in spreading its effects in different domains, and in representing cultural and linguistic diversities. The prevailing assumption is that globalisation has provided normalisation for the perception and acceptance of cultural and linguistic differences, which were once treated socially stigmatized. However, it seems to be questionable whether globalisation has removed the stigma on non-standard linguistic forms. Stroud (2003) underlines the fact that local language practices position individual identity in social and material context. Thus, within this briefly stated frame, I will try to argue that non-standard linguistic forms have been promoted by marketing academics and practitioners for the benefit of the world of commerce, and claim that it is ipso facto that cultural and linguistic characteristics are appreciated. If the representation of cultural and linguistic diversities in TV advertisements and series is thought to be normalisation as the outcome of globalisation, it is then my question is that to what extent this representation would be a legitimated normalisation. Investigating the linguistic attitudes displayed by marketing people, and people speaking with standard and non-standard accents towards the use of non-standard accents in TV advertisements and series, I will discuss the effect of globalisation on accented speech in promoting the recognition of flow of contacts, goods and services in Turkish context.

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References

• Stroud, Christopher. (2003). Postmodernist perspectives on local languages: African mother-tongue education in times of globalisation. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6/1: 17–36.
• Tomlinson, Tom. (2003). Globalism and Cultural Identity. http://www.polity.co.uk/global/pdf/GTReader2eTomlinson.pdf