There is a difference between naturally speaking in regional vernacular, and raising it to the level of caricature. Whether you appreciate one, the other, or both of these forms is a matter of taste, I suppose. (Also, I was referring to accents so much as figures of speech.)
> Speaking for myself, I think the chameleon effect only
> goes so far and then gets darned tiresome in the bargain.
> I ran away from home in MT to go to college on the east
> coast. At the time, I thought I had no accent and all
> those Easterners just talked funny. My college friends
> assured me that it was I who talked funny, especially when
> talking on the phone to MT. The on breaks, my high-school
> friends would razz me about talking like an Easterner.
> (Think of the NYT as your basic schooyard, only maybe
> better dressed.)
My own personal experience with accents is similar. I seem to pick them up very easily if I am around people with strong ones. I grew up in what was soon to be rust belt Midwest and moved to Alabama. There I worked in a factory with a lot of country people, white and black. While they always made fun of my accent, people back home thought I had a strong Ala accent. But I also lost that accent when I was at school at night where many of the faculty were transplants.
When I moved to New Orleans, my accent shifted again. (For those unfamiliar with the NOLA 'yat' accent, it is decidedly NOT Southern and actually sounds kinda like a slurred Brooklyn accent.) I've lived in Houston now of 15 years now and I think my accent has sort of settled into some neutralish sort of stew. The people I spend the most time with around here are mostly transplants and heavily formally edumacated and sort 'accentless'. The natives I hang out with, including my two closest friends in TX, a married couple, not talk like Jim Hightower or use figures of speech like Molly Ivins. (and they actually grew up in the same neighborhood as her about 10 years later).
But I have a brother who has lived in New Jersey for 15 or 20 years now, and his native accent is as strong as ever. When I talk to him on the phone his accent is just like my brother's back home who has never lived outside the area.
> So I fixed them all and moved to the southern Indiana for
> awhile. The only lasting thing I got out of that is a
> "Y'all" I keep around for when I need to pretend to speak
> "hayseed" or when I need a good non-gender-specific
> substitute for "you guys," "youz guys," etc.
"you guys" *is* gender neutral! (where I come from anyway :)
-- no Onan