Editing General American English (section)

== Origins ==
===Regional origins===
Though General American accents are not commonly perceived as associated with any region, their [[phonology|sound system]] does have traceable regional origins: specifically, the English of the non-coastal [[Northeastern United States]] in the very early 20th century, which was relatively stable since that region's original settlement by English speakers in the mid-19th century.{{sfnp|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|p=190}} This includes western [[New England]] and the area to its immediate west, settled by members of the same dialect community:{{sfnp|Bonfiglio|2002|p=43}} interior [[Pennsylvania]], [[Upstate New York]], and the adjacent "[[Midwestern United States|Midwest]]" or [[Great Lakes region]]. However, since the early to mid-20th century,{{sfnp|Wells|1982|p=470}}<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/14/051114ta_talk_seabrook|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|title=Talking the Tawk|year=2005|publisher=Condé Nast}}</ref> deviance away from General American sounds started occurring, and may be ongoing, in the eastern Great Lakes region due to its [[Northern Cities Vowel Shift]] (NCVS) towards a unique [[Inland North|Inland Northern accent]] (often now associated with the region's urban centers, like Chicago and Detroit) and in the western Great Lakes region towards a unique [[North Central American English|North Central accent]] (often associated with [[Minnesota]], [[Wisconsin]], and [[North Dakota]]).

===Theories about prevalence===
Linguists have proposed multiple factors contributing to the popularity of a [[rhoticity in English|rhotic]] "General American" class of accents throughout the United States, largely focused on the first half of the twentieth century. However, a basic General American pronunciation system existed even before the twentieth century, since most American English dialects have diverged very little from each other anyway, when compared to dialects of single languages in other countries where there has been more time for [[language change]] (such as the [[English language in England|English dialects of England]] or [[German dialects|German dialects of Germany]]).<ref>{{cite book|last=McWhorter|first=John H.|author-link=John McWhorter|year=2001|title=Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a "Pure" Standard English|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-0-7867-3147-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TfcovMPyLjEC&q=%22american+english+dialect+that+diverges%22}}</ref>

One factor fueling General American's popularity was the major demographic change of twentieth-century American society: increased [[suburbanization]], leading to less mingling of different social classes and less density and diversity of linguistic interactions. As a result, wealthier and higher-educated Americans' communications became more restricted to their own demographic. This, alongside their new marketplace that transcended regional boundaries (arising from the century's faster transportation methods), reinforced a widespread belief that highly educated Americans should not possess a regional accent.{{sfnp|Kretzschmar|2004|pp=260–2}} A General American sound, then, originated from both suburbanization and suppression of regional accent by highly educated Americans in formal settings. A second factor was a rise in immigration to the Great Lakes area (one native region of supposed "General American" speech) following the region's rapid industrialization period after the [[American Civil War]], when this region's speakers went on to form a successful and highly mobile business elite, who traveled around the country in the mid-twentieth century, spreading the high status of their accents.{{sfnp|Bonfiglio|2002|pp=69–70}} A third factor is that various sociological (often race- and class-based) forces repelled socially-conscious Americans away from accents negatively associated with certain minority groups, such as [[African Americans]] and poor white communities in the South and with Southern and Eastern European immigrant groups (for example, Jewish communities) in the coastal Northeast.{{sfnp|Bonfiglio|2002|pp=4, 97–98}} Instead, socially-conscious Americans settled upon accents more prestigiously associated with [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant]] communities in the remainder of the country: namely, the West, the Midwest, and the non-coastal Northeast.{{sfnp|Van Riper|2014|pp=123, 128–130}}

Kenyon, author of ''American Pronunciation'' (1924) and pronunciation editor for the second edition of ''[[Webster's Dictionary|Webster's New International Dictionary]]'' (1934), was influential in codifying General American pronunciation standards in writing. He used as a basis his native Midwestern (specifically, northern Ohio) pronunciation.{{sfnp|Seabrook|2005}} Kenyon's home state of [[Ohio]], however, far from being an area of "non-regional" accents, has emerged now as a crossroads for at least four distinct regional accents, according to late twentieth-century research.<ref>Hunt, Spencer (2012). [https://web.archive.org/web/20210928135157/https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2012/11/18/dissecting-ohios-dialects.html "Dissecting Ohio's Dialects"]. ''The Columbus Dispatch''. GateHouse Media, Inc. Archived from [http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2012/11/18/dissecting-ohios-dialects.html the original] on September 28, 2021.</ref> Furthermore, Kenyon himself was vocally opposed to the notion of any superior variety of American speech.<ref name="Hampton">Hampton, Marian E. & Barbara Acker (eds.) (1997). ''The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice.'' [[Hal Leonard Corporation]]. p. 163.</ref>