How to be Autistic for 37 Years Without Knowing It: Ch. 1. The Boston Accent

I'll be publishing some short blogs about discovering one's own autism in adulthood and what comes next. Here's the first post. It doesn't even mention autism. It's either an irrelevant tangent or perhaps it's a set-up for an important metaphor. Only one way to find out!

I was born and grew up just outside of Boston. In my family, and certainly my neighbourhood, I knew a few people whose Boston accents were the strong and stereotyped non-rhotic, that is, R-less, variety. Amongst older folks I knew a few who made floor and door into two syllable words, or said tonic for soda/pop and rubbish for garbage. I also knew lots of folks who, if pushed by someone from elsewhere, could say, “Park the car in Harvard Yard,” as a generic newscaster from who-knows-where America with strong R’s, glare at the stranger for having even asked, and then promptly drop their R’s again when not being overheard. And then I know the accent-deniers. The ones, as I used to be, who, having heard ‘stronger’ accents claimed not to have Boston accents.

This, of course, is nonsense. They pronounced their R’s--because this was the only element mocked enough for them to even know how to avoid--but their vowels and innotations and vocabulary, while not enough to get them a starring role in Good Will Hunting, would tell any trained linguist’s ear, “You are not from anywhere else though.” I discovered myself to be in this category when I lived in California where, despite having mastered my R’s through years of speech therapy, my references to package stores, water bubblers, and shopping carriages, my refusing to say “the” before highway numbers, my insistence than an uncle’s wife is not an insect, and even how I said the word “both” (apparently as if there is an L in there, bawlth), turned out to all be my invasive Boston dialect and accent.

A simpler truth with my Boston is this: anybody who grew up in Boston and learned English in Boston has a Boston accent. Maybe not the stereotypical one, but a Boston accent. As I have interacted with people in other places, I discovered this internalised shame of one’s home region is nearly universal. I have met countless Southerners who insist they don’t have Southern accents. But... they do. And now I live in Canada, surrounded by Canadians who insist they don’t have Canadian accents. And no, they don’t sound like exactly the moose from Brother Bear, but they don’t sound English or American or Australian either.

We all have some accent, as a natural consequence of our upbringing. Accents are comparative. They only exist in contrast to other accents. There is no neutral English. There is only privileged or pretend standardised English. And given we have some accent, we each exist on a few spectra: 1. How “thick” is our accent, at least compared to someone else’s arbitrary standard. 2. How much self-awareness do we have of our accent. And 3. How much do we know how to control it, in order to blend in to other settings of people from different places or social classes. Having an accent is inevitable for anyone who speaks. It is learned, even if you don’t remember learning it. No accent is innately superior by any objective measure, but some accents do have higher prestige in any given setting. And some people are better than others at masking the way they sound to access the prestige that goes with sounding different, sounding “proper.”

They may even claim to be wicked smart for pulling that off, but they ain’t no better than anyone else.