Accent's R Us!
Jul. 14th, 2004 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupChange Your Academic Profile in Just 4 Weeks With the Perfect Foreign Accent!
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.7.16
By LAWRENCE DOUGLAS and ALEXANDER GEORGE
Are you one of those countless professors who think "Nietzsche" rhymes
with "peachy"?
Do colleagues blanch every time you say "écriture" aloud?
Has your nasal Midwestern accent left you excluded from the hot
conferences?
If so, help is here.
Before the fall semester begins, you can become the elusive academic
from nowhere and everywhere -- the envy of your colleagues, the lust
object of your students, the hypnotic mystery the whole campus is
talking about. In just four weeks, the Affected Accent Summer Camp
(AASC) will turn you from a humdrum faculty-lounge fixture into an
exotic scholar whom no one can afford not to take seriously.
Founded in 1986 by a group of pre-eminent scholars, AASC believes that
humanistic scholarship is only as strong as the inflections in which
it is expressed. In consultation with prominent linguists around the
world, the program's founders have developed a curriculum that
promises to help professors and graduate students:
* Extend their intellectual breadth through a mastery of a wide
range of accents.
* Identify the right foreign element for their scholarship.
* Customize a distinct, exotic dialect that will keep besotted
students and publishers guessing.
Our intense four-week course provides participants with the unique
opportunity to work closely with dialect coaches and language
educators from around the world, all expertly trained in the art of
teaching English as a second language to native English speakers.
Those enrolled work with AASC faculty members in one of four language
seminars. The four-track system allows participants to select the
program that best suits their particular academic needs.
1. Ja, I have mit Habermas studied.
In this course, you learn idioms that recall German erudition, such as
compound words and interjections like "ach" and "ja," and, for more
advanced students, "na, ja." This course also teaches you how to
torture syntax, create monster compounds, and capitalize arbitrarily,
thereby allowing you to speak and write about theory, philosophy, and
the social sciences with greater conviction and authority.
Participants will learn to number written arguments obsessively and to
express even the simplest of thoughts using flowcharts, graphs, and
timelines. Several sessions will also be devoted to mastering physical
gestures such as the Brooding Nod and the Heidelberg Hair-Rake.
2. Is he British or wot?
This intense program, designed for scholars in more traditional
disciplines such as history, English literature, classics, or
archaeology, offers two subtracks:
a. The King's King's English
In these lessons, participants learn to master such elusive
vocalizations as are required to articulate "girl" as "gell"; to
pronounce effortlessly otherwise challenging names and places like
"Evelyn Waugh" and "Cholmondeley"; and to avoid such words as "mirror"
in favor of "looking glass." Special training tapes featuring speeches
by HRH the Prince of Wales and Dame Judi Dench will also be used.
b. The Mid-Atlantic Special (also known as the Dworkin)
This track is specially designed for those who aspire to an
unmistakable, yet socially and geographically unlocatable, Anglo
heritage.
Participants in both seminars will learn to use with confidence
antiquated and politically incorrect terms such as "Persia,"
"Mohammedan," and "the year of our Lord." Before, it took a two-year
fellowship at Oxford to learn the difference between "call round" and
"ring up," but you will acquire this and other crucial linguistic tics
-- including techniques for the appropriate uses of "pardon?" and
"crikey!" and "toodle pip" -- in just four weeks. The final week of
the seminar is devoted to teaching scholars how to use A4 paper.
Additional classes will be available on proper procedures for folding
a pocket silk, and very advanced students will be trained in the art
of the ascot.
3. The Euro Hash
A longtime favorite of graduate students, this seminar focuses on
mastering a vague yet distinctly European blend of accents,
particularly those acquired by expatriate travelers. Special attention
will be paid to the acquisition and appropriate use of foreign
expostulations and bons mots in at least two languages; to facial
expressions and hand gesticulations that convey contempt, boredom, and
amorous intentions; and to mastering methods for rolling, handling,
smoking, and extinguishing your own cigarettes while sipping espresso
and looking put-upon or otherwise irritated.
4. The Pan-Slavic Palaver
If your work is as arid as the Puszta, as convoluted as the Balkans,
or as filled with pain and sorrow as Mother Russia, you need to be
able to express that in your speech. In this seminar, scholars benefit
from our patented techniques for mispronouncing words with
Mitteleuropa charm and for mangling common sayings in a way that
reveals their underlying melancholy. Special breathing exercises will
also be provided to help you interject at least three different kinds
of sighs into the flow of your conversation. Participants will receive
appropriate instruction in the Faraway Gaze and the Abstracted Hand
Flutter, as well as other mannerisms suggestive of profound thought or
years spent in solitary confinement.
What past participants are saying:
"Ach, since second grade, I am always wishing not to be born in
Dallas. Then I discover AASC. In all my Life, it is the most
ungemütlich Experience I ever dreamed, but, ja, now I am so happy to
come from a small university town in Bavaria."
-- Malcolm Clark, associate professor of English, UCLA
"My courses on Wittgenstein, Moore, and Russell were foundering in the
most dreadful manner. It was rather a sticky wicket. Then I chanced
upon your splendid institute. Now I enjoy the most marvelous numbers
of chaps in my courses, and my articles appear in only the most pukka
journals. Bravo!"
-- Marvin Shapiro, professor of philosophy, Rochester University
"I grow up in Minnesota and teach Civil War history in small college
in Vermont. First book does okay, but then career stagnates. Then I go
to AASC. Now mother is Latvian and father is wealthy Bulgarian count
who dies in exile after many decades of political struggle. Thanks to
AASC, everything now coming up daisies. I go from being unknown
professor in small town to most sought-after personality in Green
Mountain region!"
-- Joan Gunderson, professor of history, Bennington College
Lawrence Douglas is an associate professor of law, jurisprudence, and
social thought, and Alexander George a professor of philosophy, at
Amherst College. Their book, Sense and Nonsensibility, will be
published by Simon & Schuster in the fall. For help on this piece,
special thanks to the Reichman & Halberstam School of Dialects.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.7.16
By LAWRENCE DOUGLAS and ALEXANDER GEORGE
Are you one of those countless professors who think "Nietzsche" rhymes
with "peachy"?
Do colleagues blanch every time you say "écriture" aloud?
Has your nasal Midwestern accent left you excluded from the hot
conferences?
If so, help is here.
Before the fall semester begins, you can become the elusive academic
from nowhere and everywhere -- the envy of your colleagues, the lust
object of your students, the hypnotic mystery the whole campus is
talking about. In just four weeks, the Affected Accent Summer Camp
(AASC) will turn you from a humdrum faculty-lounge fixture into an
exotic scholar whom no one can afford not to take seriously.
Founded in 1986 by a group of pre-eminent scholars, AASC believes that
humanistic scholarship is only as strong as the inflections in which
it is expressed. In consultation with prominent linguists around the
world, the program's founders have developed a curriculum that
promises to help professors and graduate students:
* Extend their intellectual breadth through a mastery of a wide
range of accents.
* Identify the right foreign element for their scholarship.
* Customize a distinct, exotic dialect that will keep besotted
students and publishers guessing.
Our intense four-week course provides participants with the unique
opportunity to work closely with dialect coaches and language
educators from around the world, all expertly trained in the art of
teaching English as a second language to native English speakers.
Those enrolled work with AASC faculty members in one of four language
seminars. The four-track system allows participants to select the
program that best suits their particular academic needs.
1. Ja, I have mit Habermas studied.
In this course, you learn idioms that recall German erudition, such as
compound words and interjections like "ach" and "ja," and, for more
advanced students, "na, ja." This course also teaches you how to
torture syntax, create monster compounds, and capitalize arbitrarily,
thereby allowing you to speak and write about theory, philosophy, and
the social sciences with greater conviction and authority.
Participants will learn to number written arguments obsessively and to
express even the simplest of thoughts using flowcharts, graphs, and
timelines. Several sessions will also be devoted to mastering physical
gestures such as the Brooding Nod and the Heidelberg Hair-Rake.
2. Is he British or wot?
This intense program, designed for scholars in more traditional
disciplines such as history, English literature, classics, or
archaeology, offers two subtracks:
a. The King's King's English
In these lessons, participants learn to master such elusive
vocalizations as are required to articulate "girl" as "gell"; to
pronounce effortlessly otherwise challenging names and places like
"Evelyn Waugh" and "Cholmondeley"; and to avoid such words as "mirror"
in favor of "looking glass." Special training tapes featuring speeches
by HRH the Prince of Wales and Dame Judi Dench will also be used.
b. The Mid-Atlantic Special (also known as the Dworkin)
This track is specially designed for those who aspire to an
unmistakable, yet socially and geographically unlocatable, Anglo
heritage.
Participants in both seminars will learn to use with confidence
antiquated and politically incorrect terms such as "Persia,"
"Mohammedan," and "the year of our Lord." Before, it took a two-year
fellowship at Oxford to learn the difference between "call round" and
"ring up," but you will acquire this and other crucial linguistic tics
-- including techniques for the appropriate uses of "pardon?" and
"crikey!" and "toodle pip" -- in just four weeks. The final week of
the seminar is devoted to teaching scholars how to use A4 paper.
Additional classes will be available on proper procedures for folding
a pocket silk, and very advanced students will be trained in the art
of the ascot.
3. The Euro Hash
A longtime favorite of graduate students, this seminar focuses on
mastering a vague yet distinctly European blend of accents,
particularly those acquired by expatriate travelers. Special attention
will be paid to the acquisition and appropriate use of foreign
expostulations and bons mots in at least two languages; to facial
expressions and hand gesticulations that convey contempt, boredom, and
amorous intentions; and to mastering methods for rolling, handling,
smoking, and extinguishing your own cigarettes while sipping espresso
and looking put-upon or otherwise irritated.
4. The Pan-Slavic Palaver
If your work is as arid as the Puszta, as convoluted as the Balkans,
or as filled with pain and sorrow as Mother Russia, you need to be
able to express that in your speech. In this seminar, scholars benefit
from our patented techniques for mispronouncing words with
Mitteleuropa charm and for mangling common sayings in a way that
reveals their underlying melancholy. Special breathing exercises will
also be provided to help you interject at least three different kinds
of sighs into the flow of your conversation. Participants will receive
appropriate instruction in the Faraway Gaze and the Abstracted Hand
Flutter, as well as other mannerisms suggestive of profound thought or
years spent in solitary confinement.
What past participants are saying:
"Ach, since second grade, I am always wishing not to be born in
Dallas. Then I discover AASC. In all my Life, it is the most
ungemütlich Experience I ever dreamed, but, ja, now I am so happy to
come from a small university town in Bavaria."
-- Malcolm Clark, associate professor of English, UCLA
"My courses on Wittgenstein, Moore, and Russell were foundering in the
most dreadful manner. It was rather a sticky wicket. Then I chanced
upon your splendid institute. Now I enjoy the most marvelous numbers
of chaps in my courses, and my articles appear in only the most pukka
journals. Bravo!"
-- Marvin Shapiro, professor of philosophy, Rochester University
"I grow up in Minnesota and teach Civil War history in small college
in Vermont. First book does okay, but then career stagnates. Then I go
to AASC. Now mother is Latvian and father is wealthy Bulgarian count
who dies in exile after many decades of political struggle. Thanks to
AASC, everything now coming up daisies. I go from being unknown
professor in small town to most sought-after personality in Green
Mountain region!"
-- Joan Gunderson, professor of history, Bennington College
Lawrence Douglas is an associate professor of law, jurisprudence, and
social thought, and Alexander George a professor of philosophy, at
Amherst College. Their book, Sense and Nonsensibility, will be
published by Simon & Schuster in the fall. For help on this piece,
special thanks to the Reichman & Halberstam School of Dialects.
