Mid-Atlantic English - Other Public Figures

Other Public Figures

Similar speech has historically been used by certain Americans not in the theatre; it was cultivated by the upper classes in some areas of the Northeastern United States. The recorded speech of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came from a privileged family and who was educated at Groton, a private American preparatory school, had a number of features that are now exclusive to British English. Roosevelt's speech is non-rhotic; one of Roosevelt's most frequently heard speeches has a falling diphthong in the word fear, which distinguishes it from other forms of surviving non-rhotic speech in the United States. "Linking R" appears in Roosevelt's delivery of the words "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; compare also Roosevelt's delivery of the words "naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

Prior to World War II, these institutions cultivated a norm influenced by the Received Pronunciation of Southern England as an international norm of English pronunciation. Recordings of New Jersey-born, Central New York-raised Grover Cleveland and Ohio-native William McKinley show that, in their oratory at any rate, they cultivated a Mid-Atlantic accent. (By contrast, Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley's successor and a native of New York, had what was probably a more natural non-rhotic, upper-class accent.) According to William Labov, the teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II.

This American version of a "posh" accent is now obsolescent, if not wholly obsolete, even among the American upper classes, but an example of a Mid-Atlantic accent can be found on the television sitcom Frasier as used by both Frasier Crane and his brother Niles Crane, and is reminiscent of the Boston Brahmin accent of the character of Charles Emerson Winchester III on M*A*S*H. More recent Groton alumni, even those with careers on the stage such as Sam Waterston, no longer use such an accent. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. may also serve as examples. This speech style was also the influence for Julianne Moore's character's (Maude Lebowski) accent in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski and is parodied by the speech teacher played by Kathleen Freeman in the film Singin' in the Rain.