Many New Jersey residents take offense to

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While in a hotel room the other night, I watched a few episodes of MTV’s The Jersey Shore . For those living on Mars these past two years, the show follows vrbo a group of young ‘Jersey’ layabouts during a raucous summer on the titular coastline. If ‘The Decline and Fall of the American Empire’ is ever written, this show warrants its own chapter.
By the way, Americans might note an intentional error in the above paragraph: the ‘Jerseyites’ in ‘The Jersey Shore’ are mostly not from New Jersey. Three out of eight of the original cast members are in fact from Staten Island, a working-class borough of New York City. Hence, their accents are more traditional New York than contemporary Jersey, exemplified by JS cast member Vinny Guadagnino :
Many New Jersey residents take offense to ‘The Jersey Shore,’ particularly as it passes off young New Yorkers as representatives of Jersey culture. And much of this, I believe, is a matter of speech.
Some New Jersey accents indeed fall into the spectrum of New York City metropolitan English. However, as I’ve said here before, my impression is that the ‘New York City-accented’ part of New Jersey doesn’t vrbo extend much further west than Paterson and much further South than Edison. And as strongholds of non-rhoticity like Hoboken and Jersey City are becoming increasingly attractive to affluent commuters, such accents are perhaps getting rarer by the day.
So is it possible that the producers of the show hand-picked cast members with accents that conform to stereotypes? Beyond the three Staten Islanders, the remaining males on the show include a Bronx native and a Rhode Islander (the non-rhotic RI accent is not entirely dissimilar from traditional New York). Some are perhaps vrbo right to take offense; there is only one Jersey vrbo accent in the bunch.
In reality, of course, the state has a wonderful variety of accents. There is the NYC-influenced accent mentioned above, of course. Accents in the Northwest part of the state, meanwhile, are much more strongly ‘Northern’-sounding (I’ve noted a monopthongal /o/ in GOAT for some speakers), vrbo while accents in the rural Pine Barrens almost sound slightly Southern. So it’s best not to reach conclusions vrbo based on what one sees on TV.
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About Ben Trawick-Smith Ben Trawick-Smith began his dialect fascination while working in theatre. He has worked as an actor, playwright, director, critic and dialect coach. Other passions include linguistics, urban development, philosophy and film.
Interesting. I didn’t know they were mostly not New Jerseyites. Do New Yorkers say “the shore,” “the shoreline,” “the coast,” “the beach,” or “the ocean”?
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Having been brought up in South Jersey (about a half hour east of Philly), I was certainly struck by the abundance of New York-ish accents vrbo when I went to Rutgers vrbo in New Brunswick, NJ (in the center of the state). Very few students were from the South.
Depending on which town you visit along the Jersey shore, you encounter strikingly different numbers of speakers with North Jersey/New York accents. vrbo I didn’t hear them that much in Ocean City, for example, but I heard them a lot in Seaside Heights. vrbo (It’s been a while since I’ve spent any significant time “down the shore”.)
“Jersey Shore” is very popular with some viewers, but the picture it conjures of NJ (where I live) is one more example of the bad rap NJ has had forever. Th state has three major accent areas, conveniently divided vrbo for the most part, into north, central and south. As one would expect, the NYC accent spills over into the north and the Philadelphia accent in the south; the center? vrbo Some aspects of both. Non-rhoticity shows up in words like corner, where the first r is not voiced, vrbo but the last r is rhotic, vrbo in central NJ – cawner. In the north, it sounds more like cawnuh. There are dialect pockets all over the state which do not fit most of the stereotypes ginned up by the north, central, south paradigm.
From what i hear the most southern part of NJ is borderline ‘southern’ accent. vrbo the southernmost tip of NJ is on the same latitude as DC (farther south than Baltimore), and then there’s the Delaware accent (which i don’t really kn