I occasionally go mute during anxiety attacks. If suffiently pissed, I’ve been known to go from unable to intentionally make noise or even move my hands to yelling at the top of my lungs.
There’s a thing called “code switching where people with one or more languages (or one or more dialects) use different languages on different occasions. Dunno if anger, specifically, is a thing that triggers code switching, though.
Vivvav
I’d say so. I find I’m a lot more lucid and eloquent when I get mad.
Sunny
To the best of my knowledge, it is for many people.
Dave
Which implies that Malaya may be utterly and completely wrong. I like this.
Coma
Usually, when angry, most people fall into specific types of dialect or variants with, le’s say, less social respect or acceptance (as in, dialect is often not as highly regarded as e.g. RP-pronunciation), so I find it fascinating that Sal falls out of it. Might be due to her mother ingraining ‘good’ speech patterns into her (because many people fall – when agitated – into dialect due to them having known their dialects since growing up, and actually taking some effort to speak in highly-regarded pronunciation patterns). Maybe also because Malaya is specifically criticising her demeanor as fake, so she unintentionally drops the accent, because that’s a part of being criticised. Probably both.
Anyway, fascinating from a linguistic point of view, as well as a social one nonetheless.
Coma
I should have just continued reading to see all the other comments on acquired accents and examples.
Actually, I find that’s pretty common with accents.
I was born and raised in the midwest, but then went to college and spent much of my early professional career in New York (state, not city). While I was there, I picked up an upstate New York accent. Then I moved back to the midwest. For a while, I still talked with a New York accent, but sometimes my old midwest accent would come back. Now the New York has mostly faded. This likely means that, now that she’s back in her home state, Sal’s accent is starting to fade.
It’s not her natural accent. If I remember correctly, she was sent away from home when she and Walky were young; Walky’s accent is her ‘natural’ accent, but the southern accent was picked up at a young enough age that it’s normal for her. She’s kinda like a bilingual kid who was raised speaking language B but slips into language A whenever she gets mad enough.
It’s not fake, if I remember correctly, but she picked it up when she went to boarding school down south, and I think she’s only just recently back from there. People subconsciously pick up accents when they live in different regions/countries, but that doesn’t make the accent fake, even if it drops off sometimes.
I had a friend I was stationed with in UK. She was from Georgia, but spent a few years in Del Rio, TX. She sounded Texan, but when she talked to her mom on the phone: “Git that Texas outta yer voice!” I knew when she had spoken to her mom, because she was all Georgia, until it faded back to Texan.
merbrat
I unknowingly started sounding like my ex-husband, until about 6 months after we split. He had a soft Texas accent, and I’m from So Cal. People thought I was from here.
I’m British and have spent most of my life in the UK. However, I lived in California for two years (went just after turning 6 and left I think the week before my 8th birthday). When sufficiently tired I have referred to sidewalks (despite having spent most of my life walking on pavements instead). Language is an interesting beastie.
I moved a lot as a kid, my dad was in the air force, and 1.5 year and 3 year postings are the norm. It got to the point that I could pick up the new accent within 6 months after moving.
Beyond what everyone else is saying, the southern accent is a slow, polite way of speaking. You can be angry in southern, but it ain’t easy. Yelling in midwestern is probably just easier for Sal.
She doesn’t know Sal’s history, she spent enough time down south to pick up the accent as natural but not enough time for it to permaneltly take over her way of thinking.
Malaya is just looking for something to complain about, and Marcy isn’t able to set her right for obvious reasons(take your pick)…so of course they are going to run with her being a fake until they justifiably get their asses kicked by her.
All accents change depending on emotional state and tone. And yeah, acquired accents are more likely to go away. Plenty of brits who’ve been in to the states a long time will drop back into their original accent when they’re pissed.
Other people have already chimed in with “yes that’s normal,” but just as another anecdote, I know a girl who moved from Ireland to the States when she was 8 or so and she does the same thing. American accent most of the time, but the Irish comes back when she’s angry or drunk enough.
Sort of related anecdote: I stayed in South Carolina for one week ten years ago, and I still say y’all…frequently.
begbert2
That sounds more like you picked it up as something you like the sound of and so just keep using it for fun. Sort of like how I’m inordinately fond of the phrase “you want I should” in large part because it’s terrible english – I just find it amusing to say.
Heres a weird one, I was born in the USA and lived the majority of my life in California, but when I am around anyone with a Gaelic accent for 10 minutes, I pick it up. If I get drunk, same thing. I’ve done this most of my life, but I’ve never been in Ireland and only spent a couple of weeks in Scotland. No one in my family speaks with that accent, and I don’t pick up any other accents for the most part. Go figure.
And me! I moved out of London when I was six and for the next three or four years, I was a perfectly well-spoken Midlands kid…until suddenly I would revert to an angry Cockney child. Childhood accents are hard to shift.
Nowadays I live between UK and Ireland so my accent slides around depending on where I’ve been recently.
Sal has fake bits about her like any normal teenager but her accent ain’t one of em.
Adding to the clamour, I have a phantom English accent from 2 years in England. Sometimes people can hear it, to the extent fellow countrymen think I’m foreign. But not always. I’ve never had feedback on an emotional effect tho, personally.
Ooh, my cousin spent a year in England when she was a kid and came back with a bit of an English accent. She was young enough that it went away pretty quickly, but idk if it returned when she went back in college.
I’ve been enunciating (in “news anchor English”) for years, but when I’m angry and yelling, my weird repressed Rhode Island / Southie mix breaks through.
Maybe, maybe not. My accent appears when I get tired; I generally talk “normally” but when my mouth gets lazy I pick up a drawl that could have walked straight out of a TV Western. And since I don’t recall having it when I lived it the Southwest that may just be where I picked it up, as some sort of psychological thing after transplanting.
I’ve learned 4 separate accents in my life because I was bullied when I transitioned to various different schools (in Scotland and London) for sounding different. I now have a weird hybrid accent that makes me sound like a farmer and changes a lot. But at least I’m an adult now so I don’t get made fun of.
Long story short, if you’ve lived in different places you’re likely to slip into different accents depending on where you are, who you’re with and how you feel. That’s no faker than raising your voice because you’re angry or not swearing in front of your parents.
Not at all fake, my family is from the south but moved up north, and if I get tired/drunk/angry then my accent slips out. It’s a reverse accent. Malaya is just being snobby/thinks-she-knows-everything-doesnt-actually-know-anything.
I currently have some Suth’n draaawl from living in Knoxville for a quarter-century – but I was raised in Cleveland OH, and can go back to Standard Midwestern Newscaster vowels if I think about it.
Accents are almost entirely built out of vowel changes; learning about diphthongs and how to sing them can teach you to approximate other accents too, as a side-effect.
–Dave, and for some reason spending several minutes talking to someone has me shifting towards theirs unconsciously
No, she’s actually really good at it, but she’s still pissed off at Sal for getting into that fight at the rally that got her fired from that job. She’s under the impression that Sal either started it, or didn’t try hard enough to avoid it.
Marcie’s been acting like this for a WHILE, though. She’s got a crush on Malaya and she’s letting that blind her to how much she’s hurting Sal, and since Sal had the temerity to try to seek her out to spend time with her when she was trying to flirt with Malaya, and also to be involved in the thing at the rally, she’s basically just dropping Sal entirely, probably under the assumption that Sal will always be there.
maybe that’s a little harsh, but… seriously, Marcy needs to fucking stop and think about why Hot Girl Who Disses My Oldest Friend For Sport, Believing She Is A Poseur Despite The Very Real Shit She’s Been Through That I Am Well Aware Of is more important than My Oldest Friend, Who Really Wants To Keep Being My Friend, And Sometimes Gets Involved In Shenanigans.
Also, like… She was working for a washington shill who consistently enacted racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist policies. And she’s latinx, a woman, gay, and disabled. I get that money is money, but I don’t feel bad that the hypocrite working security lost her job when her best friend was being STALKED and a dangerous violent criminal was being caught. In these situations, you goddamn support your friends.
Before she was mad at Sal, Marcie tried to get them to get along. Her crush isn’t and wasn’t hurting Sal. Marcie not being willing or able to let Sal monopolize her time was. Sal needed to realize that Marcie has her own shit going on.
Considering how Marcie has not spoken to Sal in over a week and didn’t even acknowledge her the last time they saw each other, they aren’t friends right now. She’s not Sal’s property or her keeper.
Finally, Marcie was never working for Robin. She was working for a security firm which Robin’s campaign hired for that ONE event. Even if she HAD been working for Robin herself, Marcie is broke. She’s sharing an overcrowded loft apartment and working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Not everyone has the luxury of turning down jobs to stand on principle.
And Marcie DID support Sal when Amazi-Girl attacked her. She alerted the other security staff and got between Sal and the crowd to try to prevent things from escalating. She’s pissed about the OTHER fight, because all she saw of that was Sal and AG leaving a pile of beat up interns, and she only got the story her bosses got from Frieda, who blamed the fight on AG and Sal to cover her ass. She doesn’t know what really happened, or she wouldn’t be so angry
Reaver
And to be fair, she didn’t ask Sal for what happened, she specifically ditched her at their meet up, and sent her an angry text, not asking her “Why did you start a fight?” or “What happened?”
3-I
Her friend was being stalked by a masked vigilante and her first response was “this is inconvenient for me,” not “holy shit let’s get you away from her.” We’re not talking about principles, we’re talking about “you chose to abandon Sal when she was being stalked because your job protecting a bunch of racists was more important to you.”
And also, I’m not going to continue to engage you on this when your second sentence is just “no it isn’t” with no further discussion. The comic has shown us exactly how it has hurt Sal.
And Marcie doesn’t abandon Sal, either. After Amazi-Girl stops trying to start a fight and calms down, she leaves, and Sal follows her into the crowd. Marcie simply stays at her post. With all the people crowded around them, she might not even have seen that Sal followed AG. Even if she did, the threat had clearly passed, and she had a job to do, and Sal was the one who left her behind.
Btw, that second sentence from my last comment was immediately followed by further discussion. It’s fine if you disagree with my reading of what was hurting Sal, or don’t think I sufficiently explained why I read it so differently, but I think it’s unfair to suggest that I merely stopped at “no it isn’t” like I’m some petulant child.
295 thoughts on “Ulterior”
Ana Chronistic
Sal: “Ah picked up this heah accent down South, an’ it’s real heavy, so o’ course ah’m gonna drop it on occasion.”
Ana Chronistic
Marcie: *signs* “Just POSterior motives”
butts
hahaha YES
Needfuldoer
Nice.
Koms
You have some of the best comments.
Clif
If they awarded prizes, hers would be first.
Doctor_Who
Target acquired.
butts
you rang
Plasma Mongoose
X-rated vision.
Tacos
Meanwhile I’m wondering how long it’ll take before somebody decides to recolor those sight lines red so that Marcie has Death Beam Eyes >.>
Derek
haha “straight”
Dara
yeah. XD
LeslieBean4Shizzle
That was basically my reaction.
Plasma Mongoose
Marcie straight out wants the V!
Deanatay
More like “The ‘B'”.
Gimmee dat bootay
Dat dat dat bootay
AnvilPro
That is weird that her accent would disappear, does that mean it actually is fake?
Doctor_Who
All accents are fake. In moments of stress, everyone talks like the characters in Fargo. Yah.
Stu
Eh, not really. It’s like when people who stutter can completely stop stuttering when sufficiently pissed off.
Agemegos
And then: seek shelter!
Elliot
I occasionally go mute during anxiety attacks. If suffiently pissed, I’ve been known to go from unable to intentionally make noise or even move my hands to yelling at the top of my lungs.
Reltzik
Could just be regressing to a more childhood mode of speech during times of emotional stress?
…. maybe?
…. I dunno, is that a thing in psychology?
Kabo
There’s a thing called “code switching where people with one or more languages (or one or more dialects) use different languages on different occasions. Dunno if anger, specifically, is a thing that triggers code switching, though.
Vivvav
I’d say so. I find I’m a lot more lucid and eloquent when I get mad.
Sunny
To the best of my knowledge, it is for many people.
Dave
Which implies that Malaya may be utterly and completely wrong. I like this.
Coma
Usually, when angry, most people fall into specific types of dialect or variants with, le’s say, less social respect or acceptance (as in, dialect is often not as highly regarded as e.g. RP-pronunciation), so I find it fascinating that Sal falls out of it. Might be due to her mother ingraining ‘good’ speech patterns into her (because many people fall – when agitated – into dialect due to them having known their dialects since growing up, and actually taking some effort to speak in highly-regarded pronunciation patterns). Maybe also because Malaya is specifically criticising her demeanor as fake, so she unintentionally drops the accent, because that’s a part of being criticised. Probably both.
Anyway, fascinating from a linguistic point of view, as well as a social one nonetheless.
Coma
I should have just continued reading to see all the other comments on acquired accents and examples.
LeslieBean4Shizzle
Actually, I find that’s pretty common with accents.
I was born and raised in the midwest, but then went to college and spent much of my early professional career in New York (state, not city). While I was there, I picked up an upstate New York accent. Then I moved back to the midwest. For a while, I still talked with a New York accent, but sometimes my old midwest accent would come back. Now the New York has mostly faded. This likely means that, now that she’s back in her home state, Sal’s accent is starting to fade.
jimbotherisenclown
It’s not her natural accent. If I remember correctly, she was sent away from home when she and Walky were young; Walky’s accent is her ‘natural’ accent, but the southern accent was picked up at a young enough age that it’s normal for her. She’s kinda like a bilingual kid who was raised speaking language B but slips into language A whenever she gets mad enough.
Aletheia
It’s not fake, if I remember correctly, but she picked it up when she went to boarding school down south, and I think she’s only just recently back from there. People subconsciously pick up accents when they live in different regions/countries, but that doesn’t make the accent fake, even if it drops off sometimes.
merbrat
I had a friend I was stationed with in UK. She was from Georgia, but spent a few years in Del Rio, TX. She sounded Texan, but when she talked to her mom on the phone: “Git that Texas outta yer voice!” I knew when she had spoken to her mom, because she was all Georgia, until it faded back to Texan.
merbrat
I unknowingly started sounding like my ex-husband, until about 6 months after we split. He had a soft Texas accent, and I’m from So Cal. People thought I was from here.
Miri
I’m British and have spent most of my life in the UK. However, I lived in California for two years (went just after turning 6 and left I think the week before my 8th birthday). When sufficiently tired I have referred to sidewalks (despite having spent most of my life walking on pavements instead). Language is an interesting beastie.
https://anthologypoems.wikispaces.com/Search+for+my+Tongue
Roborat
I moved a lot as a kid, my dad was in the air force, and 1.5 year and 3 year postings are the norm. It got to the point that I could pick up the new accent within 6 months after moving.
Viktoria
Beyond what everyone else is saying, the southern accent is a slow, polite way of speaking. You can be angry in southern, but it ain’t easy. Yelling in midwestern is probably just easier for Sal.
jeffepp
Acquired accents have a tendency to do that.
LookingIn
She doesn’t know Sal’s history, she spent enough time down south to pick up the accent as natural but not enough time for it to permaneltly take over her way of thinking.
Malaya is just looking for something to complain about, and Marcy isn’t able to set her right for obvious reasons(take your pick)…so of course they are going to run with her being a fake until they justifiably get their asses kicked by her.
JetstreamGW
All accents change depending on emotional state and tone. And yeah, acquired accents are more likely to go away. Plenty of brits who’ve been in to the states a long time will drop back into their original accent when they’re pissed.
Hell, my accent gets thicker when I’m angry.
wynne
Other people have already chimed in with “yes that’s normal,” but just as another anecdote, I know a girl who moved from Ireland to the States when she was 8 or so and she does the same thing. American accent most of the time, but the Irish comes back when she’s angry or drunk enough.
KaitouKidisBae
Sort of related anecdote: I stayed in South Carolina for one week ten years ago, and I still say y’all…frequently.
begbert2
That sounds more like you picked it up as something you like the sound of and so just keep using it for fun. Sort of like how I’m inordinately fond of the phrase “you want I should” in large part because it’s terrible english – I just find it amusing to say.
Inahc
ha, yeah, my english accent leaks through if I’m either drunk, or talking to someone with any sort of European accent. I miss it.
Greywolf1963
Heres a weird one, I was born in the USA and lived the majority of my life in California, but when I am around anyone with a Gaelic accent for 10 minutes, I pick it up. If I get drunk, same thing. I’ve done this most of my life, but I’ve never been in Ireland and only spent a couple of weeks in Scotland. No one in my family speaks with that accent, and I don’t pick up any other accents for the most part. Go figure.
Bathymetheus
Sounds like a past life is leaking into this one.
Daisy
And me! I moved out of London when I was six and for the next three or four years, I was a perfectly well-spoken Midlands kid…until suddenly I would revert to an angry Cockney child. Childhood accents are hard to shift.
Nowadays I live between UK and Ireland so my accent slides around depending on where I’ve been recently.
Sal has fake bits about her like any normal teenager but her accent ain’t one of em.
Carms
Adding to the clamour, I have a phantom English accent from 2 years in England. Sometimes people can hear it, to the extent fellow countrymen think I’m foreign. But not always. I’ve never had feedback on an emotional effect tho, personally.
wynne
Ooh, my cousin spent a year in England when she was a kid and came back with a bit of an English accent. She was young enough that it went away pretty quickly, but idk if it returned when she went back in college.
Plasma Mongoose
My speech develops a Scottish tinge whenever I give a rehearsed speech as trying to speak normally dries my mouth out on those occasions.
Needfuldoer
I’ve been enunciating (in “news anchor English”) for years, but when I’m angry and yelling, my weird repressed Rhode Island / Southie mix breaks through.
Bruceski
Maybe, maybe not. My accent appears when I get tired; I generally talk “normally” but when my mouth gets lazy I pick up a drawl that could have walked straight out of a TV Western. And since I don’t recall having it when I lived it the Southwest that may just be where I picked it up, as some sort of psychological thing after transplanting.
Stellar
People just naturally enunciate when they get mad. That levels out, or at least dilutes, most accents.
monkyvirus
I’ve learned 4 separate accents in my life because I was bullied when I transitioned to various different schools (in Scotland and London) for sounding different. I now have a weird hybrid accent that makes me sound like a farmer and changes a lot. But at least I’m an adult now so I don’t get made fun of.
Long story short, if you’ve lived in different places you’re likely to slip into different accents depending on where you are, who you’re with and how you feel. That’s no faker than raising your voice because you’re angry or not swearing in front of your parents.
Suzi
Not at all fake, my family is from the south but moved up north, and if I get tired/drunk/angry then my accent slips out. It’s a reverse accent. Malaya is just being snobby/thinks-she-knows-everything-doesnt-actually-know-anything.
David DeLaney
I currently have some Suth’n draaawl from living in Knoxville for a quarter-century – but I was raised in Cleveland OH, and can go back to Standard Midwestern Newscaster vowels if I think about it.
Accents are almost entirely built out of vowel changes; learning about diphthongs and how to sing them can teach you to approximate other accents too, as a side-effect.
–Dave, and for some reason spending several minutes talking to someone has me shifting towards theirs unconsciously
Woobie
Under stress, sometimes my southern accent comes back.
And if I’m talking to family still there.
I find Sal- Plausible.
(And Malaya- annoying.)
Reltzik
A very curve-obsessed sort of straight.
Passchendaele
She has her eyes on the prize. 😛
ValdVin
It’s been a bit since Willis drew a Malaya butt shot in the strip. This is just Marcie reminding us that other, cartoon, people see it.
DailyBrad
Marcy kinda sucks at this friend thing, doesn’t she.
“Why yes, talk nonstop shit about my friend, girl with hot butt”.
Sal probably is better off hanging out with Danny, they have a pretty good time of things.
Reltzik
Yeah, but Sal needs time to ease in to the high levels of dorkitude.
AeromechanicalAce
She might be letting it pass because she’s still pissed at sal for the incident at the Rally.
That said, She’s being REALLY stupid to miss the massive Red Flag Malaya is waving around…
Fart Captor
No, she’s actually really good at it, but she’s still pissed off at Sal for getting into that fight at the rally that got her fired from that job. She’s under the impression that Sal either started it, or didn’t try hard enough to avoid it.
3-I
Marcie’s been acting like this for a WHILE, though. She’s got a crush on Malaya and she’s letting that blind her to how much she’s hurting Sal, and since Sal had the temerity to try to seek her out to spend time with her when she was trying to flirt with Malaya, and also to be involved in the thing at the rally, she’s basically just dropping Sal entirely, probably under the assumption that Sal will always be there.
maybe that’s a little harsh, but… seriously, Marcy needs to fucking stop and think about why Hot Girl Who Disses My Oldest Friend For Sport, Believing She Is A Poseur Despite The Very Real Shit She’s Been Through That I Am Well Aware Of is more important than My Oldest Friend, Who Really Wants To Keep Being My Friend, And Sometimes Gets Involved In Shenanigans.
Also, like… She was working for a washington shill who consistently enacted racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist policies. And she’s latinx, a woman, gay, and disabled. I get that money is money, but I don’t feel bad that the hypocrite working security lost her job when her best friend was being STALKED and a dangerous violent criminal was being caught. In these situations, you goddamn support your friends.
Fart Captor
Before she was mad at Sal, Marcie tried to get them to get along. Her crush isn’t and wasn’t hurting Sal. Marcie not being willing or able to let Sal monopolize her time was. Sal needed to realize that Marcie has her own shit going on.
Considering how Marcie has not spoken to Sal in over a week and didn’t even acknowledge her the last time they saw each other, they aren’t friends right now. She’s not Sal’s property or her keeper.
Finally, Marcie was never working for Robin. She was working for a security firm which Robin’s campaign hired for that ONE event. Even if she HAD been working for Robin herself, Marcie is broke. She’s sharing an overcrowded loft apartment and working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Not everyone has the luxury of turning down jobs to stand on principle.
And Marcie DID support Sal when Amazi-Girl attacked her. She alerted the other security staff and got between Sal and the crowd to try to prevent things from escalating. She’s pissed about the OTHER fight, because all she saw of that was Sal and AG leaving a pile of beat up interns, and she only got the story her bosses got from Frieda, who blamed the fight on AG and Sal to cover her ass. She doesn’t know what really happened, or she wouldn’t be so angry
Reaver
And to be fair, she didn’t ask Sal for what happened, she specifically ditched her at their meet up, and sent her an angry text, not asking her “Why did you start a fight?” or “What happened?”
3-I
Her friend was being stalked by a masked vigilante and her first response was “this is inconvenient for me,” not “holy shit let’s get you away from her.” We’re not talking about principles, we’re talking about “you chose to abandon Sal when she was being stalked because your job protecting a bunch of racists was more important to you.”
And also, I’m not going to continue to engage you on this when your second sentence is just “no it isn’t” with no further discussion. The comic has shown us exactly how it has hurt Sal.
Fart Captor
What you are describing did not happen. Marcie’s first response upon learning that Amazi-Girl was at the rally was to put herself between her and Sal:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/beef/
And Marcie doesn’t abandon Sal, either. After Amazi-Girl stops trying to start a fight and calms down, she leaves, and Sal follows her into the crowd. Marcie simply stays at her post. With all the people crowded around them, she might not even have seen that Sal followed AG. Even if she did, the threat had clearly passed, and she had a job to do, and Sal was the one who left her behind.
Btw, that second sentence from my last comment was immediately followed by further discussion. It’s fine if you disagree with my reading of what was hurting Sal, or don’t think I sufficiently explained why I read it so differently, but I think it’s unfair to suggest that I merely stopped at “no it isn’t” like I’m some petulant child.
Jay
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/terms-2/
Deathjavu
Oh Malaya, you’re the worst. Being genuinely an asshole still makes you an asshole.
TrueVCU
Anyone else think it sucks that Malaya is openly trash talking Sal this much and Marcie (butt appreciation aside) isn’t doing ANYTHING about it?
DocHarleen
*raises hand*
AeromechanicalAce
It totally does.
I’d pay money for Carla to call them BOTH out on their shit tomorrow.
Come to think of it, Carla vs Malaya could be a good case study for being blunt vs being an asshole.