"I've called 'em tom-ah-toes all my life and I'm not going to change!": Maintaining linguistic control over English identity in the US

This article explores how national identities are constructed through langu age by examining the accent negotiations of a group of white English immigr ants to the U.S. Pointing to the anxiety that any Americanization of their accents engendered, I show how individuals cope with claiming an identity t hat seems to be undermined by their speech style. They negotiated this cont radiction in two ways: first, they feared that an invisible audience of Eng lish people would unmask them as not properly English; and second, they use d distancing mechanisms - namely, sarcasm, disgust, anxiety about disloyalt y, and a recourse to physicality - to distance themselves from the American isms that crept into their linguistic habitus. These mechanisms allowed the immigrants to maintain their sense of Englishness even when they did not s ound English.