{"id":2386,"date":"2010-06-16T09:14:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T13:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2386"},"modified":"2010-06-16T11:33:11","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T15:33:11","slug":"that-geckos-pleasant-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2386","title":{"rendered":"That gecko's pleasant accent: Martin and Mellors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday's Doonesbury:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I'm not especially sensitive to class nuances in British accents, but BP CEO Tony Hayward doesn't sound\u00a0 very \"fancy\" to me. Here's a post-spill interview:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

And here's a lecture from 5\/12\/2009, about a year earlier:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

His Wikipedia page<\/a> says that he was born in Eton, Berkshire, and \"gained a first class geology degree from Aston University in Birmingham followed by a PhD from the University of Edinburgh\".<\/p>\n

Duke's point in the Doonesbury strip is that (certain kinds of) British accents sound stuck-up, condescending, snobbish, arrogant, etc., to many Americans. But he immediately undermines this point by recommending a switch to \"whatever that gecko uses\", which is also a kind of British accent.<\/p>\n

According to the Wikipedia page about the GEICO gecko<\/a>,<\/p>\n

The company's ads sometimes focus on its reptilian mascot, Martin the Gecko, an anthropomorphic Day Gecko created by The Martin Agency and most recently a CGI creature generated by Framestore CFC. The gecko first appeared in 1999 during the Screen Actors Guild strike that prevented the use of live actors.\u00a0 In the original commercial, where the gecko pleads for people to stop calling him in error, mistaking gecko for GEICO, he was voiced by Kelsey Grammer.\u00a0 Later \"wrong number\" ads used Dave Kelly as the voice of the gecko. In the subsequent commercials with Jake Wood,\u00a0 (which portray him as a representative of the company), the gecko speaks with an English (Cockney) accent, because it would be unexpected, according to Martin Agency's Steve Bassett. Paul Morgan, a British actor and comedian, is the current voice of the GEICO gecko. In current commercials the gecko's accent is more working-class, perhaps in an effort to further \"humanize\" him. \"As computer animation got better and as we got to know the character better, we did a few things,\" says Steve Bassett, creative director at The Martin Agency. \"We wanted to make him a little more guy-next-door. And he looks a lot more real than he's looked before.\" A recent ad shows the gecko in a GEICO sales meeting. One of the people at the meeting says, \"I could sell more insurance too if I was green with a British accent.\" to which a female counterpart says, \"British? I thought you're from Australia.\" The commercial concludes with the gecko saying, \"Actually I'm from-\" and the commercial cuts off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here's the original Kelsey Grammer GEICO gecko, speaking in a somewhat posh-sounding accent that uncle Duke would presumably not recommend:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Here are some more recent examples, voiced (I think) by Jake Wood, in a much warmer style:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

And another one (I don't know whether this is Jake Wood or Paul Morgan):<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/object><\/p>\n

Martin the gecko now certainly seems warm, friendly, and approachable, not cold and aloof. Is this even partly because Americans understand enough of the socio-economic associations of British accents to apply the usual alignment of class, formality, and intimacy? (See for example how D.H. Lawrence arranges for Mellors to switch between \"cold, good English\" and \"the broad sound of the vernacular\" in Lady Chatterly's Lover, described here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Or is it just that Martin is animated by skillful designers, and voiced by a skillful actor, so as to create the desired impression, independent of his (what I take to be) working-class London-area accent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday's Doonesbury:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-variation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}