Why Kevin Spacey's accent in House of Cards sounds off

The linguistics behind Kevin Spacey's Southern accent in House of Cards.

Read What linguists say about Kevin Spacey's bizarre Southern accent on House of Cards: http://www.vox.com/2015/2/27/8119829/house-of-cards-spacey-southern-accent

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Produced by Joss Fong with Alex Abad-Santos
Images courtesy of Getty
Sources: Dennis Preston, Oklahoma State University; Robin Dodsworth, North Carolina State University; Kirk Hazen, West Virginia University
The Atlas of North American English: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch18_2nd.rev.pdf

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Kevin Spacey grew up in California, but in
House of Cards, he plays a politician from

South Carolina. "As we used to say in Gaffney..."
The first thing you'll notice about Spacey's

accent when he's playing Frank Underwood is
what happens to a lot of his Rs. "Money is

the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling
apart after 10 years. Power..." This is called

r-dropping, and it's a feature of several
well-known dialects. "He would rather the

poor were poorer." "The greatest wilderness
on Earth." "In the tradition of bipartisanship."

"Metropolitan Museum of Art." But it's also
associated with the upper class of the plantation

South. "This war talk's spoiling all the fun
at every party this spring." R-dropping emerged

as kind of an affectation among posh people
in southern Britain in the 18th century -- the

English didn't always talk that way. And then
it spread to elites on the East Coast of the

US. At the same time, r-dropping was a feature
of the creole and West African languages spoken

by some of the slaves in the South and their
descendants. But after World War II, new generations

of white Southerners essentially abandoned
r-dropping, so today you'll see it mostly

in the very oldest generation, or more frequently
with African-American speakers from the South.

Take Lindsey Graham as an example. Like Kevin
Spacey's character, Graham is from the northern

part of South Carolina, and his Rs are largely
intact. "going to sell the oil to another

customer." And that may be because language
in the Southern Appalachian areas was influenced

by settlers from Ireland, where people aren't
exactly shy with their Rs. "Seriously. Serious.

How close does that sound to the Kentucky
accent where they talk like that and I'm talking

like this?" Regardless, R-dropping probably
can't be the shortcut that white actors use

to sound Southern in the future. Instead,
the main feature that unites Southern dialects

is something called /ay/-ungliding. For people
outside the South, this vowel has two parts.

You can probably feel your tongue shifting
as you say the word "buy." But in Southern

speech, /ay/ is a one-part vowel in many cases,
sounding more like ah than ay. "Five" "and

livelihoods" "terrified." But there's an important
distinction here that Northerners might not

be aware of. Most Southerners only do ay-ungliding
before what's called voiced consonants, or

at the end of a word. The difference between
voiced and voiceless consonants is whether

your vocal chords vibrate when you say them,
and ay-ungliding before voiceless consonants

is stereotyped in the South as a less-educated
way of speaking. "But I don't want your life."

Ay-ungliding triggers a shift in the vowels,
or in the space in the mouth where the vowels

are formed. The ey-sound shifts lower in the
mouth. "And then blame somebody else." The

eh-sound moves forward to the front of the
mouth. "Just as strong and opinionated as

men." As do the vowels pronounced in the back
of the mouth like go and boot. "Thank you."

These vowel shifts occur to different degrees
in different parts of the South, and they're

certainly fading in cities where there's a
lot of migration and generational change.

But if you're an actor from the North or the
West, the vowels are really the key

to sounding Southern.