Singing Away the Accent

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: Firstly, I will describe the major differences between General British English and Modern Standard American English. After that, I will analyse Adele and Elton John by comparing them speak in an interview and then sing a song. Lastly, I will do a research about a few reasons of this phenomena of shifting accents when people are singing. The goal of this term paper is to see if there really is a shifting in accents when singing com- pared to speaking and gain a bit of understanding why, if that is the case. Language is the most important tool of communication. It involves every aspect of our life. When we are happy, sad or angry about something we often express our emo- tions through words. Today, thousands of languages are spoken and every language has different accents and dialects. Interestingly, sometimes it seems like a person changes their accent for different matters. When it comes to English, I was always drawn to the difference in accents and the one I like the most is the British one. Throughout the years I noticed how I sometimes struggled to connect a singer to his or her origin or region they are from because they sound so different when they are singing to when they are speaking. For the purpose of this paper, Adele and Elton John will serve as examples.