Yuna Goda
![The text reads: "A List of Idiolect-Changes. / Ticketing-Change [long-term change] A self-imposed Idiolect-Change made by adjusting accents and word-choice so that the speaker can become part of a specific community. Muscle-Adaptation-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by the changing of facial and vocal muscles. Straining-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by straining the facial and vocal muscles under stressful situations. Loosening-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by loosening the facial and vocal muscles under relaxed situations. Facilitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] A self-imposed Idiolect-Change made by softening accents and adjusting vocabularies in attempt to facilitate a conversation. Postcolonial-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change where words from colonial countries are inserted into idiolects, often by out-fashioning the postcolonial languages. Received-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change where both its accent and vocabulary become influenced by the information the speaker receives through external sources. Handling-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change made in order to handle social situations more smoothly. Homing-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by sharing certain phrases or words with a specific group of people, resulting the speaker to find more attachment with the community. Gravitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] And Idiolect-Change where some features gravitate towards the surrounding environment, but the overall shape and materiality remains unchanged."](https://2024.rca.ac.uk/files/2024/08/for_profile1-2.jpg)
![The text reads: "Muscle-Adaptation-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by the changing of facial and vocal muscles. Muscles can be trained intentionally by practicing, or naturally by being embedded in a particular speaking environment. / ‘Would you say the strongest influence on your English idiolect, is your Italian accent?’ I asked Francesca. ‘From a sound point of view, yes,’ she answered. ‘But from words point of view, English has always had a lot of impact on my Italian. I have this in all the languages. When I speak, I choose one base language, but then I’d put in the words from the other languages to say what I really want to say. But yes, I think my sound is more influenced by Italian. But I also think it’s a question of, like, muscles. I don’t know about your story. I think now you’ve been here in England for about four years, right?’ ‘That’s right,’ I replied to her. I had been in London for about five years doing my foundation course, BA and MA; though I had been away for one year during COVID. ‘And I imagine most of your speaking is in English,’ continued Francesca. ‘So, you’ve built all of those muscles. Whereas I still haven’t gotten into that. I feel like my muscles still aren’t complete, 100% programmed in. And I think that’s why sometimes I slip into open vowels. It’s because I’m not used to using those muscles.’ Open vowels are the vowel sounds which frequently appear in Italian words. Although a subtle difference, open vowels require a wider mouth shape, lowering of the tongue root, and slower pronunciation compared to pronouncing British English vowels. Francesca demonstrated by pronouncing the ‘e’ in her name in both British and Italian accent: ‘Francésca’, ‘FrancƐsca’, ‘Francésca’, ‘FrancƐscɒː’. As she performed the British pronunciation; ‘Francésca’; she stood still, staring sternly into the air. She performed her Italian pronunciation; ‘FrancƐscɒː’; with a smile, while moving her arms in large circles as if singing in a choir. ‘I also had this feeling speaking French,’ Francesca explained. ‘So I went through a kind of transition last year. I was very used to speaking in Italian, but then, as I was speaking so much French, my muscles of my voice and face got used to saying, “Oh, now let’s focus these muscles to speak in French.” Whereas I still haven’t had that transition here. I think it’s because when I was speaking French, I was having a lot of contact. Every day, I would speak French. Here, I have days I don’t speak English, because I live alone. I had this impression I’d have to submerge myself. Like, for example, if I had a job where five days a week, I’m in a place where I’m speaking in English all the time. Within a year I would have the same impact I felt like I had with the French. Right now, I wouldn’t say I feel grounded or embedded here in London.’ / Straining-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by straining the facial and vocal muscles under stressful situations, such as meeting strangers, delivering presentations, or suffering uncomfortable conversations. Despite being a stress reaction, Straining-Change also emotionally empowers the speaker. Loosening-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by loosening the facial and vocal muscles under relaxed situations, such as having conversations with close friends, family, or loved ones. / ‘I know that when I’m not super comfortable with someone, I will speak with a more British accent. I will also speak more slowly. And I’ll force my accent a bit more. But I know that when I’m very comfortable, I will let loose a lot more. And so, I think that’s when my Italian sounding words come in,’ said Francesca. It is natural for a person to change their presentation or way-of-speech in different social situations. ‘Code-switching’ might be an umbrella-term that explains most socially enforced changes in idiolects. However, after speaking with Francesca, I became more interested in how emotional change causes a speaker to contract and relax muscles so unconsciously. ‘Maybe British English actually require more stress in the muscle compared to speaking Italian. Like the way you just mentioned the open vowels,’ I remarked. ‘Yeah, Whereas I feel like British accents require like, a more restrictive upper lip,’ replied Francesca. As she explained, Francesca slightly strained her upper lip, shaping a beak-like form. I wondered whether she demonstrated the ‘restrictive upper lip’ for me, or I made her self-conscious. "](https://2024.rca.ac.uk/files/2024/08/for_profile2-3.jpg)
![The text reads: "Facilitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] A self-imposed Idiolect-Change made by softening accents and adjusting vocabularies in attempt to facilitate a conversation. / ‘Do you think you sometimes play characters, speaking English with an Italian accent? Like a caricature of an Italian person?’ I asked Francesca. I was thinking about her two pronunciations of ‘Francesca’; the stern-faced ‘Francésca’, and the singing ‘FrancƐscɒː’. I wanted to know if she performed some kind of stereotype; whether consciously or not. Or, perhaps I was the one waiting for her to perform my expectation of Italian people, and I happened to find it in her melodious pronunciation. ‘I don’t think I adopted a character. And I don’t think people project characters on me,’ said Francesca. ‘I think my change is about the comfortableness I feel with the person I’m speaking to or how official the environment is. I know that if I have to give a presentation, my voice will change, my pronunciation will change.’ After pausing, Francesca started speaking again: ‘No, actually, now that you say this, I know when. When I’m speaking with someone that has a very British accent, I will put on more of a British accent. Or when I’m speaking with someone, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t speak English as their first language, but speaks well, then my British accent will soften. I remember when I was dating my first boyfriend. He is bilingual, French and English. And I didn’t know French at the time, he doesn’t know Italian. And so we’d speak in English. He spoke with a very American accent, French American, and I think my English was better than his. I remember, like the first and second time I met him, we met at university, and he had an exam. I said, “are you nervous?” And he was like, “?”. I thought, “Oh, my God, doesn’t nervous exist?”. And I said, “yeah, nervous” like, stressed. And he’s like, “Oh, nervous”. Throughout that relationship. I had to soften my British accent to be more understood.’ ‘But from what I hear, I don’t really see that as playing a character, or a personality change,’ I replied. ‘I feel like you just facilitated the conversation.’ ‘Yeah, facilitation? That’s for sure. I think this is the right word. Like, I definitely feel like I facilitate in all of my being, language, whatever the situation is, I will like, adapt to that. But not in a character way. I just want to facilitate the conversation, or whatever it is. Just make it smoother.’ Reflecting on how Francesca swung her arms pronouncing ‘FrancƐscɒː’; I remembered she only moved her hand upward at ‘Ɛ’, the accentuated vowel of her name. That was also where the tune of her name raised up high, then quickly falling in the following consonant, ‘s’. She probably only tried to emphasize the sonic differences between the Italian accent and British accent, but found the movements joyful, and smiled performing her name in Italian pronunciation: ‘FrancƐscɒː’. ‘Now thinking about what we are talking about, I feel “oh, it is quite fluid”,’ Francesca said, nodding. ‘It would kind of adapt in the container it’s in. Be that the social container be that the linguistic container.’ / Gravitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] An Idiolect-Change where some features gravitate towards the surrounding environment, but the overall shape and materiality remains unchanged. / Elina Yumasheva’s drawing of her English idiolect depicted a single sphere. Orange, pink, red, and grey colors stirred on the surface of the globe. Its appearance reminded me of Jupiter, but without the dramatic shadows casted on its rims. I pictured her idiolect floating and swirling somewhere in a bright, open air, rather than orbiting solemnly in the darkness of outer space. Elina was another participant of the ‘Drawing Idiolects (Zine) Workshop’ earlier in April 2024. Knowing that she is a multilingual speaker of Tatar, Russian, and English, I was intrigued how the different elements of her voice had gathered into one simple drawing. By the time I saw Elina’s version of the workshop outcomes, I had seen many other drawings from the participants, and recognized a tendency; where participants code their linguistic influences by assigning specific colors or shapes to languages and dialects. However, the colors in Elina’s drawings seemed to melt together, making it impossible to dissect them into her three languages. When I asked her why she chose to draw something so fluid and singular, instead of conjoined or patch-worked, she answered that she just could not have drawn it otherwise. ‘When I thought about idiolects, I thought of something that has volume and depth,’ she explained. ‘And that there are multiple dimensions and sides to it in a way, but not sides in a very strict way, like a cube. And I also represented movement in the sphere because the idiolect is not something static to me. There’s constant movement and flow. The idiolect is very contextual. Like you, I would change my behavior depending on the context, depending on the cultural norms. And it’s not something that comes artificially. It’s not because I want to comply with certain expectations. It’s because I know how to operate in different contexts. And depending on the context, the sounds change, the vocals change, the pace of speaking changes, the intonation changes. And color-wise—I guess I used light colors because they felt neutral. I added grey just, from an artistic perspective, to add the depth and shadow to the piece. But the choice of slightly pinky, fleshy color was conscious because the idiolect is something internal, something bodily.’ When I told Elina that I first thought her drawing looked like a gas planet, she told me she also pictured something similar in her mind. Soon I became absorbed in the metaphor of the planet. I never thought of explaining the fluidity of idiolects in such a way. I asked her, ‘Do you think there’s something unmoving at the core of this sphere, and has moving layers on top of the mantle or, is the sphere one fluid thing as a whole?’ ‘I actually don’t know,’ she answered. ‘For me, it feels quite fluid. It’s just this sphere that is moving, and with different things in it. But then some things come a bit more forward and becoming more apparent and visible, and then it goes back and another aspect comes forward.’ ‘Maybe the materials contained in the sphere never change, but different things surface in different environments,’ I suggested. "](https://2024.rca.ac.uk/files/2024/08/for_profile3-3.jpg)
![The text reads: "A List of Idiolect-Changes. / Ticketing-Change [long-term change] A self-imposed Idiolect-Change made by adjusting accents and word-choice so that the speaker can become part of a specific community. Muscle-Adaptation-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by the changing of facial and vocal muscles. Straining-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by straining the facial and vocal muscles under stressful situations. Loosening-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by loosening the facial and vocal muscles under relaxed situations. Facilitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] A self-imposed Idiolect-Change made by softening accents and adjusting vocabularies in attempt to facilitate a conversation. Postcolonial-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change where words from colonial countries are inserted into idiolects, often by out-fashioning the postcolonial languages. Received-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change where both its accent and vocabulary become influenced by the information the speaker receives through external sources. Handling-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change made in order to handle social situations more smoothly. Homing-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by sharing certain phrases or words with a specific group of people, resulting the speaker to find more attachment with the community. Gravitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] And Idiolect-Change where some features gravitate towards the surrounding environment, but the overall shape and materiality remains unchanged."](https://2024.rca.ac.uk/files/2024/08/for_profile1-2-56x79.jpg)
![The text reads: "Muscle-Adaptation-Change [long-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by the changing of facial and vocal muscles. Muscles can be trained intentionally by practicing, or naturally by being embedded in a particular speaking environment. / ‘Would you say the strongest influence on your English idiolect, is your Italian accent?’ I asked Francesca. ‘From a sound point of view, yes,’ she answered. ‘But from words point of view, English has always had a lot of impact on my Italian. I have this in all the languages. When I speak, I choose one base language, but then I’d put in the words from the other languages to say what I really want to say. But yes, I think my sound is more influenced by Italian. But I also think it’s a question of, like, muscles. I don’t know about your story. I think now you’ve been here in England for about four years, right?’ ‘That’s right,’ I replied to her. I had been in London for about five years doing my foundation course, BA and MA; though I had been away for one year during COVID. ‘And I imagine most of your speaking is in English,’ continued Francesca. ‘So, you’ve built all of those muscles. Whereas I still haven’t gotten into that. I feel like my muscles still aren’t complete, 100% programmed in. And I think that’s why sometimes I slip into open vowels. It’s because I’m not used to using those muscles.’ Open vowels are the vowel sounds which frequently appear in Italian words. Although a subtle difference, open vowels require a wider mouth shape, lowering of the tongue root, and slower pronunciation compared to pronouncing British English vowels. Francesca demonstrated by pronouncing the ‘e’ in her name in both British and Italian accent: ‘Francésca’, ‘FrancƐsca’, ‘Francésca’, ‘FrancƐscɒː’. As she performed the British pronunciation; ‘Francésca’; she stood still, staring sternly into the air. She performed her Italian pronunciation; ‘FrancƐscɒː’; with a smile, while moving her arms in large circles as if singing in a choir. ‘I also had this feeling speaking French,’ Francesca explained. ‘So I went through a kind of transition last year. I was very used to speaking in Italian, but then, as I was speaking so much French, my muscles of my voice and face got used to saying, “Oh, now let’s focus these muscles to speak in French.” Whereas I still haven’t had that transition here. I think it’s because when I was speaking French, I was having a lot of contact. Every day, I would speak French. Here, I have days I don’t speak English, because I live alone. I had this impression I’d have to submerge myself. Like, for example, if I had a job where five days a week, I’m in a place where I’m speaking in English all the time. Within a year I would have the same impact I felt like I had with the French. Right now, I wouldn’t say I feel grounded or embedded here in London.’ / Straining-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by straining the facial and vocal muscles under stressful situations, such as meeting strangers, delivering presentations, or suffering uncomfortable conversations. Despite being a stress reaction, Straining-Change also emotionally empowers the speaker. Loosening-Change [short-term change] An Idiolect-Change caused by loosening the facial and vocal muscles under relaxed situations, such as having conversations with close friends, family, or loved ones. / ‘I know that when I’m not super comfortable with someone, I will speak with a more British accent. I will also speak more slowly. And I’ll force my accent a bit more. But I know that when I’m very comfortable, I will let loose a lot more. And so, I think that’s when my Italian sounding words come in,’ said Francesca. It is natural for a person to change their presentation or way-of-speech in different social situations. ‘Code-switching’ might be an umbrella-term that explains most socially enforced changes in idiolects. However, after speaking with Francesca, I became more interested in how emotional change causes a speaker to contract and relax muscles so unconsciously. ‘Maybe British English actually require more stress in the muscle compared to speaking Italian. Like the way you just mentioned the open vowels,’ I remarked. ‘Yeah, Whereas I feel like British accents require like, a more restrictive upper lip,’ replied Francesca. As she explained, Francesca slightly strained her upper lip, shaping a beak-like form. I wondered whether she demonstrated the ‘restrictive upper lip’ for me, or I made her self-conscious. "](https://2024.rca.ac.uk/files/2024/08/for_profile2-3-56x40.jpg){kind=small}
![The text reads: "Facilitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] A self-imposed Idiolect-Change made by softening accents and adjusting vocabularies in attempt to facilitate a conversation. / ‘Do you think you sometimes play characters, speaking English with an Italian accent? Like a caricature of an Italian person?’ I asked Francesca. I was thinking about her two pronunciations of ‘Francesca’; the stern-faced ‘Francésca’, and the singing ‘FrancƐscɒː’. I wanted to know if she performed some kind of stereotype; whether consciously or not. Or, perhaps I was the one waiting for her to perform my expectation of Italian people, and I happened to find it in her melodious pronunciation. ‘I don’t think I adopted a character. And I don’t think people project characters on me,’ said Francesca. ‘I think my change is about the comfortableness I feel with the person I’m speaking to or how official the environment is. I know that if I have to give a presentation, my voice will change, my pronunciation will change.’ After pausing, Francesca started speaking again: ‘No, actually, now that you say this, I know when. When I’m speaking with someone that has a very British accent, I will put on more of a British accent. Or when I’m speaking with someone, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t speak English as their first language, but speaks well, then my British accent will soften. I remember when I was dating my first boyfriend. He is bilingual, French and English. And I didn’t know French at the time, he doesn’t know Italian. And so we’d speak in English. He spoke with a very American accent, French American, and I think my English was better than his. I remember, like the first and second time I met him, we met at university, and he had an exam. I said, “are you nervous?” And he was like, “?”. I thought, “Oh, my God, doesn’t nervous exist?”. And I said, “yeah, nervous” like, stressed. And he’s like, “Oh, nervous”. Throughout that relationship. I had to soften my British accent to be more understood.’ ‘But from what I hear, I don’t really see that as playing a character, or a personality change,’ I replied. ‘I feel like you just facilitated the conversation.’ ‘Yeah, facilitation? That’s for sure. I think this is the right word. Like, I definitely feel like I facilitate in all of my being, language, whatever the situation is, I will like, adapt to that. But not in a character way. I just want to facilitate the conversation, or whatever it is. Just make it smoother.’ Reflecting on how Francesca swung her arms pronouncing ‘FrancƐscɒː’; I remembered she only moved her hand upward at ‘Ɛ’, the accentuated vowel of her name. That was also where the tune of her name raised up high, then quickly falling in the following consonant, ‘s’. She probably only tried to emphasize the sonic differences between the Italian accent and British accent, but found the movements joyful, and smiled performing her name in Italian pronunciation: ‘FrancƐscɒː’. ‘Now thinking about what we are talking about, I feel “oh, it is quite fluid”,’ Francesca said, nodding. ‘It would kind of adapt in the container it’s in. Be that the social container be that the linguistic container.’ / Gravitating-Change [short-term / long-term change] An Idiolect-Change where some features gravitate towards the surrounding environment, but the overall shape and materiality remains unchanged. / Elina Yumasheva’s drawing of her English idiolect depicted a single sphere. Orange, pink, red, and grey colors stirred on the surface of the globe. Its appearance reminded me of Jupiter, but without the dramatic shadows casted on its rims. I pictured her idiolect floating and swirling somewhere in a bright, open air, rather than orbiting solemnly in the darkness of outer space. Elina was another participant of the ‘Drawing Idiolects (Zine) Workshop’ earlier in April 2024. Knowing that she is a multilingual speaker of Tatar, Russian, and English, I was intrigued how the different elements of her voice had gathered into one simple drawing. By the time I saw Elina’s version of the workshop outcomes, I had seen many other drawings from the participants, and recognized a tendency; where participants code their linguistic influences by assigning specific colors or shapes to languages and dialects. However, the colors in Elina’s drawings seemed to melt together, making it impossible to dissect them into her three languages. When I asked her why she chose to draw something so fluid and singular, instead of conjoined or patch-worked, she answered that she just could not have drawn it otherwise. ‘When I thought about idiolects, I thought of something that has volume and depth,’ she explained. ‘And that there are multiple dimensions and sides to it in a way, but not sides in a very strict way, like a cube. And I also represented movement in the sphere because the idiolect is not something static to me. There’s constant movement and flow. The idiolect is very contextual. Like you, I would change my behavior depending on the context, depending on the cultural norms. And it’s not something that comes artificially. It’s not because I want to comply with certain expectations. It’s because I know how to operate in different contexts. And depending on the context, the sounds change, the vocals change, the pace of speaking changes, the intonation changes. And color-wise—I guess I used light colors because they felt neutral. I added grey just, from an artistic perspective, to add the depth and shadow to the piece. But the choice of slightly pinky, fleshy color was conscious because the idiolect is something internal, something bodily.’ When I told Elina that I first thought her drawing looked like a gas planet, she told me she also pictured something similar in her mind. Soon I became absorbed in the metaphor of the planet. I never thought of explaining the fluidity of idiolects in such a way. I asked her, ‘Do you think there’s something unmoving at the core of this sphere, and has moving layers on top of the mantle or, is the sphere one fluid thing as a whole?’ ‘I actually don’t know,’ she answered. ‘For me, it feels quite fluid. It’s just this sphere that is moving, and with different things in it. But then some things come a bit more forward and becoming more apparent and visible, and then it goes back and another aspect comes forward.’ ‘Maybe the materials contained in the sphere never change, but different things surface in different environments,’ I suggested. "](https://2024.rca.ac.uk/files/2024/08/for_profile3-3-56x40.jpg){kind=small}
About
Yuna Goda (合田 結内奈) is a designer and writer who researches about language and cultural identity.
Her on-going writing project, “A List of Idiolect-Changes”, discusses the fluidity of cultural identity in parallel to how people’s idiolects change in response to their surrounding environment. An “idiolect” is like a personal version of a dialect. It is the socio-linguistic term for the unique accent and word choice of a person’s way-of-speech.
Each section of “A List of Idiolect-Changes” begins with a definition of an “idiolect-change”. The names of all idiolect-changes are created based on the experiences of my multilingual friends, told through a series of interviews.
On the left is an excerpt from “A List of Idiolect-Changes”.
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