By mistake, I didn’t read all the answers.I apologize that comments have been made.My impression is that the term “accent” has multiple origins, and one of them is related to class status.it is not. Is not. it is of no relevance. (read every answer)? I’m wondering if in fact this is the most basic source, and if the “accent” is more of an affectation than an actual accent, which we generally associate with a geographic region? In the past, I have seen a variety of Hollywood horror movies. Most of them mimic the speech patterns of the well to do films.

What? I wonder what all of this is about when I see my grandmother watching movies and talking with her. I feel that the women adopted this affected speech far more often than the men (in one film, Natalie Wood speaks with the affectation and robert Redford speaks in a more modern pattern). Why did Jacqueline Kennedy have an accent like many actresses in the movies? Among older (people in their eighties and nineties), upper class people, we can still hear this accent, though among their children and grandchilden, speech now seems to resemble that of most of the rest of us…..So my tentative conclusion has been that directors and producers during the earlier movie era saw this “high class” accent as the conventional speech to emulate and present to audiences.

I do see people’s point that one source of the “accent” is that movies were evolving from the stage, and that most actors started out on the stage, where very clear enunciation and projection are so important. Why isn’t Katharine Hepburn getting the kind of “attraction” tone and speech patterns that she hears from other writers (not in interviews)? How would you project a “hick” accent?