ABSTRACT
Conceptions of the role that language plays in psychological theorizing date to well before the time of Charles Darwin, who himself explored similarities between diverse languages at the beginning of his quest for a comprehensive theory of evolution. A modernized version of this theory attributes the origin of consciousness, and much more of human cultural heritage besides, to the internalization of external speech in connection with the perception of ongoing tasks. Accents are another factor in early language development influencing the rate of language acquisition and are also one of the most prominent ways in which cultures encounter each other in everyday interaction. Accents, like languages themselves, are a form of cultural boundary, fluid rather than geographically fixed, and reflect another way that cultures cohere internally while at the same time repelling outside influences.
