| Southern American English | |
|---|---|
| Southern U.S. English | |
| Region | Southern United States |
Indo-European
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Early forms | |
| Latin (English alphabet) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | sout3302 |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Southern American English orSouthern U.S. English is aregional dialect[1][2] or collection of dialects ofAmerican English spoken throughout the Southern United States, primarily byWhite Southerners and increasingly concentrated in more rural areas.[3] As of 2000s research, itsmost innovative accents include southernAppalachian and certainTexas accents.[4] Such research has described Southern American English as the largestAmerican regional accent group by number of speakers.[5] More formal terms used within American linguistics includeSouthern WhiteVernacular English andRural White Southern English.[6][7] However, more commonly in the United States, the variety is recognized as aSouthern accent, which technically refers merely to thedialect's sound system, often also called aSouthern twang, or simplySouthern.[8][9][10]
A diversity ofearlier Southern dialects once existed: a consequence of the mix of English speakers from theBritish Isles (including largelyEnglish andScots-Irish immigrants) who migrated to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries, with particular 19th-century elements also borrowed from the London upper class and enslaved African-Americans. By the 19th century, this included distinct dialects in eastern Virginia, the greater Lowcountry area surrounding Charleston, the Appalachian upcountry region, the Black Belt plantation region, and secluded Atlantic coastal and island communities.
Following theAmerican Civil War, as the South's economy and migration patterns fundamentally transformed, so did Southern dialect trends.[11] Over the next few decades, Southerners moved increasingly to Appalachian mill towns, to Texan farms, or out of the South entirely.[11] The main result, further intensified by later upheavals such as theGreat Depression, theDust Bowl and perhapsWorld War II, is that a newer and more unified form of Southern American English consolidated, beginning around the last quarter of the 19th century, radiating outward from Texas and Appalachia through all the traditional Southern States until around World War II.[12][13] This newer Southern dialect largely superseded the older and more diverse local Southern dialects, though it became quickly stigmatized in American popular culture. As a result, since around the 1950s and 1960s, the notable features of this newer Southern accent have been in a gradual decline, particularly among younger and more urban Southerners, though less so among rural white Southerners.
Despite the slow decline of the modern Southern accent,[16][17] it is still documented as widespread as of the 2006Atlas of North American English. Specifically, theAtlas documents a Southern accent in urban areas ofVirginia,North Carolina,South Carolina,Georgia,Alabama,Mississippi,Tennessee,Kentucky,Arkansas,Louisiana (alongsideCajun andNew Orleans accents), andWest Virginia; many areas ofTexas; theJacksonville area of northern Florida; theSpringfield area of southernMissouri; and in some urban speakers in easternKansas, southernOhio, and theTulsa area ofOklahoma.[18][a] Although theAtlas is a nationwide study that focuses on urban areas, the Southern accent has been increasingly becoming concentrated, for decades, in rural areas, which are often less well-studied.[3] Other 21st-century scholarship further includes within this dialect region southernMaryland, eastern and southernOklahoma, the rest of northern and central Florida and southernMissouri, and southeasternNew Mexico.[19][20]
Furthermore, theAtlas documents(South) Midland accents of the U.S. as sharing key features with Southern accents, likeGOAT fronting and resistance to thecot-caught merger, while lacking other defining features like theSouthern Vowel Shift.[21] Such shared features extend across all of Texas and Oklahoma, as well as eastern and centralKansas, southern Missouri, southernIndiana, southernOhio, and southernIllinois.[22][19]
Finally,African-American accents across the United States have many common points with Southern accents due to the strong historical ties of African Americans to the South.
TheAtlas notably identifies severalculturally Southern cities in particular as lacking a Southern accent, either having shifted away from it or having never had it to begin with, such asNorfolk andRichmond, Virginia;Raleigh andGreenville, North Carolina;Charleston, South Carolina;Atlanta and possiblySavannah, Georgia;Abilene,El Paso,Austin, and possiblyCorpus Christi, Texas; andOklahoma City.[23] Some cities are home to both the Southern accent and other more locally distinct accents—most clearlyNew Orleans, Louisiana.
The Southern regional accent, existing from the 20th century until the present, diverges fromGeneral American accents in several ways. One defining feature is thediphthong/aɪ/ inprize, lime, fly, etc. losing its gliding quality and becoming[aː] in many or allenvironments, so for example the wordride commonly approaches a sound that most other English speakers would hear asrod orrad.[24]Southern drawling (or diphthongizing) of the shortfront vowels, particularly when in a strongly emphasized word, causespet andpit, for instance, to sound to other English speakers more likepay-it andpee-it.[25] All of this appears to be related to acomplicated chain shift of vowels that define the accent.[26]
Fronting is common for theback vowels inGOAT,GOOSE,STRUT, andFOOT, and in the first element of the diphthongMOUTH. Thepin-pen merger is also widespread.Rhoticity, the pronunciation of all historical/r/ sounds, is the norm, as in General American accents. In fact, Southern accents often have a strongly articulated bunched-tongue/r/ sound. However, some sub-regional accents used primarily by Southerners born in the mid-20th century and earlier, as well asBlack Southern accents, may be largely non-rhotic, dropping the/r/ in environments other than before a vowel sound.
InLouisiana, the accent coexists alongside distinctNew Orleans andCajun accents. Various sub-regional Southern accents exist, with the strongest vowel features documented inAppalachian English and certain accents ofTexan English.
These grammatical features are characteristic of both older and newer Southern American English.
Standard English would prefer "existentialthere", as in "There's one lady who lives in town". This construction is used to say that something exists (rather than saying where it is located).[30] The construction can be found inMiddle English as inMarlowe'sEdward II: "Cousin, it is no dealing with him now".[30]
Standard English has a strictword order. In the case ofmodal auxiliaries, standard English is restricted to a single modal perverb phrase. However, some Southern speakers usedouble or more modals in a row (might could, might should, might would, used to could, etc.--also called "modal stacking") and sometimes even triple modals that involveoughta (likemight should oughta)
The origin of multiple modals is controversial; some say it is a development ofModern English, while others trace them back toMiddle English and others toScots-Irish settlers.[28] There are different opinions on which class preferably uses the term.Atwood (1953) for example, finds that educated people try to avoid multiple modals, whereasMontgomery (1998) suggests the opposite. In some Southern regions, multiple modals are quite widespread and not particularly stigmatized.[36] Possible multiple modals are:[37]
| may could | might could | might supposed to |
| may can | might oughta | mighta used to |
| may will | might can | might woulda had oughta |
| may should | might should | oughta could |
| may supposed to | might would | better can |
| may need to | might better | should oughta |
| may used to | might had better | used to could |
| can might | musta coulda | |
| could might | would better |
As the table shows, there are only possible combinations of anepistemic modal followed bydeontic modals in multiple modal constructions. Deontic modals express permissibility with a range from obligated to forbidden and are mostly used as markers of politeness in requests whereas epistemic modals refer to probabilities from certain to impossible.[28] Multiple modals combine these two modalities.
People from the South often make use of conditional or evidentialsyntaxes as shown below (italicized in the examples):[38]
Conditional syntax in requests:
Conditional syntax in suggestions:
Conditional syntax creates a distance between the speaker's claim and the hearer. It serves to soften obligations or suggestions, make criticisms less personal, and to overall express politeness, respect, or courtesy.[38]
Southerners also often use "evidential" predicates such as think, reckon, believe, guess, have the feeling, etc.:
Evidential predicates indicate an uncertainty of the knowledge asserted in the sentence. According toJohnston (2003), evidential predicates nearly always hedge the assertions and allow the respondents to hedge theirs. They protect speakers from the social embarrassment that appears, in case the assertion turns out to be wrong. As is the case with conditional syntax, evidential predicates can also be used to soften criticisms and to afford courtesy or respect.[38]
In the United States, the following vocabulary is mostly unique to, or best associated with, Southern U.S. English:[39]
Unique words can occur as Southernnonstandard past-tense forms of verbs, particularly in the Southern highlands andPiney Woods, as inyesterday they riz up, come outside, drawed, and drownded, as well as participle forms likethey have took it, rode it, blowed it up, and swimmed away.[40]Drug is traditionally both the past tense and participle form of the verbdrag.[40]
Y'all is a second-person singular pronoun that used to refer to asingle group. It is originally acontraction – you all.[53]
Southern Louisiana English especially is known for some unique vocabulary: long sandwiches are often calledpoor boys orpo' boys,woodlice/roly-polies calleddoodle bugs, the end of a bread loaf called anose,pedestrian islands andmedian strips alike calledneutral ground,[39] and sidewalks calledbanquettes.[54]
Discussion of "Southern dialect" in the United States sometimes focuses on those English varieties spoken by white Southerners.[55] However, because "Southern" is a geographic term, "Southern dialect" may also encompass dialects developed among other social or ethnic groups in the South. The most prominent of these dialects isAfrican-American Vernacular English (AAVE), a fairly unified variety of English spoken byworking andmiddle-class African-Americans throughout the United States. AAVE exhibits a relationship with both older and newer Southern dialects, though there is not yet a broad consensus on the exact nature of this relationship.[56]
The historical context of race andslavery in the United States is a central factor in the development of AAVE. From the 16th to 19th centuries, many Africans speaking a diversity ofWest African languages were captured, brought to the United States, and sold into slavery. Over many generations, these Africans and their African-American descendants picked up English to communicate with their white enslavers and the white servants that they sometimes worked alongside, and they also used English as abridge language to communicate with each other in the absence of another common language. There were also some African Americans living asfree people in the United States, though the majority lived outside of the South due to Southern state laws which enabled white enslavers to "recapture" anyone not perceived as white and force them into slavery.
Following the American Civil War – and the subsequent national abolition of explicitly racial slavery in the 19th century – many newly freed African Americans and their families remained in the United States. Some stayed in the South, while others moved to join communities of African-Americanfree people living outside of the South. Soon,racial segregation laws followed by decades of cultural, sociological, economic, and technological changes such asWWII and the increasing prevalence of mass media further complicated the relationship between AAVE and all other English dialects.
Modern AAVE retains similarities to older speech patterns spoken among white Southerners. Many features suggest that it largely developed fromnonstandard dialects of colonial English as spoken by white Southern planters and British indentured servants, plus a more minor influence from thecreoles and pidgins spoken by black Caribbeans.[57] There is also evidence of some influence of West African languages on the vocabulary and grammar of AAVE.
It is uncertain to what extent current white Southern English borrowed elements from early AAVE, and vice versa. Like many white accents of English once spoken inSouthern plantation areas—namely, the Lowcountry, the Virginia Piedmont, Tidewater, and the lower Mississippi Valley—the modern-day AAVE accent is mostly non-rhotic (or "r-dropping"). The presence of non-rhoticity in both AAVE and old Southern English is not merely coincidence, though, again, which dialect influenced which is unknown. It is better documented, however, that white Southerners borrowed somemorphological processes from black Southerners.
Many grammatical features were used alike by white speakers of old Southern English and early AAVE, more so than by contemporary speakers of the same two varieties. Even so, contemporary speakers of both continue to share these unique grammatical features: "existentialit", the wordy'all,double negatives,was to meanwere, deletion ofhad andhave,them to meanthose, the termfixin' to, stressing the first syllable of words likehotel orguitar, and many others.[58] Both dialects also continue to share these same pronunciation features:/ɪ/tensing,/ʌ/ raising, upgliding/ɔ/, thepin–pen merger, and the most defining sound of the current Southern accent (though rarely documented in older Southern accents): the glide weakening of/aɪ/. However, while this glide weakening has triggered among white Southerners a complicated "Southern Vowel Shift", African-American speakers in the South and elsewhere are "not participating or barely participating" in much of this shift.[59] AAVE speakers also do not front the vowel starting positions of/oʊ/ and/u/, thus aligning these characteristics more with the speech of 19th-century white Southerners than 20th-century white Southerners.[60]
Another possible influence on the divergence of AAVE and white Southern American English (i.e., the disappearance ofolder Southern American English) is that historical and contemporary civil rights struggles have over time caused the two racial groups "tostigmatize linguistic variables associated with the other group".[60] This may explain some of the differences outlined above, including why most traditionally non-rhotic white Southern accents have shifted to become intensely rhotic.[61]
In the United States, there is a general negative stigma surrounding the Southern dialect. Non–Southern Americans tend to associate a Southern accent with lower social and economic status, cognitive and verbal slowness, lack of education, ignorance, bigotry, or religious or political conservatism,[62] using common labels like "hick", "hillbilly",[63] or "redneck accent".[64] Meanwhile, Southerners themselves tend to have mixed judgments of their accent, some similarly negative but others positively associating it with a laid-back, plain, or humble attitude.[65] The accent is also associated nationwide withthe military,NASCAR, andcountry music. Furthermore, non–Southern American country singers typically imitate a Southern accent in their music.[64] The sum of negative associations nationwide, however, is the main presumable cause of a gradual decline of Southern accent features, since the middle of the 20th century onwards, particularly among younger and more urban residents of the South.[16]
In a study of children's attitudes about accents published in 2012, Tennessee children from five to six were indifferent about the qualities of persons with different accents, but children from Chicago were not. Chicago children from five to six (speakers ofNorthern American English) were much more likely to attach positive traits to Northern speakers than Southern ones. The study's results suggest that social perceptions of Southern English are taught by parents to children.[66]
In 2014, theUS Department of Energy at theOak Ridge National Laboratory inTennessee offered a voluntary "Southern accent reduction" class so that employees could be "remembered for what they said rather than their accents". The course offered accent neutralization throughcode-switching. The class was canceled because of the resulting controversy and complaints from Southern employees, who were offended by the class since it stigmatized Southern accents.[67]
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