“Greater Appalachia” runs from Virginia to West Texas???
That’s beyond ridiculous. Arkansas alone is a culture separate from virtually every other in this country.
Many years ago, Parade magazine did an excellent feature on the spread of regional dialects in the US, focusing heavily on “Southern Highland” [hillbilly, basically] and that map has it down, precisely.
Follow the dialect, you follow the culture.
I can understand Texans perfectly but New Englanders and coastal southerners give me problems.
Arkansas is not as unique as you think.
There is a good book on Ozark myth and folklore [another hallmark of ‘culture’] and everything in that book is identical to the folklore of where I live.
The map is valid, with the exception that they should have run “Greater Appalachia” farther north into western PA.