It’s actually several things
Our Anglo Saxon DNA with speech inflection from a certain era
The heat....yes it no doubt slows your brain
Manners....southerners of decent upbringing* regardless of rich or poor consider rudeness and talking over folks or spouting off bad form
Fast speech does not indicate intelligence or wisdom....
*Dixie has sadly seen a rise in dignity-less white trash in recent years which frankly defies comprehension.....Tennessee is eat up with it......Kentucky too......the Deep South and Texas not so much
I doubt I have to explain what I’m talking about to most here
I’m not a bit Anglo-Saxon.
My roots are all Celtic.
Technically, I’m not even “southern”, though we speak “Highland Southern”.
Hillbillies are a people all their own.
:)
My mother-in-law-—God love her and I do, too-—is a tall, elegant, sophisticated woman, still stunning at 72. She and her husband are a self-made success story. But she picked up the idea that she needed to shed her Southern accent in order to be appropriate for business. I find that sad.
I once had a Yankee say to me approvingly, “I can’t believe you’re from here. You don’t have much of an accent.” My response was, “Well, thank you for telling me. I’m going to have to work on that.”
Compared to the deep South, I guess Virginians don’t have a pronounced accent. My Freeper friend in New Jersey thinks I do, though, LOL. I tell her SHE’S the one with the accent, not me.