Posted on 04/30/2002 7:12:45 PM PDT by foreverfree
The Southern Accent: We're Losing It
By Rob Marus
The Moose Is Loose
Have you ever noticed that people in our generation seem to be losing their Southern accents? "Hold on," most of y'all are now thinking, "I haven't noticed any lack of Delta drawls or backwoods twangs here at Rhodes."
But stop for a second and listen very closely to the inflections of your peers. Now compare their accents with, say, your father's (or, if you're from the North, your roommate's father's). See the difference? And his accent is even a little milder than your grandmother's, isn't it? She probably still drops her "R"s.
Linguists tell us that, more rapidly than ever before, English-speaking Americans are losing their distinctive regional accents and dialects.
You're much less likely today to find an Atlantan using the word "supper" in reference to the evening meal than you were 30 years ago. By the same token, you're less likely to find a Bostonian pronouncing the word "can't" like a Kennedy would.
But this phenomenon is most widespread and insidious in the South, the linguists and sociologists tell us, and particularly on college campuses. Each generation has gotten a little bit farther away from the previous generations' adherence to a Southern accent; in the 60's people stopped dropping their "R"s (a la Scarlett O'Hara); in the 70's, they stopped using "that-a-way" and "over yonder" as directional aids; in the 80's they stopped saying "fixin' to" and replaced it with "about to."
And now, here we are in the 90's, and our generation in particular is dropping the last vestiges of our accents-a lot of us won't even drawl out our long "I"s or use "y'all" anymore.
But why are we doing this? What's the point? People used to relish, even nurture their Southern accents. Why has our generation chosen to do the very opposite - eradicate the very last vestiges of it? I'll tell you the main reason: classic Yankee imperialism.
Hollywood, Wall Street, and Madison Avenue have pelted us, in this "Information Age" (which, if you ask me, is a misnomer that could be more accurately replaced with "Misinformation Age"), with a barrage of images and sound bytes that not only set up a nondescript, sterilized accent as the normative pattern of American speech (think about the way most TV journalists talk), but also create stereotypes that completely disdain Southern accents as purely the domain of hillbillys, rednecks, and racists.
Think about it; recall what you've watched on television or in the movies in the past week. Almost invariably the character with the thickest Southern accent in any movie, television show is one of two things. In drama, he (rarely are women portrayed in these roles) is the "bad guy": the KKK leader, the escaped convict, the philandering preacher, the corrupt government agent trying to cover up a UFO landing. In comedy, he (once again, women are rarely presented in these roles) is invariably the ignorant yokel: the trailer-park trash, the bumbling small-town sherriff, the provincial good-ol'-boy politician.
If a woman is ever portrayed with a Southern accent, she is either the passive, abused, blue-collar wife or the manipulative Southern belle. And, for the most part (with the major exceptions of shows set in New York City), that sterilized TV-news-anchorperson non-accent is the standard pattern of speaking for the "serious" characters and "good" characters that Hollywood gives us.
But in English there is no such thing as a "non-accent." The pattern of speech that Hollywood has set up as normative is no more than a Midwestern dialect. Any Englishman or Englishwoman would not hesitate to say that Tom Brokaw and Diane Sawyer have definite accents.
To be any sort of famous actor or actress the first thing you must do is learn how to sound like someone from Iowa. Nowadays, if you maintain your Southern accent, you're not very likely to find a job in Hollywood. You'll probably be surprised to know that Andie MacDowell, Julia Roberts, Matthew McConaughey, Kim Basinger, and even the guy who plays the mailman on Seinfeld are all native Southerners. To be a TV journalist you have to do the same thing (unless you're a complete bad-ass, like Bill Moyers).
Therefore, it's understandable that we, as open-minded, free-thinking young people who are trying to be urbane, sophisticated, and worldly-wise, should have difficulty accepting our inherited accents as something we shouldn't hide. After all, our generation is the one most shaped by the Northern media.
You see it all the time at Rhodes; think about all the people who come here from a small town and then begin to lose their drawl over the months beause they hang out with accentless folks from places like Dallas and Atlanta (two cities absolutely overrun by Northern immigrants in recent years).
So don't conform, dammit! Don't let the Northern establishment grind you beneath its heel; stand up to the attacks of Yankee capitalism and commercialism upon who you are as a person. Just because you speak differently than the mass-media norm does not mean that you are inherently inferior. If the South would just give up its inferiority complex, I think we could come a long way in solving some of our social problems.
Young Southerners, take the first step towards respecting yourselves as a people and don't assume that your accent means you are a redneck. And do it now, before it's too late. God forbid we end up a nation of people who all sound like Roseanne Barr.
If you pronounce it 'Flarada' (or arnge for that matter) I highly doubt that you are from 'Flarada.'
Or... like they should be pronounced according to Websters. Go the hell back home if you don't like us 'Hicks.'
BTW: You'll get your wish, as I am leaving the Sunshine State shortly. :-)
Oh? Well maybe my spelling is wrong but I can assure you I was born and raised in Miama, Fla. Mom was a Key West Conch, Dad immigrated from Bessemer, Ala. in 1922. So I think that qualifies me.
Sweet. Feel free to bring back your tourist dollars anytime... just don't bring any furniture.
Miami? Hell, why didn't you say so... that explains everything. Does growing up in Miami give you Florida-New York double citizenship?
LOL. Well, maybe now you could say that, but when I was growing up there(40's 50's) they used to board up all the hotels on the Beach because it was too hot down there in the summer(no air-conditioning then) and all the New Yawkers went home. Mostly crackers them days. During the winter months the NY plates on cars outnumbered the Fla. plates about 2-1. It was a nice place to live most of the year, back then. Not so now, sadly. As I said before, my mom always said that air-condtioning was the worst thing that ever happened to So. Fla. I agree.
Yep. It's sad... I wish they had never dammed the 'river of grass.' The Everglades stretching unfettered from the Atlantic to the Gulf sounds so much more appealing than what Dade, Broward and PBC have become.
Have you ever spent any time in the 'Big Bend' area of the Gulf Coast? To me, that's the real Florida. No sand on the beaches = no tourists, and it is SO very pretty there.
I grew up in St. Augustine and I've lived in Gainesville for the last 10 years. Both are truly amazing places to live. I'd highly recommend a visit if you haven't already done so.
I keep hoping that my part of Florida won't ever change as drastically or as negatively as South Florida and the West Panhandle.
BTW, I've only heard of Mitch because I'm a fan of the Dillards. Being a Dillards fan got me to buy Mitch's book, which got me interested in Ozark culture. Which got me more interested in bluegrass...
The Current Wave
Eminence, Mo. 65466
and enquiring about their subscription prices, which are around $25 a year for the weekly paper, if I remember right. In addition to Mitch's almost weekly column, Roger Dillon the Editor writes a column, and there are a bunch of church folk that write columns, too. For an unvarnished look at pure Ozark life, you ought to read it, it's around 6-10 pages, and is priceless.
I'll tell a story, here: "Who are they?" the newcomer asked. "Pay them no mind," St. Peter said, "They're crazy."
"But it looks like they want to leave!" the man whispered, not wanting the crazy folks to hear him. "Who would want to leave this beautiful place?"
"Well, you have to understand that this happens every year about this time. You see, they're hillbillies, and it's springtime in the Ozarks..." ;-D
Being from Sand Mountain ( and proud of it), I couldn’t agree more. I love my accent. Sand Mountain has a very thick accent. It makes me unique. My wife even laughs at me. I love all accents. What an amazing country to have so many dialects. Yes, Southerners are ridiculed in films, ads, etc. Who cares. As I told a New Yorker once on a conference call “We don’t give a damn what you think. We laugh at ourselves more than you do.” That is the difference. We don’t take anything, except our heritage, too seriously.
They are making this more complicated than it actually is. The homogenization of accents is simply due to our mass media culture and our highly mobile society. We are not living in geographical seclusion and isolation like we used to.
when i lived in austin my next door neighbor was fired from
a tv station for his west-texas twang.
it’s not fashionable.
notice how president bush took speech lessons to get rid of his midland-odessa twang.
Sand Mountain is a very unique place and it is the place I feel most comfortable. Nobody is in a hurry and you are always welcome to come up on the front porch of your neighbors for some iced tea. It’s changing though. Highway 431 is getting to be like the big city with all its sprawl and crazy traffic patterns. So I learned all the back roads and stay off that highway as much as I can. Except for the mandatory trip to the Catfish Cabin.
Much ado about nothing. The age of instant information and all it brings with it is normalizing regional accents that only flourished because of isolation.
And it’s not a midwestern accent that Mr. Marus thinks he hears from Hollywood, it’s a Western accent. The Midwestern accent is abrupt and nasal, ala Jenny McCarthy.
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