Appalachian Englishes in the Twenty-First Century

Ain’thology The History and Life of a Taboo Word, 2015

Ain't is an iconic stereotype for rural speakers in the United States, eliciting polarized views of social identity, class, and education. In this chapter, Kirk Hazen, Jacqueline Kinnaman, Lily Holz, Madeline Vandevender, and Kevin Walden consider the current linguistic and sociolinguistic features of ain't as it is used in West Virginia. Hazen et al. include an account of the morphology, phonology, and vernacularity of ain't as it applies to this region of Appalachia and discuss possible trends of iconicity that give it the reputation it carries today. Using interviews from the West Virginia Corpus of English in Appalachia-an inventory of native speakers from West Virginia collected over an eight-year period and balanced by age, sex, and region-the authors assessed the usage and frequency of ain't in extemporaneous speech. In addition, a sociolinguistic survey conducted with a variety of native West Virginians enabled them to gauge the attitudes of the participants with regards to the vernacularity of ain't. Hazen et al. find that, while the stigma of ain't continues into the 21st century, ain't persists and will continue to do so as a dynamic, complex shibboleth and identity marker in West Virginia.

Rural Voices: Language, Identity, and Social Change across Place. Christine Mallinson & Lizzy Seale (eds.). Rural Voices: Language, Identity, and Social Change across Place. Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield. 75-90. , 2018

Over the last 19 years, the West Virginia Dialect Project (WVDP) has con- ducted sociolinguistic investigations of English in Appalachia, assessing language variation and the social factors that guide its path. While some sociolinguistic variables are not undergoing change and others show no social marking, several demonstrate divisions between rural and non-rural speakers. Along with geographic region, orientation to higher-education, and social class, rurality guides speakers’ language variation choices. This chapter examines usage of several sociolinguistic variables—ING variation, coronal stop deletion (CSD), leveled was, demonstrative them, and a-prefixing—to demonstrate how Appalachian speech might be viewed as vernacular, as well as changes that are occurring. Language differences are found to mark the dialect regions of Appalachia, but some regional characteristics are also adopted as social markers of rurality. Sociolinguistic diversity for West Virginia speakers demonstrates the possible identity choices that rural Americans have, and the shifting social meanings show how conceptions of rurality are also in flux. How speakers portray themselves, and how outsiders perceive those markers, are part of the complex interplay and evolution of Appalachian identities.

2011

Changing English, 2005

Philologia, 2016

This paper uses a comparative analysis of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance and James Still’s novel River of Earth to parse popular language ideologies concerning the Appalachian English dialect of ‘Mountain Speech.’ Deliverance portrays Appalachian natives as ignorant and violent, utilizing non-standard orthography to represent eye-dialect of Appalachian Speech; it feeds the story on stereotypes related to the popular stigmatized terms for Southerners as “Red-necks” and “hicks.” James Still’s River of Earth portrays Appalachian language and culture accurately as Still lived in Appalachia his whole life. Yet, despite these inaccuracies, Deliverance remains the more popular novel, even being turned into a movie in 1972. This paper proposes the theory that Dickey’s novel is more popular because his voice as a Southern writer lends credibility to popular stereotype, whereas Still’s combats stereotype with factual evidence garnered from his time amongst Mountain Folk.

Language in Society, 2002

The investigation of isolated African American enclave communities has been instrumental in reformulating the historical reconstruction of earlier African American English and the current trajectory of language change in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This case study examines a unique enclave sociolinguistic situation – a small, long-term, isolated bi-ethnic enclave community in the mountains of western North Carolina – to further understanding of the role of localized dialect accommodation and ethnolinguistic distinctiveness in the historical development of African American English. The examination of a set of diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables for several of the remaining African Americans in this community supports the conclusion that earlier African American English largely accommodated local dialects while maintaining a subtle, distinctive ethnolinguistic divide. However, unlike the situation in some other African American communities, there is n...

Language Variation and Change 26 (2014), 77–102., 2014

In many rural English-speaking communities, linguistic processes such as paradigm leveling come into direct conflict with social processes of standardization. In the US region of Appalachia, an analysis of past be leveling illustrates the progression of the sociolinguistic clashes between these forces. A quantitative sociolinguistic examination of leveled was (e.g., We was there) for 67 native Appalachian speakers was conducted to assess the status of past be in light of economic and educational improvements over the 20th century. The results indicate that leveled was declined sharply, with the youngest speakers demonstrating more standardized patterns. Although the overall rate of was leveling declined across apparent time, the rate of was contraction (e.g., We’s there last night) increased, offering native Appalachians a reduced variant to contest the social push toward a fully standardized system.

2016

espanolCiudad y campo: adquisicion del dialecto en las montanas Catskill de Nueva York, al norte del estado. Las personas que se mudan de una zona dialectal a otra frecuentemente asimilan caracteristicas del discurso de la nueva region. La adquisicion del dialecto no esta muy marcada en adultos y, por lo tanto, apenas se estudia en el ambito de la sociolinguistica. En este studio, se recogieron muestras del discurso de nativos de las montanas de Catskill, en el norte del estado de Nueva York, y de los residentes de Catskill procedentes de la zona metropolitana de la ciudad de Nueva York. Se empleo una metodologia perceptiva que utiliza una escala de 9 puntos con el fin de determinar la adquisicion (Munro et al. 1999). Posteriormente, las pruebas han demostrado que los grupos difieren significativamente (p EnglishIndividuals moving from one dialect-specific area to another often pick up some characteristics of the new region�s speech patterns. Dialect acquisition is subtle in adults ...