REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS

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REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS

• by Don L. F. Nilsen
• and Alleen Pace Nilsen

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Language vs. Dialect

• A language is a dialect with an army and a
  navy.
• (Smith Wilhelm 49)
• Speakers of different dialects may have
  difficulty understanding each other, but speakers
  of different languages cant understand each
  other at all.
• Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic are
  different dialects.
• Mandarin, Cantonese and seven other varieties of
  Chinese are different languages.

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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA 1 NEW ENGLAND NAMES

• New England
• Plymouth Rock
• New York
• New Jersey
• Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Boston Celtics (Irish)
• New Amsterdam (Dutch)
• Harlem
• New York Knickerbockers
• Dutch West Indies

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EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard 280)
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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA 2 PENNSYLVANIA NAMES

• William Penn
• Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutch)
• thee thy, thine and thou

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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA 2 SOUTHERN NAMES IN
DELMARVIA

• Jamestown, Virginia
• Williamsburg, Virginia
• The Slave Trade Charleston, South Carolina
  Liverpool, England and Sierra Leon, West Africa
• Pidgins and Creoles resulting from Maritime
  English)
• The development of black English as a pidgin

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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA 3 THE CUMBERLAND PASS

• Scottish and Irish settlements in the South
• Irish story tellers (the Jack tales like Jack
  and the Beanstalk)

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NORTHERN, MIDLAND SOUTHERN EXPANSION WESTWARD
(Shuy 294)
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PHONOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES

• Greasy
• With
• spoon (noon)
• Creek
• Roof
• However, wash is not so much regional as rural.

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PHONOGICAL DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE BECOMING LOST

• cot-caught
• witch-which
• mourning morning
• However, pin-pen is remaining stable.
• (Fromkin Rodman Hyams 413)

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NEW ENGLAND PHONOLOGY

• lot (New England)
• park the car Cuba-r-is
• merry marry Mary
• calf (pass, path, dance)
• Brooklyn dis, dat, dese, dose, dem

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The Southern Dialect

• The South, because of its rural, isolated past,
  boasts a diversity of dialects, from Appalachian
  twangs in several states, to Elizabethan lilts in
  Virginia, to Cajun accents in Louisiana, to
  African-influenced Gullah accents on the coasts
  of Georgia and South Carolina.
• One accent that has been all but wiped out is
  the slow juleps-in-the-moonlight drawl favored by
  Hollywood portrayals of the South. To find that
  so-called plantation accent in most parts of the
  region nowadays requires a trip to the video
  store.
• (Collins Wyatt 2009 333-334)

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The Plantation Drawl vs. Appalachian Speech

• Even as the stereotypical southern accent gets
  rarer, other speech patterns take its place, and
  theyre not any less southern.
• The Upland South accent, a faster-paced dialect
  native to the Appalachian mountains, is said to
  be spreading just as fast as the plantation drawl
  disappears.
• (Collins Wyatt 2009 334)

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Walt Wolfram on Southern Speech

• Walt Wolfram says that the vowel shift where
  one-syllable words like air come out in two
  syllables, ay-ah is certainly vanishing.
• Other aspectssuch as double-modal constructions
  like might couldare still pervasive.
• (Collins Wyatt 2009 335)

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Roy Blount Jr. on Southern Speech

• Roy Blount Jr. said, My father, who was a surely
  intelligent man, would say caint, He wouldnt
  say cant. And, There aint no way, just
  there aint no way. You dont want to say,
  There isnt any way. That just spoils the
  whole thing.
• I just think that theres a certain eloquence in
  southern vernacular that I wouldnt want to lose
  touch withyou ought to sound like where you come
  from.
• There are still plenty of professions that
  thrive on a good southern twangfrom preachers to
  football coaches to a certain breed of courtroom
  litigators.
• (Collins Wyatt 2009 335)

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SOUTHERN PHONOLOGY

• Mrs.
• hog (frog, dog, Deputy Dog)
• south gt souf
• during gt doin, and going gt gon
• help gt hep
• test gt tes
• ring gt rang
• boy gt boah
• car gt cah
• POlice

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SOUTHERN VOCABULARY

• chitlins and grits
• to buy a pig in a poke
• Carry me Back to Old Virginie

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CALIFORNIA VALLEY-GIRL SURFER-DUDE SPEECH

• Rising Inflections (like Australian English)
• Animated Body Language (like sticking a finger
  down the throat)
• Specialized Vocabulary (like dude, esp.
  relating to shopping malls, the beach, and
  personality types)

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CANADIAN PHONOLOGY

• out and about the house
• schedule
• Canadian -eh

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VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES

• What do you fry your eggs in?
• creeper, fryer, frying pan, fry pan, skillet, or
  spider
• What do you call a soft drink?
• coke, pop, soda, soda pop, or tonic?
• What do you call a long sandwich containing
  salami etc.?
• hero, submarine, hoagy, grinder or poorboy

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• What do you drink water out of?
• drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser
• How do you get something from one place to
  another?
• take, carry, or tote
• What do you carry things in?
• a bag, a sack, or a poke
• How do you speculate?
• ponder, reckon, guess, figure, figger, suspect,
  imagine

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BRITISH-AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION DIFFERENCES

• calf, bath, pass, aunt
• learn, fork, core, brother
• carry, very
• secretary, stationery, territory, dictionary,
  laboratory, necessary, missionary
• either, neither, potato, tomato
• clerk, schedule
• captain, bottle (glottals in Cockney)

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BRITISH-AMERICAN VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES

• girl, cop, hood (of a car), trunk (of a car),
  suspenders, apartment, elevator, truck, wig,
  gasoline, bar, line, monkey wrench, television,
  flashlight, subway
• bird, bobby, bonnet, boot, braces, flat, lift,
  lorry, peruque, petrol, pub, queue, spanner,
  tele, torch, tube

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BRITISH-AMERICAN STRESS DIFFERENCES

• Aluminum
• Applicable
• Cigarette
• Formidable
• Kilometer
• Laboratory
• Secretary
• (Fromkin Rodman Hyams 413)

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BRITISH-AMERICAN SPELLING DIFFERENCES

• Cheque
• centre, theatre
• colour, honour
• defence, offence
• labelled, travelled
• Pyjamas
• tyre

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BRITISH EXPRESSIONS TO WATCH OUT FOR

• fag or faggot (wood for the fireplace, or
  cigarette)
• soliciter (lawyer)
• to knock someone up (wake them up in the morning)

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COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG

• apples and pears (stairs)
• Aristotle (bottle)
• pigs ear (beer)
• Mother Hubbard (cupboard)
• plates and dishes (Mrs.)

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GRAMMAR DIFFERENCES

• Double Modals might could
• Negative Modals hadnt ought
• Strange Past Participles larnt
• Strange Possessive Pronouns yourn, hisn, hern,
  ourn, theirn
• Strange Prepositions a quarter before eight
• Strange Conjunctions unless gt without, lessen,
  thouten
• Strange Adverbs anywheres, nowheres

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SOCIALLYVARIABLE LINGUISTIC RULES

• Minimal Pairs
• Word Lists
• Reading Style
• Careful Speech
• Casual Speech
• (William Labovs Observation)

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FIVE DEGREES OF FORMALITY

• Frozen Prissy Text Book
• Formal Most Text Books
• Consultative Conversations among Strangers or
  Large Groups
• Casual Conversations among Close Friends
• Intimate Conversations among Family Members or
  Lovers
• Martin Joos The Five Clocks

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HUMOROUS EXAMPLES OF REGIONAL DIALECTS
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BORSHT BELT HUMOR

• The Borsht Belt was a chain of hotels in the
  mountains near New York.
• These hotels provided entertainment from their
  guests, most of whom were Jewish vacationers from
  New York City.

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DOWN-EAST YANKEE HUMOR

• This humor is taciturn and reluctant.
• There is a story about Calvin Coolidge. He was
  seated next to a woman at an official White House
  function. She leaned toward him and confided
  that someone had bet her that she couldnt make
  him say three words.
• He responded, You lose.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 251)

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• While southern and western humor is filled with
  grammatical errors, New England humor is shown
  through the use of archaic or old-fashioned words
  like clumb, tonk, or holp.
• They make the character sound quaint rather than
  ignorant.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 251)

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MINNESOTA LAKE WOBEGON HUMOR

• In Garrison Keillors Lake Wobegon, all the
  women are strong, all the men are good-looking
  and all the children are above average.
• Tourists in the upper Midwest can find the Paul
  Bunyan Logging Camp. They can find his mail box,
  and can climb the ladder to drop in their letters.

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• As they travel the roads in Minnesota tourists
  will also find a huge ear of corn mounted on a
  water tower, a Jolly Green Giant, an oversized
  snowman, a huge Uncle Sam, and the Worlds
  Biggest Revolver.
• Each state of the upper Midwest has its own share
  of roadside attractions.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 251)

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SOUTHERN HUMOR

• A radio comedian once remarked that the
  Mason-Dixon line is the dividing line between
  you-all and youse-guys.
• (Fromkin Rodman Hyams 412)
• People from Alabama feel particularly picked on
  because they have become the butt of jokes made
  by talk show hosts, disc jockeys, newspaper
  cartoonists, columnists and such TV personalities
  as Conan OBrien, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 253)

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• Wayne Flynt, a history professor at Alabamas
  Auburn University explained that this is because
  of Alabamas trying to invent a world consistent
  with our ideals, and its a world that doesnt
  exist anymore. Were trying to squeeze rural
  values into an urban world.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 253)

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WESTERN FRONTIER HUMOR

• The frontier humor of the American West or of
  Australia tends to be exaggerated
• He is so stingy that he sits in the shade of the
  hackberry tree to save the shade of the porch.
• His feet are so big that he has to put his pants
  on over his head.
• His teeth stick out so far that he can eat a
  pumpkin through a rail fence.

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• When Slue-Foot Sue married Pecos Bill, Sue
  insisted on riding his horse, Widow-Maker.
• Widow-Maker bucked her off and she bounced so
  high on her spring bustle that she orbited the
  moon and they had to throw jerky to her to keep
  her from starving to death.
• When Pecos Bill died, they marked his grave site
  with, Here lies Pecos Bill. He always lied and
  always will. He once lied loud. He now lies
  still.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 128)

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• Joe Barnes was sired by a yoke of cattle,
  suckled by a she-bear and had three sets of teeth
  and gums for another set.
• Nimrod Wildfire was a touch of the airthquake.
  He had the prettiest sister, the fattest horse,
  and the ugliest dog in the district.
• Wirt Staples has a shadow that can wilt grass,
  breath that can poison mosquitoes, and a yell
  that can break windows.
• Mike Fink was a Salt River roarer, a ring-tailed
  squealer, half wild horse and half cock-eyed
  alligator and the rest crooked snags and red-hot
  snappin turtle.

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WESTERN COUNTRY HUMOR

• Country humor is associated with the Corn Belt,
  and is therefore sometimes called corny.
• In The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase
  Origins, Robert Hendrickson said, Corn came to
  be known as what farmers feed pigs and comedians
  feed farmers.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 250)

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• Jim Garry of Big Horn, Wyoming says that farmers
  and ranchers are subject to three uncontrollable
  forces the weather, the bank, and the
  government.
• Therefore, their humor tends to be fatalistic,
  even though the details change from region to
  region. It could be based on blizzards, floods
  or droughts.
• Garry tells about a guy smiling as he walks away
  from a bank. The guy says, Ive won! Theres
  no way Ill live long enough to have to pay this
  note off.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 250)

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• Marvin Koller described rural humor as
  down-to-earth as when a small Oklahoma town
  each summer sponsors a cow chip throwing
  contest, and a rural Ohio town has a
  chicken-flying contest to measure how far a hen
  will fly when released from her coop. In
  Vermillion Ohio there is a wooly bear festival
  to celebrate the amount of fur or fuzz on
  brown and black caterpillars.
• This last festival is designed to predict whether
  the coming winter will be severe or mild.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 251)

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• In the 1940s, country singer and comedian Judy
  Canova was Republic Studios top female star.
  Her show foreshadowed Hee Haw and she wore
  clod-hopper shoes and carried a cardboard
  suitcase. Her hair was braided into pigtails.
• During the 1950s, there was the National Barn
  Dance featuring Homer and Jethro. Homer played a
  guitar and Jethro a mandolin, and both would
  crack jokes and then say, Oooh, thats corny!
• This phrase later became part of an advertising
  campaign for cornflakes.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 252)

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• Cousin Minnie Pearl was a favorite on Hee Haw.
  She told corny jokes, wore a straw hat with a
  price tag hanging down, and greeted the audience
  with, How-deeee! Im just so proud to be here!
• Hee Haw, and The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville,
  Tennessee were the roots of todays country music
  industry. Earlier, the Old Southwest had been
  settled by Scottish and Irish immigrants who had
  come through the Cumberland Pass and settled in
  the Ozarks.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 252)

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• !A nasal twang that imitates the sound of a
  guitar has long been a feature of country and
  Western singing, and CB radio. There has also
  long been a tradition of moonshine humor, as
  can be seen in these book titles by Lewis
  Grizzard
• The Shoes I Bought and Paid For are Walking Out
  on Me
• My Daddy was a Pistol, and Im a Son of a Gun
• If You Want to Keep the Beer Real Cold, Put it
  Next to My Ex-Wifes Heart

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• !Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of
  Life.
• Dont Cry Down My Back, Baby, You Might Rust My
  Spurs
• My Wife Ran Off with My Best Friend, and I Miss
  Him
• She Stepped on my Heart and Stomped that Sucker
  Flat
• Jeff Foxworthy and other redneck comedians on the
  Comedy Channel continue this tradition.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 252)

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• !!Between 1910 and 1920, one-third of all
  Americans lived on farms, but by the late 1990s
  fewer than 2 percent did.
• In a 1997 Wall Street Journal article, Cynthia
  Crossen wrote, The record shows the evolution of
  a people from innocent, hopeful, rural and
  God-fearing to plugged-in, ironic, inward-looking
  and dripping with ennui.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 250)

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!!!REGIONAL SOCIAL DIALECTS WEB SITE

• American Dialect Society
• http//americandialect.org/
• Yankee-Dixie Quiz
• http//www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/y
  ankee_dixie_quiz.html

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• References 1
• Blount, Roy. Roy Blounts Book of Southern Humor.
  New York, NY W. W. Norton, 1994.
• Clark, Virginia, Paul Eschholz, and Alfred Rosa.
  Language Readings in Language and Culture, 6th
  Edition. New York, NY St. Martins Press, 1998.
• Collins, Jeffrey, and Kristen Wyatt. Whither
  the Southern Accent? (Eschholz, Rosa Clark
  2009 333-335.
• Eschholz, Paul, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark.
  Language Awareness Readings for College Writers,
  10th Edition. New York, NY Bedford/St. Martins,
  2009.
• Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams.
  An Introduction to Language, 8th Edition. Boston,
  MA Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.
• Koller, Marvin R. Humor and Society Explorations
  in the Sociology of Humor. Houston, TX Cap and
  Gown Press, 1988.

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• References 2
• Labov, William. The Study of Nonstandard
  English (Clark, Eschholz Rosa 1998
  313-320).
• Leary, James P., ed. Midwestern Folk Humor. 1991.
• Mey, Jacob L. Pragmatics An Introduction, 2nd
  Edition. Malden, MA Blackwell, 2001.
• Nilsen, Alleen Pace. Labels of Primary Potency.
  Living Language. Boston, MA Allyn and Bacon,
  1999, 145-194.
• Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen.
  Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Humor.
  Westport, CT Greenwood, 2000.

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• References 3
• Marckwardt, Albert, and J. L. Dillard. Social
  and Regional Variation (Clark, Eschholz Rosa
  1998 277-291).
• Raskin, Victor, ed. The Primer of Humor Research.
  New York, NY Mouton de Gruyter, 2008.
• Roberts, Paul. Speech Communities (Clark,
  Eschholz Rosa 1998 267-276)
• Shuy, Roger. Dialects How They Differ (Clark,
  Eschholz Rosa 1998 292-312) .
• Smith, Michael W., and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm.
  Getting It Right Fresh Approaches to Teaching
  Grammar, Usage, and Correctness. New York, NY
  Scholastic, 2007.
• Sonnichsen, C. L. The Laughing West Humorous
  Western Fiction, Past and Present. Athens, OH
  Ohio University Press, 1988.
• Winter, Anne. Graffiti as Social Discourse. in
  Living Language. Ed. Alleen Pace Nilsen. Boston,
  MA Allyn and Bacon, 1999, 106-111.