Sociolinguistics Final Essay
Why Are Y’all Mocking Me?:
Representation of the Southern American Dialect in Literature
“The soul of a people is embodied in the language peculiar to them […] A Southern language veritably exists and constitutes a rich resource for the writers of the South,” writes Cleanth Brooks in The Language of the American South (2). This Southern language that he writes about is known as the Southern American dialect (SAD) and is a dialect used by some speakers of the English language in the Southern United States. Representation of the Southern American dialect in literature is grounded in both language ideologies and language practices. This paper will explore the definition and location of the Southern American dialect; it will also examine the realization of this dialect in American literature and how this affects its role in society by discussing the representation of and reactions and discriminations towards the Southern American dialect as both a stereotype and practice. The scholars whose works were consulted for this paper took similar stances on the SAD, its representation and usage in American literature, they highlighted one main author who utilized the accent well, and they took similar stances on the future of the representation of the Southern American dialect in literature and what this means for the language ideologies surrounding this dialect.
All of the works that were consulted for this literature review agree that there is no singular definition of the American South. Both geography and time period are factors that lead to people defining the South in different ways. In her article “The Delightful Accent of the South Land: Ruth McEnery Stuart’s Dialect Fiction,” Gena McKinley writes, “[T]here was then-and still is- more than one South” that comes from “social, racial and economic distance” (98). In regards to the language of the South, multiple dialects do exist and the dialect can also differ based upon the speaker’s gender, race, and social class (Johnson 1996; Kurath 1996). To be consistent with the sources analyzed, this paper will focus on the dialect more broadly and utilize the sources that did the same to encompass the southeastern United States and will not delineate on the basis of race, gender, or class in specific. These distances that McKinley established often lead to three main stereotypes of the Southern American dialect to be represented in literature: the poor black (often a relative to the slave or plantation narrative), the Victorian and plantation manor or antebellum white Southerner, and the poor white [also referred to as redneck in some cases] (McKinley 99). While other stereotypes do exist, these are the main three that a majority of the sources agreed upon as important and pervasive. These stereotypical ideas of people speaking with the Southern American dialect have the most negative representations and heavy stereotyping in both literature and the real world (Nagle and Sanders 2010). This is apparent in many popular culture books and movies; Clay Morton, the author of The Oral Character of American Southern Literature: Explaining the Distinctiveness of Regional Texts and Duane Carr, author of A Question of Class: The Redneck Stereotype in Southern Fiction, reference the works of William Faulkner as a prominent force in the SAD representation in American literature.
Brooks, Carr, and Morton all discuss Faulkner’s writing style in detail, and other sources do mention him as a writer with success in utilizing the SAD. Faulkner represents a first-hand storyteller. He was a Southerner who lived and wrote from 1987 to 1962, and his novels focus on the American South. In his novels, he oftentimes wrote in the Southern American dialect or wrote characters who used features of the SAD. The sources analyzed for this paper agree that Faulkner had a working understanding of how the dialect was used, and they praised him for being a Southerner who was writing in the Southern American dialect and doing so correctly (Brooks 1985; Carr 1996). Due to the socioeconomic time period that Faulkner was writing during and the different expectations that existed in society then compared to now, Faulkner’s characters would sometimes fall into stereotypes themselves or they would be constructed based on the socially-defined roles of race, class, and gender. However, since this was a societal expectation when Faulkner was writing, the sources who discussed the SAD in his literature still examined his work based on dialectal accuracy rather than race, gender, and class equality and linguistic differences. Faulkner is praised to going beyond these stereotypes by creating intelligent characters. For example, in As I Lay Dying, Faulkner writes about the Bundrens family, a family who would fall under the stereotype of ‘poor white’ user of the Southern American dialect (Carr 82). However, he did not want further the ideology that a Southerner speaking in the dialect is automatically inarticulate or unintelligent. Carr writes, “Had Faulkner limited himself to the words Darl and the other Bundrens would have actually used, the reader would have taken the simple words to reflect simple thoughts and emotions” (Carr 82). Rather than play into such pervasive stereotypes, Faulkner elevated the language of the family to show that users of the Southern American dialect are “as capable of emotional complexity as their more educated counterparts, even though they don’t always have the words to outwardly express what they genuinely feel” (Carr 82). Cleanth and Brooks agree that, despite his tendencies to use stereotypical tropes, Faulkner was a progressive writer due to his inclusion of the SAD and by proving that intelligence is not based upon the ways in which one speaks. His attempts to break the negative stereotypes surrounding the Southern American dialect are praised in scholarly literature and held as an example of how writers should properly utilize and empower users of the Southern American dialect.
Mark Balhorn, Cynthia Bernstein, Allison Burkette, Carr, Amy Clark and Nancy Hayward, Ulinda Eilers, and McKinley discuss how the Southern American dialect is represented in American literature. These authors maintain similar arguments about the representation of the dialect. These sources agree with McKinley that there are three common stereotypes used in literature for SAD speakers. They agree that since the Southern American dialect often has negative and inaccurate representations in literature, the characters who speak in this dialect are often viewed as incompetent people and are made fun of, especially in the form of mimicry by other characters (Bernstein 2000; Burkette 2001; Carr 1996; Eilers 2017). In her essay titled “Regional Complexities: Misrepresenting the American South,” Bernstein writes that “mimicry creates an inaccurate sense of Southern dialect and reinforces the negative Southern stereotype” (339). Bernstein, along with other authors studied for the purpose of this paper, argues that when non-SAD speakers try to mimic the SAD and point out ‘flaws’ in the grammar, sound, or structure of the SAD, these mimickers are furthering and reinforcing negative stereotypes that already exist of SAD users in American society and their representations in literature. This is an accurate assertion of one way that stereotypes come to exist.
Bernstein, Balhorn, and Carr are in agreement on the fact that an author’s own use or understanding of the dialect that he or she is trying to write in is another factor that can propagate negative stereotypes that are seen when the Southern American dialect is used in American literature. These aforementioned scholars assert that if an author is ignorant of how the SAD is correctly used, then the representation in his or her work will be incorrect. In her article, Bernstein chronicles an example where Richard North Patterson incorrectly used the Southern American dialect in his work The Outside Man. She states,
“In using the double modal to stereotype Southern speech, Patterson, himself an outsider to the South, on two occasions misrepresents the contexts in which double modals naturally occur […] the semantic and syntactic contexts of (3) and (4) [the cited examples from The Outside Man] are not those in which a native Southerner uses a double modal” (Bernstein 340).
Authors using a dialect incorrectly is important for scholars or readers to point out, because incorrect usage, even if it is unintentional, is mimicry and it allows harmful and inaccurate stereotypes and depictions to exist in literature and to manifest in real life. In his article “Dialect Renderings and Linguistic Accuracy,” Balhorn defends this argument and furthers it by saying that it is the job of the writer to portray a dialect with linguistic accuracy and that the reader of a work must be aware that not all authors write with such knowledge. In order for an author to correctly portray a speaker of the SAD, then the author must first have a working knowledge as to how the dialect is correctly and realistically used. When authors do not do their research or have a working understanding of the Southern American dialect, they then create inaccurate and unfair portrayals of the American Southerner and often fall into stereotypical tropes.
Authors who write in the Southern American dialect should do so to attempt to accurately portray the way a Southern character would speak in real life. Thus, readers can hear the dialect in their mind while reading. Accurately representing the SAD, or any dialect for that matter, through his or her writing should be a duty and obligation of a good writer (Balhorn). Many authors who hail from the South often give the most accurate dialectal representations (Carr). In particular, Faulkner was mentioned in many of the sources studied for this paper as a Southern writer who did the SAD justice. As previously mentioned, Faulkner, despite tendencies to fall into socioeconomic and racial and gender stereotypes and tropes, Faulkner still did justice to the representation of the SAD because of his accuracy in how he utilized the dialect. His own knowledge and participation in using the dialect allowed him to create realistic characters and was true to the dialect’s own manifestation. Due to this accuracy, Faulkner created a story that was honest to the SAD’s dialectal representation in the southeastern United States. As a result, readers are able to trust the characters, storyline, and author himself. This is the representation that the sources believe all writers should strive for. Correctly writing the SAD in American literature is one way to combat the negative ideologies surrounding this dialect because readers would be able to see the diverse regions where the dialect is spoken, the types of people who speak in the SAD, and also the different regional or social variation that exist within the SAD.
The Southern American dialect is changing. This is a conclusive fact that is presented and agreed upon in all of the current literature surrounding the subject (Bailey and Tillery 1996; Johnson 1996, Kretzschmar, McNair-DuPree 2000, Montgomery 1996, Phillips 120; Richardson 57, Schneider 190). The way the SAD is used in the South has already changed from the time when Faulkner was writing; thus, its representation in literature has changed to follow suit. Certain features are no longer being used due to globalization, urbanization in the southeastern United States, and increased access to mobility, especially for adolescents (Bernstein). This leaves the future of the representation of the SAD in literature uncertain for most scholars. Although there is no singular answer about how the use of the dialect in literature will change, there are a few hypotheses that are agreed upon. Although, as Brooks stated, the SAD provides a rich resource for Southern writers and people writing Southern characters, the sources analyzed agree that the manifestation of negative stereotypes through usage of the dialect will not change, but the use of the dialect in American literature could go in one of a few directions. These possibilities are: the use of the SAD in literature will stop altogether as it is deemed unnecessary or that it may persist to show the linguistic differences in race, class, and gender historically. The dialect is being dropped altogether by some writers, which means that future readers will have less exposure to the SAD (Montgomery 1996; Schneider 2011). The other possible future is that using the dialect in literature will persist because there are many people who still speak in the SAD (Bailey and Tillery). Both are likely and logical possibilities; however, this does not directly affect the stereotypes or depiction of SAD speakers in literature. The one answer asserted certainly is that as long as the representations of the speakers of the SAD do not change, then the ideologies will not change (McNair-DuPree 2000). The stereotypes of people who use the Southern dialect as less intelligent and the three depictions of the SAD users will still continue to be pervasive in American literature.
In Language in the Deep South: Southern Accents Past and Present, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. looks more specifically at a certain regional dialect of the SAD to give a more certain answer about the future of the Southern American dialect. He writes that “the Plantation Southern accent in the Deep South is the one that has been declining” due to negative socioeconomic pressures from the wealthier class that resulted in people who used the Plantation Southern dialect to abandon the Southern features in their way of speaking in favor of Standard American English (Kretzschmar Jr. 20). Since this dialect is being made a feature of the past, then it is unlikely that authors will use the Plantation Southern dialect in future works since it will no longer be an accurate representation of people in the United States (Kretzschmar). This specific example illustrates one of the possibilities of the future of the SAD.
The literature that discusses the Southern American dialect in general is very broad but the sources are in agreement on the features of the dialects. The sources agreed that there is no specific, geographic area that defines the American South, and because of this, there is no singular dialect; also, the sources all discuss the ways in which race, class, gender, and historical context affect the realizations of the dialect in different ways. Similarly, the sources analyzed for this paper are in agreement on how the dialect is represented in American literature and the stereotypes that arise out of these depictions. Due to current changes in how the dialect is used, the future of the Southern American dialect is uncertain. Despite this uncertainty about how authors will use the SAD in literature in the future, the sources used in this paper do agree that the stereotypes associated with the SAD will not change if its representation does not change; as long as authors follow the stereotypical tropes, then the negative stereotypes surrounding the dialect in society will still be prevalent. The facts and uncertainty that surround the Southern American dialect make it an important topic in sociolinguistic studies. The dialect is used by many Southern Americans and holds an important place in American literary tradition and history, thus establishing it as a feature of the American and English language traditions that deserves accurate portrayal and honest representation in scholarship and literature.
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