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Overview
A portal to the language scholarship of the last thirty years, Appalachian Englishes in the Twenty-First Century translates state-of-the-art research for a nonspecialist audience, while setting the agenda for further study of language in one of America’s most recognized regions.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781949199567 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | West Virginia University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
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Preface What Is in This Book? This book discusses many of the qualities of the varieties of English that are part of everyday life in Appalachia. Appalachia is a big place. It resists definition, and for many people it is as much a state of mind as it is a place. For natives of the region, what they call the heart of Appalachia varies widely. For most Appalachians, home is a special place, no matter what part of Appalachia it falls in. Many of the authors in this book are linguists, although some are from other academic fields. All of the authors talk about language variation. In doing so, these authors examine language change over time and dialects today. Through these studies, we both distill and present years of scholarship on Appalachian Englishes as well as provide new analyses. At every turn, the authors have been frustrated by the dearth of scholarship on our respective topics, but we are both aware and resolved about the need for future scholarship. Instead of this book purporting to be a stopping point for the decades of research on English variation in Appalachia, it should be seen as a wayside rest point to reflect on what we know and what all we need to find out. What’s in a Term? For decades of scholarship on the kind of English spoken in Appalachia, the main term was Appalachian English. It is a sturdy term, and it was accepted without question. In the first decade of this century, scholars began to discuss among themselves the idea of abandoning the term. Several concerns about the term prompted the switch. The primary one was that the term Appalachian English denoted a single, monolithic variety, as if one dialect of English stretched across the entire region. At no point was such a situation true, but the term led both scholars and the general public to believe there was only one kind of English in Appalachia. The second problem was that, in order to keep the unity of this monolithic content, the term was at times applied to some speakers in Appalachia but not others. Folk in the country might speak Appalachian English, but people in town would not. Such an assumption goes against the basic sociolinguistic tenet to investigate language variation across communities. For these reasons, we have opted to refer to the plurality of varieties in Appalachia and to assume that all speakers of English in Appalachia are part of the picture. In the same way, people speak several different standard Englishes in the United States, and the number of standard Englishes increases greatly when we consider the hundreds of English varieties around the world. Differences in standard Englishes range from vowels to past tense forms (e.g., sneak vs. snuck). In the United States, varieties that are not stigmatized are considered standard. The standard English of any one region is defined by what it is not; it does not contain vernacular features. The judgment of what might be vernacular depends entirely on how speakers are viewed socially. Southerners and African Americans have been viewed as socially lesser for a long time, and, as a result, any differences in their speech have been judged as flaws and stigmatized. Appalachians have also been derided since at least the Civil War (Catte 2018), and any variation in their speech has been taken as evidence to justify that derision. This book takes apart that justification by showing the systematic patterns to English varieties in Appalachia and combating the stereotypes laid upon them. In this kind of work, previous studies are regularly cited. In reviewing the work of those studies, one question that arises is: How do we cast the named varieties in the previous research? If an author in this book is citing an article from the 1960s that investigated Negro English, should that term be carried forward in the review or should it be recast as African American Language? If this book were designed exclusively for other linguistic scholars, retaining older names of varieties would be a valid approach because all scholars have experienced them before: those scholars would already realize the nuances between names like African American Language and African American Vernacular English. As this book is aimed at a broader audience than just linguists, names of varieties from previous studies have been standardized. Where to Find the History of Appalachia and Its English Varieties When considering histories of Appalachia, even language histories, too many scholarly works before the late 1990s incorporated myths about Appalachia into their scholarship. After Lewis and Billings (1997) focused scholars’ attention on the kinds of scholarly myths that had been reified over the previous decades, the extent of the mythologization of Appalachia in academia was there for all to see. There is a growing body of modern scholarship, and it looks to be gaining momentum. For a good history of Appalachia, read John Williams’s Appalachia (2002), although there are other histories available. For a language-specific account of contributing dialects to the English varieties found in Appalachia today, see Michael Montgomery’s essay in Talking Appalachia (Clark and Hayward 2013). For a concise overview of the history of Appalachian scholarship and definitions of Appalachia, see William Schumann’s “Place and Place-Making in Appalachia” in Appalachia Revisited (Schumann and Fletcher 2016). Relatedly, a new volume recharacterizes Appalachia in light of recent scholarship and reassesses its place in the United States. The volume Appalachia in Regional Context: Place Matters challenges conventional representations of Appalachia through studies of activism, foodways, representations of Appalachia, and the experiences of rural LGBTQ youth (Billings and Kingsolver 2018). Another important essay to consult to assess where scholarship has gone recently in regard to language, Appalachia, and the South is Reaser’s introduction to Language Variety in the New South (Reaser et al. 2018). The book that has most impacted how I think about Appalachia while editing this book is Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia (2018). If you only read one other book about Appalachia, read that one. For any language scholar who is relatively new to scholarship on Appalachia, her book characterizes the history of activism in Appalachia and corrects the ways Appalachia has been maligned, even by those that purport to be helping its people. Other Languages in Appalachia? In writing a book of this type, we find plenty of areas where we want to see improved scholarship. One area that many of the authors in this book would like to see improved is the study of other languages in Appalachia. Spanish has been part of Appalachia for decades now, but we know of no such studies in Appalachia itself. It has been studied in lowland areas in the South, such as North Carolina and Texas (e.g., Callahan 2017; Thomas 2019). Future studies of the rise of Spanish in Appalachia are much needed, and some advanced planning is already in the works. German has been part of Pennsylvanian Appalachia since the first European settlement (e.g., Keiser 2012; Louden 2016), and it continues unabated today. Native American languages like Cherokee have been part of Appalachia for far longer than English has, and Childs (chapter 7) discusses some of the scholarly efforts. A book that dealt with the entirety of the language complexity in Appalachia would take into account all these languages and characterize their sociolinguistic patterns. Are We Including All the References Available? References in the chapters are what we consider “gateway” references. These are the citations that will get readers to most of the relevant literature. We have not included the top five most important citations for each claim, nor have we provided an exhaustive list for each topic. Academic writing is infamous for citation-laden prose, especially in linguistics. Linguists traditionally add in all the possible relevant references to demonstrate our knowledge and perhaps appease potential reviewers that their favorite people (or they themselves) are properly recognized for their contributions. In this volume, we purposefully avoid that writing style. There are many works written about English varieties in Appalachia. The online bibliography for Appalachian Englishes can be found at http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/appalachianenglish/. It is built by the “dean” of this scholarship, Michael Montgomery, and Paul Reed (author of chapter 2). That bibliography is thematically grouped, which makes the thousands of citations vastly more useful for more people. The citations in this volume will only represent a smidgen of those citations, but we hope they provide the path to find the works readers are most interested in. The Companion Website Like a bedroom closet, space is always limited in a book with sixteen authors. With those limitations, we have not been able to include the images, maps, memes, and related media many of our authors relate to with their chapters. We have a companion website (http://dialects.wvu.edu/appalachian-englishes) that provides these materials along with links to other resources that our authors wanted to share. The website will evolve and be updated as new material becomes available, so if you have relevant curriculum material to share, please contact me at Kirk.Hazen@mail.wvu.edu. Who Are These Authors? Professionally, these authors are a diverse mix of the academic timeline. As authors, we have two graduate students, two assistant professors, three associate professors, three full professors, an alumni distinguished professor, an endowed named professor, an emeritus president of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a director in an office of assessment, and a nonprofit development specialist. Academically, many of us are linguists of one stripe or another, but we do have people who instead focus on folklore or poetry. Three of us are education specialists. Some of the more elder authors have various subspecialties, as sociolinguists are wont to examine related areas that guide the paths of language variation and change. Unfortunately, there are no authors of color in this volume, and I sincerely hope that, in the second edition, a wider ethnic diversity of scholars will join this evolving conversation. An Overview In the foreword, Donna Christian examines how both the study of Appalachian Englishes and the language itself have evolved since her 1974 research for Appalachian Speech. Considering the growing scope of linguistic inquiry and the advances in linguistic tools and technology, she writes about how this book addresses the evolving and diverse facets that come together to form Appalachia. In particular, she comments on the plural labeling of Appalachian English varieties and its representation of the region’s diversity demographically, ethnically, socially, and culturally. She also considers the evolution of grammatical patterns in Appalachia, the decline of certain features such as was-leveling, and the development of new language features such as quotative be like. Finally, she writes about the implications of Appalachian identity and perception on speakers themselves, and she discusses how this book speaks to the concerns of education and identity formation in Appalachia. Linguistic and Regional Boundaries The first section of the book covers some of the linguistic and regional patterns found in Appalachia. Each of these chapters could be divided into several fully different chapters, and full dissertations have been written on some of these topics (Hasty 2012; Reed 2016). This section also lays out some of the major regional divisions found in Appalachia. In chapter 1, J. Daniel Hasty writes about the regional divides in Appalachia. One of the persistent challenges in scholarship on Appalachia is that no consensus exists as to what Appalachia might be. Hasty describes the different definitions in relation to dialect boundaries and relates some of the most diagnostic dialect features that delineate different regions. His chapter also points out the gaps in what we know about regional language variation in Appalachia. Hasty emphasizes the diversity found in Appalachian varieties and illustrates that diversity across the levels of language and the contrasts found within the region. The contrasts can be found in many parts of Appalachian life, including economic differences between urban and rural areas and any one area’s association to other dialect regions. Hasty draws major distinctions between Northern Appalachia and Southern Appalachia. Within these regions, dialect variation and language change are headed in different directions. In chapter 2, Paul Reed explains some of the most prominent sound patterns in Appalachia. He directly confronts the idea that differences found in Appalachia come from fossilized, archaic pronunciations. The ideas of dialects frozen in time or accents left unchanging for centuries have been propagated for well over one hundred years. Reed describes the innovations and continued evolution of sound patterns in Appalachian varieties across vowels and consonants. In exploring similarities to other regions, Reed describes how many Appalachian dialect features are also found in Southern or Midland dialects. Reed’s work comes from the variationist paradigm within sociolinguistics, and with those methodologies he is able to draw distinctions in both the quantitative and qualitative patterns. With the quantitative patterns, systematic sound differences can happen more or less often and correlate with social motivations; with qualitative distinctions, the sound systems can have different constraints on certain forms. Within Appalachia, both kinds of distinctions arise for phonological patterns. In chapter 3, I write about some of the grammatical possibilities in Appalachia. Grammar for linguists contains two areas of study: morphology, which examines how words are put together (un+happy+ness), and syntax, which examines how phrases are put together (Determiner+Adjective+Noun; This unhappy squid). The chapter reviews the scholarship on morphological and syntactic variation in Appalachia, but it also focuses on the language variation patterns that are part of current varieties. Some of the grammatical patterns from decades past have faded away to become infrequently used or only used in performance of an Appalachian identity. Both language change and dialect diversity illustrate the uneven distribution of these grammatical patterns in Appalachia. In popular portrayals of Appalachia, writers use the most vernacular types of grammatical variation, but those dialect features are not the norm. Areas for future research are discussed because, despite the popular attention paid to grammatical variation in Appalachia, little quantitative research has been done on grammatical patterns and their social associations. Language in Society In this section, the authors foreground the social connections upheld through language variation in Appalachia. The section starts with swaths of language larger than a phrase, namely the conversations that Appalachians weave together. It then progresses into the ways Appalachians use language to represent themselves both inside and outside their communities. The last two chapters in the section address the ways Appalachians represent their gender and ethnicity through language and how these specific identities guide language variation in Appalachia. In chapter 4, Allison Burkette investigates discourse in Appalachia. After a review of what actually constitutes discourse, she reviews previous research on discourse in Appalachia in order to highlight the natural connection between discourse and the construction of social meaning. Burkette also works through important concepts for Appalachian discourse, including how interaction and emergence can be used and how nonlinguistic elements can be tools for analysis of discourse. In chapter 5, Jennifer Cramer explains how Appalachians use language to craft their identities and represent themselves. Perceptions from outside and inside the region play a part in how language is heard and spoken in Appalachia. Cramer uses perceptual dialectology to examine how perceptions reflect local understandings of language varieties. The perceived prestige of a variety, or lack thereof, plays a major role in the qualities of a variety, such as whether it sounds educated or friendly or honest. Cramer’s work connects dialect variation to notions of culture, heritage, home, and family. In chapter 6, Christine Mallinson and J. Inscoe pull together all the known research on language and gender in Appalachia. The downside is that not much exists. The upside is that they explore all that is out there and provide a clear path forward for all future work on language and gender in Appalachia. In addition, their chapter emphasizes the diversity of Appalachian speakers’ lived experiences along the lines of sexuality, ethnicity, class, age, and identity. Because gender studies involve so much interdisciplinary scholarship, Mallinson and Inscoe reach outside linguistics to fields such as anthropology, sociology, education, and communications studies. They also emphasize the need for more research on language and gender among diverse communities in Appalachia. In chapter 7, Becky Childs reviews the literature on language and ethnicity in Appalachia. Like the previous chapter, this chapter’s topic has not been at the forefront of previous scholarship. Yet despite persistent myths about the ethnic homogeneity of Appalachia, the region has always had ethnic diversity. Native Americans inhabited the region long before Europeans forcefully settled the area. Along with European settlement, African Americans have had a continuous and growing population in Appalachia. In addition, the Latinx community is growing in both urban and rural areas of Appalachia. All of these ethnic groups are part of Appalachia, and Childs illustrates their influence on language variation in the region. Language in the Wider World In the final section, these authors explore how Appalachian varieties play out in various language-rich realms, from folklore to literature to classrooms. In chapter 8, Jordan Lovejoy demonstrates the roles that language plays in Appalachian folklore. She explains the modern folklore scholarship in this chapter and characterizes two main identity types of redneck. Lovejoy illustrates how folklorists study social groups that use language for both identification and differentiation. As she notes, Appalachian Englishes are ripe for the study of negative language stereotypes and how speakers take ownership and pride in traditional Appalachian language features. In chapter 9, Isabelle Shepherd and I illustrate how language variation has been used in Appalachian literature. Our chapter explores literary uses of grammatical and orthographic variation by writers from Appalachia. We work through examples from novels, short stories, and poems to show the creation of identity and place. Appalachian literature is multifaceted, and its complexity is reflected in the language variation authors bring to its pages. In chapter 10, Audra Slocum explores how students and teachers use and perceive language in secondary schools in Appalachia. As with any region, teenagers in Appalachia use language to do their identity work in school. Like gender and ethnicity language–related studies, research on adolescents’ language varieties in Appalachia is lacking. Slocum discusses the ways language intersects with identity and culture. For quality education to be crafted, teachers and students co-construct the language of the classroom, and Slocum highlights the important role that schools play as a social institution in the regulation of language variation. In chapter 11, Stephany Brett Dunstan and Audrey J. Jaeger report on what happens when Appalachians bring their varieties of English to college campuses. Appalachians most often face a wall of linguistic hegemony and the burden of standard language ideology, both of which influence who has power in any speaking situation. For college students from rural southern Appalachia, speaking a stigmatized dialect influences whether they feel marginalized or accepted on campus and whether or not the college campus embraces linguistic diversity. Dunstan and Jaeger report that fewer rural Appalachian students either attend or graduate college than students from any other region. They explore how dialect variation interacts with a sense of belonging on a college campus. With their findings, they then lay out the practical implications for scholars and teachers to foster inclusive environments that support successful educational outcomes. In the afterword, Walt Wolfram reflects on nearly fifty years of scholarship on Appalachia. He reviews the progress made since the early 1970s but also critiques the missed opportunities and the sometimes myopic views sociolinguists have presented about the region. Tying together linguistic scholarship with proactive educational outreach, Wolfram describes the symbiotic relationships between language and Appalachia that fuel modern sociolinguistic work.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Donna ChristianPreface
Part I. Linguistic and Regional Boundaries
1. Just What and Where Are Appalachian Englishes?
J. Daniel Hasty
2. Phonological Possibilities in Appalachian Englishes
Paul E. Reed
3. Grammar across Appalachia
Kirk Hazen
Part II. Language in Society
4. Discourse in Appalachia
Allison Burkette
5. Identity and Representation in Appalachia: Perceptions in and of Appalachia, Its People, and Its Languages
Jennifer Cramer
6. Language, Gender, and Sexuality in Appalachia
Christine Mallinson and J. Inscoe
7. Language and Ethnicity in Appalachia
Becky Childs
Part III. Language in the Wider World
8. Redneck Memes as an Appalachian Reclamation of Vernacular Authority, Language, and Identity
Jordan Lovejoy
9. Intersections of Literature and Dialect in Appalachia
Isabelle Shepherd and Kirk Hazen
10. Teachers and Teens Making Sense of Identity, Place, and Language in Appalachian Secondary Schools
Audra Slocum
11. Appalachian Englishes and the College Campus
Stephany Brett Dunstan and Audrey J. Jaeger
Afterword by Walt Wolfram
Contributors
Index