Mary Elizabeth Lowe

English 1101

Hughes

October 16, 2009


Each nation, state and often times from town to town, there are dialect differences. There are also doctors, lawyers, McDonald’s employees and homeless people in every town. An attempt to state that there is a direct correlation between a particular accent and overall intelligence is an unfair statement. However, the monolithic idea that all Southerners live, speak and think in the same manner is a source of great entertainment for some people such as Ron Collins in his “Southern Dialect Converter”. In the introductory title of his website he uses the words, “Innernet Xplorur”. This purposeful misspelling obviously took quite a bit of thought to even come up with such a ridiculous phrase, but his lighthearted manner subtly makes fun of the stereotype that all Southerners speak and spell in such an erroneous way.
Further down on Ron Collin’s website he reinforces the belief that, “Northerners tend to think of the south as a homogeneous and somewhat mysterious monolith, where English has an indiscriminate “twang” or a “drawl” and is peppered with funny, pan- religious idioms.” Collins artfully creates a list of “Ways to Annoy a Yankee” and “ Warning From the Southern Tourism Bureau”. In many ways the items on the lists are valid points, for we all know someone who has a bathtub on their front porch or says “ain’t” every other word, which makes the lists entertaining. However, overall these lists are written in an air or sarcasm and a joking manner, for Collins appears to be a smart man merely ridiculing Northern stereotypes while honoring his heritage and standing as a proud Southern dialect speaking man. He respects the Southern accent and is proud to be a part of the language and way of life despite inaccurate labels placed upon Southern intelligence which is often simply used in a stylistic manner adding flair to every word.