Southern Reputations

Jennifer Conley
Ms. Hughes
16 October 2009

Even though I was raised in the south, I realized after looking over these websites that there is a lot more to southern states than I would have guessed. After looking over the Southern Dialect Converter, which you can view at http://vaiden.net/convert.html , one can assume that the individual made the site out of respect for his southern heritage. Giving everyday words used in the south a definition in standard English so anyone can understand was nice, but viewing further on down it is clear that the individual cares for the south in more than just its' language. By the information given after the glossary of words, turns this web page from informational page into a bias only for the south, treating it as a monolith.

Like the above website, A Glossary of Southern Accents, which is viewed at http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/southernese.html , also gives an assortment of any or all southern accents, promoting that it is a monolith. However, it talks about all southern accents, giving meaning to all of them and not just one. The entry at the beginning of the page also contradicts that it is a monolith in saying that people from variations of regions, be it north or south, all have an accent. Then after every letter entry of this glossary it gives a link to http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html . This link gives a test of how much of a rebel or Yankee a person is. Instead of just asking southern or northern question like shown in this week's reading, it asks more general questions of how one would pronounce certain words or what words we would use in everyday life. With every answer given, it tells you what region or specific state in which your answer mostly comes from. This also supports that A Glossary of Southern Accents was not made in a bias opinion, but based on more statistics too.

The last site we had to look at, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English , proved to be the most non-monolith when promoting the south. On this site it talks about how the south came to be and the people who populate it. It also mentions how all the people that first populated the south came from different places with a variety of dialects. This supports Lippi-Green when she states, " Finally, it does not take into account racial and ethnic diversity in the south which results in another dimension of language variation, particularly the presence of indigenous language communities where the core language may not be English at all (Spanish, Louisiana Creole, Native American languages), not to mention the large population of African Americans and the ways that southern AAVE differ from other geographical versions of AAVE."