Sweet Home ..Alabama?? Bammer?? Bama?

Bekah Medford
Dr.Hughes
Blog: Oct 16
Starting this blog, my initial plan was to just quickly read through the sites, pick one, and just write about it to get through the assignment. As I started this process I realized that while reading each blog there were many interesting ideas, statements, opinions, and facts about the South spread throughout each and every site. My “quick” assignment then proceeded to take up much more of my evening than I had originally planned. Each site was very interesting and presents their views on the South in their own way. Though each site was discussing the Southern dialect or dialects, the treatment of the Southern dialect or dialects varied. Out of the four the views and opinions given off by the site ranged from the South as monolith, to the South having several southern dialects.
Regarding the view of “south as monolith”, I felt the Southern Dialect convertor (http://vaiden.net/convert.html) and “The Glossary of Quaint Southernism” (http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/southernese.html ) was the strongest in promoting this. I almost felt like the first of the two was utilizing a “strategy of condescention” because though very funny, and maybe true for many, it was extremely stereotypical of the South. The layout of the site also featured very stereotypical Southern characteristics. Now the second site of the two, though presenting the idea that there is just one Southern dialect, did so in a very respectful way. The introduction on the site stating that the Southern accent is perfect English but a dialect is fighting for the Southern dialect and not putting it down.
My favorite site was the Yankee/Southern test(http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html). This job did a very good job of varying different accents of dialects and attaching them to different regions, not just specifically the South or the North. The range of different regions went along with the distinction some tend to make between the Southern states. “Tennessee and Kentucky are the “outer states”; Texas is its own kind of south; whereas Florida is hardly south at all in the minds of Northerners” (Lippi-Green, 203). After taking the quiz I found myself to be “48% Dixie, barely in Yankdom.” This site is a very interesting way to see how other accents say certain words. This site began to move towards the idea that the South is not a monolith but instead has several dialects. Following this site, the Wikipedia site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English did not support the idea that the South was a monolith at all. It uses the words “groups” or “sub-dialacts”. Living in the South I have heard and I know there are several types of different southern accents, yet it was still interesting to review these sites and notice different views of Southern talk.