Talking Appalachian Page 3

  Just as Appalachian speech has changed over the years, so has its representation in literature, which is the focus of Michael Ellis’s essay, positioned as a transition into the literary works of part II. Ellis traces the evolution of mountain speech as it appears in mid-nineteenth-century literary works by George Washington Harris and others who arguably influenced later writers. Ellis explores the different styles used by writers, such as literary and eye dialects, and the difficulties of trying to re-create mountain speech on paper. Although Harris and his contemporaries (such as Mary N. Murfree) contributed a great deal to our understanding of the words used in parts of Appalachia, their phonetic depictions of pronunciation likely contributed to regional stereotypes. Ellis credits writers such as James Still and Harriette Simpson Arnow for a more restrained but likely more authentic use of dialect, citing passages from River of Earth (1940) and The Dollmaker (1954) in which the vocabulary is more important than how the words sound. Representations of dialect in works since the 1930s suggest a diversion from nineteenth-century reasons for using literary dialects. One reason, Ellis argues, citing Lee Smith’s epistolary novel Fair and Tender Ladies (1988), is to accomplish a particular style, honesty, and distinctiveness. Another reason is to reveal how dialect is used as a weapon against those who speak it, as evidenced in works such as The Dollmaker. The pressure to assimilate into new communities or as times change is also evident in The Dollmaker, as well as in Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven (see part II). A final reason Ellis cites for the use of dialect by modern writers is to demonstrate broad dialectal differences that reveal even deeper struggles, as shown in Crystal Wilkinson’s short story “Holler” (see part II).

  Part II: Voices from Appalachia

  While there is no substitute for solid research in terms of explaining Appalachian dialects (particularly for the segment of society that supports standardization) and debunking stereotypes, we believe it is equally important to read about the experience of being a native speaker and to sample literary Appalachian speech by contemporary Appalachian authors. The contributors to part II are respected authors who write about—and in the dialects of—Appalachia. Here, poets, novelists, and essayists interpret language through their characters and reflect on themselves as speakers. Their pieces tell the stories that research cannot.

  The personal essays included in this volume offer individualized, personal perspectives about dialects and their connections to identity and place, but similar thematic threads weave through all the authors’ narratives. George Ella Lyon opens this part with her eloquent essay “Voiceplace,” describing the spiritual connection between place and dialect and the cost of losing that connection. Silas House, in his essay “In My Own Country,” describes his parents’ struggle as they tried to assimilate into another culture by covering up their dialects. He goes on to explore his own resistance to the practice he calls “passing” and why he refuses to compromise by standardizing his dialect in even minor ways. Lee Smith’s “Southern Exposure” provides a whimsical look at why keeping her dialect is a “political” decision, in spite of those who suggest that she take elocution lessons. Finally, Jane Hicks, in “A Matter of Perception,” describes the linguistic prejudice and misperception she has encountered as both a student and an educator because of her dialect—a voice she fervently embraces and that informs her work as a writer and artist.

  Denise Giardina, Ron Rash, Rita Quillen, and Crystal Wilkinson contribute excerpts of fiction, and their characters’ voices speak in a variety of Appalachian Englishes. These writers represent West Virginia, western North Carolina, southwestern Virginia, and eastern Kentucky, and they write across a variety of genres; however, in these excerpts, their characters face similar conflicts about identity and perception that arise as a result of their dialects. These excerpts also illustrate themes that are common in speech communities across Appalachia and among many dialect varieties: perceptions of changing dialects within families, the practice of code switching as social currency, and a resistance—among members of the same community or between communities several miles apart—to use or even respect vernacular dialects due to the blue-collar reputation that is often attached to them.

  Giardina’s excerpt from her novel Storming Heaven,22 set in earlytwentieth-century West Virginia during the industrial boom, is narrated by Carrie. She sees her brother, Miles, transformed by his education and by his involvement in the mining business. This transformation is most evident in his talk of progress and in the way he standardizes the dialect his family uses, which, he says, “sounds ignorant.” Carrie’s observation of Miles’s changing dialect represents even bigger struggles brought on by the changing environmental, economic, and social landscapes due to industrialization.

  Conflicting attitudes about vernacular dialects as well as code switching for social currency are evident in an excerpt from the first chapter of Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden.23 Rash’s protagonist, Sheriff Will Alexander, is investigating a murder in his small Appalachian town, where people believe in haints and black snakes are hung across fences to bring rain. The reader is clued into Will’s troubled marriage when, among other things, his wife recoils at his use of the term look-see, describing such words as “hillbilly talk.” But Will continues to use his mountain dialect, explaining that “it put people more at ease when you talked like them,” though the reader knows it is also very much a part of who he is.

  Rita Quillen is best known for her poetry, but here she offers an excerpt from her (as of this writing) unpublished novel Hiding Ezra, set in the mountains of southwestern Virginia during World War I. It tells the story of Ezra Teague, a new draftee who is caught in the conflict between family and duty and abandons his post. In this particular excerpt, Andrew Nettles, an army officer who, like Teague, is a rural Appalachian, dispatches two mountain “yokels” (who speak in a dialect that most people won’t understand) to find the deserter. When they fail—as Nettles is sure they will—he hopes the army will send him some “real soldiers.” Nettles is the product of a complicated union: a mother born into wealth and an uneducated, rural father. He grows up in a confusing world of opposites, ultimately deciding that his mountain dialect cannot be reconciled with formal education. Though it is part of his heritage, Nettles rejects the dialect, fearing that he will be perceived as ranking low in the social and economic hierarchy.

  Wilkinson’s short story “Holler” illustrates another Appalachian voice—the Affrilachian one. Here, an African American narrator tells a story within a story. The conflicts about language are similar to those in the other excerpts; however, as members of a black community, Wilkinson’s characters speak a different variety of Appalachian English, and the conflict tells a bigger story about race and perception. Like the concentric circles made by a stone thrown in water, a fight reveals the family’s complex history of hardship and the perception that those from the city—even those with a “shared ethnic connection,” as Ellis points out in part I—have of black people in the mountains. “Holler” is embedded with themes of race and place and their connection to voice.

  We conclude with Anne Shelby’s poem “Spell Check,” about an Appalachian writer whose computer insists on correcting her vernacular dialect. Shelby’s poem is a humorous look at technology’s refusal to acknowledge her voice: “Makes you have titles where titties ought to be.” But it also says something about the struggle between preservation and standardization and what is lost in between: “Now it wants to replace the homeplace / with just someplace. Is this the same spell / that changed proud to poor, turned minnows / into memories?” These lasting images from Shelby’s poem provide a final summary of the book’s general themes: perception and truth, preservation and loss, and language and identity.

  Defining Dialect

  Almost everyone has a different definition of dialect,24 but those engaged in linguistics and related fields generally agree that “to speak a language is to speak a dialect [or variety] of that language” that is distinguishable by its grammar (or syntax), its speech sounds (or phonology), and its vocabulary (or lexicon).25 A regional dialect is determined by its association with a particular geographic area and, within specific communities, its vocabulary, expressions, and variations of usage.26 Within any large regional dialect, there are many varieties that exist for different reasons, such as social class and socioeconomic status or geographic boundaries that may isolate inhabitants (such as islands). The language varieties of Appalachia discussed in this volume are generally found from western Pennsylvania to northern Alabama (see map).27 However, dialects are not contained by official geographic boundaries; they move as freely as speakers do. Consider this excerpt from an article by linguist Walt Wolfram: “Within the Southern highland area generally identified as the home of ‘Appalachian culture,’ there are many specific locations that can be set apart linguistically . . . [which] is also common knowledge to natives. Thus, the pronunciation of wash in one area may contain a vowel like father, in another area the vowel of bought. Still another area’s pronunciation may contain an r, as in warsh. . . . The important point here is that all of these different pronunciations legitimately characterize particular areas within the more general region of southern Appalachia.”28

  Although the dialectal varieties of Appalachia are often identified by their linguistic features, they are also identified by a shared belief among inhabitants that they speak distinctive dialects.29 Those shared beliefs about Appalachian Englishes, however, are shaped by myths that have persisted over the years. In part, those myths exist because so few of us know how our dialects emerged and continue to change.

  Threats to Appalachian Englishes

  Some scholars predicted that the language varieties of Appalachia would be completely erased or leveled as new ge
nerations and newer linguistic forms replaced the old; however, although some patterns (such as the a-prefix) are no longer widely used, those predictions proved largely premature.30 Neither radio nor television led to the extinction of vernacular speech, and it is unlikely that future inventions will result in the disintegration of dialect features and patterns that have survived this long. Further, Appalachia’s celebration of its cultural heritage—particularly the ballads, music, storytelling, and literary works that embody language—in festivals, museums, and Appalachian studies programs throughout the region will likely keep even the oldest dialect features alive.

  Others believe that the teaching of SAE and high-stakes assessments that categorize other dialects—particularly vernacular dialects—as “incorrect” will lead to their extinction. Our first lessons in English typically identify two types of speech or writing: the good (correct) and the bad (incorrect). The further removed a dialect is from SAE—or what is commonly accepted as the “correct” version—the more likely it is to be stigmatized (see the essays by Reaser and Clark). It is no surprise that speakers of vernacular dialects like Appalachian Englishes often find themselves labeled as speakers of the “bad” variety of English. Although this dichotomy is a fallacy, it stubbornly persists in educational programs and mainstream attitudes about how English should sound. But Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schillings-Estes contend that these vernacular dialects represent “an integral component of personal and social identity” and “carry strong positive connotations for individuals and local groups” that can be “stubbornly resistant to change.”31 In other words, peer and family influence can be more powerful than institutionalized perceptions of language.

  Areas of interest (Map by Erik Scrivener, based on data from the Appalachian Regional Commission).

  Katherine Sohn discovered this resistance to change among the eastern Kentucky women she studied, who were returning to college after spending several years in the home and workplace. Though the women’s dialects engendered some resistance among faculty members at the community college they attended, Sohn observed that none of the women felt pressured to speak differently. She writes that “language is closely tied to the way women define themselves and create community, and changing that language is a method of erasing culture.”32

  Still others have learned how to negotiate other speech communities while retaining their Appalachian dialects. A native of eastern Kentucky, Linda Scott DeRosier knows this pressure all too well, but she refuses to abandon her dialect. DeRosier, a professor of psychology who now lives in Montana, writes in her memoir that her dialect has influenced other speakers. “I have . . . accommodated to the rules and expectations of the academic speech community,” she says, “but I have retained a number of the expressions common to my home community and use them so often that some of my colleagues now regularly use terms they have picked up from me.”33 It is this kind of innovation, DeRosier says, this “ability to describe all manner of things,” that SAE lacks. In fact, for most Appalachians, SAE is like a second language. Appalachian Englishes are “colorful, earthy, profane . . . a very important part of our identity as hill folk . . . and not something we should give up without a fight.”34

  Linguistic artifacts represent not just grammar or pronunciation but also generations of people who share a history, a cultural upbringing, and a strong connection to place. An expression, a grammatical pattern, or a way of pronouncing a word that can be linked to our ancestry is like a 150-year-old letter, a lock of hair, or a uniform that we hold in awe as we consider history. But unlike those objects, language is a living link to the past. Linguists may contend that Appalachian Englishes are more innovative than historical and that their linguistic links to medieval, Elizabethan, and colonial times are few, yet the words, sounds, and grammar patterns of Appalachia continue to conjure strong reactions among speakers who carry heritage in their mouths, even though they may never understand why.

  Notes

  1. Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack, Appalachia: A Regional Geography (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984).

  2. John Alexander Williams, Appalachia: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

  3. Bonnie Norton, “Language and Identity,” in Sociolinguistics and Language Education, ed. Nancy Hornberger and Sandra Lee McKay (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2010), 350.

  4. Williams, Appalachia, 12.

  5. Ibid., 14–15.

  6. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, “Introduction,” in Encyclopedia of Appalachia, ed. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), xx, xxvi.

  7. Jeff Biggers, The United States of Appalachia (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2006), xi–xiii.

  8. Jon Reyhner, “American Indian Language Policy and School Success,” Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students 12, no. 3 (1993): 35–39.

  9. Teresa M. Redd and Karen Schuster Webb, African American English: What a Writing Teacher Should Know (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2005).

  10. D. Letticia Galindo and María Dolores Gonzales, Speaking Chicana: Voice, Power, and Identity (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), 4–5.

  11. Victor Villanueva, foreword to Katherine Kelleher Sohn, Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), xiv.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Clare J. Dannenberg, “Attitudes toward Appalachian English,” in Abramson and Haskell, Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 1412.

  14. Stephen L. Fisher, “Appalachian Stepchild,” in Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, ed. Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 187–89.

  15. Crystal Wilkinson, “On Being ‘Country’: One Affrilachian Woman’s Return,” in Billings, Norman, and Ledford, Back Talk from Appalachia, 185.

  16. Fisher, “Appalachian Stepchild,” 189.

  17. Wilkinson, “On Being ‘Country,’” 186.

  18. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, eds., Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006); Dwight Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, eds., Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999); Craig Carver, American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989); Robert J. Higgs, Ambrose N. Manning, and Jim Wayne Miller, eds., Appalachia Inside Out, 2 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995); Charles Reagan Wilson, William Ferris, and Ann J. Adadie, eds., The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Walt Wolfram and Donna Christian, Dialects and Education: Issues and Answers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989); Michael B. Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall, eds., The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004); Anita Puckett, Seldom Ask, Never Tell: Labor and Discourse in Appalachia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Verna Mae Slone, How We Talked (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009); Walt Wolfram and Donna Christian, Appalachian Speech (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1976); Cratis Williams, Southern Mountain Speech (Berea, KY: Berea College Press, 1992).

  19. Werner Sollors, The Invention of Ethnicity (New York: Oxford, 1991), x.

  20. Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  21. Biggers, United States of Appalachia.

  22. Denise Giardina, Storming Heaven (New York: Ivy Books, 1987).

  23. Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden (New York: Picador, 2002).

  24. The word dialect has many definitions and perceptions among the general public and is—for that reason—often replaced by the terms language variety, language difference, or, in the case of English dialects, English varieties. The contributors to this volume may use all these terms, but with the understanding that they reference the literal definition that follows.