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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
North vs. South
Here is a short paper that couldn't be more than two pages, so it's sort of abrupt at the end.
In thinking about personal experiences with concepts in linguistic anthropology, I am reminded of my experience with regionally-defined English dialects, or accents. Most Americans are undoubtedly aware that variations in accents exist in the United States but there seems to be a surprisingly low number of people who have had one-to-one interactions with a member of another accent group. This observation is based on my own experiences. The most drastic and obvious differences in regional dialects are between northeastern states and southeastern states (North and South). More specifically, citizens of the states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have a unique accent that differs greatly from what is found in my home state of North Carolina. It should be noted that in this paper, I generalize New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts accents as “northern” while those found in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, parts of the Virginias, and Appalachian region of the US are generalized as “southern.” These are of course more specific variations that can be drilled down within the traditional northern/southern dichotomy that may or may not be apparent to an outsider. I believe, however, that a broad division between northern and southern accents serves my purposes here. Finally, northern and southern accents can be observed in all parts of the country independent of place of origin of the individual.
My personal experience with these regional accents has to do with my travels between and within the southern states and parts of the northern states mentioned above. Born in Houston, Texas, I consider North Carolina my home state because I have lived there for the majority of my life and am thus influenced more by North Carolinian culture and ways of life. I was raised in the semi-metropolitan town of Winston-Salem, home to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and birthplace of NASCAR. North Carolina’s own unique brand of southern culture permeates many aspects of life in Winston-Salem and what is called the Piedmont (the area between the mountains and coast). A short drive in any direction will yield further variation in this culture. Dialectally, North Carolina does have variation within the state. Unfortunately, living most of my life in two parts of the state renders me incapable of distinguishing between these variations in any meaningful way (basically, I know it when I hear it but have trouble describing it).
As with anyone who has lived in one region of the United States for the majority of his or life, I was and still am firmly engrained with the customs and way of speaking that is characteristic of North Carolina. So when I took my first trip north of Pennsylvania back in the summer of 2003 I was able to experience not only a different way of speaking but a completely foreign way of life. I was traveling with my then-girlfriend, who was born and raised in Massachusetts. Our ultimate destination was Mansfield, Massachusetts, a small town that could be considered a suburb of Boston. We were there to see my favorite band perform at the large outdoor venue there. Once we passed Maryland and drove through Pennsylvania I began to notice a difference in the way people talked. This was not a surprise to me as I was familiar with the divisions of accentual variation but it was simply something I noticed. Not only did people in this part of the country speak with a much different accent, they acted differently than what I was accustomed to. It turned out to be my first experience with the strongly-defined division between “northern” and “southern” accents.
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Posted by Will at November 1, 2005 02:22 PM in Anthropology | Graduate School | Personal Reflections