As discussed earlier, the value of Southern language is not singular: Southern speech is characterized by both its incorrectness and its pleasantness (Preston 1996; Preston & Robinson 2008), a perception that persists even within the South (Preston 1996; Fridland, Bartlett & Kreuz 2005; Fridland 2008). Sociolinguists have explored the complex array of social meanings associated with Southern language, in particular how place identity intersects with other social identities, such as race, sex, and socioeconomic class, as well as with more nuanced distinctions particularly relevant within the South, specifically the white South, such as rurality, intellect, and refinement. They have shown that the precise indexical meanings of Southern language are not universal but are
specific to local and community settings: for example, in Memphis, researchers (Fridland, Bartlett & Kreuz 2005; Fridland & Bartlett 2007; Fridland 2008; Kendall & Fridland 2010) have found that what it means to sound Southern depends on the interplay between both regional and local context, where “locally-constructed meaning and norms are particularly important in shaping the salience of specific vowel variants” (Fridland & Bartlett 2007:38). That is, the particular embedding of language practices within Southern communities ties different types of Southern speech to different types of Southern identities. The multiplicity and complexity of Southern language practices,
Southern identities, and language ideologies contributes to the prevalence of linguistic insecurity in the South, further influencing speakers’ particular attitudes and uses of elements of Southern speech (Lippi-Green 2012).
Some of the complexity with respect to Southern language ideologies derives from the various linguistic factors involved, including structural distinctiveness and salience. Many sociolinguists have found that the particular type of structural variation (e.g. phonological, lexical, or morpho-syntactic) influences the ways that linguistic features are tied to social meanings; for example, phonological and lexical features seem to be more easily adopted by community outsiders than variation that exists at a morpho- syntactic level (Labov 1972a; Rickford 1985; Labov & Harris 1986; Ash & Myhill 1986; Cutler 1999; Bucholtz 2011).11 In other words, linguistic “features are not equal in marking vernacularity” (Van Hofwegen & Wolfram 2010:443). Additionally, linguistic features across these structural levels have different degrees of salience and are,
therefore, associated with social stigma in different ways; for example, morpho-syntactic
11
Many of the studies that have addressed the differences in social meanings based on type of variation focus on African American Vernacular English. Many note that speakers seem to be more aware of distinctive phonological and lexical features while they may be unable to comment on, adapt to, or imitate variation that exists at a morpho- syntactic level. For example, Labov’s (1980) revisiting of Hatala’s (1976) linguistic description of Carla, a white teenager in an African American community who adopts many elements of BEV (Black English Vernacular), demonstrates that while Carla uses lexical, phonological, and prosodic features of BEV, she does not fully use the
corresponding grammatical system. In black and white Philadelphia communities, both Ash & Myhill (1986) and Labov & Harris (1986) illustrate similar findings that “the phonological and lexical features of BEV are far more accessible than the grammatical features” (Ash & Myhill 1986:40). In the specific context of the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Rickford (1985) shows that phonological and lexical forms are comparable across racial groups while racial distinctions are maintained by the use of morpho-
syntactic features. More recently, Cutler (1999) and Bucholtz (2011) specifically examine how white individuals adopt African American linguistic practices, particularly in hip- hop cultures, finding that stereotypical lexical items and phonological features are more likely to be used than the grammatical patterns of AAVE.
variants may be easily recognized, although not adopted, and are often stigmatized with their labeling as “ungrammatical” features (Preston 1996). Speakers’ metapragmatic beliefs—that is, those explicitly articulated—about various language practices and their social meanings must be understood as a function of the ways that these indexical meanings derive from both linguistic structures and ideologies (Silverstein 2001).
Some of the more salient features that identify Southern speech include phonological features, such as glide-weakened /ai/ (Plichta & Preston 2005; Torbert 2010), lexical features such as “yall” and “ma’am,” (Ching 1988; Davies 1997; Tillery, Wikle & Bailey 2000), and morpho-syntactic variants such as the use of multiple modals (Bernstein 2003; Mishoe & Montgomery 1994). Meanwhile, pragmatic norms of
Southern speech, such as particular styles and politeness, also serve as discourse-level markers of Southern language practices (Davies 1997; Johnstone 2003), yet they remain less explored in linguistic literature. Following Montgomery’s (1997:18–19) call for research on the social uses of Southern linguistic forms, this chapter examines the ways that structural forms as well as types of Southern language practices tied to specific social qualities, such as politeness and hospitality, can construct various Southern identities.
In doing so, this chapter moves beyond some of the previous research on Southern language and explores the relationship between linguistic features and social meanings; it focuses particularly on the ways that language ideologies shape the emergent social meanings of language use, for example, as grounded in the specificities of local situations and contexts. For example, I follow Johnstone (1999; 2003) who has shown in her study of Texas women that the social meanings attached to “Southern-sounding speech” may in fact be more important than the forms of that speech. In other words, Southern identities
can be thought of as discursive products, constructed through indexicality, a process by which semiotic forms, including material and linguistic signs, reflect and create social meaning. Similar to Ochs’s (1992) account of indirect indexicality with respect to gendered language, the connection between linguistic forms, like a glide-weakened pronunciation of /ai/, and social meanings, such as “Southern,” are often not in one-to- one correspondence, because social categories are “constituted and mediated by the relation of language to stances, social activities, and other social constructs” (337). That is, language does not need to directly indicate a particular social identity, but it can evoke stances, acts, and activities that are associated with that identity. Similarly attending to the related levels of social meaning that a language feature can index, Silverstein (2003) suggests that linguistic variables may take on different but related, and often competing, social meanings over time when linguistic features are contextualized in a stylistic practice, community, or local setting. Thus, in this chapter, I show how the meaning and value of Southern language is constituted by mediating layers of meaning—stances and acts—and how meaning and value are emergent products of discourses and ideologies that serve speakers’ sociocultural interests.