Crossing the threshold: The sociolinguistic North/South divide in the US

Many linguistic studies describe the diatopic variation of English in the US in a similar fashion, insofar as they almost consistently identify a specific dialect area in the Southern states. The existence of distinct linguistic features in the US South is notorious: the speech patterns exhibited by White speakers in the majority of the southern states of the US have been extensively described throughout time and have continuously received the attention of many linguists and commentators. Although objective linguistic differences in the US warrant the use of terms such as “Southern speech” or “Southern linguistic features”, the spatial division between South and non-South is, however, mostly arbitrary; the fact that its geographical border follows the Mason-Dixon Line is somewhat suspiciously convenient. After reviewing the different methods that have historically been used to delineate the linguistic South, I analyze the region’s sociolinguistic and cultural significance. In examining the linguistic definition of the South, I attempt to apply Irvine and Gal (2000)’s model of linguistic ideology. In particular, I argue that it is precisely the status of the South as a symbolic category that compels speaker-listeners to identify linguistic cues and to subsequently use them as shibboleths, in order to distinguish “Southern speakers” from non-Southern speakers.