[ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class

[John Grigg]

Samantha Atkins wrote:
  It isn't a matter of dialect particularly at all.  I find that soft- 
spoken, slow southern drawl very charming but then I grew up with  
it.   It is more a matter of attitudes and lifestyle.   As I have  
joked (but it was no joke) except for the books we kids owned (almost  
all mine) the only books in my childhood home were the Bible, the  
Sears catalog and Guidepost magazine.    I never saw my father so  
angry in public (privately was a very different matter) than when  
someone referred to me as an intellectual when I was 13.  What really  
burned him was that they meant it as a complement.   To him that was  
a very pejorative remark.   The biggest reason that I left the South  
is there were to many people who cared about hunting, fishing, maybe  
their church and their kids and that was it.  Anything else was too  
"controversial".    Not that I didn't know some fine minds there.   
They were just too far in between.
>
   
  The South has supposedly changed quite a bit over the last 2-3 decades and that's why they now call it the "New South."  Growing up in Alaska I swallowed all the negative stereotypes about this region of America and when I spent two years in Lousiana as a Mormon missionary during the late eighties (both in the small towns and the big cities) I was surprised by the number of not only educated but "enlightened" people.  I guess I was expecting to find one giant and nonstop clan rally! : (  
   
  Among the "homogenized" Mormon subculture I found a unique "Southern-ness" among the LDS people I met.  I was often told "yes, I'm a Mormon but I'm a *Southern* Mormon!" lol  A popular comic strip from an unofficial Mormon publication showed two Mormon Salt Lake City officials walking up to a Church meetinghouse in the South which has a sign that reads "Welcome to the Church of Jesus Christ of Southern Latter-Day Saints."  The one Salt Lake official says to the other "it looks like we are going to have to have a talk with them again regarding that darn sign!"  I saw that particular comic strip everywhere during my time there.
   
  I witnessed a great deal of mindnumbing poverty and quite a few houses with *dirt* floors.  I spent time in neighborhoods which felt like they belonged in the dang third world.  And the young children running through them did nothing to dispel that feeling.  But in the same towns and cities there would be beautifully restored Antebellum houses owned by the wealthy minority.     
   
  The New Orleans I remember was not a city of jazz bands, strip joints and four star restaurants (as it is marketed to the world) but instead a place of Black ghetto neighborhoods and many frustrated people.  I had a simple faith that I would be safe and I marvel looking back on things that I was not beaten or killed considering all the time I spent in some extremely dangerous areas.  Gang members would smile at us in a way which revealed they weren't quite sure whether to say hello or mug us.  But what really chilled my blood was when little boys around five or six would stare at us with cold eyes and say "keep on moving, white boys (someone obviously taught them to say that)."  When Katrina hit and there were all the news specials about the "real New Orleans no one ever sees" I thought to myself "I have."   
   
  A strange experience I had was living in Natchez, MS when the film "Mississippi Burning" came out.  The owner of the only theater in town refused to let the movie show because he took offense that the film recounted the sordid tale of Civil Rights workers being murdered in his community (and he was an old man who had been living there when it happened)!  A bit of the "Old South" re-emerging from the fabric of the "New South." lol  Most of the people there disagreed with his actions and viewed him as a social dinosaur from another era.  
   
  I recommend everyone read the very amusing and thought provoking "Confederates in the Attic."  This excellent book takes a close look at Civil War re-enactors and in doing so shows the social evolution of the Old South to the New.  Until reading this book I didn't realize "true" Southerners view Atlanta as a city of aliens within their very borders. lol
   
  On the subject of accent and social class, I will say that this is still a definite part of the South.  I remember educated middle-aged and older *Southern* women (both Mormon and non-Mormon) who took great pride in their "restrained" middle/upper-middle class Southern accents which set them apart from the "Proles."  But often these women were not from Louisiana but other parts of the South like Virginia or Texas.  And going along with this, I recall asking people to read various texts who at least up to a point revealed their social class by their reading & speaking abilities.  An ordinary middle-class or working class person can certainly read well enough, but I remember "men and women of breeding" who had definitely been trained in elocution.  
   
  On the other end of things were the "authentic" Cajuns.  I traveled in the swamplands they  called home and felt like an alien in their midst.  It was like being in another country. lol  They spoke such a severely accented dialect of English that I could barely understand half of what they said (when they chose to speak in English).  I will never forget (especially now in this time of war) visiting a tiny barbershop in a Cajun area where the walls were almost completely covered with photographs of local Cajun men in dress uniform after having enlisted in the Marine Corps (if you are from this area and Cajun there is only one branch of the military to consider joining, lol).  The pictures dated back to the First World War (no American Civil War pics, surprisingly)!  I felt a sense of the sacred there. 
   
  A very painful memory of mine was when a Bible was passed around a large Sunday School class (with people from every rung on the class ladder present) for everyone to read a passage.  I realize a person high on "the ladder" could still have a reading disability but what I saw did show something about class.  We had an instructor who was a real jerk and demanded people start over if they made the slightest mistake since in his view we had to show respect (as he saw it) for the reading material.  
   
  This walk down memory lane makes me realize I met a ton of eccentrics while traveling in the South. lol  I'm not sure if the area has more "eccentrics per square mile" than other places or if as a young missionary I just happened to be more aware and "out among the people" than I am now.               
   
  John Grigg 
   
   
  

Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
  
On May 27, 2007, at 11:35 AM, gts wrote:

> On Sun, 27 May 2007 12:34:57 -0400, Lee Corbin 
> wrote:
>
>> Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other
>> linguistic markers of class have people noticed?
>
> Though born and raised in the suburbs of the SF Bay Area, I left Ca 
> long
> ago and never looked back. Since then I have lived all over this great
> land, among the rich and the poor from North to South to East and 
> West.
> I've noticed many different dialects and ways of speaking, and I 
> have to
> say it's a bit disturbing to me to think of them as linguistic 
> markers of
> "class". Am I being too PC, Lee? Maybe.
>

It isn't a matter of dialect particularly at all. I find that soft- 
spoken, slow southern drawl very charming but then I grew up with 
it. It is more a matter of attitudes and lifestyle. As I have 
joked (but it was no joke) except for the books we kids owned (almost 
all mine) the only books in my childhood home were the Bible, the 
Sears catalog and Guidepost magazine. I never saw my father so 
angry in public (privately was a very different matter) than when 
someone referred to me as an intellectual when I was 13. What really 
burned him was that they meant it as a complement. To him that was 
a very pejorative remark. The biggest reason that I left the South 
is there were to many people who cared about hunting, fishing, maybe 
their church and their kids and that was it. Anything else was too 
"controversial". Not that I didn't know some fine minds there. 
They were just too far in between.


- samantha

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