Ah, one thing in the book I recommended -- Do You Speak American -- mentioned a curious detail about Southern accents: that Southerners will code-switch more than any other dialect. Molly Ivins is a great example of someone who code-switches between Southern slang/phrasing and "proper english", ie this bit about a Texas bill being argued in the state legislature: "the delights of peein' against the back wall after a good whisky drank were limned in excruciating detail."
I've been trying to think of any time anyone in my family has made any comment about someone's accent. Hmm. Other than to peg the person's family origins, like "I hear a bit of coastal Carolina in your voice" or "Any chance your parents are from upstate Mississippi?" I can't ever recall someone getting any guff for accent, or non-accent. Except maybe when family will comment that one's accent has softened, but even then, the person with the soft accent (like myself) will soon have regained all that accent just by talking to relatives for a short bit.
I think the real emphasis is on Southern phrasing & sentence construction, and in knowing the basic courtesies: the questions to ask, the responses to give, the information to offer, and the ways one behaves -- like the whole not-arguing thing. If you've got all those, then even without an accent, more astute people will realize you're Southern, especially if you slip and say "ya'll" ... But even if they don't think/realize you're Southern, they'll still probably think you're really well-behaved or just really polite.
(Unless they're that type of Yankee that sees begging-the-affirmation as passive-aggressive. Heh.)
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Date: 14 Jan 2011 04:24 pm (UTC)I've been trying to think of any time anyone in my family has made any comment about someone's accent. Hmm. Other than to peg the person's family origins, like "I hear a bit of coastal Carolina in your voice" or "Any chance your parents are from upstate Mississippi?" I can't ever recall someone getting any guff for accent, or non-accent. Except maybe when family will comment that one's accent has softened, but even then, the person with the soft accent (like myself) will soon have regained all that accent just by talking to relatives for a short bit.
I think the real emphasis is on Southern phrasing & sentence construction, and in knowing the basic courtesies: the questions to ask, the responses to give, the information to offer, and the ways one behaves -- like the whole not-arguing thing. If you've got all those, then even without an accent, more astute people will realize you're Southern, especially if you slip and say "ya'll" ... But even if they don't think/realize you're Southern, they'll still probably think you're really well-behaved or just really polite.
(Unless they're that type of Yankee that sees begging-the-affirmation as passive-aggressive. Heh.)