In the mountains they talk like Shakespeare...

So, in my last post, I talked about mountain stereotypes and gave a little background to where they came from. However, there are other stereotypes about the mountains that come from the inside, that is, natives to the region. One of the big ones is that the speech of the mountains is like that of Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. Or some other literary giant from some unspecified point in the past. It's almost a reflex, as people will bring this up usually as a retort to some slight about culture or speech. It usually goes like this: Person A (from the mountains) says something that reflects mountain heritage; Person B says that it's wrong/weird/incorrect etc. Person A replies with the Literary Giant from the Past idea.

But, Shakespeare and Chaucer were not contemporaries. In fact, Chaucer lived from 1343-1400, whereas Shakespeare lived from 1564-1616, roughly two hundred years later. The English that each spoke was not the same (just google 'Romeo and Juliet' and read a few lines in the original. Then google 'The Canterbury Tales' and read a few lines in the original. Not the same!). Shakespeare would've spoken and did write in Early Modern English, and it's fairly comprehensible to most of us modern speakers. We can read it decently well. But, it would've sounded a little strange, and to understand it would have been more difficult. Below is a fascinating video showing how it might've sounded (plus it's a cool video in general).

Here's a link in case it won't play...

Chaucer wrote in and would've spoken Middle English, and it would not have been very comprehensible to us at all, below is a video.

here's a link just in case.

Now, I've heard lots and lots of mountain voices in my life, but none sound like either one of these!

This idea also has a fundamental misunderstanding of language and language change. Language is constantly changing, from word meanings (tweet...) to new words (blog...) to word order/syntax (want to go with?) to pronunciation as in the videos above. Language never stands still. It is constantly in flux. You can listen to your grandparents or great-grandparents and hear the difference (or listen to your grandchildren or great-grandchildren!), notice new usages that are slightly unfamiliar, etc. Then just imagine 400 or 600 years of little changes (which become slightly bigger changes, and even bigger changes, you get the idea!). Hard to see how we can speak like either one!

But, getting back to my main point. Why do we feel we have to invoke this Literary Giant of the Past idea? Let's reflect just a minute about this. Why would we (and I include myself because I've said it too) say this? What are we actually doing? At its core, what we're doing is saying that whatever Person B reacted to is worthy because it has a fine literary tradition and is associated with the great English of the past. We feel as if the way we speak is not worthy in and of itself; we must borrow prestige from the past. It's high time we started to recognize that our way of speaking is just as worthwhile as any other variety. All ways of speaking have worth. There is no need to rely on some other sense of worth (from the past, literary, or any). The way we speak reflects where we are from, who raised us, who we associate with, basically who we are. Some may not like that and want to change. Others will want to embrace it. It's time to stop the stigma without relying on a false idea of sounding like Shakespeare or Chaucer. No one needs to rely on outside sources of prestige to justify how they sound. If someone doesn't like the way we sound, that reflects them and their prejudices and not the way we speak.

Stereotypes and the Mountains...

One thing that everyone from the mountains knows about is the fact that lots of people don't know anything about the mountains, but think they do. This has been highlighted recently with the water contamination tragedy in WVa. Many people have tweeted, posted, and said many ignorant things about the people of WVa (I am most decidedly not going to repeat the stuff, but we all could guess what they mentioned). By extension, they are talking about all of us mountain folk. Just a few months ago, DirectTV aired a pretty offensive commercial about mountain people, and had to pull it and apologize (Google it, but be prepared to be pis-, er, I mean upset...). Mountain people seem to just invite mis-characterization (as well as other groups, as I'll discuss below).

People caricature the mountain people in lots of ways. I will always remember two big stories. The first is while I was on a trip to NYC for a basketball visit. One of the players at the school I visited heard me talk, and asked where I was from. I replied, 'East Tennessee.' He laughed, and said something about how it was easy to tell. He then asked, 'So, like, do you guys even have phones there?'. I replied, 'Nope, we have a bunch of cans and lots of string. Of course we have phones! Do you guys even know what good air smells like?'. Not the best sarcastic retort I've ever said, but I think it did the trick. The second story is when a friend and I were in line at a fast food joint. This particular friend ordered his food, and some guy behind us said, sort of under his breath to his friend but loud enough for us to hear, 'What rock did this guy come out from under?'. My friend, unfazed, turned and calmly asked, 'Do you know anything about algorithms?'. The other guy replied, 'No.'. My friend, 'What about soil acidity or alkalinity? Or the ways to understand (something I don't remember but sounded really complicated)?'. Dude's reply, 'No. I don't even know what that is.' My friend, with the best retort ever, said, 'Well, that's what I thought. Now, just because my mouth moves slow doesn't mean my brain does. Can't say the same for you.' He then casually walked away. Now, obviously, that was a pretty cutting remark. But, why would someone say these things about a stranger? It's because our language causes people to make judgments.

This is, as you've probably guessed, stereotyping. The question is, why are the mountains and the people who live there such an object of stereotyping? Why have our language varieties been so stigmatized? Well, this is obviously a complex question with a complex bunch of answers, but I'll try to summarize what people have said and add my own two cents.

Most things that people say about the mountains and our language(s) are not original. In fact, most of them began in the late 19th century, from about 1880 on. A particular kind of popular literature, local color, was popularized. This writing focused on far-flung locales and unique places in the US and around the world. The idea was to find an area that was 'different', compose a description or a story about that area focusing primarily on the differences. Now, as I'm sure you're guessing, this isn't a great way to get factual information. Focusing on what is the most different while ignoring the similarities, in any area of life, is most likely going to devolve into stereotyping. With regard to Appalachia, there were many things that were different from a burgeoning middle class, East Coast urban norm. But, there were lots of similarities. Yet, the writers focused on what was most different. (This idea is more fully developed in Henry Shapiro's Appalachia on our Mind, a must read for anyone interested in the region. There are many other great sources. I'd be happy to point you to them, just contact me.)

So, the most different things were written about, and of course language was one of them. The characters in some of the literature (such as John Fox Jr., Mary Murphree, or George Washington Irving, to name a few) are flat hard to understand at times. So, readers got the impression that the people from the mountains talked 'funny'.

Here's the thing about language. We tend to place how we feel about a group onto the way that group talks. So, when someone feels that mountain people are stupid, ignorant, inbred, etc, their way of speaking is characterized the same way. The same thing happens with women's speech. People who think women are emotional, needy, weak, etc. say that the way women talk is the same. The same with African American speech. The same with all groups. We say that a particular way of speaking is (insert adjective here), not because the language is like that, rather because we feel that way about the group who speaks like that.

The really insidious thing is that, oftentimes, that disparaged group buys into the stereotypes. How many of us Appalachian people have ever said 'we don't talk correctly/proper/well'? What about other groups? Same thing for them. We've (and they've) heard it so much that it becomes almost like a truth. It's like we think, 'Well, if so many say it, it must be true.' So, we buy in (not all or in all ways, but some). I'll explore some reactions in my next post.

We don't call this what it really is: prejudice. Language isn't lazy or uneducated. People may be, but language isn't. And you know what? There are lazy and uneducated people in all groups. There are also really hardworking and educated people in every group. No group is monolithic or without variation. Anytime we try to fit a group into a single box (or limited boxes), we are showing more about ourselves and our own lack of understanding than the group we are trying to put down.

Where you'uns from? Dialect in the media

Well, I'm back to the blogosphere after a holiday break. I traveled a lot, and had a merry time with family, and I hope everyone had the chance to do the same.

Over the break, I was thinking about possible topics, and one popped right out of social media. Many people took the NYT's dialect quiz, and were quite surprised by the results. Some of our mountain brethren and sistren were taken aback by reading that their closest 'city' was somewhere flat. So, a brief word about dialect maps and the popular notion of dialects.

First off, the maps were/are cool. Anytime language variation gets positive attention in the media and social media, I am for it. However, there were a few issues. There weren't enough questions, and the questions that were contained were mainly lexical (what word do you have for X). The other questions were really broad (how do you say the vowel sound in X). They pulled those questions from something much larger and more refined. I understand why; it was meant to be fun and fast. But, the biggest issue is that everyone's lexicon changes A LOT over time. For example, growing up in rural Appalachia, we didn't have a road that went parallel to the interstate/freeway. I mean, we had to drive 45 minutes to get to an interstate/freeway, so I was barely aware of the nuances. So, what word do I use? Well, I lived in TX for a while, where people say frontage road. So, that's the word I use. But, I also understand access road, which is very common. Also, with the word caramel. Different members of my family say it the two main ways, the two syllable version and the three syllable version. I think I actually vary in how I say it. So, I liked the maps, but again, we need to recognize their limitations.

Moving to the popular idea of dialects will require more words, so hold on and bear with me (this usually takes an entire class period, and reminders for an entire semester, so I apologize now for the length of this). When many people think of dialects, there are two common notions. One is that a dialect is somehow inferior to the 'standard' or 'mainstream'. The other is that everyone in a particular area (say the South, or NYC, or Boston) speaks a dialect, and other areas (like the Midwest) don't. First off, we all speak dialects, and everyone speaks more than one. A dialect (or as we linguists usually refer to them, a variety) is just a rule-governed system of language spoken by a group of people. I want to highlight two ideas: rule-governed and group of people. All native speakers of any language variety on this planet speak a rule-governed language. Now, you may be thinking, 'What about people who say (thing that I think is wrong or have been told is wrong)?'. An example can help. Let's start with a bugaboo for many people, double negation. We've all heard the cliche 'two negative make a positive' from either a teacher, parent, or someone. According to this logic, a statement like 'I don't got no money' would mean that the speaker actually has money. Now, would any native speaker of English really interpret this sentence that way? I say no. Or, perhaps more tellingly, say a child is about to put a penny in a light socket. A nearby person says, 'No, no, no, no!!!'. Does the child count the 'no's', divide by 2, realize that the negatives cancel, and then say, 'Aha! Even number, negation cancelled. That means I can continue by electricity experiment!'. Obviously not. Besides this, there are languages (French, Spanish, many others) where double negation is *required*, as in 'Je ne parlez pas anglais', which is literally 'I no speak no English'. Now, is the entire French language illogical? Of course not. So, what about those rules I mentioned? Linguistically, rules are more like ways of defining how a system works (kind of like laws of physics, descriptions of how things behave). When I say that there are rules of language, what I mean is that certain things are common among native speakers and are allowable in a given language or variety, and other things are not. So, in lots of varieties of English, I can say, 'I ain't got no money.'. Technically, I have broken no rule of English. There is a subject: I, a verb: ain't got, and a direct object: money, with a negative marker: no. English usually requires a subject, verb, and often needs an object. So, what rule was broken? No linguistic rule. Now, before I get the emails about how I am saying anything goes, a sentence like Over the I ball fence hit the is not English (in any variety). Why? Because it does not adhere to what native speakers do. There is no variety of English that I am aware of that would call this sentence allowable. But, there are many varieties that allow double negation and other things. However, there is a social side to language also, perhaps even more important. We are judged, positively and negatively, on how we speak and write. Some things that are totally fine spoken in one arena of life, say with family, may not be in other areas. Or sometimes the way we write is different from how we speak. I liken this to clothing. There are some clothes that are appropriate for a fancy dinner, but a tux at a sports bar would be a bit out of place. The same can be said for sweat pants and a T-shirt. Great for hanging out at home or somewhere really casual. Not so good for an awards ceremony. There is no rule preventing me from rocking a sweet zoot suit tux when I want to watch a ball game with my friends. However, I expect that there will be jokes (a lot of them...). Or if I wore gym shorts and a T-shirt to a formal dinner, I might get some weird looks and probably I won't be asked back. Was I wrong? No, I wasn't indecent in either case (or breaking any laws), but there were certain expectations about what to wear. Now, these expectations change. No one I know wears a powdered wig anywhere, but that was the style in the 1700s. Do we lambast people who don't wear powdered wigs anymore? No, but people did. As style changed, behavior changed. Some people didn't like it, but that passed.

The same thing happens with language. The rules, which describe behavior, change as the behavior changes. We don't say thee or thou very much anymore, so the rules of how to use them have definitely changed. Very few people in the U.S. pronounce vowels like in Great Britain, so that has changed. The behavior changed, and thus, so did the rules. This is a part of language.

In fact, language varies in time, space, and within space. We all know that our grandparents sound a little (or a lot) different than us, as do our parents. We also know that people in different areas sound a little different (vowels and consonants) or use different words (like schlep or gum band or holler). We also know that people who hang out together sound a lot alike and/or use words to demonstrate membership in a group. Education, group, sex/gender, language varies by all of these and more. I think this is the coolest part of language. It is so complex, yet we all can use it. There are so many ways it can vary, yet we can still communicate.

Some multiple musings (about modals), as you might could expect...

Many of you helped me out by taking surveys, and several of you asked what the research was about. This post will help to clarify what I was interested in:

There's a feature of Southern American English (and a few other varieties, like Northern England English, Scottish English, Irish English, some Caribbean varieties) that is very noticed by outsiders but overlooked by insiders: multiple modals. A modal is a verb that indicates the likelihood, ability, possibility, etc. of a verb. For example, I can do that, expresses the idea that the speaker has the ability to do something. In contrast,  I might do that means there is a possibility that the speaker will (or will not) do something. If you are familiar with the stand-up comedy of Jeff Foxworthy, you'll remember his brother saying, 'I used to could dance. If you give me a minute, I might could again.' I never could figure out as a youngster why these were funny. They sounded perfectly normal to me, and I know lots of people who said/say/will say phrases like that. I never got the joke (not the only time that's happened, but that's a different post!)

In most varieties of English, you can only have one modal in a clause (can, could, may, might, should, will, would are the main ones, with must, ought to, and shall also usually included, but less common in some varieties, and used to also is counted by some people). But, interestingly, Southern American Englishes (and the others I mentioned) allow more than one. It is very common to hear I might could do that, You should oughta go, He might will do it next week, etc. Now, not everyone likes all the combinations (might could and might should are very common), and I'm sure some of you have heard my voice in my surveys using these. Your reactions were probably mixed, some were good, some were terrible. But, I'm willing to bet that you liked some of them.

One question that arises is why we have these. One plausible explanation is that the English of the mountains and American South were heavily influenced by the English of the Scotch-Irish immigrants, who had this feature in their speech and it continued. But, the combinations used in the American South and Northern British varieties are different (I'll provide a link to a website below that you can check for yourself!). This is probably a factor, but I would be willing to add that the phrases are very useful also, and this contributes to the fact that we still use them.

For example, a good friend of mine told me a great anecdote that perfectly captured how the multiple modal can be useful. While she was in high school, she naturally wanted to go to school dances and activities. Her popularity and general nice personality meant that she was asked out by potential dates. Now, depending on how she felt about the potential suitor, she would respond, 'Well, I might can go.' This would secure a way to go (can), but would also leave open the possibility of not going (might). This way, she might be able to accept an invite from someone she might want to go with more! Very useful, it would seem.

The Pen is Mightier than the, Pin?

Since this is Mountain Man Linguistics blog, I wanted my first language related post to be about something that I know my mountain brethren and sistren (?) can relate to. Growing up, and to this day, I pronounce the words pen and pin exactly the same (I've measured, mine are very very similar, see the images at the bottom of the post). In fact, I have a hard time even making them sound differently. I have to recite in my head pet, pet, pet, pet and then say something that kinda sorta sounds like the way others say pen. In linguistic jargon, we say that these two sounds have 'merged', meaning just like you think it means: the sounds have become very similar if not almost the same. The cool thing is, this little phenomenon isn't due to an inability to make the different sounds. I can easily distinguish pit and pet, mitt and met, etc. The key is the final sound.

First some quick background. As a linguist, I am interested in sounds, not letters. So, when I am referring to letters or written words, I'll put them in italics (like I did above). But, when I'm referring to sounds, I use square brackets []. This means I'm referring to how we actually pronounce the sound that the letter is supposed to represent. So, when I refer to the final sound in both pen and pin, I'll use [n]. Since not everyone who reads this is an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) nerd like me, I'll also try to give you a brief description.

Back to the actual post. The final sound is the key. When the vowel sounds [ɪ] (like in pit) and [ɛ] (like in pet) come before a nasal sound, they merge. English nasals are represented by the letters  n, m, and the letter series ng, phonetically [n], [m], and [ŋ]. A nasal just means that we close off our mouths and air flows out your nose. Try it! Just say 'mmmmmmm'. Your lips are closed, and air is coming out of your nose! (Yes, I make noises like this all the time. Just ask my wife, friends, office mates, colleagues, random people beside me when I'm reading on the bus...). When [ɪ] or [ɛ] come before one of these nasal sounds, they merge in my speech, and many other varieties of American English. I know what you're probably thinking, 'Don't you get things confused?'. No, we don't. Why? Because we ask for an ink pen when we want to write and a stick pin when we need the sharp metal thing. Also, I mean, context. If I have a blank sheet of paper or I need to sign a receipt, even if you hear pin, you know that I'm not planning on sewing. This is not a limitation, rather it is an adaptation. Other areas have different mergers.

However, sometimes funny things can happen, which makes language awesome! I shared an office with people from Miami, FL, Pittsburgh, PA, and Rock Hill, SC. Three completely different areas, with three completely different language varieties. It was glorious (well, to me the sound guy it was). One day, the colleague from Pittsburgh and I were talking, and I said something about ten sheets (I think I was referring to copies or something). She was working on the computer at the time and not fully paying attention, and stopped for a moment, thought for another long moment, and then asked, 'Why would you need metal?'. I was totally confused. We didn't have the slightest clue what the other was talking about. She wondered why the mountain guy wanted sheets of tin, and I wondered why the city girl thought I was going to give my tests on metal. Finally, it dawned on me. My merged vowels. I laughed, quickly explained, and we both laughed about it. From that day on, I made sure to try to avoid ambiguous uses of pin, pen, ten, tin, and others.

The point is language varies. People don't always sound the same, and in my humble opinion, the world would be a far more boring place if we did. Sometimes people say really mean things about language varieties that aren't the same as the ones they grew up hearing and speaking. But, at it's core, that reflects the biases that people have against those people groups, not their language. We mountain people have been stigmatized in many ways for the better part of 200 years, and since our language is part of what makes us us, people have tried to marginalize it. But, it isn't the language they really care about. If you listen to the criticism, what you hear are stereotypes about a person or about groups of people. Languages and language varieties can't be lazy, backward, hick or dumb; people can be like that (according to the opinions of others, mind you). Yet, I've heard my language and the language of my family, friends, and neighbors called such names. Those are the same insults that people throw at people who live in the mountain region. A language can't be backward, but in the narrow-minded opinions of some people, the way that a particular group speaks can be, because those people are backward, surely their language must be. See the faulty logic? In sum, language varies across space, time, groups, and individuals. I have my own unique voice, with some features that are shared, and some of my own. You have your unique voice, some features may be shared with me, or shared with others, and some that are yours alone. Embrace it.


Nerd Line - Things below this line are more technical. Feel free to read, but you've been warned.

Below are spectrograms of me saying the words ten and ten in running speech, cut from the phrases eight, nine, ten while counting and sheets of tin.  (if you don't know what a spectrogram is, I'll probably address them in a later post. For now, just think of this as a picture of the words tin and ten, and remember the nerd line warning.). You'll notice how similar they are.

What's in a name?

So, a few people have asked, 'Why the name Mountain Man?'. That's a good story, and one worth putting out there. First, some history...

I played basketball growing up, a lot; from about 3rd grade through college, basketball was pretty much life. The daily grind was school, practice, weights, more individual work, maybe some homework, and then college or NBA games on TV (a little obsessive perhaps). Some good friends and I once counted up how many hours we were in the gym in high school. It was 34. More than a day, not quite a full time job. So, you can guess I played in a lot of games. If you count scrimmages, summer camps, team camps, pre-season, regular season, and post season, I probably played in hundreds of games (I have no idea the actual total, but I would easily say 500).

My family was very supportive of this, as they all played basketball also. I think my parents only missed a handful of games in my entire life (and this is with 4 other children playing basketball, involved in activities, etc.), and these were very few and far between. Now, my family is very passionate about everything. My parents, grandparents, and sisters would cheer me on at every event. I have vivid memories of my grandfather, in his 80s, yelling at me 'Shoot it!' while I was at half court. Not the best advice, but he believed in me. My sisters and mother never met a referee that they liked or that they thought could call a game worth anything. And, my dad would yell all the time. He always wanted me to 'Shuck and jive, Bro, shuck and jive!'. To this day I'm not exactly sure how one goes about shucking and jiving on a basketball court, but I tried my best. However, all this yelling was hard to sit beside, so my parents rarely if ever sat near one another at a game. Dad would be on one end or one side of a gym, and my mom would be on the other. My sisters and grandmother sat with my mom (usually) and my grandfather sat with my dad. So, many times there was competing yelling, and competing instructions to me and insults to the referees.

So, returning to the name of the blog...

In college, my dad liked to sit behind our bench at home games. He would always give me a knowing nod during warm-ups, just to let me know that he was there and that he supported me. He would yell, like always. One game, he decided that he wanted to yell a nickname. During a slight lull in the action, he loudly and lustily shouted, 'GIVE IT TO THE MOUNTAIN MAN!', at the very top of his lungs. Of course, everyone knew that he was my dad, and that he was yelling for me (not that I disagreed, I wanted the ball, but I might've used a bit more tact about requesting more touches). My teammates, naturally, thought this was awesome, and the name stuck. They would take athletic tape and cover my nameplate on my locker with a new label, The Mountain Man.

At first, I was a bit ashamed of the name. I thought that it meant something negative. There are a lot of stereotypes about mountain people, and not very many are positive (and this blog will probably address them from time to time). But, as I have matured, I embrace the name. The mountains are where I'm from. The experience of driving home and watching the land rise and the view shorten is exhilarating. Nature's wonder and beauty are at their finest and most breathtaking in the mountains. The people in the mountains, misunderstood and pre-judged by outsiders who have never even been anywhere close, are truly the best in the world. Values like home, kin, honesty, humility, and courage are exhibited daily by some of the finest men and women anywhere. I am proud to be from Appalachia. I am proud to reflect the values of home. I am proud to be a man of the mountains, a Mountain Man.

A little picture pleasure, a view from near home...

Research Participants Needed!

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who participated! I have enough responses for now. I may need you in the future, so keep checking back. You are the best!

Greetings all!

I'm working on a project about how people feel about different types of sentences. I'd love some participants! The links are not mobile optimized, so please take them from a laptop or desktop. Here's the announcement:

My name is Paul Reed; I'm a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Program at the University of South Carolina. I am working on a project with Dr. Stan Dubinsky and am writing to see if you would be willing to take a few minutes to take one or more surveys to help facilitate our research (the links for which are included at the bottom of this email in no particular order). The experiments that we’re asking you to participate in are part of a project aimed at finding out how the English language works, (in particular) examining how variation in Modern American English is perceived. Each survey involves rating sound clips based on the acceptability of various sentences and should only take about 15 minutes to do. 

There are no restrictions on participation eligibility; we welcome responses from anyone that is interested, including: students, faculty/staff, and anyone outside of academia, as well as both native and non-native speakers. Please feel free to pass this request along to anyone that you think might be interested in participating. There is no compensation offered for participating, except, of course, the good feeling of helping out.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me at reedpe@email.sc.edu.

Thanks!