scholarly journals Linguistic Employment Niches: Southern Dialect across Industries

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312199916
Author(s):  
Jon Forrest ◽  
Steve McDonald ◽  
Robin Dodsworth
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
American English ◽  
Measurement Techniques ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Technology Industry ◽  
Southern American English ◽  
The American South ◽  
General Movement ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
Interactive Service

The authors examine how linguistic niches may develop in certain industries. Using acoustic measurement techniques, the authors examine the extent to which workers in different industries display dialect features associated with the American South. The data are drawn from 190 semistructured sociolinguistic interviews from 2008 to 2017. Six linguistic variables were constructed to measure dialect features associated with southern American English. The results show that workers who are employed in the technology industry display significantly fewer southern dialect features than workers in interactive service work, law, and government. The general movement away from southern American English over time was also more prominent among technology workers. These results suggest that newer and more professional industries display less traditional patterns of southern speech. While the results do not support causal claims, they imply that individuals tend to work in industries that match their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

The Sociology of Country Music

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Race And Ethnic Relations ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The American South ◽  
Political Realignment

How can a sociological approach improve our understanding of country music? This chapter answers this question by focusing on the intersections between country music history and the core sociological theme of modernity. Challenging standard interpretations of country music as folk culture, it shows how the emergence of the popular commercial genre corresponds to the increasing modernization of the American South. The genre’s subsequent growth and evolution tracks central objects of sociological study including industrialization, geographic mobility, race and ethnic relations, the changing social class structure, political realignment in the United States, and (paradoxically) urbanization. Country music is comparatively understudied in the sociology of music despite its rich history and massive popularity; this chapter shows that the genre and the discipline nevertheless mutually illuminate one another in robust and often surprising ways.

Case Study: The Southern Oral History Program

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall ◽  
Kathryn Nasstrom
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
American South ◽  
New Era ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Gender ◽  
History Department ◽  
The University

A case study of the southern oral history program is the essence of this chapter. From its start in 1973 until 1999, the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) was housed by the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), rather than in the library or archives, where so many other oral history programs emerged. The SOHP is now part of UNC's Center for the Study of the American South, but it continues to play an integral role in the department of history. Concentrating on U.S. southern racial, labor, and gender issues, the program offers oral history courses and uses interviews to produce works of scholarship, such as the prize-winning book Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. The folks at the Institute for Southern Studies tried to combine activism with analysis, trying to figure out how to take the spirit of the movement into a new era.

The Vanishing Servant and the Contemporary Status System of the American South

1953 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Arnold Anderson ◽  
Mary Jean Bowman
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
The American South
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