7 - Sounding southern: a look at the phonology of English in the South

Summary

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

(Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”)

Sounding southern

There is doubtless no limit to the number of ways that a blackbird may be looked at, but Wallace Stevens in his poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” demonstrates that there are at least thirteen. The same is true of Southern American English (SAE) phonology. There is really no limit to the ways of sounding southern and to the ways of describing those “noble accents,” but there are surely at least eight to explore in this look at the phonology of English in the southern United States.

Michael Montgomery's revision of James B. McMillan's Annotated Bibliography of Southern American English (McMillan and Montgomery 1989) lists over 600 items concerned in whole or in part with the phonetics or phonology of English in the South. Two inferences can be drawn from this fact. First, it is difficult to provide both a comprehensive and a detailed picture of SAE phonetics and phonology in a brief overview. However, it is possible to draw a broad picture of SAE phonology that is both understandable to the general reader and accurate in its depiction of the scene.