The metaphor of linguistic planets of belief, which gives the book its title, is introduced to the readers to illustrate how people construe the linguistic identity of others by drawing from stereotypes, attitudes, and ideology. Most of the studies presented in the book are conducted from the perspective of perceptual dialectology and the focus is set in the US, though studies of similar characteristics are known to exist in Japan and the Netherlands.
This book not only summarizes previous work on the field but also makes an important contribution by commenting upon US perceptions of the American South in a well-grounded expository manner, to raise awareness and promote the acceptability of different manners of speaking.
Though results were inconclusive due to the great individual variability, after asking non-linguistic specialists to label a map with their linguistic knowledge of the different areas, an inversely proportional relationship was observed between the number of details provided and the size of the region (i.e. national, regional, local). Yet, some meaningful results were still discovered and are summarized below.
Nationally, the most prominent distinction observed was the division between the people in the north (e.g. Yankees, talk fast) and those in the south (e.g. country, slow), even if some other regions were also occasionally commented upon (e.g. Californians as ‘surfer dudes’).
Then, the focus is set on the American South, a heavily labelled region, even by southerners themselves and repeatedly associated with negative stereotyping (e.g. hicks, hillbillies). However, to dissociate themselves from the stigmatized southern stereotypes often popularized by the media (rural, twang), while at the same time being able to maintain their southern identity, participants often resorted to the conceptualization ‘us vs. them’, designed to establish that ‘we are southern but not that type of southern’. An example of this can be seen in how Kentuckians from Louisville placed the negative southern stereotypes in the Appalachian region (e.g. redneck).
Finally, it should be mentioned that the application of the status vs. solidarity dichotomy (i.e. ‘friendly but stupid’) was also highly extended, and southerners frequently labelled other southerners as good people but not ones with whom they strongly self-identified.
Noteworthy, the authors have themselves experienced the application of this conceptualization in the Southern university setting in which professors were sometimes perceived as less qualified if they make use of expressions such as ‘y'all’, and students from Eastern Kentucky were known to be teased because of their accents.
In sum, this book intends to elucidate the different perceptions that people have of other linguistic varieties to provide the knowledge which will then give users the power to make informed decisions when they encounter linguistic diversity in their everyday lives.
