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<pre wrap="">Charles Doyle <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:cdoyle@UGA.EDU"><cdoyle@UGA.EDU></a> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Dawgs
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I went to a football game this past weekend, the University of Georgia vs. Mississippi State. Each university has for its totem the bulldog. Each university features its team as the "Dawgs"; the University of Georgia (at least) has been doing so for many years.
It wasn't much of a game, so I had time to wonder about that spelling in a region where "dawg" represents what has been the traditional pronunciation anyway--with that "open o" that dialects of many regions are losing apace. Among (old-fashioned) "Southern" speakers, the "dog"/"dawg" distinction would be simply orthographic (like "come"/"cum"). But what about the semantics? Is it (or was it when it originated) merely a playful bit of self-conscious eye-dialect?
Or, is the spelling something like a Confederate battle flag to be waved into the face of non-Southerners? Or perhaps it simply suggests "tradition" for fans of the University of Georgia (I don't know about MSU), whose campus is now prevalently populated by first- and second-generation <i
class="moz-txt-slash"><span class="moz-txt-tag">/</span>dag<span
class="moz-txt-tag">/</span></i>-speaking Northern immigrants?
Is it because we lost that war 140 years ago that Southerners have been so absorbed, obsessed with issues of our regional identity? A mom-and-pop restaurant in a small Georgia town will advertise its "Southern cooking," as if that weren't the default . . . .
Oh, yes, the Dawgs won the game. Barely.
--Charlie</pre>
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Of course, an additional error is that the <i>real</i> Dawgs are the
Southern Illinois University Salukis. The students all sit in the Dawg
Pound. I don't know how long they've been called that (at least thirty
years, I believe). But Carbondale, although located in Illinois, is
definitely south of many isoglosses (although not the Southern
diphthongization one--nobody says [dawg] (in the IPA sense...)).<br>
<br>
Geoff<br>
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