Texas Englishes

[Rudolph C Troike]

I guess they don't require Texas history in 7th grade the way they used
to. Texas was very much part of the Confederacy, and some of my relatives
served in the Confederate army. The last battle of the War between the
States was fought near Brownsville, six weeks after Lee's surrender. News
of the liberation of the slaves reached Texas on June 19th, which came to
be celebrated as "Juneteenth", and is the focus of an ethnic celebration
even here in the deserts of Arizona.
        Linguistically, East Texas was settled out of the South -- my
ancestors moved to the Marshall area from Alabama and Mississippi, and the
Southern speech boundary generally extends to the edges of the pine
belt. (There is usually an ecological basis for most settlement history.)
Central Texas (from Dallas to San Marcos) was left unsettled, probably
because of the need for different plows, until large numbers of people
moved in from the upper South, especially Tennessee, bringing South
Midland speech to the area. This became the staging ground for subsequent
movement westward to the mountains of New Mexico. South Texas held few
English speakers until the 1920s; the "Valley" was opened up for
development then thanks to the introduction of irrigation. Houston, though
on the edge of the pine belt, always used to think of itself as Southern
(and certainly acted that way politically), and Dallas regarded itself as
the "capital of East Texas" (and Fort Worth was considered the "capital of
West Texas", complete with cattle yards, now closed).
        However, Texans are socialized to think of themselves as Texans
first and foremost, and only secondarily anything else. The "image" of
Texas promoted through the movies, TV, and other emblematic elements,
seized on the "western" "cowboy" experience rather than the less romantic
cotton farmer. Interestingly, the most cattle today are grown in East
Texas, which has better pastures, and the most cotton is grown in West
Texas, where it can be machine-harvested. But as Lynne testified, Southern
traditions still survive even in marginally Southern places like Waco (and
I'm sure in Houston, if you were to look at the Houston Post).
        Thanks very much to Don Lance for sharing his perceptual findings
with all of us.

        Rudy (you can take the Texan out of Texas, but you can't take
Texas out of the Texan) Troike