Does Southern speech suck?

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Ron,

I have an enormous collection  of such pop culture stuff (and some
bits of it are reported on in several article, most copiously I think
my "Where the worst English is spoken," in Edgar Schneider's Focus on
the USA but also in perhaps even more detail in Niedzielski and
Preston, Folk Linguistics).

It's a shame i can't dig through the files; I've been collecting this
stuff for years, but it is not yet organized. If i find a little time
in the next few days I'll send you some of the best (a blurb on
Charle Kurath's retirement is one of my favorites).

I assume your colleague does not want perceptual and social
psychology of language studies since they abound and you are as aware
of them as I am.

dInIs

>One of my colleagues sent me the following inquiry. Can anyone help? I am
>momentarily (?) stumped.
>
>>  One of my students wants to look at negative attitudes
>>  towards Southern speech for her next writing project but,
>>  although we can
>>  find plenty of linguistic analyses of it, we cannot find any emotional
>>  editorials either declaiming or supporting Southern speech. Any hints
>>  you could give us?

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
740 Wells Hall A
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office - (517) 353-0740
Fax - (517) 432-2736