Teaching With a Kentucky Accent

[Herbert Stahlke]

As offensive as attitudes' like this professor's are, they are legal, as are
the prejudicial actions that are taken on the basis of them. Rosina
Lippi-Greene makes this point eloquently in her book English with an Accent.
Accent and dialect are two of the few remaining areas of public activity in
which discrimination is still not just legal but licensed by court
decisions.  It's not just attitudes we have to change.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Peter Richardson
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 10:50 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Teaching With a Kentucky Accent


On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Dave Hause wrote:

> I think you might have taken that as pure career advice if he had
qualified it by saying "...teach English somewhere other than Eastern
Kentucky."

The point about career advice is well taken. I begin the first day of a
class here by telling, oh, the first minute or so of Jerry Clower's
Mississippi Coon Hunt. Then, just after I've talked about havin' a rat
killin' ("If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'"), I interrupt myself and tell the
students in my real version of standard academic English that it was, in
fact, all a big lie. Then they're to talk among themselves about that
crucial initial impression they had of me and, as part of their homework,
to write a short piece about their reaction for the next class. Most admit
to wondering how anyone with an accent like that could be teaching in
college, and some say they immediately assumed I was a racist redneck. (I
did ask for absolute honesty, incidentally.)  "American Tongues," which we
see later in the course, reminds them of that first day when they were all
caught with their prejudices a-flyin'. That video, as you'll all remember,
has a nice section devoted to the extra mile that a speaker with a heavy
Southern--or Brooklyn--accent must walk in order to reach the starting
line for a responsible position. It's a tough lesson, not soon forgotten.

Peter R.