Country DJ Too Southern for Station

[Anne Gilbert]

Mai:
> True. I posted the URL not so much as the shock of the day but because
it's
> interesting to see what kinds of comments about language variation make it
> into the media.  Still, matched guise experiments on Southern speech and
on
> stigmatized language varieties in general show that, while these varieties
> earn their speakers low ratings on status characteristics such as
> intelligence, at the same time they correlate with positive impressions on
> so-called solidarity characteristics, such as friendliness and
> trustworthiness, at least when the speakers rated are men. In the context
of
> the job of a DJ for a country station, we might have expected the
solidarity
> concerns to outweigh status concerns, so actually this case was at least
> mildly surprising.

That might be true, except in places like Atlanta, which is probably trying
to "upgrade" its image.  Then the "solidarity" concerns might not have as
much weight.
Anne G


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