snuffy smith's home identified by regional dialect

[Dennis R. Preston]

If it ain't Kaintucky, I shore gone lose some of my my HPQ (Hillbilly
Pretense Quotient), and I may even have to retitle some articles I
done published.

dInIs



>John Baker wrote:
>
>>A strip in the first year or two identified Li'l Abner's home as
>>"Dogpatch, >Kentucky."  I don't recall the state being mentioned in the
>>later years of the >strip, which may be why the Dogpatch, USA amusement
>>park was in Arkansas.
>
>Coming in late to this discussion, please forgive this intrusion:  Based on
>a fairly careful reading (some years ago) of the first three years of Li'l
>Abner dailies, I don't remember seeing any mention of Kentucky as the site
>of Dogpatch.  Capp seems to go to great pains to generalize 'the mountains
>of the South' in various forms, rather than being specific.  In many ways,
>Capp deliberately sought to control public reaction/beliefs concerning Li'l
>Abner.
>
>Course, I could have missed it, or it could have occurred in a Sunday strip
>(I haven't seen many Sundays; don't even know when Sundays began for this
>strip).
>
>If you have a citation for a specific date for this (or a secondary
>source), John, I'd very much appreciate it if you'd post it.  (I have the
>first three years of dailies handy, so I can quickly check such a reference
>for those years.)
>
>For years, I've believed that Capp deliberately did not specify a state,
>and everything I seen supported that, but I'm happy to be corrected by
>appropriate documentation.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Michael McKernan, Ph.D.


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu