Attitudes toward Regional Pronunciation

Abstract

Superior and embracing a variety of linguistic stocks, the North-Central States present a challenge to dialectologists and sociolinguists alike. In this area of complex cultural history, different values, ideas, religions, and language varieties have clashed since the earliest days of settlement. One such confrontation appears frequently in the historical traditions of Indiana and Illinois, that between Northern &dquo;Yankee&dquo; and upland Southerner. The well-documented mutual suspicion between these pioneer types included, on the part of the Yankee at least, an overt sense of linguistic superiority so powerful that it affected the assimilation process of the German settlers who came to Illinois about the same time. Several generations have passed, of course, and one might expect the residents of this area to have forgotten these regional prejudices brought by their forebears. But linguistic atlas and other data indicate that many of the regional language differences survive, especially pronunciation features.