by Kirk Hazen, Ph.D.
Studying Dialects in the Mountain State
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall en to all sides and filter them for yourself.
—Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself
This epigraph describes the spirit of my work. I study dialects by ening to real people, I work in West Virginia where "the good of the earth" still exists, and I am fortunate to do both. I founded the West Virginia Dialect Project (WVDP) to learn more about language diversity in West Virginia and to share its fascinating beauty and complexity. Teaching and researching about dialects is a wonderful job because my laboratory is the entire state, and all I have to do is en to what people have to say.
Dialects are often seen negatively, but this is one of the most unfortunate myths of our modern world. Dialects are something like snowflakes: all snowflakes contain water but no two snowflakes are alike. There is no meteorological reason why any one snowflake is better or worse than another. For dialects, no variety of any language is linguistically better or worse than any other. And that is not just a knee-jerk reaction of political correctness; that's nature.
All humans are born with a blueprint
for language, and the languages people are exposed to become
the building blocks that each young child builds from according
to that blueprint. Whether it be Mandarin Chinese, Mexican Spanish,
Swahili, or Appalachian English, they are all varieties of human
language from the same blueprint, and they all function equally
well as language.
Unfortunately, most of our attitudes towards dialects ignore their linguistic equality and enforce their social inequality. In the United States, some language varieties are stigmatized and the others are considered standard enough, both of which result from social attitudes towards the speakers. Outside and sometimes inside the state, West Virginia dialects are stigmatized, despite their linguistic equality, and the WVDP is actively battling that stigma.
The WVDP works with undergraduate and graduate students in researching and teaching about dialects in West Virginia, but language myths often stand in the way of our educational mission. For example, when I tell people I study dialects, the first thing I hear is that Elizabethan English is still spoken in West Virginia. For some people it makes a regal connection, and in one of the most unfairly badmouthed states in the union, it may give West Virginians a sense of pride. But it is simply not true.
Elizabethan English is not spoken in West Virginia or anywhere else today, and there are two reasons. First, Elizabethan English, spoken during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was never spoken in West Virginia. In 1603 Jamestown was still an idea, and major settlement in the region to become West Virginia did not begin until the eighteenth century. The second reason is that all languages change. Even if there had been a settlement of Elizabethan English speakers, and they remained isolated until today, their great-great . . . great grandchildren would not speak the same dialect as did their forebears.
With the myth of Elizabethan English no longer viable, is there any hope for West Virginia dialects? The WVDP believes a great deal that hope waits in the wings. With an understanding of how language works and why their dialects are as linguistically legitimate as any other dialect, West Virginians should feel proud of their language variation because it is part of their cultural heritage.
The dialect feature I hear the most about demonstrates a link to Scots-Irish heritage: The car needs washed vs. The car needs washing. Although upsetting to some, this is a perfectly normal process. A verb is the boss in a sentence and requires certain things to come after it. For example, the verb to kiss requires a following noun, as in The girl kissed the boy. The verb to need in areas outside upper West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania requires a verb, like washing or to be; inside this area, the verb to need only requires an adjective like washed or painted. This same bit of variation is found in parts of the British Isles, especially Scotland.
Another Scottish link is the similarity between the Appalachian mountains and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They were both settled by Scots-Irish immigrants, and share a pattern of subject-verb concord that dates back at least six centuries. This pattern includes an -s in sentences like The dogs walks and The people goes. The two areas also share the famous a-prefixing, as in He went a-hunting; this process of a-prefixing is a complex linguistic process dating back four centuries. It originated in sentences like She is at working which meant that the action was going on at that moment.
Some of our research focuses on West Virginia dialects from a vastly different angle. The WVDP is currently studying whether or not people can speak two dialects the same way they can speak two languages. This study of bidialectalism is intimately linked to successful language education in our schools. In formal education, many teachers want their students to learn the standard regional dialect (standard English is simply a nonstigmatized dialect). The most popular approach in the last two decades has been the additive method: The teacher adds a second dialect to the student's first dialect, and this approach respects the local variety while helping the student achieve a regional standard. We know people can learn a standard form of a language, but does their local dialect stay intact? Until now, no linguistic study has ever been conducted to see if this approach works.
Part of the WVDP teaching effort in local communities will focus on students studying their own dialects. For example, students could interview their older relatives to gather words that were once popular but are now out of fashion. As a class, we could then incorporate those words into exercises and dialect quizzes like the one here. In other regions such as the Outer Banks where these dialect curricula have been tried for several years, both the teachers and the students have reacted enthusiastically to learning about their cultural heritage through dialect study.
Finally, as part of our public outreach, we have presented programs to community groups such as the West Virginia State Fair, the alumni of the Eberly College during Homecoming, and the regional USDA Office. If you would like to have us come out and talk to your group about language, or if you would like to help us learn more about West Virginia dialects, please contact us at (304) 293-3107. Dialects are a natural, renewable resource we should all tap into.
|
|
|
|
|