The Southern accent wanes as migration reshapes region's identity

Catch up quick: Two main drivers are demographics and politics, says Catherine E. Davies, professor emerita of English at the University of Alabama.

• The demographics piece comes down to migration and generational shifts, she tells Axios Huntsville.
• Younger generations tend to have more supra-local political attitudes or more progressive politics, and are aware of the stigma surrounding the accent and the judgments people make about it, Davies said.
• Migration, essentially watering down the accent, has likely played a strong part for Huntsville, thanks to the space program and other draws surrounding the federal presence at Redstone Arsenal.

Zoom in: Migration has a double effect, too, Davies points out, citing work done by Irwin L. Morris in "Movers and Stayers."

• Morris argues that in the late 1980s, economic development efforts in the South began bringing in younger, more liberal movers from outside the region.
• The more conservative small communities who didn't like it left, compounding impacts on the accent.

"The main idea is that younger generations are moving away from the typical Southern accent," Davies said, pointing to work done at the University of Georgia by Margaret Renwick.

• Younger generations can also "style-switch," she said.
• After interviewing her students in 2007, she found that they were very aware of the stigma attached to the Southern accent and were able to shift when they needed to tone it down.

Case in point: Renwick, who spoke about her work recently on NPR, studied Georgia English through seven generations, focusing on vowel sounds and finding that younger Georgians were losing the accent their elders put on words like bide, bait, bet and bat.

Context: The accent doesn't always fit the expectation so perfectly.

• Davies pointed to country music, where the Southern accents of artists like Alabama native Hank Williams were associated by the general public with a more conservative political orientation.
• But now artists like Alabama native Jason Isbell are singing with strong Southern accents and associating themselves with more progressive politics.

Then there's "y'all." Unlike other Southern-isms like "might could" or "fixin' to," "y'all" is going mainstream.

• Tracking the spread of "y'all" is something Davies says she'd like to keep an eye on, and it comes down to its utility.
• When "thou" was dropped from common English, it left "you" to cover both singular and plural applications, she explained.
• Other efforts to make a more distinct plural "you": "you'uns," "youse" or "you guys," just haven't been as accepted as "y'all."

💭 Derek's thought bubble: When I travel to New York or Washington, D.C., and even in North Carolina, I hear, "You don't sound like you're from Alabama."

• My case is likely typical of Southern millennials, Davies said, but I have mixed feelings about it.
• 📧 I could talk about this all day, so hit reply and let me know what you think.