West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies

West Virginia Dialect Project

English in Appalachia is one of the most widely recognized vernaculars in the world. In stark contradiction to its popular status, it has received little empirical scholarly attention, although recent work¹ has attempted to rectify this situation. The primary goal for the West Virginia Dialect Project (WVDP) is to conduct quantitative sociolinguistic analysis on the English language in and around West Virginia, including its regional affiliations, its relative degree of vernacularity, its sociolinguistic divisions, and its direction of change. Outside of this current project, the last sociolinguistic interviews conducted in this region which fostered widely recognized scholarly attention were in the 1970s. For example, Michael Montgomery’s Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English is a tremendous addition to the scholarship, but the undergirding data² dates from the 1930s.

Two immediate concerns motivate the WVDP. First, the traditional features of English in Appalachia, dubbed the Appalachian Heritage Language, are quickly fading from West Virginia. Like features of endangered dialects elsewhere,³ the Appalachian Heritage Language features have become badges of identity; however, no modern scholarship has assessed to what extent they are a part of regular usage. Second, rural U.S. communities are fading from their once vibrant status. How is this change in rural society reflected in language variation patterns? As West Virginia is one of the most rural areas in the United States, an account of the current state of synchronic variation allows for an empirical assessment of (sub)urban/rural divides on sociolinguistic variation.

One scholarly goal is to develop a clearer regional association for English in West Virginia. Currently, it is associated with the South in most literature; however, the Appalachian region, including part of West Virginia, reaches beyond even the dialectological boundaries of the Upper South.⁴ What varieties of English in West Virginia should be classified as Southern or [End Page 81] Northern? Walt Wolfram and Donna Christian⁵ include all of West Virginia in Southern Appalachia, but more recent scholarship calls that classification into question.⁶ From a different regional orientation, how does English in West Virginia fit in the Midlands?⁷ Some of the maps in the Atlas of North American English show Midlands’ characteristics in West Virginia,⁸ but others do not.⁹ Considering that West Virginia is the transitional zone between the Atlantic seaboard dialects and the Midlands, do sociolinguistic boundaries exist between the eastern and western boundaries of West Virginia?

Most often, speakers in this dialect region have been sweepingly classified as vernacular, and they have been offhandedly linked to inbreeding and retardation.¹⁰ The WVDP’s findings to date present a different picture. The same range of vernacularity found in other varieties of English in the United States is found in this region. Preliminary evidence indicates that social class operates similarly to other communities;¹¹ however, the average rate of vernacular features may be higher than that of other regions. With the dearth of recent studies, no hypotheses can be tested. How vernacular is English in Appalachia? To what degree do social factors modulate vernacular sociolinguistic variables? No recent quantitative sociolinguistic assessment has been widely considered by the field of sociolinguistics. Allison Burkette¹² did consider linguistic geography in a small community in the North Carolina mountains (thirteen speakers). Christine Mallinson and Rebecca Childs¹³ have explored sociolinguistic constraints in a small North Carolina mountain community, but regional affiliations have not been their concern.

Social divisions in West Virginia have not been explored since the early 1970s, when important economic changes were beginning in the state. Since that time, traditional industries (e.g., mining and forestry) have begun to share the economic spotlight with technology-based positions and factory jobs. As West Virginia has changed, sociolinguistic variation can track when and why these changes have occurred.

The last goal of the WVDP is to assess patterns of diachronic variation. How are the language variation patterns of Appalachia changing? One current hypothesis is that those language variation patterns marked as stereotypes have quantitatively dissipated through apparent time. Other features, such as pleonastic pronouns (e.g., my sister, she is always on time...