UA to Host Symposium on Language Variety in the South

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – How did distinctively Southern ways of using language develop? How is the speech of Southerners represented in popular culture? What other languages besides English have been spoken in the South? How is language changing in the South?

These and many other questions will be examined at The University of Alabama during a three-day symposium on “Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” April 15-17 in the Ferguson Center. This once in a decade symposium will be held with the yearly spring meeting of the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics.

The conference will include more than 100 different presentations on language and dialects of the South. The conference is free to UA faculty and students and to the general public, who are welcome to attend any of the presentations.

Kathryn Tucker Windham will use her uniquely Southern storytelling style to charm audiences on Friday from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. in the Ferguson Theater. On Saturday at 2 p.m. in the Ferguson Theater, Tuscaloosa native Rachel Shuttlesworth will talk about how Southern American English has been represented in movies adapted from books, such as “Steel Magnolias,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “The Color Purple,” “A Time to Kill” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

On Thursday at 11:20 a.m. in the Ferguson Theater, Dr. Crawford Feagin will discuss the language changes in Alabama during the past 100 years. The Anniston native studies Southern pronunciation and looks at the motivations for language change. Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. in the Ferguson Theater, Dr. John Lipski from Penn State will give a lecture “Is “Spanglish” the third language of the South?: truth and fantasy about U.S. Spanish,” one of many presentations pertaining to Spanish speakers in the South.

Naming in the African-American community is the subject of one presentation by Dr. Janis Nuckolls and Dr. Linda Beito during a session on African American English Issues from 11:20 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday in the Ferguson Forum.

Native American languages, the earliest languages spoken in the Southeast, will be highlighted in a number of presentations including a general introduction by Dr. Pamela Munro, on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. in the Ferguson Theater, and recitations by Margaret Mauldin (Muskogee Creek) of traditional Creek stories. In addition, there will be multimedia presentations on Southern dialects and Cajun French on Friday and Saturday in the Ferguson Theater.

An important feature of the conferences is the Saturday program for K-12 teachers. It has been approved by the Tuscaloosa City Schools and the Tuscaloosa County Schools for professional development hours. This outreach is part of UA’s mission of service to the community.

The goal of the conference is to provide a forum of exchange for researchers concerned with language variety in the South. Important issues include the relationship between black and white speech in the South, past and present linguistic diversity and the relationship between language and identity.

Organizers of the event are linguists Dr. Michael D. Picone, professor of French and linguistics, and Dr. Catherine Evans Davies, associate professor of linguistics. The field of linguistics bridges the social sciences and the humanities. Major funding for the conference comes from the National Science Foundation, Regional Humanities Centers at Tulane and the University of Virginia, and the UA College of Arts and Sciences.

For a complete conference schedule and a complete listing of sponsors, go to http://www.as.ua.edu/lavis. Short descriptions of every presentation are also available on the conference website.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state, with approximately 5,500 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students. The College has received national recognition for academic excellence, and the College’s students have been selected for many of the nation’s top academic honors, including 13 Rhodes Scholarships, 14 Goldwater Scholarships, seven Truman Scholarships, and 15 memberships on USA Today’s Academic All-American teams.