Young Women in the U.S. South: The Emergence of a New Southern Identity
Numerous language scholars are moving towards understanding linguistic variation in the context of enacting various social personae (Eckert 2008, Moore Podesva 2009, Zhang 2005) Using ethnographic methods, which view language practices within local cultural contexts, can reveal correlations between linguistic choices and various displays of such personae, for example in linking language practices to ethnic ties (Mendoza Denton 2008) or city orientation (Johnstone 2006) In this paper, I examine how adolescent females in the urban U.S. South construct regionally meaningful personae using various Southern linguistic features, but I argue that it is their use of other nonlinguistic levels of identity that may in fact be more meaningful as they construct Southernness. I examine a locally defined Southern identity through an ethnographic study of the members of an elite high school sorority in the U.S. South. While members of this group minimally use traditionally defined Southern dialect features (e.g. pin/pen merger, /ay/ monophthongization) they maintain strong beliefs about their Southern identities. That is, language is only one, often minor, component of these speakers' Southern identities. Furthermore, these adolescents' orientations to Southern models of personhood (Agha 2007) are defined in terms of other macro social features, including attitudes toward traditional gender roles, conservative Christianity, family practices, and Southern foods. Thus, I argue that for these speakers, language use alone may not indicate Southern identity, but by being attuned to other resources, we can see that these speakers still construct themselves as Southern while they redefine what it means to be young women in the South.