This was the subject of no small debate at a party last night.
It’s a given, I think, that when people in the U.S. north of the Mason-Dixon line want to project a characterization of less-than-stellar intellect, they will almost always resort to the clichéd redneck/hillbilly dialect as a shortcut. This takes advantage of the stereotypical perception of slow-talking country people as not being particularly smart. (An unfair perception, of course, but that’s not the point. It’s the widespread practice that interests me here, not whether or not it has anything to do with reality. So don’t go there.)
So if somebody who already speaks with a classic Southern dialect — Georgia, say, because of course there are several — wants to put foth this kind of characterization, what dialect do they use?
Two data points were offered. One woman described her boyfriend, who is from Baton Rouge and speaks with a strong regional accent; apparently when he puts on a stupid-guy voice, he makes himself sound more Southern. Another woman went to school in Alabama and said the local equivalent was to affect a broad Brooklyn-esque dialect. (Which was, of course, no more specific to Brooklyn than an outsider’s Southern accent is specific to, say, Montgomery, but whatever.)
So wha’d all o’ y’all say, Southern Dopers? When people in your area slip into the standard dumb-yokel persona, what vocal mask is employed?
(Note that I’m looking for general regional practice, and overall tendencies, not what you yourself might specifically do. That’s why this is in GQ, not IMHO.)
IMO, A redneck/hillbilly accent is not the same as a Southern accent. I think the cliche hillbilly accent is what a Southern person would use to project “dumb”.
Now matter how redneck someone is, there is a family that they know that is even more trashy or redneck than they are. Southerners know that an exaggerated redneck accent doesn’t sound that bright even if they have it so exaggerating it is what usually happens. There are other forms of contempt reserved for other accents but they are usually difficult to do and don’t serve as well for that effect.
Among people I hang out with, the standard “stupid”-sounding accent is a working-class New York-sounding accent – whatever accent it is where people say “dis” and “dese” and “hey youze guyz!” and such. The idea is to sound like some uneducated guido.
Being from Wisconsin and now living in Minneapolis the people around here talk fairly normal. But if you want to mock someone who is a local you immediately do the “Fargo” accent to annoy them.
Since relocating to Houston, I’ve come across more than a few locals with pronounced Southern accents who, when they wanted to sound “dumb,” put on an affected black accent.
I’ll sometimes hear someone affect the characteristics of a recognizable character actor dummy. Maybe a Jim Nabors or a Cliff Claven. Others seem to adopt almost a Barney Rubble voice, kinda that universal, slow talikng doofus.
In my family, we do an exaggerated upper-midwest (Wisconsin/Minnesota) accent. But maybe that’s because we have family members up there (I mean, “up dare”) who are such appropriate targets.
No general policy on this that I’ve seen in my many years living in the South.
The exaggerated redneck/hillbilly accent is a common one, but there are many others (the urban black accent aforementioned not being uncommon, either.)
The classic “yokel hillbilly” accent you might see on Comedy Central or something, is, in my experiences an imitation of appalachian accents. A great deal of appalachia is indeed in “the South” but “the South” and appalachia have never seen eye to eye on a lot of things. There’s a big difference between people who live in Nashville and people who live in the mountains of Tennessee, and a big difference between people who live in Richmond and the people who live in the western end of the state in the mountains. Appalachia I think is a distinct subregion, mostly within the south but some of it going into the North, with residents who are ridiculed by the nation at large, and indeed “Southerners” as well.
To sound mockingly stupid, he’d hunch a bit, drawl more, and speak at a rate of about 50% of normal.
Eh, I don’t know.
When I want to put on a “moron” voice, I switch to a typically lower-class East Vancouver accent and matching colloquialisms.
There’s no regional prejudice there – although it’s arguably a bit classist. (Maybe self-consciously – my mother’s rude bits weren’t scraped by any silver spoon when I was on the way out.)
Anyway, it’s just the easiest way to sound uneducated and dim-witted – imitate the unschooled you’re most familiar with.
Actually, judging both by the responses and by my experience, it is not a matter of buying into a national stereotype of their region, but a matter that nearly every region has its own derided accent and everyone typically uses their own. Note the “Fargo” accent described by folks West of the Great Lakes and the “Brooklyn” accent noted by others. In high school, the “dumb” accent we used in Detroit was generally the “Downriver Polish” accent, although the local Italian accent was occasionally used. There was a “hillbilly” accent used on occasion, but Detroit received a very large wave of immigration from Kentucky during WWII so it was, effectively, a local accent, as well.
True. In Massachusetts, people do the Italian Guido or at least a strong Boston accent when they want to sound like a maroon. People in New Hampshire and Maine pick the strong hick versions of their state to do it.
My mother has a fairly pronounced North Georgia accent. Sometimes she will try to affect an accent that is of some other region, like Brooklyn or England, but she honestly can’t do it. She just ends up sounding even more Southern.
