I'm reading a section of Stephen King's On Writing where he talks about writing dialogue. In two of his examples, a southern-style accent seems to indicate ignorance. It's actually that style of speaking I like to refer to as "coun'ry," that slow rolling of words into one another that probably came about because southern humidity was far too oppressive to allow haste in anything, even speaking. Either way, such representations usually show the ignorance of the writer as well as the character. In my short life so far, I have lived in three southern states, four if you count Florida, but no one counts Florida. Each state has not just one version of a southern accent, but several. The great South is like Great Britain: when you're from there, you can tell where someone else is from simply by the way they speak.
In the countryside of Tennessee, you will find what may be the most typical country southern accent I've ever heard. In South Carolina, Charleston alone has the refined Charleston accent of the old south (click here to hear former Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings), the Gullah accent of its slave descendants (click here to hear examples), and the lack of an accent at all in its younger generation (actress Mena Suvari and comedian Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" grew up there). The rest of the state has a much more common-sounding southern accent but not much of a country accent. Georgia, Atlanta not included, has a somewhat country accent pervasive throughout, although people speak faster in urban areas than Georgians from the actual countryside. Think of Paula Deen without the theatrical emphasis on her Southern-ness. In the mountains around Georgia and in some of the more rural areas, though, you'll find what some call a "hick" accent - see the comic strip above. That's the accent most used to represent ignorance in books because it represents people whom others assume aren't exposed to outside influences or a proper education. It's prevalent in many Appalachian areas, not because the people are ignorant, but because the people are geographically isolated and have developed their own dialects. In Atlanta, the diversity of its residents causes the southern accent to be less pervasive. The African American youth of Atlanta, though, have a way of speaking that is partly an accent, partly a colloquial vocabulary, and entirely their own.
The actresses in the movie "Steel Magnolias" did a fine job of their southern accents, even though Dolly Parton is from Tennessee and Julia Roberts is from Georgia. The playwright who originally penned "Steel Magnolias" for stage was from Louisiana, where the story takes place, and he knew how to write that Louisiana drawl. It's in the writing of the accent that the differences need to appear, and it's in the poor writing of accents where people get confused and begin to attach the stereotypes associated with the way people speak. Did Alice Walker get the accents right in The Color Purple? It wasn't until the movie came out that I even understood what half of the characters were supposed to be saying. Margaret Mitchell Marsh, though, thoroughly researched the history behind Gone With The Wind, and she represented a variety of different dialects as accurately as anyone can, I suppose, when writing phonetically.
North Carolina, Alabama, Mississipi, Texas, and Oklahoma all have their own accents, too. Perhaps authors who are going to write dialogue of someone in the South but aren't from the South should begin with a travel journal!
