The University of Kentucky held Myths & Realities of Appalachian Englishes, an event exploring the reality of language spoken in Eastern Kentucky.

In collaboration with 250 Lex, UK professor of linguistics, Jennifer Cramer, discussed misconceptions about Appalachia’s diversity and its reality at Lexington’s Central Public Library on Saturday, March 29.

“There are a lot of ideas about Appalachia, its people and its languages that are misleading,” Cramer said. “The more we get to know how people and their language work, the better we will be as people to interact with others.”

Next to an image of an “average” Appalachian male who is “poor, bearded, shoeless and gun-toting,” Cramer said Appalachia is immersed in mythologies, including stereotypes of being isolated, monolithic and monolingual.

“I’m sure you can find someone who looks similar to this man. It is a character, but maybe there’s one or two (like him),” Cramer said. “These are some of the details that we have to dig into when we’re talking about language, people and culture.”

According to Cramer, the Snuffy Smith comic strip also misrepresented some linguistic features of Appalachia, such as the word “was” being written as “wuz,” saying it did not reflect Appalachia’s reality.

“Some of the features are Appalachian English, but some of them are probably there to make the characters look stupid,” Cramer said. “The patches on the elbows, the coonskin hat, there’s a lot of things that go into that imagery, and the language is part of it to make this family look silly in some manner.”

Cramer said dialect is a language variety associated with a certain group, saying it is a “variety with all the differences,” including sound, word and sentence structure.

“The way I tell my students to think about it is that there’s no such thing as flavorless ice cream,” Cramer said. “Every variety of English or any other language is just a different flavor of that language. . .that’s when we talk about dialects and talk about accents.”

This diversity is reflected in the “Appalachian Englishes” phrase, even though “English teachers and Microsoft Word do not like it,” Englishes convey the idea of the variations of English language.

According to Cramer, this reality confronts the stereotypical myth because people from different parts of Appalachia or even within the same town “sound different” and present language variation.

Cramer said the varieties of English spoken in Appalachia are “systematic, vibrant and constantly changing,” saying those features characterize the reality of Englishes in Appalachia.

According to Cramer, many UK students with stigmatized dialects are made fun of. As a result, Cramer said, they change how they talk in order to fit the definition of being a college student.

“Everyone has an accent, everyone has a dialect,” Cramer said. “We really should work hard to understand each other and not try to pick on each other for how we talk.”

Eastern Kentucky University communications professor, Eric Meiners, said he is conducting research on conversations people have about dialects.

Meiners said many students from Kentucky and the central Appalachian region discuss dialect with their families, including their identity in college and what it means to be a college student.

Meiners said the “sheer diversity” that exists in Appalachian Englishes goes beyond the stereotypes.

“It’s important to acknowledge that the language doesn’t just end on the county line. It’s an emerging thing,” Meiners said. “There’s a lot more subtlety and nuance to Appalachian culture and language than stereotypes would indicate.”