Country Accents

What is a "country accent" (in Oklahoma and beyond)?

After Dr. Freeman moved to Oklahoma, she started wondering what people mean when they say -- either proudly or apologetically -- that Oklahoma has a "country accent" or that Oklahomans "are country" even if they're not from a rural area. In a related project on Oklahoma English, Oklahomans' imitations of Country and Southern accents were similar (the Accent Copy Cat study), and other Oklahomans couldn't tell them apart (the Name That Accent experiment), but people still don't think of Oklahoma (or its people or accents) as Southern. Even if their descriptions and attitudes -- both positive and negative -- about Oklahoma, "countryness," and Southernness are similar, Oklahomans seem to feel that "country" is a better fit.

Up to this point, Dr. Freeman had just been asking people what they thought whenever it came up, and she heard from colleagues in other states that "country" didn't quite mean the same thing where they lived -- it might be more negative, like "redneck," or something people in a city would say to call rural areas unworldly, like "provincial." But no matter where they were, the description was never simple.

So, she decided to ask people from all over America to weigh in. What does "country" mean where you're from?

Presentations

(*student authors)

Freeman, V. & *Curran, J. (2020, January). Is Country the same as Southern? Characterizing the Oklahoma Country accent via imitations. Poster, American Dialect Society (ADS), New Orleans, LA.
*Curran, J. & Freeman, V. (2019, November). Country or Southern: Does it even matter? Language and Linguistics Student Conference (LLSC), Edmond, OK.

Related Work

Oklahoma English Project

Past Recruitments

Students

Jenna Curran
Christie Harris
Molly Landers

Student Corner

Data and Materials

Zoom videos of 10 groups (as of June 2021), usually 3-4 people each, discussing what it means to call someone or something "country" where they're from. Mostly college-age friends, some including parents. Most groups are from the same place but don't necessarily live in the same place now. Some from Oklahoma, Indiana, other nearby or Midwestern states.
Audio recordings of 3 focus groups from Oklahoma or nearby states discussing how people talk in Oklahoma, including what "country" means. 4 people each, one group of OSU students, two with OSU staff (age 30s-50s, college-educated), about half male/female.
Preliminary descriptions of common themes about Oklahoma English from the focus groups -- see Part 1 of LLSC slides above.
Discussion questions, consent and procedures in Qualtrics, flyers, IRB forms, etc.
Basic participant demographics.

Project Ideas

Find, describe themes in the discussions: deeper look at Oklahoma, compare regions or people by demographics (What does "country" mean around the U.S.? to city/country folk? to younger/older people?)
Collect more groups, targeting a specific region or to get good geographic coverage of the U.S., or targeting/covering people by other demographics (age, gender, city size, ethnicity, etc.)
Any acoustic or linguistic analysis of the conversational speech