The Small Town Way We Speak

When I attended the Rural County Career Fair as a reporter, I came across a very interesting phenomenon about the way we speak.

One of the men at the booth on remote work was talking about all the remote jobs that were available for rural communities like ours. One of the jobs he mentioned was teaching English to people in different countries. He was quick, however, to qualify that suggestion with a joke, saying, “Of course, in Panguitch, Utah, we don’t know how to speak English.”

Now I know this was just a joke, but the fact that it even made it into this guy’s discourse shows something about the way small town people speak — and how we feel about it.

I studied linguistics in college, and I am a total word nerd and an editor, which sometimes intimidates people. People around here, though, seem to feel especially intimidated and even defensive toward journalists, teachers, editors and just people who seem to know how to speak.

Why is that?

The Way We Speak

A big part of it is that we instinctively identify differences between “city people” and “small town people.” City people talk different. That’s a fact, and it shows through in linguistics research. Small town people, too, have a particular flavor of speech that sets us apart.

When my family first moved to Cannonville, we did what every new move-in does: identify differences. We started to notice the funny ways that people spoke that were different from the way we did. My sister, when pressed to talk about the difficulties of moving to a small town, even told someone, “Y’all talk like this!” in an exaggerated cowboy accent.

These were some of the words we identified:

• favorite, pronounced like “favor-ite” with a long i.
• Escalante, pronounced like “Escalant” instead of “Escalant-y.”
• creek, pronounced as “crik.”
• corral, pronounced as “ker-el.”
• up North, to describe going anywhere north of Payson to get groceries or visit family.
• The Dump, describing the steep-grade road going past Bryce Canyon between Tropic and Bryce.

And these were some unfamiliar grammatical constructions:

• was, used as the past-tense verb no matter who the subject is, like “you was walking your dog,” or “we was up North.”
• to, replacing “at” in certain circumstances, like in, “I was down to the crik.”

It took us a while to really catch on and speak the way small town people speak, but now all of my younger siblings speak as if they had been born here. They belong. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Why We Speak that Way

It does feel, however, like the way we speak, work and live in small towns is being attacked. 

Some of that feeling has to do with educational and career aspirations. It’s true that if we want to get a city job, or be respected by people outside of small towns, we have to talk like it. So to those who want that, more power to them.

But some of that defensive feeling is just that we like where we live. Likewise if we want to get a small town job, or be respected by small town people, we also have to talk like it.

Conclusion

Clearly, we know, both instinctively and intellectually, that we need to talk like our people, and it comes through in our jokes and attitudes toward outsiders. Sorry, remote work guy, you didn’t know your joke would turn into a full-on linguistic analysis of Southern Utah. But my point is, is there anything wrong with our way of speaking?

If a cowboy, Southern-Utahn accent is a manifestation of our love for our community; if we feel a certain solidarity with the people around us for the way that we speak; if “up North” gets the point across, then bring it on!

No need to get defensive. Soon Escalant will be the favor-ite place of every word-nerd and “non-English-speaker” alike!

– by Abbie Call

Feature image caption: The way we speak in small towns differs in many ways from the way city people talk. But is there anything wrong with that? It’s our way of showing that we love where we live. Courtesy Oleksandr Pidvalnyi.

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