ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the linguistic history of the South, focusing on historical and contemporary influences that have contributed to its development. It identifies common linguistic features that generally characterize Southern English, before considering trajectories in the South's linguistic future. Language varieties exist on a continuum and there are no clear dividing lines between where one dialect ends and another begins, either in terms of who its speakers are and where they live, or in terms of what features characterize it. Language is a tool that speakers use to establish, reinforce, navigate, cross, and challenge borders. Social notions about who is privileged and who is stigmatized and struggles over what type of language is valued socially and institutionally, particularly in classrooms and in the media, are critical questions that are perennially relevant in the study of language and place, culture and space.
