My East Texas Drawl

"Despite the fact that certain features of Texas dialects of English are sometimes stimatized by speakers from other areas as hicky or 'incorrect,' Texans will continue to use them, partly because people who live in Texas wish to distinguish themselves form other Americans." 

- Keith Walters, University of Texas linguist

In college, I had several "ah-ha" moments that showed me more of who I was and who I wanted to be - One of those happened sitting in a lecture hall in Communication 101. My freshman year I entered college as a Communication major. I had been watching news programs for as long as I could remember and was always on top of current events. So naturally, as many of my classmates in my department, I was very interested at the time in persuing a career in broadcast journalism. That allllll changed when we studied accents.

Our professor had been teaching on the way people from different regions and communities within those regions communicate with one another, and how a language (like English) could vary across an area, specifically the United States. This was something that was very interesting to me and very relevant in my life at the time.

I had grown up in East Texas and in a family where the East Texas drawl was almost genetic. Although I had traveled some and had had many experiences that had made it clear that my Texan accent was distinctive, I had not yet noticed that what people were really hearing wasn't just a Texan accent, but my East Texan drawl.

Once in New York City I had tried to order "iced tea" and it took about 4 times of repeating and annunciating to the best of my ability for the waiter to understand.  My mom and I decided that because of the way us East Texans often pronounce our "i", my "iced tea" probably sounded like "ass tea." That was not on the menu...

I met a similar circumstance when in college when in a freshman bible study group my groupmates kept thinking I was saying "bobble",  not "bible." After moving out of East Texas to go to college at Texas A&M (where Texan accents were running wild), it became clear to me that The Drawl was taking away my "i's" and making them sound like "o's" or "a's." My accent was clearly different from some of my friends. Those from West Texas had The Twang that was more nasally and shortened words, rather than adding syllables and making them longer like we do in the East...

After I quickly learned what the difference was between the way I talked and my friends from other parts of the state, I easily became able to determine if someone was an East Texan neighbor just from hearing them talk. It became like a secret talent of mine - I could pin someone from Dangerfield, Lufkin, Canton or even Paris after hearing only a sentence or two come out of their mouth. Haha, really! And at that point I became more proud of my accent too! I loved East Texas then as much as I do now, and I realized liked having something about me that was distinguishably related to where I was from.

But in my communication class our professor spoke about how when someone works in broadcast television, they have to leave their accent behind and learn how to speak in an "accentless" voice (basically in something that sounds like someone from the MidWest). That didn't fly well with me. I felt like to chose to loose my accent would be leaving a part of me behind, and just be an incorrect representation of who I am. So sitting in Communication 101 I decided that a career in broadcast journalism just wasn't something that I was interested in anymore - I would rather keep my East Texan Drawl and stay true to my roots. I decided that I didn't need to be the next Katie Couric anyways! :)  And I like to think that's a little bit of Small Town Style.