At 10:58 AM 7/19/99 EDT, Ken Follett wrote:
>Stereotypes of dialect are confusing. They seem to derive from stuff like the
>Dukes of Hazard....

An interesting aside here...  In the summer of 1997, the Oral History
Research Office at Columbia held a "Summer Institute" that dealt with
dialect.  Alessandro Portelli conducted interviews with residents of Harlan
County, Kentucky, and all the interviews were transcribed verbatim and in
dialect, including sounds from dogs, roosters, et cetera (not an easy task,
I assure you -- I edited some of the transcripts).  Discussions at the
institute revolved around whether the dialect and the environmental cues
were important aspects to keep in the transcript.  I don't recall the exact
outcome (another time, another place, another life for me), but I believe
the majority of the discussants favored removing the dialect and
environmental cues from the transcript as long as the original, unedited
audio tapes were available (forgive me if I am wrong here)...  It seems
that the dialect got in the way of understanding the "meat" of the
interview.  I, myself, enjoyed reading the original transcripts along with
the tapes -- both the transcript and tape made much more sense to my
northern ears that way...

As for us up here in Minni-so-tah, we will forever be associated with that
wonderfully dialectal movie, Fargo (Fargo's really in North Dakota, of
course, but it's all just flyover land to many of you) -- I guess that's
about the same as being associated with 'da Yoopers, for those of you from
Michigan...

Barbara