students hear as a Southern accent moves far beyond the boundary of what
they identify as the South.
Figure 11.7 Comparison of perceptual, production, and identification boundaries for the area
“Southern,” from the point of view of Hawai’i respondents
Source: Preston (1989a: 129). Reprinted with permission of the publisher, De Gruyter
Thus, if we were to isolate those states which seem consistently to be
marked as some kind of Southern in cultural and linguistic terms (Table
11.2), we are then talking about almost 103 million people, or just over 34
percent of the total population of the United States in the first decade of
the twenty-first century.
This number might be too small, because it excludes those parts of
Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and the Southwest where English is perceived
as clearly Southern in accent. On the other hand, the figure is clearly too
large; to assume that all 103 million people in the 12 named states are