Vernacular pronunciations, grammatical forms, and expressions associated with rustic or
old-fashioned members of a culture. Folk speech, like folk lore, is transmitted from one
generation to another within oral traditions of a culture rather than through public
communications media or educational or institutional precept. It is associated primarily
with the working class in both agrarian and industrial settings, particularly when spoken
with a strong regional accent. Folk speech may be used by anyone, but it is most
commonly associated with individuals who are past middle age, who have relatively little
formal education, or whose income is well below the national average. Because folk
speech persists through many generations, it contains many archaisms and is often used
in folk sayings.
Many of the pronunciations, words, grammatical forms, and syntactic structures that
are regarded as folk speech originated in earlier stages of a language and have been
retained in some or many dialects for centuries. For instance, double or triple negatives
and the use of ain’t (He ain’t never done nuthin like that before) derive from the use of
augmented negation in Old and Middle English and the contraction of are not/am not and
have not/has not (with later loss of h and weakly articulated v and s) in Early Modern
English. Folk usages may also develop from nonhistorical forms of untraceable origin,
such as He ain’t do tkat (“He didn’t do that”) in African American Vernacular English.
Some folk speech is found in all dialects of a language, such as double negatives and
ain’t, whereas other folk usages are specific to certain regions, such as the use of y’all in
the American South. Folk forms may develop in English as a second language and be
retained after acculturation, as in the German and Polish American use of ainna/ enna
(from ain’t it) as a tag question (Hot today, ainna?) used by residents of Milwaukee and
South St. Louis. Occasional folk usages can be traced through millennia, such as the
Chicano Spanish verb form semos for standard somos (we are), traceable to variant usage
in Rome when Augustus Caesar used simus rather than sumus.
In the United States, the regions that were settled by native speakers of English before
1800—New England, the Southeast, Appalachia—are known for their folk speech, such
as “Down East” language in Maine or “hillbilly” talk in Tennessee and northern Georgia.
The Upland South, the Missis-sippi Delta, and the Ozark Mountains were settled by
immigrants from lowland and upland areas of the Southeast and thus use folk speech
forms derived from the language of their linguistic ancestors in the South Atlantic states.
The Midwest and the West attracted a greater variety of immigrants and consequently a
mixing of cultural and linguistic traditions; also, public education was widely available
within two generations after these areas were settled, thereby widening the influence of
“book language” on local speech. Thus, the expression “folk speech of Kansas” would
have a much narrower range of reference than “folk speech of Maine” or “folk speech of
Alabama.”
The folk language of African Americans in the South developed through oral culture,
not just during the time of slavery but well into the 20th century. Because of limited educational and economic opportunities prior to the last quarter of the 20th century,
African Americans not only have had less access to “book language,” but also have lived
in social environments that contribute to the development of vernacular speech that is
substantially different from the language of Americans who have economic, social, and
political power. During Southern migrations to urban areas in the first half of the 20th
century, folk speech forms in Black English vernacular spread across America (such as
the uninflected be in He always be tellin me somethin new). Because Black folk speech
originated in Southern states, the expression “folk speech of African Americans in
California” would be relatively meaningless, whereas “folk speech of African Americans
in the Mississippi Delta” is very meaningful.
Nonstandard verb forms are particularly salient in folk speech. In interviews for the
Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (see Editor’s Note) in New England, the
Upper Midwest, the Atlantic states, and the Gulf states, a substantial number of
Americans said he don’t rather than he doesn’t, particularly older speakers with less than
a high school education. Similar results were found by fieldworkers for the Dictionary of
American Regional English (Cassidy et al. 1985-; henceforth DARE). Most of the
nonstandard verb forms that are regarded as folk speech derive directly or indirectly from
regularization processes that were well under way in Early Middle English (ca. 1250). In
Old and Middle English, the suffixes of past-tense verbs and past participles were weak
(added a suffix with d or t: talk/talked, say/said, buy/bought) or strong (changed the root
vowel but did not add d or t: know/knew/known, find/found/found). Virtually all new
verbs that have entered the language since Late Middle English use the regular weak
inflections (add d or ed), and many of the older verbs have changed their form
(boughten→ bought). Present-day folk use of knowed and growed reflects the tendency
for Early Modern English speakers to use the new form of suffixation, whereas holp and
clomb reflect retention of an old form. Past-tense verbs like he writ and he drunk derive
from strong verbs that used different root vowels in singular and plural forms (he wroot/
thei writ; he drank/thei drunk); in the 18th and 19th centuries, authors of dictionaries and
school grammars favored one of the competing forms but the “folk” often continued to
use other form. Folk usages such as hit (it), betwixt, three foot high/go three mile down
the road, and many pronunciations (for example, sech for such) also have historical
explanations.
Folk usages do not necessarily derive from Middle English (1100–1500) or Early
Modern English (1500–1700) grammatical forms. The present-day use of past-tense
forms as past participles (it was wrote that way; he should have went home) developed in
Modern English after the loss of distinction between past-tense and past-participle forms.
Though these verbs are considered “wrong” by educators, they persist in oral contexts
and thus are part of folk speech. The pasttense forms dove and snuck, following the older
vowel-change forms of the past tense, apparently developed during the 19th century
(Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage). In the late 20th century, writers tend to use
snuck only for humorous effect or to suggest rural or unsophisticated speech, but both
dived and dove are used widely in print. The competing pasttense forms of dive have
regional distributions, with dove predominant in Atlas data from Northern states and
dived predominant in data from Southern states. The distribution of div in Atlas surveys
was similar to that of other archaic forms (thus folk speech)—namely, in northeastern
New England and the Upper South and in the speech of African Americans.
Pronoun forms play a prominent role in folk speech. Throughout medieval and
Renaissance Europe, the secondperson-plural pronouns vous (French), Sie (German), and
ye/ you (Late Middle English) were used for singular reference in formal social contexts,
and the singular forms tu, du, thou/thee were reserved for informal contexts. After you
had become established as a singular form in Early Modern English, you all and you ones
developed as folk plural forms. Over time, these forms were contracted to y’all and
youens. Folk forms also developed in the possessive pronouns in Late Middle English as
my/mine and thy/thine devdoped from Middle English min and thin. The n was elided
when these words were modifiers of nouns beginning with consonants, and the longer
forms were used in modifiers before vowels and in the pronoun form (mine eyes, they are
mine). In Southern and Midland dialects in 14th-century England, the n came to be
associated with the pronoun form and was added to other possessive pronoun forms (your
eyes, they are yourn; his eyes, they are hisn). In Northern and East Midland dialects in
14th-century England, s, by analogy to noun forms, was often used to mark the
possessive pronoun (your eyes, they are yours; her eyes, they are hers) (Mossé 1952:59–
60). In Old and Middle English, none of these possessive pronouns had ever used s. The
East Midland form, which would have been used in the London area, became the
preferred form in printed documents. In interviews for The Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf
States in the 1970s, yourn was used twenty-three times and hisn forty-two times. In
vernacular Black English, s is often added to the pronoun mine in emphatic usage,
particularly by young speakers (What’s mines is mines!).
Loan transfers and borrowings in the speech of immigrant groups have become part of
American folk speech, such as schlep and Are you coming with? from Yiddish influence.
Elements of foreign accent often remain in speech well after acculturation, such as dese
tings in urban Italian American settings in the East; dis and dat in the speech of
Midwesterners of German ancestry; and the Scandinavian American pronunciation rench
for range in the Iron Range of Minnesota. These usages are usually regarded as ethnic
dialect; they are passed from one generation to another by processes that keep other
elements of folk culture alive.
During the 1960s and 1970s, when national attention was focused on the education of
children from impoverished homes, linguists used the term social dialect to refer to the
language of socioeconomic and ethnic groups in America. Social dialects include not
only the “nonstandard” language of minorities (Hispanics, Blacks) and poor Whites, but
also language typically used by speakers of higher social status in certain contexts, such
as the language of sales personnel in elegant shops catering to the rich. In this sense,
Standard English is the dialect that educated people use in semiformal and formal social
contexts.
Authors often use folk speech to indicate that a character is uneducated, rustic, or oldfashioned. Generally, an author uses only a few folk-dialect items, just enough to evoke
the intended impression. Writers often spell words to give the impression of folk
pronunciations, such as duz, sez, wuz, and wimmin. These spellings are known as eye
dialect. In most standard varieties of English, does, says, and women are pronounced duz,
sez, and wimmin, and in rapid speech was is pronounced wuz under weakened stress.
Even though these spellings accurately represent standard as well as folk pronunciations,
the “misspellings” give the impression of rusticity or low level of education.
Though slang and argots are transmitted through oral traditions, they are not folk
speech because their use is limited to groups with specialized interests or to generations
younger than middle age. Slang terms tend to be shortlived: What was neat in the 1950s
became cool in the 1960s, rad in the 1980s, and fly in the 1990s. Such terms are used
primarily by younger speakers and experience short lives, but pot, dope, and crack as
terms for illegal drugs have become candidates for standard usage in public discussions
of drugs in print and electronic media. If these latter terms continue to be used for several
generations after other terms have replaced them, they, too, may be considered folk
speech at some time in the future.
Though folk speech is generally associated with nonstandard usage, such as the
examples used so far, much of our everyday language derives from oral traditions and, in
this sense, is folk speech. For example, soda, pop, tonic, and dope are used in
conversation to refer to carbonated soft drinks. Tonic occurs primarily in New England
and dope in the Southeast, whereas the other two terms are used throughout the country,
though with some regional distribution (pop in Kansas City and soda in St. Louis). In
formal written contexts, soft drinkis preferred because the conversational terms are
considered informal. Young people may introduce terms that later will be regarded as
folk speech. For instance, most of the informants in the Atlas and DARE surveys had
regional variants for dragon fly (such as snake doctor, snake feeder, darning needle), and
interviews during the 1960s and 1970s found that young speakers had added helicopter
bug. Some everyday terms have regional distributions that are rarely noted by anyone
except dialectologists. For example, in DARE interviews, armful is common in Northern
and Eastern states whereas armload is more common in Southwestern and Western
states.
Though many competing grammatical forms and all conversational vocabulary
ultimately derive from oral traditions, some are sanctioned by usage mavens, and others
are not; whether a particular form would be considered folk speech depends on who is
“passing judgment,” who uses the form, and the circumstances under which it is used. In
a school setting, He knowed just where it was—three mile down the road, would be
considered “incorrect,” and perhaps quaint, but the same sentence spoken by the pupil’s
grandfather would be considered folk speech. I seen him, spoken by an elegantly dressed
office worker would be considered “uneducated,” but the same phrase in the speech of a
laborer digging a ditch for a sewer pipe would be considered working-class folk speech.
English professors who use the phrase in any social context would be committing a gaffe,
but animal husbandry professors who use it in conversations with pig farmers might be
merely using the folk speech of those with whom they communicate in their profession.
Donald M.Lance
References
Cassidy, Frederic G., et al. 1985, 1991. Dictionary of American Regional English. Vol. 1, A-C.
Vol. 2, D-H. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
Mosse, Fernand. 1952. A Handbook of Middle English, trans. James A.Walker. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. 1989. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.