The United States’ South is rich in history, myth, and tradition. The lives of Southern people have been influenced throughout the years by a variety of sources, including traditions brought to the United States by Spanish and French explorers, Irish, Scottish, and English immigrants, and African slaves. The language of the American South is particularly distinctive. The Southern dialect, which is usually considered the speech of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and parts of Texas and Missouri, varies slightly from state to state. In other words, a Southerner from Alabama can hear the differences in the speech patterns of an Arkansan, a Georgian, and a Floridian, whereas those from other parts of the world are probably only likely to hear that the speakers are generally "Southern."

Despite the wide range of diversity within the larger Southern dialect, the critical analysis of Englishes tends to "forget" them—they ignore Southern American English in general or disregard it as minor or insignificant:

It is perhaps true that the number of dialects in the United States is not as wide as in Britain, but the range of varieties of dialects is great in the United States; regional varieties of the language can be found throughout the North, West and Midwestern regions as well as the South. Additionally, the population of the United States was approximately 250 million people in the 1990 census. As a conservative estimate, approximately 55 million of those people lived in areas that speak the Southern dialect. To refer to the varying dialect of approximately 22% of people of the United States as a "certain variety of ‘tidewater’ English off the south-east coast" suggests that the researcher did not completely research the varieties of the Southern dialect.

After the United States’ Civil War, the people of the Northern United States, as the victors in the war, became the political and intellectual leaders of the United States. For this reason, the life of the progressive, industrial North (as opposed to the pioneering West or the defeated South) became the "standard" by which all United States citizens were expected to live. However, the Southern people still maintained their traditional beliefs, which unfortunately included a lack of respect for women and people of color, and the area remained agricultural rather than industrial. The Southern way of life was therefore considered by the Northern "ruling class" to be unenlightened and backward. Through this chain of events, the use of the Southern dialects, predictably, became equated with a lack of education:

The stereotype of the "ignorant Southerner" is still widespread throughout the United States. In radio and television programming as well as films and books, the character with the "Southern" accent—usually an affected accent by an actor who does not come from a Southern heritage—is the comic relief, the buffoon, or perhaps the clumsy but lovable character. The use of this sort of stereotype is found in all nations—for England, the Liverpudlian or Welsh character might serve as an example; in Taiwan the dolts are the ones who speak Mandarin with a heavy Taiwanese accent (the "Taiwanese Mandarin"). The use of this "accent stereotype" as a kind of truth in all forms of media worldwide should cast doubts on the ability or agenda of the media to produce accurate representations of the people who speak any particular language. However, this faith in the media is present in the writings of at least some researchers:

In actuality, television programs, films, and other media generally only serve to provide representations of the normative or standard forms of the language, using local dialects or accents only to serve as a reinforcement of a particular stereotype. This phenomenon is especially present in the United States, where the closest equivalent to "R. P." English is the "Network Standard," which is "the presumed usage of radio and television newscasters, etc." and can be described as accent-neutral. Characters who speak with obvious accents are therefore deliberately trying to draw forth a reaction in their audiences—they are putting an emphasis on what the characters are "supposed to be like" based primarily on their accents.

So what does it signify that the media chooses to represent only what is considered to be standard English in a neutral or generally positive light? As Thiru Kandiah says, " . . . [the norms and positives associated with standardized English] may be seen to be but reifications of the values and the ideological concerns of the dominant group, which, through their normalizing claims, serve to legitimate and extend their hegemonic position and purposes." In other words, the representation of Southern (or Welsh, or Taiwanese Mandarin) characters as foolish serves to reinforce the strength of those who are in control of the leadership of the country while lowering the national opinion of the real people that are symbolized by those characters. In the case of the United States, this "common entertainment experience" that provides "representations of the world to a wide population" cripples, as stated before, at least 22% of the population.

Books written by those outside of the Southern tradition that use stereotypical "Southern" characters all too often have a similar damaging effect on the reputation of real Southern people. However, when Southern authors choose to give accurate representations of Southern speech in their works, the intended effect is generally not disablement, but rather empowerment through true-to-life illustrations of real Southern people. As Skinner stated, "the demotic tradition pioneered by Mark Twain" did indeed reduce the gap between written and spoken communication, as does all writing in dialect. It also attempts to reduce the gap between the reality of Southern people and life and the misconceptions that surround them.

William Faulkner, one of the principal Southern authors of the twentieth century, carries character accuracy to its fullest, creating true portraits of Southern people and speech in his novels. He created the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, roughly based around his hometown Oxford, Mississippi, and set the majority of his novels there. For this reason, the speech he recreates in most of his novels would be the Mississippi version of the Southern dialect.

In Sanctuary, Faulkner creates the story of Temple Drake, a debutante who is kidnapped. As I Lay Dying is a narrative from several points of view about a family’s journey to bury their dead wife and mother. Light in August combines many subplots to create an overall theme of "struggle against all odds." In all of these novels, Faulkner’s characters come from different cultural and financial backgrounds, but all share features of Southern speech that cross over these socio-economic boundaries. Interestingly, the features of language that one reads in Faulkner’s novels from sixty years ago can be heard today in the speech of Mississippi lawyers or farmers, Mississippi college students or mechanics, Mississippi housewives or receptionists. Unlike British English, where differences in vocabulary and usage seem to stem largely from class differences, many "sub-standard" features of Southern English are constant in informal speech throughout the population—regardless of background, class, or education.

In Sanctuary, Temple Drake is involved in a car accident, which begins a chain of events that eventually leads to her kidnapping by Popeye, a Memphis gangster who lives in the backwoods of Mississippi. The following extract is set just after the car accident, when Tommy takes Temple and Gowan, her date, to Popeye’s house in the woods in order to help them find a way back to their destination, Jefferson, Mississippi:

Disregarding Faulkner’s representation of a strong "backwoods" accent in words such as "ef" for "if" or "git" for "get," the features of vocabulary and sentence construction in Tommy’s speech are consistent with Southern English. In the South, "durn" is a common euphemism for "damn" or "damned." "Ere" usually means "even" or "nearly," depending on context, and the use of "them" as opposed to "those" is prevalent when the word is used as a subject, as is dropping the initial "th" from the word "them" when it is used as an object. The word "right" is often used as synonymous with "very," as seen in "right tall."

As Tommy is an uneducated man from the backwoods who probably has little exposure to people outside his immediate living quarters, he does use some features of speech that are more common to those who have a lower level of education, such as the use of the words "hern" and "hisn" as opposed to "hers" and "his." One might believe that the word "aint" is also most common in those with little education, but it is in fact in common usage throughout the American South in informal speech. "How much she weigh" is an example of ellipsis, which is found in most varieties of English, not just Southern English.

In comparison to Tommy, Anse Bundren is also a fairly uneducated man, but his life as a farmer in a small town or village affords him more human contact. Throughout the book, a comparison of Anse’s vocabulary with that of Tommy or any other "backwoods" Faulkner character would reveal that they often make the same sorts of word choices. The following extract finds Anse and his sons in a wagon transporting his dead wife’s body to Jefferson, where she requested to be buried. This passage describes how two of Anse’s sons are a source of embarrassment to him: Jewel because he insists on riding a wild horse alongside the wagon, Darl because other people view him as "simple-minded":

Again, "durn" is the curse word of choice for Anse. "Hadn’t no more than" is a common Southern phrase meaning "had just" or "had only," and "I says" is used in place of "I told him/her." This construction is predominant in Southern speech and is similar in function to the use of the "historic present" in story-telling, but to use the more "standard" construction "I say" in this context would feel unnatural to the Southern tongue. The substandard usage of words such as "begun" for "began," "setting" for "sitting," and "laying" for "lying" is extremely widespread in all Southern speech, from educated and uneducated speakers alike. It probably stems from the use of wide, flat vowels in the accent, so that there is little difference in the pronunciation of the "correct" versus the "incorrect" words.

Of course, many critics would say that the above examples come from an uneducated sample of speakers, and that the "standard" of Southern speech—if Southern speech can ever be admitted by critics to having a standard—is likely to be less limited in vocabulary and more correct in usage: " . . . [T]here has been a tendency to regard the minority usage of upper- and middle-class life, education, publishing, law, administration, and government as more proper, legitimate, and real than anything used by other English-speakers, whoever and wherever they might be." But as the extract from Light in August shows, even the educated population, those involved in law and administration, still use many of the features of "sub-standard" Southern speech that Anse and Tommy themselves would use:

The sheriff and deputy are well-respected, well-educated Southern men involved in the administration of law. But the conversation, while not completely informal, is rich with such Southern colloquialisms as "a good spell" meaning "a long while," "reckon" meaning "assume," "fixing to" meaning "about to," "aimed to" meaning "meant to," and "leastways" meaning "at least." In addition to the colloquialisms, there is a predominance of "substandard" word usage in their conversation. The deputy uses "begun" for "began," "done" for "already," and "come" instead of "came": "she begun telling me," "like she had done got used to telling it, done got into the habit," "done come on ahead of her," and "Byron come in." He also uses "aint" liberally, saying "I aint saying it’s Byron’s" and "It aint going to be long, neither." In this last instance, he uses "neither" instead of "either"; double negatives are in epidemic proportions in everyday Southern speech.

Another feature of Southern speech that does not relate directly to vocabulary or usage is the tendency to use colorful and descriptive speech. One example is found in Anse’s convoluted sentence structure ("her wanting us all to be in the wagon with her that sprung from her flesh and blood," "setting back there on the plank seat with Cash, with his dead ma laying in her coffin at his feet, laughing"). The fact that his meaning is slightly unclear is due to his lack of education, but his overall intention—to describe the hollowness of his situation as thoroughly as possible—is successful. Similarly, Tommy’s question about Gowan "laying crop by" is vivid despite his obvious lack of education, and it is exactly the sort of euphemism that one would expect from a Southerner whose life is largely agriculturally-based. Likewise, when the deputy says that "Byron Bunch is camped out in a tent about as far from the cabin as from here to the postoffice," he is implying that Byron Bunch has remained near to the woman so that he can be the one to aid her if she happens to give birth suddenly. He does not say this directly, however; he implies it through his distinctly Southern euphemistic language. Interestingly, all of the above examples reveal an attitude shared by many Southern men, that they are responsible for taking care of women and maintaining their "good reputations." A more explicit example of this point of view is found in Anse’s passage censuring Darl’s behavior ("it’s a reflection on your ma, I says, not me: I am a man and I can stand it; it’s on your womenfolks . . .").

How does this brief study of one local variety of English relate to the study of international Englishes? Most importantly, it defies the idea that there is any real "standard" that one can apply to any kind of English. Especially in recent years, with advances in technology and more open international communication and trade, new Englishes have been developing very rapidly. These new Englishes are fascinating from a purely linguistic point of view, but many researchers of international Englishes believe that there should be a standard with which to compare those Englishes, and that standard should be the "original mother tongue," in this case, British English. And, since most international learners want to be as fluent as possible in "true" English, they often accept this standard. But, as Parakrama states:

However, Parakrama has ignored the fact that mother-tongue English has always been "a network of mutually intelligible dialects that systematically enrich and challenge each other through contact." Linguists, if they first studied mother-tongue Englishes and then applied their findings to the new Englishes, would find that Parakrama’s overwhelming difficulty with accepting British English as the standard for international Englishes has been gleefully ignored by the majority of mother-tongue English speakers.

Southern American English, ignored and dismissed as not important enough to merit close study, has become, although living and well, a forgotten dialect. So has every regional English mother-tongue dialect that has been passed over as inconsequential in the race to study the new Englishes. If one looks at examples of all local varieties of English among those who call "English" their mother tongue, one finds that the "standard" is actually the "non-standard," that usage and vocabulary choice are varied wildly. For this reason, a new study of international Englishes could benefit greatly from a look at how most mother-tongue Englishes work to defy the "standard" that so many linguists and critics believe can be applied.