Classification of Texas

Guest   Mon Nov 14, 2005 1:27 am GMT
Is Texas considered to be linguistically and culturally a part of the West or the South?
Kirk   Mon Nov 14, 2005 1:52 am GMT
<<Is Texas considered to be linguistically and culturally a part of the West or the South?>>

It depends. As a kid I lived in a suburban area of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area and most of the people there didn't have southern accents. A lot of this has to do with the fact that a lot of people live in the area who aren't originally from Texas (like me and my family) and even those who are native Texans there tend to sound pretty "General American" (it's the prestige accent and southern speech there is relatively stigmatized even for natives--there can be a great divide between urban Texans and their rural counterparts and how people identify with one or the other and have corresponding linguistic patterns). I would mostly include D-FW within the realm of Midwestern English. I believe the situation is similar for Houstonians and other urban Texans. As soon as you leave large urban areas in Texas you're almost guaranteed to hear accents with southern features much more frequently than you'd hear them within heavily urban/suburban areas.

Culturally, one way I describe suburban D-FW is that in many ways it feels like "Los Angeles on the Great Plains." As a large population center with millions and millions of inhabitants, you can find anything and everything there and outlook is pretty cosmopolitan. Also, as with most other metro areas in North America, it is ruled by sprawling mostly low-to-medium-density development (endless wide freeways crisscrossing each other, malls, shopping centers, large master-planned housing developments) surrounding the denser urban cores of Dallas and Ft. Worth.
Uriel   Mon Nov 14, 2005 3:05 am GMT
Texas is such a big state that it spans several dialect regions. If this helps, it's a link to a dialect map of the US with explanations of each one:

http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/1906/dialects.html
Brennus   Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:33 am GMT
Texans are Southerners. I know a lot of people who wonder why they're often called "Westerners" instead.
Uriel   Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:49 am GMT
East Texans are Southerners. West Texans are Westerners.
Kirk   Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:54 am GMT
And North Texans are Midwesterners.
Brennus   Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:21 am GMT
Just a note:

In the late 18th and 19th Centuries, the North and the South competed with each other for settlement of the American West. The North eventually won out reaching California and successfully outlawing slavery in Kansas and New Mexico. Texas and Missouri were the South's last big prizes. The late British Historian, Arnold Toynbee (1889 - 1975) talks about this a little bit in his famous "Study of History" . I'm sure other historians do too (i.e. Frederick Jackson Turner) but I haven't really read them.
Travis   Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:26 am GMT
>>And North Texans are Midwesterners.<<

I find the idea of such sort of funny, considering that such is nowhere even close to my normal conception of the Midwest. Of course, then, to me, saying that, for example, Missouri is part of the Midwest is rather iffy, and the occasional idea that Kentucky is part of such is laughable.

But anyways, if you're referring to dialect groups, I'd think that that part of Texas would be primarily speaking Midland dialects, rather than Western dialects or the sorts of dialects found throughout the Upper Midwest.
Kirk   Mon Nov 14, 2005 9:27 am GMT
<<But anyways, if you're referring to dialect groups, I'd think that that part of Texas would be primarily speaking Midland dialects, rather than Western dialects or the sorts of dialects found throughout the Upper Midwest.>>

Oh yeah it's definitely not Northern Midwest in terms of dialects. I guess Midlands would be more accurate.
Uriel   Mon Nov 14, 2005 3:06 pm GMT
Brennus, politics and culture often overlap each other oddly. While Texas did allow slavery and seceded from the Union during the Civil War (much to the exasperation of Sam Houston, who had just spent a whole decade fighting to get TX ADMITTED to the Union), that doesn't mean that those political ties are accurately reflected in the local culture and dialect. After all, even New Mexico was nominally "captured" by the South during the Civil War, although it was never a battleground state -- but NM is firmly Southwestern, with a very different cultural heritage than the South.
Dude Who Knows   Tue Nov 15, 2005 5:17 am GMT
I would consider Texas part of the Southwest, along with New Mexico and Arizona. Texas does have many connections to the South. As was mentioned above, it was a Confederate state during the Civil War, and Texan dialects sound very similar to Southern dialects to most people from other regions of the United States. Still, Texas is not considered "Dixie", nor part of the "Deep South."
Brennus   Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:59 pm GMT
Uriel ,

Hello. I respect your viewpoint as well as that of Dude who knows. I realize this is an issue not everyone is going to agree on. Still, I take the more conservative view myself even though I'm aware that Texas has received newcomers from the Midwestern and Northern states from time to time. (For example, Norman Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey and Kris Kristofersson's family probably drifted down from the Dakotas since Texas was not an original destination for Scandinavian immigrants).

I agree with you, however, that New Mexico is "firmly Southwestern" even if it's debatable whether Texas and Oklahoma are.
Uriel   Wed Nov 16, 2005 7:27 am GMT
Well, Texas has always been sort of the odd one out, ever since its inception! Its history as former Mexican real estate and independent republic, as well as its transitional location between the South and the Southwest make it neither fish nor fowl, hard to classify.
Brennus   Wed Nov 16, 2005 7:54 am GMT
Uriel,

True. I understand also that in colonial times much of Texas and Colorado were claimed by both Spain and France since the Spanish and the French were never able to agree on a boundary between New Spain and the Lousiana Territory (La Louisianne).
Brennus   Wed Nov 16, 2005 7:57 am GMT
were claimed > 'was claimed' is probably better.