By Bailey Wheeler

The thick southern drawl is everywhere from books to TV shows to movies. Arkansas is placed firmly in the south, but in Northwest Arkansas, many people lack the thick drawl of a southern accent. On the surface, it seems that this way of speaking has disappeared.

NWA is part of the Ozark region, a region linguistically associated with the Ozark accent. According to Rachel Whitaker, a historian at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, the Ozark accent is a subcategory of the Southern accent with some pronunciation coming historically from the Appalachian region of the United States.  

Whitaker is an eighth-generation Ozarker. When she was growing up in the Ozark region in the 1980s and 1990s, the Ozark accent was still spoken in the region. However, Whitaker says that she no longer has hers and that her vowels have gotten longer. According to Whitaker, in the 25 years since she moved to Oklahoma, she has begun to sound more like an Oklahoman. 

Dakota Pirtle moved from Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, within the past several years to live with her partner, Enoch Anglin. Anglin has moved throughout their life to various parts of Arkansas, but is primarily from the small town of Hoxie.

According to Anglin, they find themselves subconsciously changing the accent they speak with depending on the social context. In academic settings, for example, they speak with less of a southern drawl. In a brief account, Anglin described an experience of being told they had a really strong accent, but to them, they thought they sounded “normal”. 

Pirtle compared her experience of living in Jonesboro to her experience living in Fayetteville, saying that in Jonesboro, when Anglin and her went to Walmart, they heard people just being southern, but that when ‘they’ go to Walmart off M.L.K Jr. Blvd, it isn’t the same.

Gunnar Holstead moved to Fayetteville from Monticello, Arkansas. Where Holstead is from, everybody speaks with a thicker accent and, in his own words, sounds kind of like him. In his experience, when he needs to speak to those in higher positions or have a serious conversation, he speaks more clearly. According to Holstead, there isn’t much of that same accent here in Fayetteville. Though he stated that he is from the Great Plains area rather than the Ozarks.

Whitaker stated that the Southern accent is regional and localized in a lot of ways. She mentions that the areas between the Northwest corner of Arkansas and the Southeast corner of Arkansas have their own distinctions. According to her, the Ozark accent doesn’t exist as it once did, and the changes in the accent spoken in Northwest Arkansas are the result of the consumption of mass media. However, she said that there is still a holdover of some of the words and phrases used in the Ozarks.

Whitaker states that the accent seen in Northwest Arkansas is similar to that of the accent seen in the American Midwest. She thinks this is a result of everybody watching the same people on TV and the same people on streaming services. In her opinion, English is a fabulous language that is just constantly evolving and absorbing. 

In Anglin’s hometown they state that everyone has a Southern accent, not always necessarily a very thick Southern accent but definitely noticeable to others if they left the region. However, in Anglin’s experience, the newer generation’s accents have declined in their thickness.

Pirtle works at a behavioral health hospital in Fayetteville and states that many of the patients she works with do not have a Southern accent. She thinks that some of the decline in the prevalence of the Southern accent is a result of the internet and social media. 

Anglin stated that they have noticed a change in the slang words they use; they began to notice this change in the 2010s during the initial explosion in short-form videos on YouTube and Vine. 

In Holstead’s opinion, Fayetteville lacks the Southern Ozark accent as a result of the influx of students to the University of Arkansas. In his experience, people from Texas speak differently than how Ozarkers do. Holstead also admitted that his speech patterns have adapted slang from social media. For example, Holstead said he uses terms like “fire” and “lit.”

When asked how he thought the Southern accent in Northwest Arkansas would continue to change, Holstead stated that he assumes it will be gone in the future. In Holstead’s opinion, the type of people who move to Fayetteville are not the type of people to keep traditional Southern accents alive. 

In Anglin’s opinion, the Southern accent won’t die off completely. Just as many people assimilate linguistically to the dominant culture, people on the outskirts continue to pass on the accent.

Pirtle explained that Southern accents are a minority in the United States, and that over time they will probably be spoken less, but that she hopes that they will remain. Pirtle said that often people have commented on her thick Southern accent. She often thinks to herself, “Y’all are from Arkansas, too. Why don’t you have a Southern accent? Why do you sound like that?” 

The Ozark accent has declined in Northwest Arkansas. The decline in accent can be attributed to immigration to the NWA area, but as Whitaker explained, modern media consumption and globalization have played a role. On her program on the Ozark accent, Whitaker said that she often tells people, “it’s not that you speak bad English, your English is just different because there are old rules, there’s old pronunciation.”