Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 12:45:56 EST

From: "Betty S. Phillips" EJPHILL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ROOT.INDSTATE.EDU

Subject: Re: Offensive terms



I sympathize with David Johns and his encounters with the term

"Yankee". My mother, from Wisconsin, married my native-Georgian

father in 1945, and Waycross was her first point of entry into the

South. She never did find any humor in her new relatives' "Damn

Yankee" jokes. But as David's comment about how people show no

embarrassment or hesitation about asking, "Are you a Yankee?"

suggests, the resentment toward Northerners is really fairly shallow

(in my experience). Certainly, I've known Northerners who

assimilated fairly rapidly and painlessly into Southern life.



Betty Phillips

Dept. of English

Indiana State U.

Terre Haute, IN 47809















Date sent: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 06:12:00 EDT

Send reply to: American Dialect Society ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu

From: "David A. Johns" DJOHNS%UFPINE.BITNET[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu

Subject: Offensive terms

To: Multiple recipients of list ADS-L ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu



# Since it was used a while back in this discussion, let me

# register my offense at "The War of Northern Aggression,:" y'all.

#

# David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens OH



A few years ago, while exploring back roads along the bluffs

overlooking the Mississippi in southwestern Wisconsin, I found a

cemetery with graves going back to the mid-19th century. Near the

back were a few headstones dated 1861, with inscriptions indicating

that the young men buried there had died in the "Infamous Southern

Rebellion". So there.



"Yankee", by the way, is definitely a negative term in Waycross, GA,

where I'm living now -- I've even seen bumper stickers saying "I had

[!] rather be dead than be a Yankee." But natives have no qualms

about using it openly; in fact, I hear "Are you a Yankee?" several

times a week, not to mention constant references to Yankees "coming

down here and telling us how to live our lives".



I don't know what this says about Southern manners.



David Johns

Waycross College

Waycross, GA