Talkin' Southern with Roger Johns: Y’all in All Its Glory #Bookgiveaway

HALLIE EPHRON: My last book was set in South Carolina, so I'm well aware of the challenge of writing authentic Southern-tinged dialogue. I'm happy to discover that even a southerner has to struggle to get it right.

Here's Roger Johns, author of River of Secrets, talking with y'all about just one of the conundrums of Southern speakl So, all y'all, listen up!

ROGER JOHNS: A few weeks ago, as a way to distract myself from a case of the jitters over the impending release of my second book, River of Secrets, I decided to see if I could get a handle, once and for all, on the debate surrounding the proper use of “y’all” and “all of y’all”.

With only four letters and one apostrophe, you’d think “y’all,” the quintessential Southernism, would be fully understood, by now. It’s not. “Y’all” is nothing if not a study in nuance and controversy. I had recently had a near throw-down over the matter so, while it was fresh in my mind, I started asking around on social media and in person, to see how others felt about it.

If you live outside the South, you may be unaware of this disagreement. It isn’t a Hatfield-and-McCoy-caliber feud, but it’s a live issue and it’s been simmering for as long as I can remember. If you write Southern characters and you want to get that Southern sound just right, or if you’re visiting the South and you want to fit right in, here’s everything you need to know about “y’all” versus “all of y’all.”

[NOTE: Having spent many years in the professoriate, I tend to see all bodies of knowledge through the lens of the academic article, so I’ve documented the results of my investigation in that fashion because, as everyone knows, academic prose is the clearest, easiest-to-read style of writing there is.]

The Main Controversy

Most of the folks I queried consider “y’all” acceptable, even in polite company. However, it’s linguistic cousin “all of y’all” is not universally accepted. A small but determined group of purists contends that “all of y’all” is plagued with a redundancy. This group (let’s call them the anti-Redundanistas) is quick to point out that, because “y’all” is a contracted form of “you all”, by definition it refers to everyone being addressed, so the “all of” is redundant and should be left off.

Unsurprisingly, the anti-Redundanistas are dismissed as grammar scolds by members of the Singular-Plural Camp, the most vocal defenders of “all of y’all” (sometimes rendered “all a y’all”). Under their theory, “y’all” is singular (referring to all members of a single group) and “all of y’all” is plural (encompassing either multiple groups or one really, really large group).

The Singular-Plurals are, in turn, dismissed by proponents of the Numerosity-Temperament Conjecture who contend that “y’all” refers to everyone the speaker could reasonably be addressing, while “all of y’all” indicates, not just the number of people or groups, but also the speaker’s frame of mind. Under their thinking, “Y’all are in trouble” is a yellow-card warning. However, “All of y’all are in trouble” (sometimes voiced as “Y’all are all in trouble” – a variant extant principally below the Georgia Gnat Line) is the equivalent of Defcon-1.

And, finally, there’s the “All Y’all/All of Y’all” Conundrum.  While in most cases “all y’all” and “all of y’all” are synonymous, in other contexts “all y’all” may simultaneously have more than one meaning. This can be confusing, especially to non-Southerners. Consider the example: “I want all y’all to know that I appreciate all y’all did for me.” Here, the expression refers both to the group and to something the group did.

Related Issues

During my look-around, I even encountered a few who belong to what’ I’ll call the Axe-the-Apostrophe Insurgency. This is a forward-looking group that wants to formalize “yall” as the official spelling. They claim the apostrophic form draws unnecessary attention to the word’s hick town pedigree.

And then . . . there’s “Mom’an’em” (rhymes with homonym), a heavily elided thrice-contracted form of “Momma and them.” Like “y’all”, this popular but less versatile expression refers to a group, however its use is confined to groups of which one’s momma is a member. Mixing and matching, with this one, is widely practiced and perfectly acceptable. Hence “I’m guessin’ all y’all’re gonna meet mom’en’em up at the ball park” would be an unremarkable construction.

While I feel as if I learned a lot during this investigation, I sense there’s more. If you’d like to weigh in on the “y’all” debate, or if you’d like to cast your vote for a particular school of thought, I’d love to hear from you (even if you’re from north of the Mason-Dixon Line or west of the Rockies). And, if all of y’all would like to offer any guidance on other regional slang, I’m all ears.

HALLIE: This feels so perfect coming after yesterday's discussion of just and so. I'm in the Singular-Plural camp. Though I wonder if I can even vote since I've got no southern roots, and for the longest time the closest I got to "South" was Florida and DC.

What do the rest of all y'all think?

BOOK GIVEAWAY: Roger is giving away a copy of RIVER OF SECRETS plus a bit of swag to one lucky commenter!

BIO

ROGER JOHNS is a former corporate lawyer and retired college professor, and the author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books: Dark River Rising (2017) and River of Secrets (2018). He is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year (Detective ▪ Mystery Category), a 2018 Killer Nashville Readers’ Choice Award nominee, and a finalist for the 2018 Silver Falchion Award for best police procedural. His articles about writing and the writing life have appeared in Career Author, Criminal Element, and Killer Nashville Articles. Roger belongs to the Atlanta Writers Club, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Mystery Writers of America. He is a member of The ITW Fearless Bloggers and, along with four other crime fiction writers, he co-authors the MurderBooks blog at www.murder-books.com. You can visit him at www.rogerjohnsbooks.com.

SYNOPSIS: River of Secrets

Herbert Marioneaux, a Louisiana politician with a reputation for changing his mind on sensitive issues, has been murdered. DNA evidence points at Eddie Pitkin, a social justice activist who furthers his causes by confronting powerful, wealthy people with their uncomfortable past. A history of conflict between Marioneaux and Pitkin cause many in the court of public opinion to call for Pitkin’s conviction. Wallace Hartman, the homicide detective assigned to the investigation, is also the childhood best friend of Pitkin’s half-brother so, in the eyes of some, her objectivity is in question. Wallace discovers an iffy alibi witness along with evidence of a deeply troubled relationship between Marioneaux and his son, shifting suspicion in a new direction. Questions about the DNA arise, Pitkin’s supporters and enemies square off in the street, and what began as an open and shut case becomes murky and politicized, sparking waves of violence across Baton Rouge. And, at her time of greatest need, the prospect of sabotage from a leak within her department forces Wallace to go it alone as she digs deep into the dark heart of the political establishment to untangle a web of old, disturbing secrets.