EDITORIAL: Daniel Sosnoski's "Butter My Butt and Call Me a Biscuit!"
There is nothing quite so amusing about living in the American South as overhearing your fellow Southerners’ lingo while waiting in line at the supermarket. Besides the inevitable “dag burn” here and “ain’t” there, there’s a long list of colorful, exaggerated expressions that Southern speakers often customize when using, making these expressions more colorful and exaggerated than before. Daniel Sosnoski covers one such expression, “butter my butt and call me a biscuit!” as well as a wide range of its variants (including the racier ones) in this very thorough article. He touches a little on the friendly, humorous nature of this and other expressions, even the ones that are a bit (or a lot) on the insulting side.
Sosnoski’s article and others like it that focus on different Southern expressions are great starting points for writers who are writing Southern characters but aren’t that familiar with Southern speech outside of the accent and a few stereotypical patterns (such as the mismatching of a subject and a verb-i.e., “he don’t,” etc.). One thing that they usually don’t touch on, though, is the culture behind such expressions. The South, especially the rural South (which is where I’m from), is noted for being much more laid back than many other areas of the United States. Rural and suburban areas are often so small that the majority of these areas’ residents know or are at least familiar with the other residents, and many are related to each other (usually distantly) via blood ties or marriage. In other words: everyone knows everyone else, even if only by word of mouth. Going grocery shopping is like going to a high school class reunion, except your peers range greatly in age and background. And since everyone is at least familiar with everyone else, social interaction is often very personable and friendly, even when a Southerner comes across someone (Southerner or not) with whom he or she isn’t that familiar. When you’re used to wandering around town and running into Jim Smith from your cousin’s church or Mary and Wayne Jones’s neighbor’s boy, being so personable with others and using such expressions, especially the joking ones, come naturally.
That being said, there is such a thing as “too much” when it comes to using these expressions. Although their presence is a staple in Southern speech-such as when old Leon Crites says of the local delegate’s son, “The boy’s a good kid, but you could throw him out to pasture and he still wouldn’t know the difference between a steer and horse”-they’re not so prominently used that Southerners bounce them off the wall every time they open their mouths. The same goes for the uses of “ain’t” and improper grammar that are (not wrongly) associated with Southern speech. (In fact, most Southern dialogue sounds pretty much like any other American dialogue with only a few Southern pepperings here and there to distinguish it as Southern.) The use of these things when writing your Southern characters boils down to one thing: your character itself.
When writing your Southern characters, ask yourself these few questions. Do the expressions fit them? When you write the phrases, can you hear their voices saying the expressions, or are you adding them merely to make your characters sound Southern? Regardless of background, everyone has his or her own thoughts, ideas, personality, and way of speaking, so always, always consider your characters before you consider their backgrounds. The character is the cake; the background is the icing that makes the cake even better. Keep that in mind, and you’re on your way to writing an authentic (but respectful) character of the American Southern background-or any background.
Sosnoski’s article and others like it that focus on different Southern expressions are great starting points for writers who are writing Southern characters but aren’t that familiar with Southern speech outside of the accent and a few stereotypical patterns (such as the mismatching of a subject and a verb-i.e., “he don’t,” etc.). One thing that they usually don’t touch on, though, is the culture behind such expressions. The South, especially the rural South (which is where I’m from), is noted for being much more laid back than many other areas of the United States. Rural and suburban areas are often so small that the majority of these areas’ residents know or are at least familiar with the other residents, and many are related to each other (usually distantly) via blood ties or marriage. In other words: everyone knows everyone else, even if only by word of mouth. Going grocery shopping is like going to a high school class reunion, except your peers range greatly in age and background. And since everyone is at least familiar with everyone else, social interaction is often very personable and friendly, even when a Southerner comes across someone (Southerner or not) with whom he or she isn’t that familiar. When you’re used to wandering around town and running into Jim Smith from your cousin’s church or Mary and Wayne Jones’s neighbor’s boy, being so personable with others and using such expressions, especially the joking ones, come naturally.
That being said, there is such a thing as “too much” when it comes to using these expressions. Although their presence is a staple in Southern speech-such as when old Leon Crites says of the local delegate’s son, “The boy’s a good kid, but you could throw him out to pasture and he still wouldn’t know the difference between a steer and horse”-they’re not so prominently used that Southerners bounce them off the wall every time they open their mouths. The same goes for the uses of “ain’t” and improper grammar that are (not wrongly) associated with Southern speech. (In fact, most Southern dialogue sounds pretty much like any other American dialogue with only a few Southern pepperings here and there to distinguish it as Southern.) The use of these things when writing your Southern characters boils down to one thing: your character itself.
When writing your Southern characters, ask yourself these few questions. Do the expressions fit them? When you write the phrases, can you hear their voices saying the expressions, or are you adding them merely to make your characters sound Southern? Regardless of background, everyone has his or her own thoughts, ideas, personality, and way of speaking, so always, always consider your characters before you consider their backgrounds. The character is the cake; the background is the icing that makes the cake even better. Keep that in mind, and you’re on your way to writing an authentic (but respectful) character of the American Southern background-or any background.