General American Research Articles

The Speech of Spicewood, Texas

SPICEWOOD, a very small town about forty miles northwest of Austin, was settled more than a hundred years ago by people who fought in the Texas Revolution. It has been isolated from any considerable communication with rather near-by towns until comparatively recent times. Even now one must go by way of unimproved mountain roads in order to get there from any direction. From Austin one must in addition be ferried across the Pedernales River. The speech of Spicewood is what is often termed the 'hill-southern' types having most of the traits of ordinary Texas speech, but being peculiarly characterized by an extremely retroflex r, the preservation of numerous archaisms, and the total lack of any main features of plantation-southern speech. My material is based on the speech, both as sampled by phonograph recordings by a number of informants of various ages and as observed in the natural conversation of Spicewood citizens. In this paper I enumerate the features in which Spicewood speech differs from General American (GA), giving special attention to deviations from East Texas speech, as set forth by Mr. Oma Stanley.