I’ve been listening to Sir Terry Pratchett’s ‘THE LAST CONTINENT’ as my current coping mechanism, and enjoying the take-offs of various classic Australian tropes (now much sneered at by our east coast cities, because they are too busy imitating east coast cities in the US). Poor Rinso (Rincewind, but not in Australia) has just had his Crocodile Dundee scene, and moved on to the man from Snowy River. The luggage is having guest appearance in the parody of Pricilla Queen of the Desert. The best part is the parody name for Sydney. So appropriate, if possibly even better if applied to Canberra.
Actually, it is an excellent illustration of how regional colloquialisms and stories – especially stories that the much larger audiences elsewhere enjoy (maybe even ones they are familiar with) can really make a book. It’s what Pratchett did well: many of his books actually revel in regional stereotypes. The kind that are now apparently offensive, so look to ‘trigger’ warnings etc. in the future. Oddly, these are things which are offensive to the people who don’t live there, or pretend they don’t live there. The people who do… find them funny and delight in them. You see, while Pratchett makes fun of some of the aspects of say… Australia, he’s… well, nice about it. There are good points to the people and places he teases. Those of us who actually live in rural Australia… well, like any good stereotype, there are some bits of truth in the foundations. Um. Things we’re actual fond of and proud of – and Pratchett’s parody is affectionate. Besides, the man made fun of everything. He was truly an equal opportunity offender.
I am strongly of the opinion that internationalism has just about run its course as a fashion… It was really a fashion, not a practical thing – which is why I suspect many countries and regions will be rediscovering an interest in having idiom of their own local flavor. And I think it will make writing richer for all of us.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “Flat out like a lizard drinking”
There’s a long running TV show here in Japan called the Kenmin show which is about the quirks and differences of people in different prefectures (ken) in Japan.
Japanese people seem mostly proud of the regionalisms, and also proud of their Japanese ness while yet culturally appropriating everything.
Intensive cultural appropriation is part of their culture. Starting with stealing from China.
No doubt it helped modernization.
I think some writers (younger ones, mostly) make the mistake of conflating superficial cultural references – TV shows, pop musicians, local restaurants – with true local culture. That might include climate (or adaptations to same, such as screened-in porches) as well as traditional food specialties and local sayings/dialects. The goal is to write something which won’t date rapidly and is truly unique to the area and the time in which it is set.
I recall one of the sources of existential angst in William Gibson’s version of cyberpunk, was the homogenization of globalist/corporate culture stripping most of society of an identity not artificial.
Texas has so many immigrants from other states that a strong accent is getting rare. I also blame TV.
I’ve heard a lot of such immigrants boasting online how they want to change everything in Texas beyond recognition because of how ‘wrong’ all those hillbillies are. I hope they fail.
Which accent? 😉 Far East Texas had a different one from Houston from the Hill Country. Up in the Panhandle, we have/had the flatter, more Midwestern version of the Houston accent, but keeping the vocabulary of down state. It messes with people who are expecting something more Southern in pronunciation.
People think of “the South” as a monolith in the US. It never was. Different groups settled, different economies developed, and different customs and cultures spread over the area. The Carolina Low Country is very different from the cotton belt of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. Louisiana has the Spanish and French influence (sugar, trade) as well as cotton. The upcountry highlands of the mountains and border states are different again. Both Silver John and Scarlett O’Hara are genuine Southern types. Which outsiders often don’t want to know.
I remember reading that in North Carolina, the people of the Piedmont were so disenchanted with the idea of leaving the Union to become a new nation that they tried to secede from the secession. It didn’t work.
And agreed on no place ever being a monolith. Here in PA we had the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Scots-Irish, the mostly middle to upper class English descended from the Quakers, the mostly-Slavic laborers in the cement and steel mills and coal mines, heck we even had a small but influential Finnish community.
You can see a lot of the above in the local cemetery. It used to be two different ones, with Protestant Germans on one side the mostly Catholic Slavs on the other. And you didn’t dare bury someone on the ‘wrong side’ of the cemetery, either! Heck, the Slavic part actually has a ‘Poor Sinner’s Corner’ under some grand old trees.