The blog The Revivalist: Words from the Appalachian South has a very interesting post on Appalachian dialect and code switching. You can read it by clicking on the following link: Appalachian Code Switching. Guest blogger Chelyen Davis, a Southwest Virginia native who lives in Richmond, sees “code switching” among Appalachian folks all the time. That’s when someone switches dialects depending on the circumstances.
Chelyen, who also writes on her own blog Homesick Appalachian, asks an important question—now that we’re constantly exposed to people from other regions, is code switching just a fact of life or are we losing a key piece of our mountain heritage?