All of the readings for this week, at one time or another, discuss the idea that language works in important ways to shape what we do and do not think about particular people. We have also seen that language is shaped and used by people with power or without power in important ways and in two directions. In other words, people with more social power have the ability to use language in ways that oppress people with less power. However certain words and language patterns get adopted by people with less power in ways that help them gain power and control their own identities.
For this week’s prompt, I’d like you to use your favorite search engine to search the terms “hillbilly” and “redneck.” What sorts of results come up in your search? How are these terms used both derogatorily and positively? Where do you see examples of people or groups using the terms in a mean-spiritied, condescending way? What examples do you see where Appalachians have reclaimed the terms and use them as something they are proud of? Are there differences between the two terms or people that use them? Can a person be both a hillbilly and a redneck?
Besides revealing my guilty pleasure for playing Minecraft, the screenshot above should speak to the extents to which the term “hillbilly” is almost entirely derogatory in nature in today’s society. The hillbilly in almost every one of the top results of a simple Google search showed a person more than likely as a white individual, dressed in tattered overalls, their teeth rotted out, and of course they are crosseyed. The absurd anatomical frames associated with the hillbilly are testament to the extent that people can be victimized by labeling. The archetypal hillbilly has even found its way into political cartoons and memes. The people of Appalachia have been labeled hillbillies and the implications of this categorization is the unconscious attitude towards those associated with the term as being characteristically uneducated and otherwise incompetent. Categorizing and labeling peoples as hillbillies has come with a social stigma result of the perceived follies of the Appalachian man and woman.