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Hillbilly Stereotypes

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Once upon a time, the word “hillbillies” was created. The first use of the term was a reference to a camp in West Virginia made by The Railroad Trainmen’s Journal. Eight years later, the New York Journal-American defined the term as “a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks, whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him” (Online Etymology Dictionary, 2017). While the New York Journal uses the state of Alabama in their definition, the word hillbilly has actually been used to describe anyone in the hills mentioned by the New York Journal: the Appalachian Mountains.
As defined officially by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), the Appalachian mountain range extends from northern Mississippi and Alabama up to southern New York. However, as the region grew and developed, the locations to which isolated hillbilly stereotypes could be applied shrank to what ARC classifies …show more content…
People living in great poverty in Eastern Kentucky endure a very different geographical, social, and economic climate than those of any other class thus creating a distinct culture. One noticeable effect of the unusual development of Eastern Kentucky is the dialect. Though the grammar and words used in this region sound very improper to the average American citizen and further contribute to the negative connotation surrounding the term hillbilly. The Appalachian dialect has its own structure and rules separate from the standard English upon which it is based (Luhman, 1990). In 2017, a graduate student at the University of Kentucky did his dissertation on cultural discontinuity in Eastern Kentucky because “Appalachian American students should be seen as a distinct cultural group” and compares their distinction to Latino American and Native American populations (Conner,

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