Southern accents, Eastern accents, Northern accents and Ebonics

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

the region, or the racial/cultural group? Is it the family that determines the dialect, or the peer group?

1. With education and occupation controlled for, racial/cultural group matters more than region. Aside from accents and minor differences in phrases used (these differences have been reduced through media exposure to other people and places), sentence structures are extremely similar. Now if we were talking about the Gullah Sea Islands, that would be a different story but even this is a perfect example of "Slave dialect heritage mixed with...other stuff" and there are similarities between Gullah dialect and Ebonics.

2. Family when the person is younger and peer groups as the person ages and (usually) begins to spend more time at school, work, and away from the family. The same as any other learned behavior.