Texan English
The newest and most innovative Southern U.S. accent features are best reported in Lubbock, Odessa, somewhat Houston and variably Dallas, though general features of this same dialect are found throughout the state, with several exceptions:[2] Abilene and somewhat Austin, Corpus Christi, and El Paso appear to align more with Midland U.S. accents than Southern ones.Some linguists propose that urbanization, geographic and social mobility, and the mass media have homogenized the speech of the United States to a national norm.[11] Due to rapid urbanization, increasing dominance of high tech industries, and massive migrations, Texan speech has been reshaped as well, especially since 1990.[4] The urban-rural linguistic split mainly affects Southern-style phonological phenomena like the pen-pin merger, the loss of the offglide in /aɪ/, and upgliding diphthongs, all of which are now recessive in metropolitan areas.[10] Texas English may use many grammatical constructions typically associated with Southern U.S. English, including fixin' to,[19] multiple modals like might could and should oughta (reportedly used by every social class and, as of the 1980s Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, predominately in Upper and Lower East Texas), and plural verbal -s as in Our father and mother helps used by both Black and (somewhat less commonly) white Texans.A lifelong resident of the Texas Hill Country, Johnson's thick accent was a large part of his personality and brought attention and fame to the dialect.