“Moving to Mecca”—A Case Study of Language Ideology, Insecurity, and the Uprooting of Appalachian Englishes

This paper, through a case study of a middle-aged university administrator, investigates how mobile Appalachians—those who uproot themselves from Appalachia and move for professional or personal reasons—navigate linguistic insecurity. Appalachian college students are often discriminated against via codes of power that reify standard language ideologies. Through a quantitative analysis, we argue that Appalachian Kentuckians are more likely to change the way they speak as a product of linguistic insecurity compared to Kentuckians from other parts of the state. Through a qualitative narrative analysis, we see how one participant, Zoey, responded to an inciting incident of linguistic insecurity that propelled her to change the way that she speaks—a phenomenon we term uprootedness. We then explore how she negotiates this change later in life while working in a professional university setting. We provide preliminary evidence that the linguistic discrimination mobile Appalachians experience in college years can carry forward into their professional lives. Positive recognition and representation through Appalachian art and literature, however, contribute to resistance to such discrimination.