Uses of Southern‐sounding speech by contemporary Texas women

Anglo‐Texas women typically do not think of themselves as Southerners, but many can use speech forms that came to Texas from the American South. The relationship of Texas women to Southern speech is complex, and Texas women orient to and use Southern forms in various ways. Several of the possibilities are briefly illustrated. These examples serve to raise questions about language crossing and stylization in contexts in which the variety being adopted does not clearly ‘belong’ to an outgroup, and to suggest some new avenues for thought about what ‘regional varieties’ are and how regionally‐marked speech forms can serve as rhetorical resources.