Being a public relations practitioner, and having lived in various Southeastern and Northeastern states, as well as our neighbor to the North, I seem to be an anomaly when it comes to regional dialect. I’m not sure how it happened or how I do it, but I must say that my dialect is geographically neutral. Just last week, during a client dinner, a gentleman said that he had been trying to place me based on my dialect. He knew that I wasn’t originally from the South due to my lack of a Southern accent, that he could detect some “East Coast” in me, but still couldn’t figure it out. It’s fun to keep people guessing!
Although I have been living in South Carolina for approximately four years, there are still some phrases and sayings, “Southernisms” if you will, that stop me in my tracks – leaving me more often than not baffled as to what the person was trying to convey. I then focus on the aforementioned phrase as the person continues to speak – thus missing the remainder of their message. Whoops, I hope that what they were saying wasn’t too important.
Some examples of Southernism that can detract from your core message include but are not limited to “might could”, “fixin’ to”, “mash (the button)”, and/or “cut on or cut off (the light).” If you use one of these phrases in professional conversation, then your message gets lost in confusion and the listener may decide to stop listening.
The most common offense that I hear is “might could.” What exactly does this mean? The definition of “might” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “used in auxiliary function to express...probability, possibility in the past” whereas “could” is defined as “used in auxiliary function in the past.” The “might could” phrase is grammatically incorrect as might and could are essentially the same word, thus redundant when used together. Rather, what should be said is in place of “might could” is “might be able” [to do something].
I remember flying up to New York City for a client meeting with a Southern agency and my coworker said, “Well, you might could do that,” in the middle of a pitch. I immediately cringed. What was the clients’ reaction? They looked at each other with rather confused looks on their faces. The result can be twofold. To begin, your message can get lost in the clutter. What is even worse is that one of the key meeting takeaways may be the Southernism on which they focused and only parts of your message.
That’s it ya’ll!
Being cognizant of what you say and how you are saying it is extremely important when it comes to new business pitches, client conference calls, media relations, the list goes on. One does not want to jeopardize business growth or professional perception due to geographical phrases or sayings. It seems like a silly way to lose out on new business growth and to potentially lose current clients, and something that is fairly simple to prevent, does it not?