If you had a conversation with a person in 1770 would they understand?

[EngProf]

Having grown up in the "north" (45 minutes southwest of Chicago), a redneck was a farmer.
Possibly different regional interpretations.

I'm not a huge fan of Wikipedia, but their definition fits how people I know would feel about being called a "redneck":

The term redneck is a derogatory term chiefly used for a rural poor white person of the Southern United States.[1][2] Its usage is similar in meaning to cracker (especially regarding Georgia and Florida), hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks),[3] and white trash (but without the last term's suggestions of immorality).[4][5][6]

By the 1970s, the term had become offensive slang, and its meaning had expanded to mean bigoted, loutish, and opposed to modern ways.[7]

Patrick Huber has emphasized the theme of masculinity in the continued expansion of the term in the 20th century, noting, "The redneck has been stereotyped in the media and popular culture as a poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist Southern white man."[8]

Calling someone "white trash", "...bigoted and loutish...", and "...poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist..." is not a way to be civil in the FL.
It has NOTHING to do with being a farmer. Were you really not aware of the present (last 40+ years) meaning of the term?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Redneck" has been adopted by many Northern working-class people as an identity -- it revolves around big pickup trucks, all-terrain vehicles, alcohol, guns, a fondness for NASCAR, and a taste for country music. All of these traits are stereotypes of the Southern "redneck," but have been effectively promoted and sold thru the media as markers of working-class identity since the late 1970s, pushing them into cultures which have no reason to be "Southern" or to have any interest at all in the South.

I find this whole process both fascinating and deeply disturbing. I first started to notice it with the popularity of the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies and "The Dukes of Hazzard," both filled with extreme caricatures of the "redneck South," and both extremely popular with younger working-class audiences in my area. I could dismiss it as a kid fad then, but I've watched that generation grow up and embrace those stereotypes as the basis for their own class identity -- stereotypes which are completely at odds with the Northern industrial working-class culture into which they were born.

A lot has been written about this Southernification of working-class culture. Today, "Redneck" is seen as practically synonymous with "working class" in any part of the country, and it's actively embraced by many people in the rural North as a sign of working-class solidarity. But that solidarity isn't the raised-fist activist solidarity of the 1930s industrial working class -- it's more an embrace of otherness, a deliberate attempt to set one's self apart from "The Elites" in a way that doesn't actually challenge their elitism -- in effect, adoption of the "redneck" persona is to say to the "elite" class "you think we're a bunch of peckerwoods? OK then, pretty boys, that's exactly what we're gonna be. Yee haw." It's an empty and nihilistic rebelliousness that doesn't actually rebel against anything meaningful or promote any progressive social change, and in that sense I think it's actually quite destructive to the working class. So why is it happening?

Two reasons. The Boys promote it as a way of channelling class anger away from any sort of revolutiionary action -- for all their "rebel" posturing, these "rednecks" are actually supporting the status quo, not seeking to change it in any signficicant way. And the other reason is simple despair. The unionized Northern industrial working class was gutted by globalization in the 1970s and 1980s, and has never recovered its economic position or its dignity. All that's left is "yee hawing" into the darkness. And that's not so much offensive to me as it's profoundly sad.

 

[tonyb]

I'm not a huge fan of Wikipedia, but their definition fits how people I know would feel about being called a "redneck":

The term redneck is a derogatory term chiefly used for a rural poor white person of the Southern United States.[1][2] Its usage is similar in meaning to cracker (especially regarding Georgia and Florida), hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks),[3] and white trash (but without the last term's suggestions of immorality).[4][5][6]

By the 1970s, the term had become offensive slang, and its meaning had expanded to mean bigoted, loutish, and opposed to modern ways.[7]

Patrick Huber has emphasized the theme of masculinity in the continued expansion of the term in the 20th century, noting, "The redneck has been stereotyped in the media and popular culture as a poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist Southern white man."[8]

Calling someone "white trash", "...bigoted and loutish...", and "...poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist..." is not a way to be civil in the FL.
It has NOTHING to do with being a farmer. Were you really not aware of the present (last 40+ years) meaning of the term?

Knowing that our friend EngProf finds the word offensive is reason enough for a PC snowflake like me to avoid using it in his presence.

Still, his Wikipedia source aside, and his insistence that "it has NOTHING to do with being a farmer," it ought be noted that many are the people who believe, rightly or not, that the word had been a reference to white people who did stoop work in the sun (yes, farm workers) and as a result had reddish backs of their necks. That certainly seems among the more plausible etymologies.

In response to what I take to be a rhetorical question in that closing sentence, it might be reasonably asked if our friend EngProf has any familiarity with Jeff Foxworthy or any of his fellow comics on the Redneck Comedy Tour. Is this embracing of the term somewhat akin to certain persons of African descent adopting the N word as their own? I dunno, and I'm not arguing the case either way. But it bears consideration.

 

[vitanola]

I wondered whether northern working class folk don't militantly appropriate the "redneck" label to a greater extent than their Southern bretheren, but upon reflection see that this is not the case in the least. In my part of Michigan the Jawga Boyz are among the most popular musical groups among the youngsters just now. Imagine a descendant of one of the Michigan 24th Volunteer Infantry identifying with the song presented in THIS muisc video. The number of levels of cultural appropriation boggle the mind.

 

[Stanley Doble]

To get back to the original question a reasonably literate person would have no problem communicating with a reasonably literate person of the 1770s. You can read the writings of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others from that time period with little trouble.

There were many regional dialects especially in England, that were nearly incomprehensible to their contemporaries who lived just a few miles away. In those cases you might have more trouble.

Some parts of the Appalachians were first settled in the 1770s and preserve the speech patterns and accent to this day. They may use a few words and phrases that are no longer familiar to us but the language has not changed that much.

If you avoided subjects like Google, iphones, refrigerators and automobiles you would get along with someone from 1770 just fine.

Here is a little something from a historical re enactor of the period on interpreting historical recipes. Notice that the problem is not so much the difference in language as the vagueness of the original recipe.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Literacy is the operative word there. While literacy in cities such as Boston was close to 100 percent by the end of the colonial era, it dropped the further you went into the rurals, and it dropped sharply the further south you went. The literacy rate among women varied even more -- for white colonial women born around 1730, the literacy rate was only about fifty percent.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I was trying to make the point that a person from a remote village in England or Scotland might be incomprehensible to us, but would be equally incomprehensible to someone from their own time from a different county.

Literacy would make a difference. You can see that by reading things that were written at the time. You have to go back another hundred years to Shakespeare's time for things to get a little murky and another hundred years before that and it is like a foreign language.

 

[dnjan]

It might take a week or two to get the hang of Modern English circa 1770. But fitting into the culture? I dunno, man.

Was that the "thee" and "thou" period in North American English?

I would probably understand them, but they would probably consider me rude and uncivilized.

 

[Stanley Doble]

You are thinking of the Victorians. They could be pretty rude in the 1700s. On the other hand if you were not a practicing Christian you were a weirdo. It would be best to attend church and pay it lip service like everyone else.

 

[green papaya]

in California they have a lot of people known as "Trailor Trash" types, these are the lowest class, meth head, drug addiction, thief, welfare queens, pure garbage, ex convicts, people that spent time in prison, they usually have a long criminal history.

they are way below a Red neck / hillbilly in hierarchy

trailor trash = bums

 

[tonyb]

I can see how those living in mobile homes might take offense.

I considered a mobile home park for a short-term residence while the dewy-eyed bride and I weighed whether we were sufficiently wedded to this new locale to buy a house here. But then a better deal came along so we rented a house for that one year.

An old girlfriend lived in a double-wide. So did my folks for.a couple years. A niece and her husband and their passel of kids do well in one set up on their land out in the woods.

A couple I know have been living in a fifth wheel for three or four years now. They ran into a rough patch and they're now doing what used to be considered that which virtuous people do, which is to live within their means.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Mobile homes have always been common here and are becoming more so, as the merciless manicured fist of gentrification forces working-class people away from the coast. With house prices climbing out of their range and the "Air BNB" racket eliminating affordable rentals, pretty soon there won't be anything left but trailers for people earning less than six figures per annum. Maybe we should get into high-level embezzlement, I hear some of Our Betters do very well with that.

 

[green papaya]

"Red Neck" or Hillbilly have become more of a compliment these days , it's just slang for "Country Boy"

but it also depends how you say it, it can be used in a insulting tone or a friendly more complimentary way for a country boy

 

[tonyb]

There's mobile homes, and then there's mobile homes.

The fifth wheel-residing couple I alluded to above have that trailer parked in what can only be called a trailer park. The park managers run a tight operation. The place is clean and orderly, and while people residing there live in travel trailers and motorhomes, there's nothing about the place that might fairly be called "trashy."

And then there's the mobile home park a couple miles away that's filled with aged, poorly maintained single-wides, some of which sport blue plastic tarps over their leaking roofs. There's many an inoperable car left there to further deteriorate, and the occasional old mattress leaning against the side of a single-wide. You get the picture.

I've been in "mobile home communities" with golf courses and tennis courts and swimming pools. And I've seen some newer manufactured houses that in no way resemble trailers. Indeed, most people would have to be told that such structures were built indoors rather than site-built.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Maybe we should get into high-level embezzlement, I hear some of Our Betters do very well with that.

Couldn't resist...

 

[ChiTownScion]

Mobile homes have always been common here and are becoming more so, as the merciless manicured fist of gentrification forces working-class people away from the coast. With house prices climbing out of their range and the "Air BNB" racket eliminating affordable rentals, pretty soon there won't be anything left but trailers for people earning less than six figures per annum.

A state of affairs that I observed 35 years ago while enjoying a graduation present trip to another vacation destination: Aspen. The people who actually make the place go had to live "down valley," often 40 miles or more away. And often in a mobile home, if they were fortunate.

Just came back recently from a week in Maui. (Not my choice of a vacation venue.. but my wife was attending a seminar there and thought that it'd be a fun trip for all of us. I'd have rather spent a week in Altoona watching freight trains on Horse Shoe Curve.... but I digress.) On the last day we happened to detour through a neighborhood where the natives dwell. Not the well heeled retirees nor the vacation resort crowd, but the people whose families have been there for generations. "Hardscrabble" would be a charitable adjective.

It's fun to enjoy a well deserved rest and vacation after busting your hump for 50 weeks straight, but it's important to remember that those who clean your room/ condo, wait on you in a restaurant, fetch you a drink, bus your table, sell you that post card, etc., are human beings as well. They deserve to be treated as such. They need to pay bills and they have the same right to dreams and self respect as you. More important than leaving a tip, remember to employ the same "please" and "thank you" courtesy that you welcome from others.

 

[green papaya]

Im sure there are plenty of respectable people living in trailors, but there is another lower level also known as "low life" or degenerates, they dont always live in trailors, they may also live in apartments, motels, SRO [Single Room Occupancy] these are the bottom of the barrel types of people, they live in places like the "Tenderloin" or skid row in cities

most have mental problems/ drug addiction / alcoholism / long criminal history, history of violence they are the undesirables of society.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Im sure there are plenty of respectable people living in trailors, but there is another lower level also known as "low life" or degenerates, they dont always live in trailors, they may also live in apartments, motels, SRO [Single Room Occupancy] these are the bottom of the barrel types of people, they live in places like the "Tenderloin" or skid row in cities

Or luxurious estates on top of the hill. The most morally degenerate man I ever knew was such, mingling with senators, congressmen, and other high-level politicians. He was a cocaine user, a serial adulterer, and a thief.

 

[Fading Fast]

My experience is that there are wonderful, smart, caring, warm, giving, hard-working, honest people who live in shacks and who live in mansions.

There are also lying, cheating, scumbags, always looking for a edge, always willing to screw you and without an ounce of morality or decency who live in shacks and who live in mansions.

The cliche's of the "evil" rich or the "good-hearted" poor / or the "munificent" wealthy and "scummy" poor are just nonsensical stereotypes.

At least that has been my experience in a life that has given me plenty of exposure (granted in the narrow geography of the Northeast) to both and, pretty much, everything in between.

 

[vitanola]

I once owned a small (about 100 units) seasonal mobile home resort on a large "all sports" lake. I unfortunately had to sell the park to pay for a raft of medical expenses after my (individual) health insurance was cancelled for a so-called "pre-existing" condition which developed whilst I was insured. It was set up in the 1950's back before our state's DNR strictly regulated shoreline modifications. Each lot had an adjacent dock, for the shoreline had been canalized. The fellow who set this place up all those years ago was a smart cookie. He offered the services of his handyman to lot renters at small cost, allowing them to build decks and room additions to their trailers, permanently tying them to their respective lots. Because of this, the trailers in the park were generally pretty old, mostly "Ten Wides" and "Twelve Wides" dating to the 1950's or 1960's. These old, smaller units are adequate vacation cottages, though they would be considered to be entirely unsuitable as decent year-round housing. A park like this must be meticulously maintained, lest it fall into dilapidation and spiral down into a slum.

The fellow who advised me when I had the park was a good friend, and an experienced operator of mobile home communities. He owned a number of large, attractive parks in a large industrial metropolis. These parks looked like idealized suburban communities with curving streets, lots of mature trees, and carefully maintained houses, all encouraged by active management and careful maintenance. My friend sold out and retired around the turn of the century. Hi parks were purchased by a large Real Estate Investment Trust. It took about six years for them to turn from "Mobile Home Communities" into "Trailer Parks".