Do Texas natives consider Texas the South or Midwest (Scotland: schools, gated)

[spursfan]

Originally Posted by ATX Homeboy

Yeah, I have to agree with you on the whole accent thing.

What freaks me out is people from different areas of Texas and their accents. I'm from Austin and most people I have met tell me that I sound like I'm from NOLA, but I've met men/women from Dallas with the closest "Southern" sounding accents in Texas and they live 200 miles north while Houstonians probably have a more distinctive Texan drawl. Don't even get me started on the people down in San Antone.

I really can't even discern a certain accent from San Antonio. Whenever you hear someone with a heavy southern or even Texan accent, most san antonians would recognize you probably aren't from SA.

[Kibby]

Originally Posted by ATX Homeboy

Really depends on where you live. People from East Texas quickly identify themselves as southern while people from Lubbock to Austin to Del Rio and west will identify themselves as southwestern. Many people I have met from the gulf coast and south Texas as well as other areas throughout Texas will certainly tell you they are Texan before anything else.

Interesting point about the Gulf Coast (my birthplace) and South Texas. My family goes back to the early/mid 1800's in Texas ... that WAS Texas back then. When we moved to North Texas - Mr K kept referring to it as "yankee land". He still claims that anything north of the Brazos is in "yankee land".

Must be a way south or Gulf coast kinda thing. I have to admit - the "real" Texans are pretty obstinate in their thinking. My Dad was born in Oklahoma which (in my husband's eyes) means I have tainted blood and can never call myself a "real Texan". I've always thought it amusing that his French born Mother did not have the same "tainted blood". It's a Texas thang.

[Fullback32]

Originally Posted by Kibby

Interesting point about the Gulf Coast (my birthplace) and South Texas. My family goes back to the early/mid 1800's in Texas ... that WAS Texas back then. When we moved to North Texas - Mr K kept referring to it as "yankee land". He still claims that anything north of the Brazos is in "yankee land".

Must be a way south or Gulf coast kinda thing. I have to admit - the "real" Texans are pretty obstinate in their thinking. My Dad was born in Oklahoma which (in my husband's eyes) means I have tainted blood and can never call myself a "real Texan". I've always thought it amusing that his French born Mother did not have the same "tainted blood". It's a Texas thang.

Hehe. I get the same thing form my Comanche relatives in Lawton, Oklahoma. Mom is a full-blood and all her family lives up there for the most part. They are horrified that I'm a Longhorn and hate OU with a passion.

[Westerner92]

I didn't know people would even consider Texas Midwestern. Someone mentioned the Northern Panhandle has some Midwestern influence. I agree with that to some extent. It has rolling prairies with grain fields, but it also has ranching and oil rigs. Even people in towns like Dalhart and Perryton are diehard Texans with Texan accents even though they are closer to five other states' capitals than their own. If I personally had to choose a regional affiliation without Texas as a choice, I would say Southwestern, but there is no denying that there is Southern influence here (in West Texas). In Midland, there are the Robert E. Lee High School Rebels, but there are also the Lubbock High Westerners. Southern Baptist is the denomination with the most adherents, but Catholicism is just a few percentage points behind. It is very much a transition zone between Southwest and South, but there is no question that it is Texas.

[Kibby]

YUP - Once again, we have come to the conclusion that Texas is just a bit uniQ. Who woulda thunk it?

Want to "label us"? What to categorize us? Want to regionalize us?
No problemo - the word everyone is looking for has 5 letters beginning with a capital T. Come on down and find out what it's all about.

[Synopsis]

I've NEVER heard anyone refer to Texas as being Midwest. Anyone that suggests so has a screw loose, IMO.

[EasilyAmused]

Southwestern is Arizona and New Mexico
Midwest is Ohio.

We don't fit either category. Lil'bit o' South with a whole cup of Texas.

[TexasHorseLady]

We actually have as much in common with Arizona and New Mexico as we do with the South. A little bit of each along with the many other influences that went into making up Texas.

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by EasilyAmused

Southwestern is Arizona and New Mexico
Midwest is Ohio.

We don't fit either category. Lil'bit o' South with a whole cup of Texas.

Exactly, EA. While Texas can rightfully be considered "Southwest" in the old sense of the word (i.e. frontier western expansion of the generally regarded South), it is not the Southwest as in New Mexico and Arizona. We have very very little in common with them in terms of basic history or cultural.

In his book, Cultural Regions of the United States, Raymond Gastil pointed out just one of them in referring to most of Texas in a sub-region of the South he called the "Western South":

Unlike the Interior Southwest, neither aboriginal Indian nor Spanish-American culture played a central role in the definition of the area. The people of Texas are mostly from the Lower, Upper, and Mountain South and these Southerners easily outnumbered the Spanish speaking and Indian people even before the state joined the Union. Therefore, when we refer to a large Spanish-speaking population in Texas, we are primarily speaking of a relatively recent immigrant population, quite different from the core areas of the Interior Southwest."

It is a good read, and one of the most definitive ever done on the subject. As he says in a chapter devoted to it, Texas was mostly settled by people from the Southeast and it was that Southern culture which dominated in most ways.

As you allude to as well, the new setting and environment those from the older South moved into gave it a "western/frontier" flavor that can be proudly translated as uniquely Texan, but the basic characteristics were Southern.

New Mexico (other than the small eastern slice called Little Texas) and Arizona had little if any of these traits.

Here are couple of maps from his book, which are kind of interesting:

http://faculty.smu.edu/RKEMPER/anth_...al_Regions.jpg

http://faculty.smu.edu/RKEMPER/anth_..._Districts.jpg

[Texana1]

I agree that Texas is just Texas, but I don't see anything at all in common with New Mexico or Arizona. I disagree completely with that, not meaning to be rude or anything. I lived in the real southwest at one time and in the real deep South as well. And in my opinion while Texas has differences with both, the similarities were much more like the southeast than the southwest. I'm talking about the people and the way they talk and the general culture and all. Texas is much more southern than southwest like New Mexico and Arizona. It for sure isn't midwest!