Like people in the South, folks in Appa-lachia are often perceived as slow, uneducated or backward when in fact their unique ways of speaking aren't meant to be judged. You can't be fired from your job as an industrial chemical engineer for being a Southerner, but you can be fired for not sounding intelligent. The bias is so deeply rooted it's virtually unconscious, Hazen says. Dialects are legitimate, naturally evolved differences in language that have nothing to do with education. What most people don't understand is that writing and language are different things, Hazen says.
Language is biological, an innate way to communicate.
Writing is an invention, created by people who have agreed to common standards. Everybody has a dialect. There is no such thing as speaking the English language and speaking a version of the English language. The West Virginia Dialect Project started in August 1998 and has several ongoing tasks, including what Hazen believes is the first attempt to look at black speech in Appalachia. His team is working on a paper for the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, published by the University of East Tennessee.