On Sundays after church, my family would pile into our crank-window GMC truck and head to Kentucky Fried Chicken. “Can I get me some of them tater wedges?” my father would say into the speaker, while ...

Let’s dig deep and find out why certain names simply fall out of fashion. When you hear names like Gladys or Herbert or Doris, you probably automatically think of old people, but why is that?

In Boston, there are reports of people pronouncing the letter “r.” Down in Tennessee, people are noticing a lack of a Southern drawl. And Texans have long worried about losing their distinctive twang.

Whether it’s Julia Garner’s foul-mouthed Missouri twang in “Ozark” or Dolly Parton’s soft yet (fittingly) steely drawl in “Steel Magnolias,” the Southern accent is as variable as it is recognizable.

Accents center on the pronunciation of words, while dialects encompass pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Here, the subjects of Grant Wood's American Gothic channel speaking styles popular in ...