Y'all Heard? An Argument For The Great Southern Pronoun
In the book Speaking of Alabama, an essay by linguistics professor Catherine Davies calls "y'all" a speech "improvement" — at least when referring to the plural second person.
Listen up, y'all: Perhaps even Yankees should start saying "y'all."
That's an argument put forth by Catherine Davies, a professor of linguistics at the University of Alabama, in a collection of essays titled Speaking of Alabama: The History, Diversity, Function, and Change of Language (edited by Thomas E. Nunnally). Davies' essay includes a section with the heading "A Southern Improvement to the Pronoun System."
"Well, I would.
