Y’all Sprawl

Brody McCurdy ’22 mr never said “y’all” as a kid growing up in Florida or when he later earned his undergraduate degree at Davidson College. He opted, instead, for “you guys.”

But when he got to Davidson, McCurdy noticed that a lot of people were saying “y’all” even though they didn’t sound Southern. “I was involved in all these progressive organizations, and it was used as a gender-neutral term,” he says. “I thought, ‘What is happening?’”

McCurdy has had a fascination with “finding out how language ticks” since he was in middle school, so he came to NC State for graduate studies in linguistics. And for his master’s thesis, he explored the spread of the use of “y’all,” a term historically associated with the South. “The last work on it, academically, was in the 1990s,” he says. “That work found that ‘y’all’ was spreading outside the South, but they had no idea why. They thought it was because it was super useful, one word instead of two.”

. . . ‘y’all’ was spreading outside the South, but they had no idea why. They thought
it was because it was super useful, one word instead of two.

What McCurdy found through his research confirmed that “y’all” has spread well beyond the South. He also found that the term’s increased popularity is due in part to being gender neutral. He says the “Y’all Means All” campaign to show support for the LGBTQ+ community was instrumental in the spread of the term. “Younger people are way more likely to use ‘y’all’ as gender neutral,” he says. “The same with the LGBTQ+ community, and people who are progressive politically.”

McCurdy, an associate researcher in the linguistics department, found examples of “y’all” being used by non-Southern characters in television shows, and he interviewed a woman in Boston, Mass., who said her company sent out a memo encouraging employees to use “y’all” as a gender-neutral alternative to “you guys.”

And McCurdy has started using it, too. “I do intentionally use it in conversation, specifically in mixed-gender groups,” he says. “If someone is unhappy with the use of ‘you guys,’ it’s not much skin off of my back to use ‘y’all’ and be inclusive.”