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University Microfilms 300 North Zoob Rood Ann Arbor, Michigan 40106 A Xarox Education Company 73-2030

JOHNSON, Dorothy Rensch, 1924- THE INFLUENCE OF TELEVISION VIEWING UPON PERCEPTIONS OF VARIOUS CONCEPTS AMONG APPALACHIANS AND NON-APPALACHIANS.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1972 Speech

| University Microfilms, A XERQK Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan ? I

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE INFLUENCE OF TELEVISION VIEWING UPON PERCEPTIONS

OF VARIOUS CONCEPTS AMONG APPALACHIANS AND

NON-APPALACHIANS

DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Dorothy Rensch Johnson, A.B., M.A., M.A *****

The Ohio State University 1972

Approved by

Adviser S Department of Speech-Communication PLEASE NOTE:

Some pages may have

indistinct print.

Filmed as received.

University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgment of assistance in a project of this sort is likely to be inadequate, no matter how extensive the list of names included. Gratitude is due to too many individuals. Some contributions are recognized as vital while others are likely to be fully appreciated only at a later time. My special thanks are due, however, to those without whose immediate contributions this disserta­ tion could not have been written. Dr. Wallace C. Fotheringham, who served as adviser spent many patient hours reading and counselling. But his greater contribution was the insight provided over many months into methods for "getting at" the things I wanted to learn about the Appalachian people. No one concerned with the Appalachian sub-culture could fail to acknowledge his debt to authorities such as Jack E. Weller and Harry M. Caudill, both of whom are talented at bringing into focus some characteristics and practices which might otherwise remain puzzling. The staff of the Appalachian Regional Commission provided mate rials and counsel in areas where factual information was unavailable from any other source. Mrs. P. W. McCreight, a member of the visiting committee for the Center for Appalachian Studies and Development of West Virginia University, put at my disposal not only her extensive personal collection of materials on Appalachia hut also her personal knowledge of its people. The administration of Marshall University, and especially the faculty and chairman of the Department of Speech, freed me from my regular duties in order to pro­ vide time for this investigation and supplied continuing encouragement. A great debt is owed to my students. Many of them over the years have been native to the Appalachian region and have excited my interest, concern, and admira­ tion for certain aspects of Appalachian culture. Four of those students served as interviewers and achieved remarkable success in areas where I could not have accom­ plished the same results. They performed a demanding task conscientiously and succeeded in eliciting responses from Appalachian people who would not have been as candid with an outsider to the region. Mrs. Donald Woods provided not only professional assistance in typing and preparation of the manuscript, but also the support of a friend. Most of all, my thanks are due to my family: to my children for patiently enduring sketchy meals and a mother too often preoccupied and not available for family iii projects; to my mother-in-law who gallantly sacrificed her own interests to keep the home fires burning; and to my husband for his expert knowledge of broadcasting in Appalachia, for endless reading and criticism, for vainly trying to curb my prolixity, and for indulgence through­ out the long ordeal.

iv VITA

May 3, 1924. . B o m - Schenectady , New York 1945 ...... A.B., Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois 1947 ...... M.A., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1948 ...... M.A., Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 1949-1950. . . Instructor, Department of Speech, West Vir­ ginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 1965-1972. . . Instructor and Assistant Professor, Depart­ ment of Speech, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia

PUBLICATIONS "Introduction to Speech Communication" in The Fundamentals of Sneech-Communication. ed. by Allen Otis Ranson (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1970). Co-editor with Allen Otis Ranson, The Fundamentals of Speech-Communication (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publi shing Co., 1972).

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Broadcasting Studies in Broadcasting. Professors Walter B. Emery and Don R. LeDuc Studies in Communication Theory. Professors Wallace C. Fotheringham, Franklin H. Knower, and Leonard Hawes Studies in Educational Broadcasting. Professor Keith Tyler Studies in Rhetoric. Professor James L. Golden and William R. Brown TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... ii VITA ...... v LIST OF T A B L E S ...... vli Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 The Problem Objectives of the Study Hypotheses of the Study Review of Literature on Appalachia II. PROCEDURES...... 67 Drawing the Samples Interviewing Construction of the Interview Schedule Processing of Data III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION...... 88 Responses to Free Association Perceptions of Stimulus Words Differences Between Heavy and Light Viewers Perceptions of Favorite Television Programs IV. SUMMARY AND C O N C L U S I O N S ...... 193 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 208 LIST OF TABLES

Table Page 1. Net Changes in Population for the United States and the Four Sub-regions of Appa­ lachia, 1960-1970 ...... 19 2. Per Capita Personal Income in the United States and in the Four Sub-regions of Appalachia, 1969 38 3. Unemployment Rates in the United States and in the Four Sub-regions of Appalachia, 1969 39 4. Television Saturation— Receivers per House­ hold in Non-Appalachian, Central Appala­ chian, and Northern Appalachian Samples . . 90 5. Average Daily Hours of Television Viewing . . 93 6. Sources from Which Respondents Got Most of Their N e w s ...... 96 7. Comparison of Credibility of News Media . . . 98 8. Percentage in All Samples Who Regularly Selected a Particular Station for News . . 100 9. Stations Regularly Selected for News by All Samples...... 101 10. Perception of Television’s Fairness in Handling of Controversial Opinions .... 102 11. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to TELEVISION, by Content Category .... 110 12. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples C o m b i n e d ...... 117 vii Table Page 13. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to RADIO, by Content Category...... 118 14. Meaning Components Common to Both RADIO and TELEVISION Summarized by Percentage of Responses in All Samples ...... 120 15. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined ...... 123 16. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to TELEVISION NEWS, by Content Category . . 125 17. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined ...... 130 18. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to APPALACHIA, by Content Category .... 132 19. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cant! y More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples C o m b i n e d ...... 137 20. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to GOVERNMENT, by Content Category .... 139 21. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples C o m b i n e d ...... 143 22. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to NEIGHBORS, by Content Category...... 145 23. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples C o m b i n e d ...... 149 viii Table Page 24. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to HOME, by Content C a t e g o r y ...... 150 25. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples C o m b i n e d ...... 155 26. Responses of Non-Appalachian, Central Appa­ lachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to FAMILY, by Content C a t e g o r y ...... 156 27. Components of Meaning Perceived as Signifi­ cantly More Important by Demographic Sub- Samples in All Three Geographic Samples C o m b i n e d ...... 160 28. Concepts Perceived as Significantly Dif­ ferent by Heavy and Light Television Viewers, Designated by Chi Square V a l u e s ...... 162 29. Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to APPALACHIA, by Content Category ...... 163 30. Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to GOVERNMENT, by Content Category ...... 167 31. Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to NEIGHBORS, by Content Category ...... 169 32. Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to HOME, by Content Category ...... 171 33. Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to FAMILY, by Content Category ...... 173 34. Favorite Television Programs, by Category . . 176 35. Responses of Those Who Indicated ALL IN THE FAMILY as Their Favorite Program, by Content C a t e g o r y ...... 178 ix Table Page 36. Responses of Those Who Indicated a DETEC­ TIVE Program as Their Favorite, by Content Category ...... 181 37. Responses of Those Who Indicated a NEWS or PUBLIC AFFAIRS Program as Their Favorite, by Content Category ...... 183 38. Responses of Those Who Indicated a MEDICAL Program as Their Favorite, by Content C a t e g o r y ...... 183 39. Responses of Those Who Indicated a SPORTS Program as Their Favorite, by Content C a t e g o r y ...... 187 40. Responses of Those Who Indicated a SOAP OPERA as Their Favorite Program, by Content Category ...... 189

x CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The Problem During the past decade "Appalachia” has become synonymous in the national mind with poverty, ignorance, and social privation. The area is rich in natural resources. Some sections of Appalachia are more highly industrialized them the national average. But these advantages have not prevented the region from becoming a retrograde island completely surrounded by areas of com­ parative wealth and opportunity. Per capita income and other indices of economic and social well-being point to the discrepancies between Appalachia and the country at large. The region constitutes a drain on the economy of the country, and the non-Appalachian counties of the thirteen Appalachian states, in terms of tax losses and welfare aid. The condition in which some mountaineers live constitutes a blight on the collective conscience. And the "war on poverty" has focused the attention of government and social scientists on the region. More­ over, the large-scale migration from Appalachia to the population centers of the country has introduced problems 2 of assimilation and acculturation in the cities. Just as the problems of other minorities have been shouldered by people of good will in all social strata nationwide, Appalachia as a region and Appalachians as a people have been recognized as problems to be borne by the entire nation. Appalachians are "exceptional" people in the sense in which educators refer to "exceptional children." They thereby lump together somewhat incongruously the handi­ capped and the gifted. Both are exceptional because they stand out. They are not like their fellows of the huge homogenous group called "average." Mountaineers are thus exceptional. Certainly they differ from the millions of average middle class Americans. The respects in which they are handicapped are widely recognized: they have been the victims of exploitation, deprivation, and their own intransigence. But they are gifted, too. Their talent for survival is all that has kept them from extinction. In the face of unyielding natural surroundings and a national culture which passed them by (and which they find unfamiliar and unappealing), they have survived. They are gifted in living by the values which some Americans have forgotten. They value people above possessions, relationships above achievements. The frenetic, materialistic, competitive status-seeking which has alienated many of today's young people from their parents has always been alien to the mountaineer. Like other exceptional people, the mountaineer does not always "fit” in the larger culture. In the spirit of adopting a culture which neither suits nor serves him, he should not be required to fit. In the sense in which he feels at home only among the crags and hollows of the mountains, he should not be forced to fit. Even in the sense that it may be less intolerable to be grindingly poor among the hills of home than in a big city ghetto, he probably should be permitted to choose. But if the mountaineer is to enjoy the advantages which most Americans have come to regard as rights, if he is to function productively in the fast-paced interaction of m odem America, it is clear that some modifications must occur not only in public policy and facilities but in some of the mountaineer*s traditional behaviors and out­ look.

Objectives of the Study The prevailing culture in the United States is the product of the "melting pot" which has assimilated many diverse cultural characteristics from various waves of immigrants. The persistence of an Appalachian sub­ culture is primarily the result of the isolation of the mountains which inhibited outside influences from effec­ tively reaching the mountaineer for so long. The most pervasive of the outside influences which have penetrated the mountains in recent decades is television. Many have assumed that television is exercising a modifying effect on traditional mountain culture. This study was designed to test that assumption. The study had six major objectives: (l) to compare the perceptions of various basic concepts among three populations, non-Appalachians, Central Appalachians, and Northern Appalachians; (2) to determine whether differences, if any, among the perceptions of the three populations would coincide with characteristics of the Appalachian sub-culture described previously by social scientists; (3) to investigate the perceptions of the nature and functions of broadcasting media among the three populations; (4) to ascertain the extent of tele­ vision exposure and the perception of credibility of the medium among the three populations; (5) to discover whether the level of television exposure would relate to differences in perceptions of the environment; and (6) to examine the perceptions of the message of particular television programs in order to learn whether the three populations actually perceived the same message from the same program. 5 Hypotheses of the Study It was hypothesized that: 1. Central Appalachians would perceive various aspects of their personal and regional environment in ways that differed from the perceptions of Northern Appalachians and non-Appalachians; thus, the meaning which they attached to particular concepts would differ significantly from the meaning of those concepts to others. 2. Central Appalachians would derive different components of meaning from the message of specific tele­ vision programs from the meaning derived by other viewers. 3. Central Appalachians would view more tele­ vision and manifest greater confidence in the credibility of the medium than other viewers. 4. Central Appalachians who were heavy tele­ vision viewers would perceive various aspects of their personal and regional environment in ways which differed significantly from the perceptions of light television viewers, thus reflecting the acculturation effect of television viewing. 5. Northern Appalachians would not differ sig­ nificantly from non-Appalachians in their perceptions of various aspects of their environment. 6. Northern Appalachians would differ from non- Appalachians in the number of hours they watched tele­ vision, but not in their perception of the credibility of the medium, their perception of the message from particular television programs, or in the influence of heavy viewing upon perceptions of their environment* 7- Cross-partitioning of samples would reveal significant differences between sub-samples in the per­ ception of various concepts; thus, the perceptions of older people would differ from those of younger, men from women, high income from low income, and highly educated from less educated. But such differences would not be as great as cultural differences.

Review of Literature on Appalachia Despite the journalistic attention focused on Appalachia since its "rediscovery" in I960, some basic misconceptions are tenacious in the popular mind. In order to understand clearly the nature of the region or the characteristics of its people, two caveats should be observed. The first of these is that the region is not homogeneous. The dimensions of Appalachia have been variously defined for differing motives. The earliest studies included only parts of seven states— Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and a very small portion of Alabama. The Southern Appa- lachian Studies1 sponsored by Berea College and various religious and welfare organizations during the late 1950*s (the most extensive study of the area undertaken to that time and a direct forerunner of governmental studies during the following decade) continued to be limited just to those states. They dealt primarily with the mountain areas, the natural habitat of the mountaineer who was thought of as the true Appalachian. By the time the Appalachian Regional Commission was created by Congress at the request of President John F. Kennedy on April 9, 1963, the area had expanded considerably. Similarities of economic problems and a strong measure of political expediency had dictated the inclusion of the western panhandle of Maryland and parts of four more states— New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and South Carolina. When a new appropriation for the Commission was debated by Congress in 1967, the area was extended somewhat illogically to include twenty counties of northern Mississippi. Similarity of

1Thomas R. Ford, ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1962). 2 The original request for a meeting of Appalachian governors to discuss common economic problems was issued by Governor J. Millard Tawes of Maryland (Appalachia: A Report by the President's Appalachian Regional Commission. L Washing ton: Government Printing Office, 196*0,) despite the fact that only the tip of the western panhandle of Maryland intrudes into the Appalachian Region. 8 economic status, rather than common culture or problems, appeared to be the rationale for the extension. Thus Appalachia today embraces all of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states. This inclusivity can be defended since the Appa­ lachian Mountains range from the Mohawk Valley in New York to the Fall Line Hills in Mississippi. It was this chain of mountains which constituted a hurdle for America's earliest migrants and a haven for the solitary and inde­ pendent men who chose to remain among the ridges and valleys. For a hundred years the mountain range was the barrier between the European settlements of the east coast and the Indian villages of the interior. The inac­ cessible mountains also shielded the mountaineer from the larger culture which developed beyond the mountains. But to a marked extent, the inclusiveness of govemmentally drawn boundaries for Appalachia can be misleading. In an effort to deal realistically with the differences between peoples and problems, Ralph R. WIdner, Executive Director of the Appalachian Regional Commission from its inception in 1965 until late 1971, defined four

^Ben A. Franklin, winner of the 1970 Wetherford award for the best published work on the Appalachian South, maintained that the addition of Mississippi "was dictated largely by the fact that Senator John Stennis of Mississippi is a key member of the appropriations com­ mittee." (David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson, eds., Appalachia in the Sixties; Decade of Reawakening fLexing- ton: University of Kentucky, 1972J, p. 1447) separate Appalachias.^* The first is the Appalachian Highlands, the scenic playground stretching from the Catskills of New York to Mt. Oglethorpe in Georgia, which has increasingly become a refuge for the affluent of the Boston-Norfolk magalopolis. The second is Southern Appa­ lachia, encompassing the Piedmont of the Carolinas and the Great Valley of Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama. It is largely agricultural and has already begun to make substantial strides toward prosperity. The third is Northern Appalachia, occupying the Allegheny Plateau. This includes the industrial areas of western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, southern New York, and northern West Virginia. Although there have been economic dislocations in the area, the extensive industrial base is a firm foundation for potential prosperity, and it has always enjoyed an economic level above that of the other areas. The fourth of Widner*s Appalachias is Central Appalachia which encompasses most of the Cumberland Plateau of northern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and extreme western Virginia. Widner says of Central Appalachia, This area is heavily populated. In fact, it has a population density greater than that of the United States as a whole. It has practically no communities of over 10,000 population. In-

^Ralph R. Widner, "The Four Appalachias," Appala­ chian Review. Vol. II (Winter, 1968), pp. 13-19. stead, its population is largely scattered up and down the creeks and hollows and along the ridges in homes so inaccessible that to get to them you must drive up a creekbed.5 Central Appalachia comprises only sixty of the 397 counties of the whole Appalachian region and its 1,375,510 people constitute only 7.5 per cent of the total population of Appalachia.^ The mountaineers of Central Appalachia were never especially visible politi­ cally. They tended to be tax-consumers rather than tax- producers and there were few federal or state legislators from mountain areas. Yet this is essentially the Appa­ lachia of the early (pre-1965) studies, the hard-core problem area which might never have attained national attention without the inclusion of surrounding areas in the program. While there are some mountaineers in all of the region, it is in Central Appalachia -chat mountain­ eers are clustered. It is these people who have been the focus for studies in mountain psychology, sociology, and folkways. The second factor which should be recognized in order to understand Appalachia is that not all of the inhabitants are "poor, proud and primitive" mountaineers. Cultural characteristics tend to vary with the degree of

5Ibid., p. 15. £ Appalachia; An Economic Report— 1970 (Washington Appalachian Regional Commission, September, 1971), Appendix C, Table VI. physical isolation. Some inhabitants of the creeks and hollows may never have ventured beyond the county in which they were bom, but not all mountaineers live up a hollow. Insularity decreases, even in Central Appalachia, among those who live on a paved road or in one of the many small towns. And among urban dwellers there are more resemblances to the rest of middle class America than to the rest of Appalachia. There are comfortable, educated, sophisticated inhabitants of the cities who are inclined to deny or resent even the implication that there is an Appalachian sub-culture. Even in pockets of cosmopoli­ tanism, however, there are cultural vestiges as well as the economic imprint of the region. As the preliminary report of the Appalachian Regional Commission stated in 1964, "Rural Appalachia lags behind rural America; urban Appalachia lags behind urban America; and metropolitan 7 Appalachia lags behind metropolitan America." Research on Appalachia has tended to obscure these variations. Studies devoted to physical and mate­ rial objectives— highway planning, industrial develop­ ment, strip-mine reclamation, health care facilities— have generally dealt with the region as a whole. Cultural studies have tended to be more parochial, focusing on isolated communities of traditional mountaineers or

7 'Appalachia: A Report bv the Presidents Appala­ chian Regional Commission, p. xviii. 12 emigrants from such communities to cities outside of Appalachia. The dearth of investigations of less iso­ lated mountaineers has implied a cultural homogeneity which cannot be reconciled with physical and economic variations among the areas of the region. This study has sought to take cognizance of such variations among the mountaineers of Central and Northern Appalachia.

Brief History of Appalachia Among the first literary references to Appalachia was Poe's mention in 1845 of the wild mountains in western Q Virginia, "tenanted by fierce and uncouth races of men." Their behavior was apparently the product of the type of men who first settled the mountains, and the influence of the mountains upon them. The same personality character­ istics which caused them to leave Europe as dissenters or outcasts frequently made them unwilling to adapt to the stratified society of the eastern coastal settlements when they reached the New World. While some sought merely passes through the mountains to more congenial lands beyond, the most solitary and self-sufficient travelled only far enough to find the creekbeds and hol­ lows of the steep mountains to shelter them from the authority of a society too similar to the one they had left. D Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1913/, p. il. 13 There are conflicting dogmas of the origin of the Appalachian people. There appears to be some truth Q in each. One theory holds that many of the settlers were castoffs of European society— the orphans, debtors, and petty criminals who reached America as indentured labor. When their period of indenture was over, many of them sought escape from the strictures of coastal society which offered them little. Thus the predominant motiva­ tion for those who were willing to settle the gullies and ridges was escape rather than the creation of another organized society. This primary characteristic gave rise to the stereotype of the independent mountaineer. The state seal of West Virginia bears the legend "Montani Semper Liberi" (Mountaineers are always free). Much of the history of the region has been devoted to the pursuit of freedom from authority. Another view10 of the forebears of today*s Appa­ lachians is that they were predominantly Scottish immi­ grants from Ireland who went first to Pennsylvania but

q Jack E. Weller, Yesterday*s People; Life in Con­ temporary Appalachia (Lexington: university of Kentucky Press, 19b5), pp. 9-12. The view is also supported by Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962), pp. 1-6. 10Wylene P. Dial, "Overview of Early Modern Eng­ lish," unpublished speech prepared for West Virginia University*s Mountain Heritage Weekends. This view is supported by H. L. Mencken, The American Language. 4th ed., ed. by Raven I. McDavid, Jr. (New York, 1963), p. 455. 14 found the best lands already settled by the English. They,.together with a scattering of Palatine Germans, moved south and west into what is now Appalachia and remained there. The etymological support for this view consists of unmistakable traces of the "Queen’s English’1

of Elizabeth I in the vocabulary, grammar, and pronun­ ciations of today’s mountaineers. Isolation imposed by the mountains, according to this view, preserved a flavor of speech which was probably common among the working class of William Penn's colony. Whatever motivated the early settlers to brave the harsh living conditions of the forbidding mountains, only rarely did they venture from their forested retreat. Occasionally, however, news of great national concern penetrated the mountains and brought them forth. Because so many of them nurtured resentment against the British crown, they proclaimed their independence more than a year before the Declaration of Independence. And during the Revolution the mountain men met the British at King's Mountain and administered one of the "most resounding defeats ever sustained by a British force. ”'*'1 Again during the Civil War, the mountaineer did battle. Loyalties were divided in the mountains, and

11Introduction written by Harry M. Caudill to John Fetterman. Stinking Creek (New York: E. P. Dutton. 1967), p. 9. 15 families were often split between Yankee and Rebel. But not only did they fight valiantly on both sides, they also saw their homeland become a battleground. Their primitive agriculture disrupted by foragers and incessant guerilla warfare, thousands of them struggled out of the mountains in search of food and shelter. General 0. 0. Howard, director of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, called their plight to the attention of the White House, and President Lincoln told the General that after the war a way would be found to aid the poor mountain people whom the world had bypassed and forgotten so long.12 In essence, it was the same pronouncement enunciated almost a century later by another soon-to-be-assassinated president. Although the mountaineer fought some savage bat­ tles with the Indians during his first century in the mountains, he reached a greater accommodation with them than many white men. There was large scale adoption of Indian methods of hunting, agriculture, and woodlore. Unlike the nomadic Indian, however, the mountaineer tended to wear out the soil in the scant bottom-lands with such methods. And many of the same factors which kept the Indian from competing successfully with the shrewder and more organized society of the white man also inhibited the development of the mountaineer. Three interrelated industrial intrusions into the mountains during the century following the Civil War

12Weller, Yesterday's People, p. xi. 16 13 shaped much of the history of Appalachia. First came the timber companies. The untapped wealth of the vast virgin forests brought agents from the speculative "land companies.” Legions of unsophisticated mountain men, unaccustomed to a money economy, were lured into selling their timber for an average of fifty cents an acre as "futures" against the day when the railroads would pene­ trate the mountains and make forestry feasible. Second was the wave of coal and gas prospectors who persuaded the mountaineers to sell the mineral rights which they didn’t even know existed. With those rights went sweep­ ing permission to extract minerals by any means convenient to the leaseholder regardless of how it might despoil the land and wreck the agriculture or even destroy the moun­ taineer’s home. The third wave brought the railroads. Again the mountaineer was exploited during the rail construction period. But more important, the coming of the railroads meant that the potential depredations of the timber and coal companies became actualities. In all three of these incursions, the mountaineer was the naive victim of his ignorance of the true value of his resources and labor. And the extractive industries which have profited from the wealth of the hills have never been induced or com-

^Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. pp. 46- 324. 17 pelled by the mountaineer to pay the taxes which would have supplied even the minimum services essential to a progressive society. It took almost a half century of mining before the mountaineer was willing to submit to unionization of the mines. But the union wars, like the blood feuds fol­ lowing the Civil War, failed to establish the mountaineer as master of his own land. The paternalism practiced by the mining companies was merely extended, intensified, and legitimized by union contracts. And union leadership ultimately conspired with absentee mine owners to supplant 14 many of the miners with machinery. The process which administered the coup de grace to the legendary independ­ ence of the mountaineer was the coming of the welfare state. One last process shaped the degeneration of Appa­ lachia, although it was paradoxically the sole example of the mountaineer acting entirely on his own. The monu­ mental migration of the mountain people from their home­ land has radically altered the region which they left. Migration began early in the century but the mountaineer had always been so prolific that the natural increase in population tended to offset emigration. Beginning with

14 T. N. Bethell, "Conspiracy in Coal," in Appala­ chia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening, ed. by David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson, pp. 76-91. 18 World War II job opportunities in big city war industries, however, the migration paralleled but greatly exceeded the general American exodus from rural to metropolitan living. Migration resulted in a population decrease for the region as a whole of thirteen per cent between 19^0 and 1950 and nineteen per cent between 1950 and I960. For the two decades, West Virginia suffered net losses of thirteen and twenty-five per cent. 15 ^ Much attention has been devoted to emigration from the region, not solely because it represents a deple­ tion of tax resources and congressional representation, but chiefly because it represents the flight of the upwardly mobile. Those who remained behind were too often the phlegmatic, the defeated, the totally dependent.1^ Findings of the 1970 census, that Appalachian population trends had been reversed, should have been encouraging to demographers. The overall increase of 2.7 per cent for the decade, however, reflected the inclusivity of politi­ cally dictated boundaries for Appalachian more than a significant change in migration. "The counties with losses in population," cautioned Brown,

15James S. Brown and George A. Hillery, Jr., "The Great Migration, 19^0-1960," in The Southern Appalachian Region; A Survey, p. 59. Caudill. Night Comes to the Cumberlands. no. 353-355. 19 are concentrated in the Cumberland and Allegheny Plateau sections of West Virginia, Kentucky, Vir­ ginia, and Tennessee, including the sixty coun­ ties which the ARC CAppalachian Regional Commis- sionj calls "Central Appalachia" but including many other counties too, especially in West Virginia. All but two of the counties among the 303 in Southern Appalachia having population losses of ten per cent or more from I960 to 1970 are in these parts of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia.17 Net changes in population between I960 and 1970 shown in Table 1 indicate that while some areas of the region were growing, albeit at less than the national rate, Northern Appalachia stood still and Central Appala­ chia continued to decline. Even the high natural increase in Central Appalachia was not enough to offset the sub­ stantial outflow of migrants.

TABLE 1 Net Changes in Population for the United States and the Four Sub-regions of Appalachia, 1960-1970*

Natural Net Total Areas Increase Migration Change

United States (total) • * + t +13.3% Appalachia (total) + 9.0% - 6.3% + 2.7 Northern Appal. + 7.0 - 7.0 0.0 Southern Appal. +11.7 - 1.9 + 9.8 Appal. Highlands + 9.2 - 3.5 + 5.7 Central Appal. +10.4 -21.0 -10.7

♦Source: Appalachia: An Economic Report— 1970 (Washington: Appalachian Regional Commission, September, 1971), p. 97.

17 'James S. Brown, "A Look at the 1970 Census," in Appalachia in the Sixties, p. 142. 20 Thus the history of Appalachia has been largely the story of external forces exerted against the moun­ taineer rather than events which he instigated or con­ trolled. The instinct which made him seek sanctuary in the mountains from the forces of a manipulative society, and stubbornly cling to the land while others fled, in­ sulated him from the social and political acumen which would have made him more nearly the master of his own fate.

The Contemporary Mountaineer Jack E. Weller, who has written extensively on the sociology of Appalachia, recognizes three social classes in contemporary mountain society. 1. The lower class. It is a pathological society in that it does not deal adequately with the problems of life. It is not a problem-solving society; in fact, it is a problem-creating society. . . . Family life is such that attitudes and habits are fostered which almost guarantee defeat for its members, and these family habits are passed along from one generation to the next.^-® Among the lower class, Weller includes not only the vast army of welfare recipients, but those whose dependence on primitive subsistance agriculture or out-dated mining skills perpetuate an almost unbearable marginal existence.

18Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 151. 21 2, The folk class. Members of this class, says Weller, "have met the situation of mountain life in an adequate fashion, although in ways different from those IQ of middle class culture." Weller does not permit his admiration for this class of people to obscure his con­ cern that this life style has become "... seriously inadequate to prepare its people for the cooperative, interrelated, technical society into which we have moved in the twentieth century, 3. The upwardly mobile class. This group includes not only those who might be characterized as middle class elsewhere, but also those from the folk class who are susceptible to encouragement from what he calls "bridge 51 people" to move out of the strictures of mountain atti­ tudes and mores which would inhibit their free movement into the larger culture of the country. The traditional social structure of the mountain­ eer, particularly in Central Appalachia and to varying degrees in Northern Appalachia, is based on familism. "Everybody here is kin," 22 according to one study after

19 Ibid.. p. 154. 20 Ibid. 2 IIbid.. p. 157. 22 James Stephen Brown, "The Conjugal Family and the Extended Family Group," American Sociological Review. Vol. XVII (June, 1952), pp. 297-305. 22 another. Because of the isolation imposed by the moun­ tains, families tended to remain and multiply on their own creek, with one adult son after another settling farther up the valley on progressively less level and less desirable land. Isolation coupled with the dearth of passable roads inevitably contributed to inbreeding. "It is not unusual today," writes Weller, to find families with four generations living side by side in one narrow valley— brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins— intermarrying to such an extent that in some fashion every person is related to every other.23 Family influence even extends to those who migrate from the region. "Close identification with family of origin, as measured by frequency of interaction with parents, tends to hold back the young rural migrant from becoming a functional member of the urban community," according to Harry K. Schwarzweller, who has been studying some Appalachian families for more than twenty years.2k When a family does migrate, the tendency is to move to the population center where other members of the extended family have previously settled. Thereafter they perpetuate

^Weller, Yesterday’s People, p. 13. Oh Harry K. Schwarzweller, "Parental Family Ties and Social Integration of Rural to Urban Migrants," Jour­ nal of Marriage and the Family. Vol. XXVI (November, 1964), pp. 410-416. 23 the same family interdependence they once knew in the 25 mountains. Despite emotional dependence upon the family, fostered by parental unwillingness to allow children and young people to esqaerience any substantial independent life, the mountain family is not close in the same way that is true of some other familial societies. Weller, who has lived in Central Appalachia for almost a quarter century, maintains that the casual observer looking in on a household could easily catch the feeling that here are persons who live side by side in the same house but have little else to do with each other. Few recreations are ever shared. . . . Meals are not usually a family affair but are taken cafeteria style. . . . CBecause the too-small house is likely to be crowded with beds3 the home cannot be a gathering place for the youth. . . . The mountain man often pays little attention to his children.26 Such absence of family closeness, on the other hand, does not result in loose emotional ties. Coles, a child psychiatrist who has lived with and studied mountain children in their homes, describes the attitude of a moun­ tain mother. She knows that the chances are her children will leave her very early to wander far over the hills— and in so doing stay close to what she considers

25 James S. Brown, Harry K. Schwarzweller, and Joseph J. Mangalem, "Kentucky Mountain Migration and the Stem-Family: An American Variation on a Theme by LePlay," Rural Sociolo^gv. Vol. XXVIII (March, 1963)» pp. ^8-69. ^Weller, Yesterday’s People, pp. 58-61. 24 "home." When her children grow up, however, she expects they will have little interest in going farther away than they have already been— even as many other American children, kept relatively close to their parents' small front yard or back­ yard during early childhood, begin to leave home almost with a vengeance when older.27 The most compelling social tie in the mountains is the reference group. According to Weller, it "is com­ posed of persons of the same sex and status and of approxi- 28 mately the same age." For adults, the reference group tends to be family-based, including members of the extended family. "So strong is the reference group structure of the society that even husbands and wives tend to pull away from each other toward their respective reference groups."2 9 Dependent upon the reference group for his self-image, the mountaineer tends to reject anything which would cause him to pull away from his reference group. Education, travel, affluence, or any other element which might make him stand out from the group is thus less attractive than it might be to his cosmopolitan counterpart.

Psychology of the Mountaineer The mountaineer was something of a loner before he chose the isolated mountains as his dwelling place. "Here

27Robert Coles, Migrants. Sharecroppers. Mountain­ eers. Vol. II of Children of Crisis (boston: Lixtle. Brown andCompany, 1 967), p. 215. 2®Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 58. 29Ibid. 25 then is a key to much that is puzzling in highland char­ acter," wrote Kephart in one of the earliest studies. "In the beginning isolation was forced upon the mountain­ eers; they accepted it as inevitable and bore it with stoical fortitude until in time they came to love solitude for its own sake and to find compensations in it for lack of society."^0 Difficulty of travel reinforced this natural inclination and his frequent defeats at the hands of out­ siders (land agents, coal barons, etc.) made him withdraw over and over again. Campbell explained the development of independence in a later study. Circumstances forced him to depend upon his own action until he came to consider independent action not only a prerogative but a duty. We are not easily aware of the deep influence of this individualistic way of thinking upon present conditions. It persists in the midst of a society that has passed away from the conditions that occasioned it.31 There is a substantive difference between inde­ pendence and individualism, and it is the latter which persists in contemporary mountain culture. The inde­ pendence which permitted him to survive largely by his own resources is no longer possible. His primitive farm-

30 Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, p. 306. 31 John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (New York: The Russell Sage foundation, 1 9 2 1 ), p. 93. 2 6 3? ing methods long ago wore out the soil. The steep crags surrounding his farm prevented cultivating enough acreage to compete in today's mechanized agricultural economy. The mines which once needed his unskilled labor are now largely mechanized and automated. It is no longer a land in which he can make his independent way. The habit of thinking first of himself has under­ gone a permutation of his earlier independence into individualism. "I can do it myself” has given way to ”1 can look out for myself." According to Weller, "He does not conceive of the 'public good* except as it coincides with his own 'private good'."^ This self-centered view of the world has fostered willing as well as widespread dependence upon public welfare. Fetterman describes one county with a popula­ tion of 2 5 , 0 0 0 in which more than sixty-four per cent of the people receive some kind of welfare aid, not Including medical assistance. 54 Politics in Appalachia is likely to be another

52Weller maintains that it was the lack of agri­ cultural skills and experience of the early settlers which led to destructive farming methods in Appalachia, one of the few mountainous areas in the world which does not practice contour farming. (Weller, Yesterday's People. p. 1 2 .) ^Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 31. ^John Fetterman. Stinkine Creek (New York: Dutton. 1967), p. 29. ------27 reflection of this individualism. Kephart described earlier conditions: As they stand today, each man "fighting for his own hand, with his back against the wall," they recognize no social compact. Each one is sus­ picious of the other. Except as kinsmen and partisans they cannot pull together. Speak to them of community of interests, try to show them the advantages of cooperation, and you might as well be proffering advice to the North Star.35 He might have been describing the current situation. Vote-buying is common and tacitly accepted. Corrupt public officials are taken for granted and infrequent prosecution for public corruption is likely to be based on "whose ox is gored" rather than on public outrage. Government is concentrated at the county level and is frequently in the hands of a single family, with one brother the superintendent of schools, another the county judge, and a third the sheriff. Coles describes the dis­ illusion of a young college graduate from Mingo County, West Virginia (one of the counties included in this study). Ned likes to talk about the various towns in and near Mingo County, towns with names like Bias and Justice and Pie. The county has had a certain notoriety as the locus of long­ standing family feuds, and thoroughly ingrained political corruption— with dead voters, stuffed ballot boxes, and the outcome of elections a sure thing. . . . "The people who are in power stay in until they lose their guts and become too lazy to be efficiently dishonest, or until they get mean enough, flagrantly mean enough,

^*5Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, p. 309. 28 to arouse almost everyone; namely, people from the outside, the state legislators and the fed­ eral people, who then come in and supervise things and try to get an honest election held, which in Mingo would strike everyone as a contra­ diction in terms, I'll tell you. . . . It used to be I'd get all worked up about those poli­ ticians in Mingo, the courthouse gang and the rest who hang on their tails. Now I think they're just a bunch of small-time crooks, a little more colorful than most, and not half as bad as the real crooks in Appalachia. A lot of them don't live here, and never have. They come from the Golden Triangle in Pittsburgh and from Wall Street."36

Such individualism in elected officials serves to deepen a sense of futility in the electorate and foster indi­ vidualism there. The mountaineer is not only individualistic, he is also dedicated to tradition. "Their adherence to old ways is stubborn, sullen, and perverse to a degree that others •57 cannot comprehend," writes Weller. This traditionalism manifests itself in peculiar ways which are out of step with the rest of American society. While middle class America tends to be improvement-oriented, the mountaineer is existence-oriented. Since survival has frequently been all that he could achieve, the mountaineer has been con­ ditioned to aim only at survival. Because some mountain­ eers struggle along with no money at all, surviving on what they can grow or produce plus a little barter, they

36 ^ Coles, Migrants. Sharecroppers. Mountaineers. pp. 2 8 5 -2 8 6 . 37 "^ Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 19. tend to be profligate when some money comes their way. The mountaineer is present-oriented rather than future- oriented and finds it difficult to lay plans and pursue them. Change has so often been for the worse that he fears and avoids change. Traditionalism leads to suspicion. That which is different is suspect. "Intellectual deviancy is sus­ pect. Hence there is ambivalence toward education unless it is seen as immediately practical,"^® says Simpkins. Weller maintains that his traditionalism makes the mountaineer like the poor and those of closed socie­ ties everywhere. The culture of Appalachia tends to resemble the traditional culture found most everywhere in the world— in Asia, South America, Africa. Thus the Appalachian tends to be more like most of the people in the rest of the world than do those in the middle class. In a real sense, those of us in the middle class are the "new breed" in the world.39 Having lived for two centuries in privation and grindingly hard work, it should not be considered strange

0. Norman Simpkins, "Contemporary American Youth Appalachian Variety," unpublished speech presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, November 7, 1967, p. 3. (Mimeographed.) ^Jack E. Weller, "A Profile of the Appalachian Family," unpublished speech presented to the Southern Regional Education Board seminar on Appalachia held at West Virginia University, Morgantown, June, 1968, p. 14. (Mimeographed.) 30 that some mountaineers are what Weller calls action seek- 40 ers rather than routine seekers. Instead of schedules and habits and long-range goals, the action seeker lives an episodic life. Routine is tolerable only if it can be lightened by intermittent thrills, challenges and diver­ sions. This characteristic can contribute to erratic attendance patterns in school. It can excuse shirking a major responsibility on the first day of hunting season. It can contribute to frequent job-switching. Action- seeking can make the mountaineer a prodigious drinker of moonshine whiskey, a fanatical sports fan, an impulsive spender, and compulsive in his pursuit of dangerous enter­ tainment. It may even be a contributing factor, together with the patriotism which stems from his traditionalism, to the remarkable record of enlistment and heroism which 41 mountaineers have amassed in each of our country's wars. It is well to remember, however, that service in the armed forces has also represented a cash income and a means of escape from hopelessness as well as an outgrowth of patri­ otism.

40Weller borrowed the description from Herbert J. Gans. The Urban Villagers (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), pp. 28-31. 41Figures on enlistment, casualties, and awards supplied by the Department of Defense through the office of the Honorable Kenneth Hechler, Congressman for the fifth congressional district of West Virginia, in a telephone Interview July 6 , 1972. 31 Decision-making is difficult for the mountain- 42 eer. He has had little experience based on group cooperation, so he tends to be unsure of his own opinions and would "rather switch than fight." Partly out of his solitary heritage, he tends to be taciturn and stoically unwilling to show emotion. Kephart says, From infancy these people have been schooled to dissimulate and hide emotion, and ordinarily their faces are as opaque as those of veteran poker players. Many wear habitually a sullen scowl, hateful and suspicious, which in men of combative age, and often in old women, is sinister and vindictive. There are, however, reasonable explanations beyond mere physical isolation for such taciturnity and unwilling­ ness to cooperate. Coles quotes an educated mountaineer thus: They're not only proud and suspicious, like all those government manuals for VISTA volunteers say; it's something else— maybe plenty smart, that's what they are. . . . What-good would it do them if they did hurry, and talk a lot, and go demanding this and that? Do you have any idea what kind of tricky, two-faced people have gone up those hills, trying to sell people sugar pills, fake elixirs, and a share in the state capitol building in Charleston? And what has happened to the men who have left the hills and tried to get a fair deal for themselves in the outside world? . . . We all sit around and say: look, they're like this and they're like that, and they've got this hang-up about stran­ gers, and they're a whole "sub-culture" and they have "traits" . . . Even my best friend

42 Weller, Yesterday's People. pp. 46-47. 43 Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, p. 214. 32 would think I'm an idiot if I said the people up in Winding Creek are plenty smart, but if I talked about the "sub-culture" and the "traits" then I ’d be real savvy. . . . You get talking with them, and they tell you they'll help and they do. But after a while they find it hard to get other people to go along, because people around here are plain scared; they're afraid they'll be cut from welfare, or their kids won't be picked up by the bus, or won't get their free lunch, or a hundred other things will hap­ pen that the courthouse crowd can do to you.^ It may be that what seems like social isolation to an articulate outsider may be more apparent than real. Discussing the excitement of a family who had waited a month for a ride to a country store outside their hollow, Coles observed, Often when I watched that excitement I wondered what all the observers, including me, who have written about such families can possibly have meant by words like "isolated," "withdrawn," "suspicious," or "parochial." These parents and children alike are looking forward to com­ pany, to a change of scene, to hearing all sorts of stories and Joining neighbors near and not so near. If people are truly "withdrawn" and "isolated" they don't anticipate such experi­ ences, in fact they shun them rather than perk up at their prospect. 43 A grim survival-oriented existence has often left the mountaineer broken in body as well as defeated in spirit. Primitive agriculture, timbering and coal mining have contributed to widespread maiming and crippling. The Civil War and the legendary blood feuds which followed

44 Coles, Migrants. Sharecroppers. Mountaineers. p. 291. 45Ibid.. p. 326. 33 46 it peopled the hills with widows and orphans. Pneumo­ coniosis, while probably not as rampant as welfare rolls or union oratory would indicate, is terribly prevalent and disabling. 47 Such apparent willingness to risk danger and even death flies in the face of the fact that the mountaineer is "person-oriented" rather than "object- 48 oriented" as most of middle class America. It is this characteristic which makes him intense about human rela­ tionships but casual about possessions, his own or others*. It may be his disdain for possessions which makes the mountaineer a litter-bug. Almost every observer com­ ments upon the mountaineer's willingness to accumulate heaps of trash— in the creeks, in his yard, beside the roads. The mountaineer is subject to the same pre­ packaged consumer economy as the rest of the country but most hollows do not enjoy the automatic garbage collection expected elsewhere. So the temptation is to evade the constant necessity for burying trash and merely dispose of it in ways which take the least effort. Coles noted the contradiction in many mountaineers:

46Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. pp. 46- 51. 47 Ben A. Franklin, "The Scandal of Death and Injury in the Mines," in Appalachia in the Sixties. pp. 92-108. teller, Yesterday's People, pp. 49-57. 34 Again and again the importance of order and cleanliness are emphasized and the presence of disorder and confusion acknowledged— and stream garbage is perhaps a concrete form of disarray that reflects a much larger uproar and agitation, a social and political rough- and-tumble which a plundered region has to live with now that so much of its wealth has gone elsewhere.49

Yet Weller described a community effort in one small town to organize regular trash collection with the help of the county sanitarian and a mining company which donated land for a dump. The plan was vehemently resisted with such objections as "Everybody has always thrown stuff in the creek" and "Why should we pay to have it hauled away, when the river will take it away free?"^ It may be that the mountaineer's blindness to trash in his own yard helps to make him tolerant of the ugly scarring and pol­ luting which is the aftermath of strip mining. Personal honesty is not necessarily part of the mountaineer's code. His individualism has encouraged him to take any advantage that he could. His half-century battle of wits with the "revenuers" who wanted to stop or tax his illegal distilling of moonshine was applauded by his own and other reference groups. Welfare, too, has had its damaging effect. Caudill says that, "as

AQ Coles, Migrants. Sharecroppers. Mountaineers, p. 231. ^Weller, Yesterday's People, pp. 98-101. 35 hopelessness deepened, morality was undermined."^51 In addition to the demoralization of having to accept aid, there has been a steady erosion of honesty, as ingenious forms of welfare cheating seem the only means of gaining money. Fetterman quoted one disapproving mountain man. If they can drive a car around and lead a dog around fox hunting, they ain't blind. . . . I’ve been around them signin' up for commodities. Some'd tell how they didn't have nary a thing in the house, and I knowed better than that.52 While it is estimated that one-tenth of one per cent of welfare recipients nationwide may be legally ineligible, the figure is two per cent (twenty times as high) in some parts of Appalachia. Child rearing practices are an anomaly in the folk culture of the mountains, and tend to perpetuate some of the most disadvantageous characteristics of adults. Appa­ lachia's birth rate is declining somewhat from its historic high, but it is still the highest in the country.^ Babies

51 Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. p. 285. 52Fetterman, Stinking Creek, p. 50. 53 Interview with Mrs. Joan Bassford, chairman of a committee of the Huntington, West Virginia, chapter of the League of Women Voters which conducted a depth study of the situation in West Virginia, on The News Picture, regu­ lar 6:00 p.m. news program, WSAZ-TV, Huntington, West Virginia, July 8 , 1971, 54Gordon F. DeJong, Appalachian Fertility Decline: A Demographic and Sociological Analysis (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), p. 110. 36 are considered a blessing, as befits a culture where they were once regarded as potential labor in the unceasing struggle to scratch out a living. Even illegitimacy is not seriously disapproved, and neither baby nor mother is alienated or ostracized from the family. As babies grow older, however, they are more and more permitted to join their own reference groups, with comparatively little supervision from parents. "Mountain children are reared impulsively,11 says Weller, with relatively little of the conscious training found in middle class families. . . . Punishment is not given in order to press toward a desired result, it is simply to keep the child in line. . . . This training, based as it is on fear of punishment, builds into the child either a resentment toward or a fear of authority of any kind. . . . Child rearing in mountain fam­ ilies is not only impulsive but permissive and indulgent as well. Children are seldom required to do what they do not want to do. . . . There is little in the mountain child's training that would help him develop self-control, discipline, resolution, or steadfastness. . . . In his adult life, he tends to be capricious, vacillating, and volatile.55 The reference groups of older children tend to exert a very conservative influence. Because of the acceptance they afford, there is a security inherent in remaining exactly like others in the group. There is, therefore, an unwillingness to plan or execute grand ambitions lest they be thought "uppity." There is a

"^Weller, Yesterday's People, pp. 65-67. 37 suspicion of models from outside the hills and an imita­ tion of the life-style of parents without any real basis for understanding stemming from communication between generations. Imitation of adult behavior without under­ standing its motivation reinforces traditionalism and fatalism. Coles says, "They are people with a fatalism rare in this country. . . . What the parents chose as a style of living, their children proclaim as a rule of living."3 And Weller concludes, "This kind of parental non-attention and non-involvement contributes to the basic insecurity and low self-image of the mountain youth and adult.

Living Standards in Appalachia Any of the usual social indicators can reveal the discrepencies between Appalachia and the rest of the coun­ try and especially between Central Appalachia and the other areas of the region. Per capita income, for instance, reflects the variations in the region. When income fig­ ures are expressed as a percentage of the average income in the country, as in Table 2, it is graphically revealed that the mountaineer in Central Appalachia subsists on a level little more than half that of most Americans.

^Robert Coles, "It's Our Nothing," Appalachian Review. Vol. I (Summer, 1966), p. 15. ^'Weller speech, p. 16. 38 TABLE 2 Per Capita Personal Income in the United States and in the Four Sub-regions of Appalachia, 1969*

Per Capita Per Cent of Area Income U.S. Average

United States $ 3,697.00 1 0 0 .0# Appalachia (total) 2 ,968.00 80.3 Northern Appalachia 3,292.00 8 9.0 Southern Appalachia 2,796.00 75.6 Appalachian Highlands 2,768.00 74.8 Central Appalachia 1,959.00 52.8

♦Source: Statistical Summary #1: Per Capita Income Trends in the Appalachian Region, memorandum prepared for the Appalachian Regional Commission by its Office of Special Studies, April, 1972, Tables C and D. (Mimeo­ graphed. )

Per capita income in Central Appalachia climbed from 46.8 per cent of the national average in 1959 to 52.8 per cent in 1969, the last year for which regional figures are available. But it is noteworthy that the $1,959.00 Central Appalachian per capita income in 1969 was still below the $2,161.00 per capita income enjoyed by all Americans a decade earlier. 58 In terms of unemployment, obviously a factor in per capita income, comparison in Table 3 again demonstrates

Statistical Summary #1: Per Capita Income Trends in the Appalachian Region, memorandum prepared for the Appalachian Regional Commission by its Office of Special Studies, April, 1972, Tables C and D. (Mimeographed.) 39 the discrepancy between Central Appalachia and other areas of the country.

TABLE 3 Unemployment Rates in the United States and in the Four Sub-regions of Appalachia, 1969*

Percentage of Area Unemployment

United States 3.596 Appalachia (total) 3.9 Northern Appalachia 3.7 Southern Appalachia 3.4 Appalachian Highlands 4.2 Central Appalachia 7.5

♦Source: Appalachia: An Economic Report— 1970 (Washington: Appalachian Regional dotmnission, September, 1971), p. 11.

Statistics do not adequately reflect the quality of life or the conditions of living in a mountain hollow. Fetterman, Caudill, and Coles, among others, have drawn poignant portraits of Central Appalachian living. The family home usually consists of four over­ crowded drafty rooms, with beds crowding every room but the kitchen. Although the house is likely to have elec­ tricity, running water is not so common and an outhouse is probably perched precariously on the hill behind the house. Even if it is not a farm, there is likely to be a largely vertical garden or c o m patch climbing the hill 40 behind the house, and to work the worn out soil is back­ breaking labor. Not all mountaineers are on welfare. Older men particularly resist being "beholden." But defeat and despair permeate the atmosphere of the home, whether the head of the house is working or not. Caudill described a typical forty-five year old man, one of thousands once employed in the mines, who has long ago given up any meaningful struggle. When he finds an occasional day's work plowing and planting a vegetable garden, cultivating a field of com, stacking lumber at one of the few remaining sawmills or helping someone to build a house, the pay is rarely more than six dol­ lars. . . . He is at a total loss to understand his predicament. Each evening he sits in his tattered living room and watches his television set which he bought in happier and more pros­ perous times. Glib-tongued commentators describe the tremendous economic and technical progress occurring elsewhere in the nation. He resents with increasing bitterness the combination of circumstances which has precluded him from par­ ticipation in the progress of his country.59

Transportation in the Mountains Possibly the most compelling single element in the environment of most mountaineers is physical isolation. The inaccessibility of the hollows of his homeland inhibit his economy, health service, education, indeed his entire life. While creekbeds serve as the only roads into the homes of many mountaineers, even in more urban areas

5 0 Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. p. 285. 41 there have not been enough good roads to facilitate the mobility required in a progressive society. Three factors have combined to make Appalachian roads few and poor. Responsibility for roads belongs to states and counties, and these governmental entities have never been adequately financed because the extrac­ tive industries have never been taxed in proportion to their counterparts elsewhere. While there has always been less money for roads, the roads themselves cost more to build and maintain. A mile of highway in the hills costs twice that in more level terrain. And the same steep hills which cause roads to twist dangerously along the ridges make them deteriorate faster than roads in other parts of the country. Typically, the mountaineer has been able to affox'd a battered second-hand car at best. The punishing con­ dition of many mountain roads has tended to reduce such vehicles to barely mobile junk in short order. One result is that the mountaineer (who has no repugnance for public trash heaps) tends to litter his country roadside with abandoned cars which are progressively cannibalized to keep other wrecks running. West Virginia Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr., announced on July 17, 1972, that one- half million such junked and abandoned cars were to be removed from the state*s highways and secondary roads 42 under provisions of a new program.^ The total repre­ sented almost one for every three of the state's 1,744,237 people. If roads and cars have been a deterrent to mobil­ ity, public transportation has not been markedly better. There is comparatively little commerce in Appalachia, and the urban centers are not populous. This makes for unproductive routes for airlines and passenger trains. Thus, in an area where automobile travel is restricted, public transportation is also less than adequate. Not surprisingly, therefore, the preliminary re­ port of the Appalachian Regional Commission included a recommendation for rapid and extensive road building. Developmental activity in Appalachia cannot proceed until the regional isolation has been overcome. . . . The remoteness and isolation of the region . . . is the very basis of Appa­ lachian lag. The Commission recommends a mix of investment and timing which gives the single problem of access a double priority of emphasis.°1 The resultant Appalachian Development Highway System authorized some 2,700 miles of new road construc­ tion. Of the $1,354,076,000 federal share of Appalachian Regional Commission expenditures from its establishment in 1965 until June 30, 1971, $820,000,000 (61 per cent) was

^°The News Picture, regular 6:00 p.m. local news program, WSAZ-TV, Huntington, West Virginia, July 17, 1972. 61 Appalachian Regional Commission, Annual Report. 1964. p. 32. 43 62 spent for highway development. But in the years since the original authorization, highway costs have risen by an annual three per cent and new safety requirements have been added. Appalachian states, already committed to the massive interstate highway program, have been hard pressed to find the matching money required. As a result, only 1,500 of the authorized 2,700 miles can be constructed with the federal money now available, even if the states 63 can find every penny of the local share. ^ Thus, although the mountaineer's historic isola­ tion is being mitigated, the most remote creekbeds still serve as roads. Major arteries are still lacking. And great stretches of Appalachia remain locked away from progress.

Religion in Appalachia Earl D. C. Brewer, professor of the sociology of religion at Emory University, is co-author of what is probably the most authoritative survey of the religious 6A beliefs and practices of Appalachia. Based on the

fiP Appalachian Regional Commission. Annual Report. 1970. p. 13. 63 Appalachian Regional Commission. Annual Report. 1969. p. 41. --- D. Weatherford and Earl D. C. Brewer, Life and Religion in Southern Appalachia: An Interpretation of Selected Data from the Southern Appalachian Studies (New York: Friendship t>ress, I§62). 44 exhaustive Southern Appalachian Regional Survey, he sum­ marized religion in the mountains. The religious heritage of the Appalachian people has been pidnared as "left-wing protestantism." Its characteristics include puritanical behavior patterns, religious individualism, fundamentalism in attitudes toward the Bible and Christian doctrine, little distinction between clergy and laity, sectarian concepts of the church and its mission, revivalism, informality in public wor­ ship, and opposition to central authority of state or church.65

The Council on Religion in Appalachia has defen­ sively maintained that each of these characteristics can 66 be regarded as an asset rather than a liability. But the fact remains that although the mountains are dotted with small churches, all are largely unsuccessful in com­ peting for members, despite Appalachian geographic loca­ tion in the Bible Belt. Weller reports that, "In some areas, the proportion of church membership in the popula­ tion is below thirty per cent, with male membership some­ where around five per cent and teenage youth membership 6*7 falling in the range of one to two per cent." Revivalism is heavily endorsed, but back-sliding is rampant. "The mountaineer turns to God and to the

Earl D. C. Brewer, "Region and the Churches," in The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, p. 201. 66Max E. Glenn, "Cooperative Mission in Appala­ chia," in Appalachia in Transition, ed. by Max E. Glenn (St. Louis: Bethany Press, , pp. 111-121. ^Weller, Yesterday*s People, p. 121. 45 doctor just about simultaneously," Weller claims. "Reli­ gion thus is a crutch for times of trouble but is not of 68 much use in daily life." The mountaineer's traditional­ ism, fatalism, and individualism mitigate against any religious commitment in the usual sense. "Through a century and three-quarters," says Caudill, the mountaineers have stayed remarkably irreli­ gious. . . . They have retained a respectful reverence for the Holy Bible and for the Prot­ estant cause, but it is a reverence without scholarship, discipline, or leadership. . . . There are thousands of mountaineers who go for many years without entering a church of any kind. . . . Materialism has brought them suf­ fering and destitution and they lack spiritual values to support them in their distress.69

Education in Appalachia Lack of education in the region underlies many of its other ills. Less than forty per cent of the popula­ tion 25 years of age or older had finished twelve or more years of schooling in I960. 7 0 At the same time, the average educational expenditure of the various states in the region was $2 0 3 . 0 0 per public school child compared to a national average of $341.00 per child. 71 For those mountaineers who lived up a hollow, far from a paved road

6 8 Ibid.. p. 126. 69 Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. p. 350. 7 8 0rin B. Graff, "The Needs of Education," in Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, p. 189. 71Ibid.. p. 190. 46 or school bus route, the effort to send a child beyond the nearby grade school 3ust did not appear to be worth­ while, particularly since formal schooling did little to equip the student for survival in a mountain community. Five years later, the state of West Virginia, including its urban areas, ranked forty-first in the nation in the percentage of ninth graders who remained to graduate from 72 high school. And at the end of that decade, sixty-five per cent of the region*s students still did not graduate from high school, with less than thirty per cent of those from isolated rural areas completing even ten grades. 73 The region is handicapped by a shortage of college graduates. Only five per cent of Appalachian adults over 25 years of age had finished college in 1965, compared to eight per cent nationwide.74 Caudill asserts that the incidence of total illit- eracy is startlingly high. 75 ^ Functional illiteracy, which effectively stunts economic and social potential, is even higher. Weller explains, ------f 72Oscar G. Mink, Dropout Proneness in Appalachia (Morgantown: Office of Research and development, Appala- chian Center, West Virginia University, June, 1968;, p. 3. 73 James Branscome, "The Crisis of Appalachian Youth," in Appalachia in the Sixties, p. 224. 74Appalachian Regional Commission. Annual Report. 1965. p. 8. 75Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. p. 339. 47 Since the forms of education were imposed from the outside and did not grow up as an expression of the culture, teaching what the mountaineer wanted his children to learn, there has tradi­ tionally been a resistance to "hook learning." A person was thought well enough educated if he could read and write and count, and "too much" schooling was thought to he unnecessary and even dangerous.76

This attitude toward education tends to be per­ petuated by the ingrown nature of mountain schools. Too often the only teacher willing to live and teach in an isolated community has been one who grew up there. And the school board, unable to find better qualified appli­ cants, has often appointed teachers unqualified even by the meager standards of the hills. Familism has also bred nepotism in the school systems, which tends to protect mediocrity. "Most professional personnel are indigenous to the district within which they are employed and are extremely locally oriented," according to a pro- 77 fessor of education. As a result, "mountain-bred and mountain-taught teachers find it too easy to perpetuate the experienceless and unchallenging training character- istic of mountain schools."78

^Weller, Yesterday*s People, p. 108. 77 James R. Ogletree, "Appalachian Schools— A Case of Consistency," unpublished speech presented to the Southern Regional Education Board Seminar on Appalachia, West Virginia University, Morgantown, June, 1968, p. 4. (Mimeographed.) ^®Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 112. 48 Whether educational deficiencies of the region are related to the low expectations of undereducated adults or from the attitudes inherent in mountain psy­ chology (suspicion, resistance to change), the fact is that general progress in the area must be tied to rising educational achievement. Not only academic, but voca­ tional training must be more widely available and more widely sought if social and economic progress is to be realized.

Summary of Cultural Characteristics The mountaineer was originally a loner. He sought the mountains as a refuge from the authority of society, and he has developed more slowly and along different lines than his counterpart elsewhere. He tends to be taciturn and phlegmatic, unaccustomed to deliberation and unwilling to defend his opinions. He is individualistic and un­ familiar with cooperative effort. He is dedicated to tradition and is fatalistic, suspicious of outsiders and apprehensive of change. He is survival-oriented rather than future-oriented and is reluctant to set or pursue long-range goals. His social structure is familial which breeds a closed society rife with nepotism and protective

79 Education Advisory Committee, Appalachian Regional Commission, The Status of Secondary Vocational Education in Appalachia (Washington: ARC. October. 1958), p. 46. 49 of incompetence. His child-rearing is permissive and he tends to be undisciplined in adulthood. He is person- oriented and disdainful of possessions, tolerant of lit­ tering and pollution and destructive of community property. He strongly resembles some other elements of society which have been identified as disadvantaged, and as some of them have turned to drugs to ameliorate the contradictions and suffering in society, so the mountaineer has sometimes turned to moonshine. In many respects, he is like the nationals of emerging countries more than he is like the rest of America. Whether the mountaineer elects to improve his situation at home or to migrate, such characteristics have too often been a hindrance to his progress. In the world outside the mountains, the mountaineer has been stereotyped according to his weaknesses and unrecognized for his strengths. The sound substitutions which dis­ tinguish mountain dialect frequently brand the mountain­ eer as a hillbilly when he ventures out of the hills. Countless service men and migrants to the cities have experienced the derision and outright discrimination which sometimes attend that dialect. The "A1 Capp syndrome" has had decades to penetrate American thinking and will not be easily erased. Mountaineers suffer a tension be­ tween fierce pride at home and apologetic insecurity when they face the wider world. Possibly they would benefit 50 by raising the banner of "Hillbilly Power" so that they could be reminded that their heritage, too, is inspiring. And to improve their lot is not necessarily to sacrifice all that has made them distinctive.

Modification of Cultural Characteristics While social scientists have devoted their study to the nature of the Appalachian sub-culture, government has appeared to concentrate solely upon material and economic adjuncts to progress. The staff of the Appala­ chian Regional Commission, however, has not been unaware that public facilities were not a sufficient solution to the mountaineer’s plight. Ralph R. Widner, former Execu­ tive Director of the Commission, acknowledged that the folk culture of the hills made it difficult or impossible for the mountaineer even to take advantage of civic SO benefits being provided by government programs. No matter how admirable the mountaineer's stoicism in facing adversity, his traditional life style and We1tanschauung had inhibited his full participation in modern society. Such attributes as his undervaluation of education, his insularity and suspicion of outsiders, his reluctance to adapt to new ways, and his inclination to think of govern­ ment as "they" instead of "we" could not contribute to

8 0 Widner, personal interview, Huntington, West Virginia, September 11, 1971. his social and economic health. A reordering of such viewpoints was recommended by a research project sponsored by the Appalachia Educa- pi tional Laboratory in 1971. The objective of the study was to identify the most pressing needs of education in the region and the most critical goals which education should be seeking to reach. A panel of "Appalachian experts" was selected from residents of the region who were judged to be most knowledgeable about the people and problems. Ninety-one educators and thirty-five non­ educators, including professional people and business leaders, were chosen. They were asked open-ended ques­ tions about what the youth of Appalachia needed most from their educational experience. Predictably, there were recommendations for curriculum reform, improved teacher training, and better educational facilities. But the objective ranked first, among all sub-groups of the panel, was the "need for changing attitudes within and about Appalachia.1,82 The public school is not the only agent for dif­ fusion of new viewpoints among mountaineers. While their isolation was psychological as well as physical, writers

81 Merrill G. Campbell, project director, Directions for Educational Development in Appalachia (Charleston: Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Inc., November, 1971). 82Ibid.. p. 44. 52 could refer to mountaineers as "yesterday's people," or "our contemporary ancestors." But the mountaineer is not as isolated as he once was. More than any other influence, television has opened his window on the world. "In the past," says Caudill, the steep, rock-ribbed and crag-crested hills were a labyrinth that effectively isolated both land and people from the large outside world. Our mountain "quaintness" was simply a survival of old mores and attitudes after changing condi­ tions elsewhere had eroded them away. Now new highways and the all-pervasive television are changing all of this. . . . Isolation and isola­ tionism are passing and most mountaineers now want— in the words of a discerning school super­ intendent— to "join the rest of the world."93 Weller maintains that, "Television brings the mountaineer face to face with modem American culture, and both he and his children spend hours watching it and unknowingly absorbing the ideas and values piped into his 84 very front room." The Appalachian Regional Commission has not dis­ regarded the potential usefulness of television. In 1971 a grant was secured from the U. S. Office of Education to "examine the ways in which this medium could be used for educational purposes. We regard those purposes as going

8^Caudill, "Jaded Old Land of Bright New Promise," in Appalachia in the Sixties, p. 244. 84Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 67. 53 considerably beyond classroom instruction."85 Such purposive use of broadcasting had been adopted some time earlier by other agencies. During the early 1960's the Presbyterian Appalachian Council, meeting to consider once more the low level of significant reli­ gious penetration into the hollows, recognized that the only continuing exposure many mountaineers had to reli­ gion was from devoted listening to radio evangelists. Accordingly, they changed the name and the aim of the organization and became the Presbyterian Appalachian Broadcasting Council. Since that time their energies and resources have been poured into religious indoctrina­ tion in the form of promotional spots incorporated into the folk- and country-music programs which are especially 8 6 beloved in the mountains. Television as well as radio has been utilized for educational purposes. Beginning in 1968, in an effort to improve the mountain child's chances for success in school, the Appalachia Educational Laboratory has sponsored a program of pre-school education. A series of well- designed television programs tailored to the specific needs of isolated and deprived children was combined with

85 Personal letter from Howard Bray, Deputy Direc­ tor of the Commission, July 16, 1971. 86 Interview with William C. Wolfe, chairman of the Council, July 17, 1971. 54 the resources of travelling home visitors. The project was predicated upon the belief that what a child learns during his lifetime depends upon what he learns before he is five years old. As the Head Start program has attempted to help the deprived city child catch up with his more advantaged neighbors, so the television pre­ school program has attempted to compensate to the moun- 87 tain child for his meager preparation for school. ' Instructional television— programs designed with particular instructional objectives for a particular target audience— is not the only educational resource available through the medium, of course. Incidental learning, and the acculturation which results from con­ tinuing exposure to the same programs by a whole popula­ tion, occurs irrespective of the type of program. And information programming provides the surveillance of the environment and circulation of opinion required by all peoples in order to make informed responses to that environment. Wilber, in listing the properties of pov­ erty, included "poverty of information" among the lia­ bilities in many Appalachian communities. As society becomes increasingly complex, access to and possession of information takes on added importance. Information is acquired in a variety of ways: by word of mouth from older people and

87 Joel B. Fleming, "Preschool in Appalachia: School Without a Schoolroom," Educational/Instruction­ al Broadcasting (March, 1969), pp. 15-18. 55 peer groups, from schools, from books and peri­ odicals, from radio and television, and so on. Among the sources of information, the mass media play an important role particularly in dissemina­ tion of daily news. Appalachia contains a number of small, isolated communities relatively lack­ ing in information from the outside world. . . . The net result is a scarcity of information which in turn can contribute to poverties of other varieties.9® There are characteristics of television which commend its use as an educational and informational medium in Appalachia. Factors which mitigate against heavy usage of some other media— functional illiteracy, isolation from urban centers, poverty which makes the buying of printed materials a low priority item— do not inhibit its use. It is, according to former Federal Communications Commissioner Kenneth Cox, ,ra medium which, contrary to McLuhan, con­ veys the most information in the most literal form by giving us oral language combined with visual perception and requiring the least effort to interpret the abstrac- 89 tions involved." Thus even lack of education does not prevent learning from television. Not least of television's advantages is that it has been established in the hills not as an educational medium, but as entertainment. It is sought as a means

88 George L. Wilber, "Systematic Indicators of Regional Poverty," Growth and Change. A Journal of Region­ al Development. Vol~ TTT7- No"! 3 (July, 1972), pp. 12-13. 89 Kenneth A. Cox, "Can Broadcasting Help Achieve Social Reform?" Journal of Broadcasting. Vol. XII, No. 2 (Spring, 1968), p. 125. 56 for making the afflictions of life more tolerable rather than as a means for changing them. That means, however, that it is the entertainment and informational program­ ming of commercial stations which attract the mountaineer rather than instructional programming designed to educate him. Thus, most learning from television is incidental— a by-product of the search for diversion— and thus not viewed with suspicion. The pervasiveness of television means that some learning takes place, whether for socially useful purposes or not. The socialization accomplished through television was described by Snathers, not altogether approvingly. Television has undoubtedly been one of the greatest agents of change ever to enter Appalachia, and much of its influence has been wholesome. But through both its programs and its commer­ cials, it has also helped to teach Appalachian people that their values and their way of life and their standards are not quite "right."90 It is axiomatic that before television can be con­ sidered a source of influence, its signal must be avail­ able and selected by the listener. Some students of mass communication have doubted the availability of television to the mountaineer. DeFleur, for example, maintained in 1970 that, There are still pockets where television has not penetrated, both in terms of the social structure

90Michael Smathers, "Suspicion and Community in Appalachia," in Appalachia in Transition, p. 77. 57 and with respect to geographic location. Among extremely low income areas of the Appalachians, for example, television ownership is the excep­ tion rather than the rule.91 It is possible, of course, that he had never seen the for­ est of antennas which dot the hills. However Weller wrote, some five years earlier, from his vantage point within Central Appalachia, "More and more every mountain shack or coal camp house sprouts its TV antenna on chimney or QO pole." And in 1968, Mullenex conducted a depth study of three typical isolated communities in the mountains of West Virginia to ascertain the extent of mass media usage and preferences. His objective was to find the medium most available and most likely to reach such a target audience with necessary agricultural, health, employment and other public service information. He found, among such typical low socio-economic level families, eighty-eight per cent television saturation compared with less than half that percentage for printed media. His conclusion was, "Rather than the media being used only to report to the nation about poor people, they can be used to help readjust value orientations and family goals of people who are poor."^

91 Melvin L. DeFleur, Theories of Mass Communica­ tion. 2nd ed. (New York: David McKay Co., 1^70), p. 71. 9 2 Weller, Yesterday's People, p. 135. 93 Foster G. Mullenex, "Mass Media Use Patterns and Interests Among West Virginia Rural Non-Farm Families of Low Socio-Economic Status," (unpublished M.A. thesis, West Virginia University, 1968), pp. 22-25. 58 Coles explained how television found its way into the homes of mountain families neither financially nor philosophically equipped to accept it, using the words of a mountain wife. Hugh fought the television. He said it was no good, and we surely didn't have the money to get one. You can get them real cheap, though, secondhand for twenty-five dollars, and there's a chance to learn how to fix it yourself, be­ cause some of the men who come back from the Army, they've learned how and they'll teach you and do it for you if you ask them. We had to get one, finally. The kids, they said everyone else didn't have the money, any more than we did, but somehow they got the sets, so why couldn't we? . . . They felt left out without TV. . . . He said they wouldn't see anything but a lot of trash, and why should we let it all come in here like that? And he said they'd lose interest in school and become hypnotized or something, and he'd read someplace it hap­ pens. . . . They'd try to answer him real quiet, and say it wasn't so important, TV wasn't, it was Just there to look at, and we would all do it and have a good time. . . . And finally, I Joined in. . . .He told me one day it was a foolish fight we all had, and television wasn't any better or worse than a lot of other things. But he wished the country would make more than cheap TV's. "We could all live without TV if we had something more to look forward to," he said.94 Few studies have been undertaken in Appalachia specifically investigating the effects of television. Most have had some other objective, with television exposure simply one of several variables examined. More­ over, conclusions have proved somewhat contradictory.

q L Coles. Migrants Sharecroppers. Mountaineers. p. 353. Rees reported that isolated families in Appalachia were poorly informed by television. About one head-of-house­ hold in five, he found, could not explain even the most rudimentary aspects of atomic fallout despite extensive coverage of the subject on the air. Hirsch, on the other hand, came to the opposite conclusion. 96 Investigating the process of political socialization among children in Central Appalachia, he found that television was the most important agent of information (but not of political attitudes) and outweighed family, school, and peers as an information source. In pursuing the absence of direct relationship between television exposure and political attitudes, he endorsed the conclusion reached earlier by 97 Greenstein that media do not relate directly to politi­ cal attitudes but they do relate to self esteem and self esteem relates to attitudes. Donohew and Singh^9 8 attempted to identify the

95 ^Robert Rees, "The Uninformed: Media-Isolated Farm Families in Four Appalachian Counties" (University of Kentucky, 1970). ^Herbert Hirsch, "Political Socialization in Appa­ lachia" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1968). 97 Greenstein, "The Impact of Personality on Poli­ tics," The American Political Science Review. Vol. LXI, No. 3 (September, 1 9 6 7 ), pp. 629-641. 98Lewis Donohew and B, Krishna Singh, "Communica­ tion and Life Styles in Appalachia," Journal of Communica­ tion, Vol. XIX (September, 1969), pp. 202-216. types of individuals in a poverty stricken area of Appa­ lachia to determine whether a particular life style was especially receptive to the adoption of innovations. Three distinct types of persons emerged in their investi­ gation. The "outgoing” type was characterized by vari­ ables which represented direct contact with the outside world. Another, the "isolated" type, was found to be most physically and socially isolated from the greater society. The third, the "mass media" type, was most exposed to media of information, in addition to other variables. Far from supporting the expectation that mass media exposure would be related to the adoption of change, the study concluded that the level of adoption by all three types tended to be inversely related to their level of exposure to the outside world. A further finding, that the most isolated individuals were lowest in dog­ matism, was assumed to be a contributing factor in the willingness to adopt change. It was noted, however, that "because differences between types on many of the vari­ ables are not large, they may have occurred by chance. A slight shift in scores on some of the variables would change the characteristics of the types." The overall influence exerted by television upon the viewpoint of the mountaineer was not an objective of

"ibid.. pp. 211-212. 61 the Donohew and Singh study. But two inferences appeared to he warranted hy what was not investigated as much as by that which was studied. One stemmed from the fact that receptivity to change was measured by acceptance of some of the projects of the Office of Economic Opportunity in the area (Head Start, Neighborhood Youth Corps, etc.). Influence of television upon such changes would appear to be limited to dissemination of information and promotion for particular projects rather than any fundamental modifi­ cation of the mountaineer1s traditional viewpoint. It appeared doubtful that acceptance of one would automati­ cally predict the other. The second was that a modifica­ tion of one traditional attribute of mountain thinking actually did occur and was measured but unacknowledged. If the mountaineer has in the past been unsure of his own opinions and unwilling to defend them, as previously cited from a number of observers, then it appeared to be highly significant that exposure to mass media tended to be related to more strongly held opinions as measured by a dogmatism scale. Although television's impact upon acculturation of the mountaineer has been studied only peripherally, the relationship of mass communications to psychic mobil­ ity has been investigated among the peoples of emerging 62 lOO countries, some of whom have similar traditional views. Schramm summed up his observations by concluding that broadcasting (chiefly radio in many emerging countries, but also including television where it has been intro­ duced) can accomplish some things superbly— broadening horizons, raising aspirations, increasing empathy with strange ways and strange people, conferring status on new concepts.The temptation has been to ascribe to television greater effects than those it is capable of producing and to raise expectations which it cannot ful­ fill. This is somewhat akin to what Lerner has called the "want: get" ratio of television. 102 It is compara­ tively easy, he says, for the medium to diffuse ideas of what people should want— primarily material wants. It is more difficult but more important to spread ideas of how to get those wants supplied.

Everett Rogers, "Mass Media Exposure and Modern­ ization Among Colombian Peasants," Public Opinion Quar­ terly . Vol. XXIX (1966), pp. 614-625; R. Vincent Parace, "A siudy of Mass Communication and National Development," Journalism Quarterly. Vol. XLIII (1966), pp. 305-313; Y. V. Lakshmana ftao, Communication and Development: A Study of Two Indian Villages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 196b;; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958). ■^^Wilbur Schramm, Mass Media and National Develop­ ment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 127- 144. 102 Daniel Leraer, "Communication and the Prospects of Innovative Development," in Communication and Change in the Developing Countries, ed. by Lerner and Wilbur Scnramm (Honolulu: Ea st-West Center Press, 1967). 63 Some students of broadcasting, while not spe­ cifically concerned with the modification of cultural characteristics, have speculated upon what actually 103 occurs in communication by television. Loevinger has advanced what he calls the "Reflective-Projective" theory as an explanation for television's effect. This theory postulates that mass communica­ tions are best understood as mirrors of so­ ciety that reflect an ambiguous image in which each observer projects or sees his own vision of himself and society. . . . While the mir­ ror can pick out points and aspects of society, it cannot create a culture or project an image that does not reflect something already exist­ ing in some form in society. Further, the mir­ ror can project an accurate or a distorted image. . . . The members of the audience pro­ ject or see in the medium their own visions or images. . . . Projection is a process that has been well known in psychology for many years. Essentially it consists of an observer attributing his own attitudes, ideas, or feel­ ings to the perceptions he perceives from the environment. . . . Thus television is a multi­ channel communication which is more elemental and therefore has greater immediacy and impact than other media. . . . The mission for which it is best fitted is the creation of a common contemporary culture and a sense of national (and perhaps international) unity. . . . National unity does not require or imply una­ nimity of views on all issues or suppression of dissent. It does imply a common bond or mood as well as agreement on some basic ideas and principles.10^

103 ^Lee Loevinger, "The Ambiguous Mirror: The Reflective-Projective Theory of Broadcasting and Mass Com­ munications." Journal of Broadcasting. Vol. XII. No. 2 (Spring, 19&), pp. §7-116.------10hbld.. pp. 108-110. 64 By application of the Reflective-Projective theory, then, if television's most suitable function is the creation of a common culture, it would have to be because viewers from a sub-culture perceived more and more the reflection of the larger society and projected less and less their own attitudes, ideas, or feelings into those perceptions. Burke 105 has advanced the theory that a primary function of television is the reduction of ambiguity in the natural and social environment. The mass media, whatever else they may be doing, are consistently involved in bringing a picture of some aspect of a rapidly shrinking world to people who are spending a great deal of time trying to "get their bearings" in one sense or another. Along with many other agencies of information, the mass media— and I think espe­ cially broadcasting— are literally "creating a world."106

Surely the mountaineer is compelled thus to "get his bear­ ings" in the comparatively alien culture which,television thrusts upon him, to make some sense out of the cacophony of events and information and attitudes which would other­ wise be too new, too unfamiliar, too upsetting, and too much.

^William L. Burke, "Space Modulators and the Cat People: Ambiguity Reduction and Mass Communications." Journal of Broadcasting. Vol. XII, No. 4 (Fall, 1968), pp. 301-308. 106Ibid., p. 307. 65 However, Burke also emphasizes the process which Loevinger called projection. We tend to esqpose ourselves to messages, per­ ceive them, and remember the perceived material in highly partial ways. We approach, perceive, and variously manipulate symbolic materials in an intensely personal manner, in line with our on-going concerns and interests. Not only does a man reduce ambiguity but he does so in terms of and in favor of his own nature and his own orientation.107 Thus, while the mountaineer may find in television some reduction of the ambiguities of contemporary American culture, he tends to view television through the filter of his own experiences and preconceptions. If those pre­ conceptions are deeply rooted enough, he may even perceive a message entirely different from that perceived by the viewer from another cultural orientation. Thus, many authorities on Appalachia have asserted that television is playing a vital role in the metamor­ phosis of the mountaineer*s worldview. Some studies have included television exposure as one variable among many in the mountaineer*s response to his environment. None, however, has focused primarily upon the effect which tele­ vision viewing has had upon the mountaineer*s perceptions of his environment, or attempted to discover whether the mountaineer's cultural conditioning has caused him to perceive a different message from television than the

107Ibid., p. 301. 6 6 message perceived by other Americans. This study was devised for that purpose. CHAPTER II

PROCEDURES

The objective of this study was the comparison of perceptions of various basic concepts and of broad­ cast media among three populations: non-Appalachians, Central Appalachians, and Northern Appalachians. Accord­ ingly, a field study was undertaken of stratified samples drawn from those three populations.

Drawing the Samples The independent variables to be controlled in drawing the samples from each population were age, sex, education, Those variables are customarily controlled in audience research conducted by commercial television rating services, with results which demonstrate that the various demographically defined segments of the audience tend to use the medium in differing ways. Ac­ cording to DeFleur, Knowledge of several very simple variables— age, sex, income level, and educational attain­ ment— provides a reasonably accurate guide to the type of communication content a given indi­ vidual will or will not select from available media. . . . In spite of the heterogeneity of modern society, people who have a number of

67 68 similar characteristics will have similar folkways. These similar modes of orienta­ tion and behavior will relate them to such phenomena as the mass media in a fairly uniform manner. The members of a particu­ lar category will select more or less the same communication content and will respond to it in roughly equal ways.1 It was reasoned that other variables which could influence perceptions might stem from the nature and quality of public education or other aspects of civic life, which could vary from one state to another. It appeared to be desirable, therefore, to draw the samples from the same state if possible. Since the effect of television upon perceptions could obviously be influenced by the nature and content of television service, it was also considered desirable to draw the samples from areas with standardized or equivalent television service. West Virginia, the only state wholly within the boundaries of the Appalachian region, appeared to afford an opportunity to draw the respective samples from areas where such extraneous variables could be controlled as well as possible. Counties in the southern part of the state are among the sixty counties of Central Appalachia as designated by the Appalachian Regional Commission, while many of the counties in the northern and middle

^"Melvin L. DeFleur, Theories of Mass Communica­ tion. 2nd ed. (New York: David McKay Co., 1970), p. 123. 69 areas of the state fall within the designated area of Northern Appalachia. Charleston and Huntington, the largest cities in the state, are situated in Northern Appalachia, but the one non-commercial and three commer­ cial television stations licensed to those cities serve an area of dominant influence including the southern counties which are a part of Central Appalachia. The Central Appalachian sample, therefore, was drawn from residents of Mingo, McDowell, and Logan Counties of West Virginia, and the Northern Appalachian sample was drawn from Mason, Jackson, and Wood Counties of the same state. The two areas are separated by approximately forty miles at their nearest points, and one hundred forty miles at their most distant points. There are no major highways connecting the two areas and roads tend to be typical of the mountains— narrow and tortuous. It was reasoned that there would be little significant con­ tact between the two populations resulting in substantial cross-fertilization of perceptions. The non-Appalachian sample was drawn from resi­ dents of Huntington, West Virginia, who had lived there less than a year and whose former residence was outside of the Appalachian region. Some of them were employees of large corporations with branch plants or offices in Huntington who had been transferred to the area by their employers. Some were educators who had been recruited 70 from distant school systems or universities. A few were temporary residents who considered another state their permanent residence. None was native to any area of the Appalachian region or had spent longer than a year living in any part of the region. Each of the geographic samples consisted of forty- eight individuals, with each sample dichotomized accord­ ing to four demographic variables. Half of each sample were men and half were women. Age was dichotomized according to the “television generation," with those aged seventeen to thirty presumed to have been exposed to tele­ vision during most of their formative years while those thirty-one years or older had not. Half of each sample consisted of those who had finished twelve years of formal education or less, while half had had some formal education beyond high school. Income level was dichoto­ mized according to the median income in each of the respective sample areas. Half of the non-Appalachian sample represented family income above the national median of $9,500.00,^ while half had a family income below that figure. The point of dichotomy for family income was $8,500.00 in Northern Appalachia and $5,000.00

^Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1971 (Washington: Department of CommerceJ, Table 500, p. 3lb. 71 3 in Central Appalachia. It was reasoned that any influ­ ence which family income had upon perceptions of various concepts was likely to derive from the individual's com­ parison of his financial condition to that prevalent in his community, rather than comparison to some national standard. Each sample, then, consisted of sixteen cells, with three respondents representing each cell. No con­ sideration was given, in drawing the samples, to use of or attitude toward television, or even the availability of a television set. As a result, each sample included some whose exposure to television was extensive and some who claimed that they never viewed television at all. Assistance in drawing each of the samples was provided by public school personnel in each county and by those Individuals who had supervised the taking of the 1970 census. In addition, assistance in locating indi­ viduals eligible to be included in the non-Appalachian sample was provided by personnel officers of some Hunting­ ton corporations and the Chamber of Commerce which keeps

3 Figures for median family Income in the various regions of Appalachia are approximations and may be a little higher than the true figures if they were avail­ able. Estimates were extrapolated from Statistical Summary #1: Per Capita Income Trends in' the Appalachian Region. Appalachian Regional Commission memorandum from the Office of Special Studies, April, 1972 (mimeographed), in consultation with Dr. Jerome P. Pichard, chief stat­ istician to the Commission. a continuing record of newcomers to the city.

Interviewing Respondents in each of the samples were inter­ viewed individually in their homes between May 15 and June 15* 1972. All interviews were conducted orally, with responses recorded by the interviewer, in order to obviate any influence of functional illiteracy or dis­ inclination of a respondent to participate in a written task. No time limit was set for any part of the inter­ view, so that interviews varied in duration from as lit­ tle as fifteen minutes to more than an hour. No indi­ vidual selected for inclusion in any of the samples refused to be interviewed, and many professed to enjoy the experience so much that the interviewer was detained for lengthy discussion of the concepts covered in the interview. Unsolicited comments peripheral to the inter­ view schedule were recorded by the interviewer whenever they appeared to shed light upon responses given. No attempt was made to tabulate such peripheral comments, but some were included in the discussion of the data when they provided explanation or elaboration for responses. Interviews in Central Appalachia and Northern Appalachia were conducted by four university students. Two students were indigenous to each of the respective areas. Since Appalachians have been characterized as highly suspicious of outsiders, it was reasoned that 73 interviewers from the area would avoid the stigma "for­ eigner" and could be expected to elicit greater coopera­ tion from respondents than an outsider who could be detected easily by dialect and idiom. Student inter­ viewers were trained in the use of the interview schedule and carefully instructed to avoid anything which could influence responses from interviewees. As a further check upon the adequacy of student interviewing, a number of Northern and Central Appalachians were interviewed by the author with no significant difference in the nature of responses but somewhat lower frequency of responses than those elicited by student interviewers.

Construction of the Interview Schedule The primary procedure used to reveal the percep­ tions of various concepts was continued free-association to nine stimulus words. A single word was presented as a stimulus, to which the subject was requested to respond with the words and phrases which then came to his mind. If the subject stopped after one or two responses, he was encouraged to continue his association by repeated presentation of the stimulus word. Such presentations were repeated until the subject indicated that he had reached the extent of words and phrases associated in his mind with the given stimulus word. The objective was to learn how respondents in the various samples per­ 7 4 ceived aspects of their personal environment, some aspects of the Appalachian region, and broadcast media as they relate to personal environment. Nine words were selected to be used as stimuli for free-association. Those related to personal environ­ ment were "home," "family," and "neighbors." Stimulus words calculated to elicit perceptions of regional environ­ ment were "Appalachia" and "government." And perceptions of broadcast media were elicited by the stimulus words "television," "radio," and "television news." Alternative stimulus words such as "community" and "mountaineer" were considered and rejected either because they appeared to lack specificity or could have been construed as deroga­ tory. The ninth free-association task was designed to reveal perceptions of particular television programs, to learn whether the message of a given program was perceived similarly by respondents in the various samples. Accord­ ingly, respondents were asked to name their favorite tele­ vision program, and the individual program title was then used as the stimulus for the final exercise in free- association. The principle of association as a method for eliciting meaning can be traced to Aristotle who maintained that "Memory is the possession of an experience potentially 75 A revivable." Seventeenth century British philosophers pursued the fascinating but illusive path of associa- tions in an effort to trace the process of thinking. Hobbes was convinced that all ideas stemmed from the senses. Locke, who coined the phrase "association of ideas," reasoned that complex ideas could be analyzed to discover their elements which were always simple ideas. Hume added the "laws" of association— resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect— in his dispute with Berkeley about the nature of complex ideas. And Hartley ultimately established associationism as a formal doc­ trine . While philosophers speculated upon association by introspection on their own thinking processes, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that Wilhelm Wundt introduced the idea of observing associations in others. Experimenters, particularly those at the Univer­ sity of Wurzburg, probed the connections between ideas which proceeded from a single stimulus. All of these investigations, first by philosophers and later by experimentalists, were focused on the effort

A Jean Matter Mandler and George Handler, Thinking: from Association to Gestalt (New York: John Wiley and Sons7 1964), p . 12. *5 The use of association by British philosophers and the origins of experimental use of the tool discussed in Mandler and Mandler, Thinking: from Association to Gestalt, pp. 1-185. 76 to explain the processes of thinking, reasoning, memory, and other cognitive functions. Finally, according to Deese, they issued in a theory of behavior, particularly verbal behavior in a particular language. "The theory of association," he asserted, "is intended to describe the minds of real people." Contemporary use of the doctrine of association appears to be devoted chiefly to two objectives: the study of learning, memory, and thinking as normal human functions, and the diagnosis of emotional and personality disorders. The former objective is pursued largely in terms of the variation in the strength of associations among groups of respondents, as revealed by frequency and order of responses. The latter objective is frequently pursued without reference to the actual content of responses but rather by classifying responses psycho- metrically to identify those characteristic of deviant behavior or to assess ego strength as a filter through which associations are produced.' The use of word-association as a tool in the study of verbal behavior assumes, according to Laffal, that responses to a stimulus word are influenced by four g James Deese, The Structure of Associations in Language and Thought (Baltimore: Johns hopkins Press, 1965), p. 9. 7Ibid., pp. 21-39. 77 variables: (1) the "response hierarchy," or the pool of all relevant associations from which a respondent may draw, (2) needs, conflicts, and psychic structure of the subject, including the personality dynamics of the indi­ vidual, (3) reality demands, or the influence of the experimenter toward socially acceptable and pertinent responses, and (4) intrusive stimuli such as physical aspects of the task which are extrinsic to stimulus and respondent.8 If the research objective is the discovery of the dimensions of meaning of a given concept for a particular population, rather than either normal or abnormal char­ acteristics of individuals in that population, it seems apparent that the first of the four variables identified by Laffal would provide the relevant information if it were available. Meaning, according to Ogden and Richards and a host of other students of the process of communica­ tion, is evoked in the listener, called up by the symbol and its referent and mediated by his experiences and Q personality. The meaning of a concept for a population, then, would consist of the sum of all possible associa­ tions in what Laffal termed the "response hierarchy," Q Julius Laffal, Pathological and Normal Language (New York: Atherton Press, 19&5), pp. 12-13. q ^C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), p. ll. 78 including modifications introduced by the needs, conflicts, and psychic structure of individuals in that population. As defined by Deese, "the meaning of any form is not given by a single response or, indeed, by a collection of responses at some particular time, but by the potential distribution of responses to that form."10 Meaning, then, could only be approximated, since any list of responses would suffer the finite limitations of the vocabulary and experiences of a particular group of respondents. He recommended intercorrelations between responses as a method of identifying salient aspects of meaning for the group. Fotheringham and Geizer11 recommended a further refinement of the traditional practice of mere quantifying of responses in word-association. They submitted the list of original responses to a second group to determine whether, given enough time to respond, they would or would not include each of the original responses. After thus eliminating responses which were idiosyncratic, presumably including those which stemmed from perceptions

10Deese, The Structure of Associations in Language and Thought, p. ATT "^Wallace C. Fotheringham and Ronald S. Geizer, "Free-Association Responses and the Investigation of Mean­ ing: a Technique for Instrument Development," Central States Speech Journal. Vol. XXII, No. 2 (Summer, 1^7l), pp. 73-77. 79 deviating markedly from the population norm, they employed an intercorrelation matrix to identify clusters of re­ sponses which represented meanings for the concept for that population. Most uses of word-association have involved sam­ ples drawn from a particular culture, employing a par- ticular language. Szalay and Brent 12 used the tool to discover differences between cultures in the meaning of basic concepts. They compared responses of subjects from the United States, Colombia, and Korea, to identify differences in the perceptions of representatives of different cultures. Such differences, they asserted, were the result of the coding process conditioned by the respective cultures. "Responses are produced," they reasoned, that have meaning elements in common with the stimulus meaning. These elements with-their relative salience constitute what may be iden­ tified as subjective meaning content. . . . When more than one response is requested, it is likely that the responses obtained will represent the products of more than one mean­ ing element. The most salient meaning ele­ ment starts the response production; the less salient meaning elements elicit the later responses. Thus if continued associa-

Lorand B. Szalay and Jack E. Brent, "The Analysis of Cultural Meanings Through Free Verbal Associa­ tions," Journal of Social Psychology. Vol. LXXII (1967), pp. 161-187. 80 tion tasks are used, the sequence of the response may be expected to reflect rank order of the meaning elements in subjective salience.

The use of word-association in the present study is similar to that of the cross-cultural study of Szalay and Brent. The objective was to investigate not the totality of meaning for a given concept, represented by "the potential distribution of responses" to a given stimulus, but the subjective meaning of the concept for a particular sub-culture. The assumptions underlying the use of word-association in this study, then, were as follows: 1. Responses actually produced by a sample of people drawn from a particular population can be considered a sample of the potential responses which could be elicited from that population. 2. The "meaning" of a concept for a particular population consists of various content categories or components of meaning which can be combined to approximate the total subjective meaning for that population. 3. Components of meaning have two dimensions: size and importance. 4. The size of the component is represented by the proportion of total responses to that stimulus rather than merely the frequency of response included in that component. Thus a component made up of ten per cent of the responses of one group would consti­ tute a larger component than one made up of five per cent of the total responses of

I3Ibid.. p. 163. 81 another group, even if the latter group produced ten times as many total responses as the former. Importance of a component derives from its rank when all components of meaning are ordered by size. Thus, the largest would be regarded as the primary component in the meaning of a given concept for that group of respondents. Perceptions of a concept, summarized as content categories or components of meaning, can be compared; thus, If a sub-culture differs from the dominant culture in the subjective meaning which it attaches to a concept, the difference is likely to be manifested in variations in the dimensions of components of meaning. 7. Differences in the subjective meaning of a concept, whether they result from variations in the size or importance of various compo­ nents of meaning or from the absence of some components from the perceptions of a particu­ lar sub-culture, may represent barriers to effective communication and could issue in distortion of communication messages. As noted by Deese, Fotheringham and Geizer, and others, word-association has an inherent deficiency as a tool for discovering the totality of meaning for a given population. Responses to a stimulus are limited by the verbal fluency of respondents. A sub-culture character­ ized as markedly lacking in verbal facility could be expected to produce far fewer responses than the more fluent dominant culture. The fourth of the assumptions listed above, however, was regarded as compensation for the expected disparity in response frequencies, since comparison would be of the dimensions of components 82 rather than merely of frequencies. Since other methodologies available for the measurement of meaning are similarly linked to the use of language and appeared to require even greater verbal sophistication, word-association was deemed to be the tool most likely to elicit as much of the meaning for a concept as possible. Words, even if used sparsely, appeared to be the sole method for examining the subjec­ tive impressions of others. In the words of Iris Murdoch, novelist and former Oxford teacher, "Words constitute the ultimate texture and stuff of our moral being, since they are the most refined and delicate and detailed, as well as the most universally used and understood, of the 1 i symbolisms whereby we express ourselves into existence." In addition to the free-association tasks pre­ sented to respondents, ten questions were included in the interview schedule to establish the availability of tele­ vision to each respondent and his use of and attitude toward certain aspects of the medium. Five of the ques­ tions were adapted from some used in the biennial Roper Poll 15^ in order to ascertain the ways in which these sam­ ples matched or departed from the practices and attitudes

1/f"People," Time. Vol. IC, No. 22 (May 29, 1972), p. 40. 15 ^Roper Organization, An Extended View of Public Attitudes Toward Television and. 6ilier Mass Media 1959- 1971 (New York; Television Information Office, 1971J. 83 expressed by a nationwide sample. Questions asked in addition to the free-association tasks were: 1. Do you have television in your home? — total sets in working order? — how many color sets in working order? 2. On an average day, about how many hours do you personally spend watching television? — on week days? — on week-end days? 3. I'd like to ask you where you usually get most of your news about what's going on in the world today— from the newspaper, or radio, or television, or magazines, or talk­ ing to people, or where? U. If you got conflicting or different reports of the same news story from radio, television, magazines, or the newspapers, which of the four versions would you be most inclined to believe? 5. When you listen to news on television, is there a particular station which you regularly select? 6. (If answer to #5 was "yes") If you regularly select a particular television station for news, which one do you choose? 7. In its news programs, discussion shows, and interviews, television devotes a certain amount of time to opinions— opinions of com­ munity leaders, leaders of organizations, politicians, and just average citizens. In presenting opinions, television is supposed to be fair and balanced in showing different points of view. Do you think television is fair or is not fair about showing different points oT~view? 8. (If answer to #7 was "unfair") Would you tell me in what way you think television is not fair— is there too much opinion given which is extremely liberal, or extremely conserva­ tive? 84 9. Do you think that television newsmen— those who report the news on the air rather than the people they report about— express their own points of view in the stories they report? 10. (If answer to #9 was "yes") Would you give me an example of a newsman who did that and in which news story?

Processing of Data Responses of respondents in all samples to the questions above were tabulated and summarized as descrip­ tive of practices and attitudes in the three samples. Where appropriate, results were compared to those of the nationwide sample surveyed by Roper. Responses to the stimulus words in continued free- association were reduced to content categories in three steps. First, a master list of words and phrases was compiled for each of the stimuli, yielding 1,826 undupli­ cated responses, or an average of 228.25 responses per word, for the eight stimulus words submitted to all respondents, plus 293 unduplicated responses associated with the titles of favorite programs. Second, content categories were established for each concept by four independent judges. The master list of unduplicated responses to a given stimulus word was inspected by each judge, who established provisional content categories suggested by the list. Such provisional content cate­ gories were further refined by discussion and agreement among the four judges. Finally, each of the four judges 85 classified each of the unduplicated responses by the agreed content categories. Agreement among judges was very high. Ninety- one per cent of the responses were classified identically by the four judges, and another five per cent were clas­ sified identically by three of the four judges. The remainder, placed in one content category by two judges and into another by the other two, were resolved by the author. Chi square value for differences in agreement was below the level of significance, and there was strong relationship among judges on classification decisions (Cramer*s statistic » .37). When responses had been classified by content categories for each concept, responses of individual respondents were tabulated to reflect both frequency and order. In addition to evaluating each individual word or phrase as one response, greater weight was given to those responses produced early in a respondent*s list of associations on the assumption that immediacy reflected salience. Thus the first response from each respondent was considered to be part of the primary component of meaning of that concept for him and was given an addi­ tional weight of three. Secondary responses were given additional weight of two, and tertiary responses an addi­ tional weight of one. Tables of response frequencies were then summarized by content category for each sample 86 for each of the stimulus words. Comparison of the perceptions of the three sam­ ples was made from the weighted frequency tables. Non- parametric statistics were computed to assess correla­ tions and differences among samples in the perceptions of each concept. The three samples were then combined, and partitioned according to the four demographic vari­ ables— sex, education, age, and income— to ascertain whether differences among samples were related to demo­ graphic factors as well as to cultural differences. Finally, the three geographic samples were again parti­ tioned according to the level of television viewing. A respondent whose self-declared hours of viewing were greater than the average viewing time in his sample was regarded as a heavy viewer, while those who claimed to view less than the average of their sample were considered light viewers. Differences thus revealed in the percep­ tions of heavy viewers, by comparison with those of light viewers, were assumed to relate to increased exposure to television. Perceptions of heavy and light viewers were compared for each of the concepts assumed to relate to personal and regional environment. In an effort to discover whether respondents in the three samples perceived the same message when they were exposed to the same television program, responses evoked by the name of their favorite television program were compared. Inasmuch as only one program was cited as favorite by a substantial number of respondents, programs were combined by type and considered together. Thus, detective programs were deemed a type of program and responses compared for all detective programs as a group. Medical programs, soap operas, etc., were simi­ larly grouped, and responses to each program type were compared in order to examine similarities and differences among samples in what they perceived In the programs. CHAPTER III

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Preliminary to evaluation of the effect of tele­ vision upon any population, an assessment must be made of television saturation in that population. Accordingly, respondents were asked to indicate how many working tele­ vision receivers were available in their households, both black and white and color. They were also questioned con­ cerning their habitual patterns of exposure to various media of mass communication and their perceptions of the credibility of media. No attempt was made to cross-check the accuracy of these self-declared estimates of viewing time and other factors, since the purpose was simply to compare the self-assessments of respondents in this study with those of national surveys. Descriptive statistics on respondents* use of media are summarized in Tables 4 through 10 as an introduction to evaluation of the effects of television in the three samples. It was not the intent of this study to ascertain the number of television receivers actually available in any of the three populations surveyed, and it was impos­ sible from the data available to infer total saturation 88 89 figures. It was interesting to note, however, that not one household among those surveyed in any of the three samples reported that they had no working television receivers. Every household, even among the lower income groups, reported at least one working television set. Ownership of more than one working television receiver might he construed as a fairly dependable indi­ cator of a household^ dedication to television viewing. In the three samples surveyed in this study (drawn by demographic characteristics and without reference to interest in television) multiple-receiver households actually exceeded the national average. According to the American Research Bureau, of the 62,969,100 tele­ vision homes in the United States, 26,008,400 (forty-one per cent) had more than one working receiver.'*’ Among the samples in this survey, seventy-three per cent of the non-Appalachians had more than one working receiver, fifty per cent of those in Central Appalachia had multiple sets, and only the Northern Appalachians fell slightly below the national average with thirty-nine per cent. The analysis of multiple-set ownership in Table 4 revealed near uniformity among the various sub-samples of

■*■ American Research Bureau, Television U.S.A.: Tele­ vision Market Estimates of TV Households with Color feets. Multi-sets and UHF-eauipped. Sets as of February/March 1972 (New York: ARB, 1972j, p. 7. 90 TABLE 4 Television Saturation— Receivers Per Household in Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian and Northern Appalachian Samples

Non Central Northern Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian N=48 N*=48 N=48

Total television sets 104 78 73 Total color sets 38 33 27

Television sets per household 2.17 1.62 1.52 Color sets per house­ hold .79 .69 .58 Total sets per color household 2.42 1.76 1.81

Households with multi­ ple sets 35 24 19 above median income 17 13 15 below median income 18 11 4 30 years or younger 19 12 10 31 years or older 16 12 9 higher education 19 14 10 high school or less 16 10 9

Households with color sets 33 29 27 above median income 17 20 16 below median income 16 9 11 30 years or younger 20 14 15 31 years or older 13 15 12 higher education 17 13 17 high school or less 16 16 10 the study. Neither age, educational level, nor even in­ come seemed to effect the likelihood of multiple-set ownership. Only in Northern Appalachia did those ahove the median income greatly exceed those below in ownership of multiple sets. In Central Appalachia, where the median income was a mere five thousand dollars, almost as many of those below the median as above owned more than one receiver, and the sets-per-household of the whole sample (1.62) was greater than that of the Northern Appalachians (1.52) where the median income was sixty-fivfe per cent higher. It might be concluded that television, a form of entertainment easily available to those who are physi­ cally isolated or economically depressed, had come to be considered a necessity rather than a luxury among all economic levels. Another index of a household's interest in tele­ vision viewing is ownership of a color receiver— clearly an optional piece of equipment if a black and white set is already available in the household. The American Research Bureau, in its March 1972 survey, reported that fifty-three per cent of all television households in the United States were equipped with color sets. Each of the samples in this study exceeded that average. Sixty- nine per cent of the non-Appalachian, sixty per cent of

2Ibid. the Central Appalachian, and fifty-six per cent of the Northern Appalachian households had one or more color receivers. Unlike multiple-set ownership, color receivers were not uniformly distributed in the samples. As shown in Table 4, color sets (which are more expensive than black and white) were more prevalent among those with incomes above the median, especially in Central Appalachia where the median was so low. In the non-Appalachian and Northern Appalachian samples, color sets were slightly more prevalent among the younger and better educated sub­ samples, while in Central Appalachia it was the older respondents with high school education or less who were more likely to have color sets. While television saturation is customarily meas­ ured by the number of receivers available in a given population, a more important measure in assessing the influence of television is the number of hours of viewing per day. Table 5 indicates that the three samples in this study were substantially different in their viewing levels. The Northern Appalachians' self-declared viewing averaged 2.83 hours daily, which coincided exactly with the national median reported by Roper. The non-Appala­ chian sample was below the national level at 2.42 hours

^Roper Organization, Inc., An Extended View of Pub­ lic Attitudes Toward Television and Other Mass Media 1959- 1§?1 (New York; Roper Organization, Inc., 197i), p. 5. TABLE 5 Average Daily Hours of Television Viewing

Non Central Northern Daily Listening Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian Week Week Week Week Week Week Days End Days End Days End

Average hours of viewing for whole sample 2.42 2.97 4.02 4.23 2.83 2.78

Females 3.16 3.40 3.85 3.54 3.00 2.59 Males 1.69 2.54 4.18 4.95 2.66 2.97 Age 31 or older 2.36 2.55 4.12 3.97 2.70 2.85 Age 30 or younger 2.48 3.39 3.91 4.50 2.96 2.71 Higher education 2.02 2.25 3.66 2.81 2.53 3.24 High school or less 2.82 3.69 4.37 4.66 3.13 2.32 Above median income 2.23 3.18 3.77 4.29 2.66 3.02 Below median income 2.61 2.76 4.27 4.19 3.00 2.54 94 reported daily. But the Central Appalachian sample's self- declared average was a remarkable 4.02 hours of television viewing per person per day. On the face of it, the mean number of hours in the Central Appalachian sample is sig­ nificantly greater than either of the other samples. Both the non-Appalachians and the Central Appalachians reported that they watched more television on weekends, while the Northern Appalachians reported only slightly less on the weekends. Most surveys of viewing behavior in the United States indicate that women are exposed to more television than men, presumably because more of them are at home during the daytime as well as the evening when most tele­ vision viewing occurs. Both the non-Appalachian and Northern Appalachian samples revealed the same tendency in their weekday viewing habits. Only in the Central Appalachian sample did men report more viewing than women— an average twenty minutes more per day during the week and eighty-five minutes more per day on weekends. This departure from the typical American pattern may be a reflection of two factors at work among the men of Central Appalachia: the widely recognized devotion to sports (and therefore sports programming on the air), and some enforced idleness as a result of unemployment and underemployment, more prevalent in Central Appalachia than elsewhere. 95 In all three samples, those with incomes above the median reported less viewing during the week but more on the weekend than those below median income, and less viewing was reported by those with some higher education than by those without. These viewing habits, too, par- i ± alleled national characteristics reported by Roper. Mass media have been identified repeatedly as the most important elements in political socialization 5 for various groups in the population. And socialization is essentially the objective of those who consider tele­ vision a potent instrument for improving the situation of the mountaineer. So it was necessary to discover which sources of information were relied upon by the various samples in the study. The biennial Roper Poll indicated in its most recent survey that thirty-one per cent of U. S. respondents got most of their news from television alone, while another twenty-nine per cent got most of

^Roper Organization, Inc., An Extended View of Pub­ lic Attitudes Toward Television and Other Mass Media 19^9^ 1971 (New York! Roper Organization, Inc., ), p. b . 5 Two of the studies which investigated this effect of television are Joseph R. Dominick, "Television and Po­ litical Socialization," Educational Broadcasting Review, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February, 1972), pp7T8-56; and Herbert Hirsch, "Political Socialization in Appalachia: An Inquiry into the Process of Political Learning in an American Sub- Culture" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1968). Others have come to similar conclusions. 96 their news from a combination of television and other sources. The same survey reported that twenty-one per cent of the respondents got most of their news from news­ papers alone and another five per cent got their news from g newspapers plus other media not including television. Comparison of the three samples of this study with the respondents to the national poll revealed some interesting discrepencies.

TABLE 6 Sources from Which Respondents Got Most of Their News

Non Central Northern Roper* Principal News Source Appal. Appal. Appal. Poll

Newspaper only U% 21% 17% 21% Radio only 0 10 19 • • Television only 8 25 33 31 Magazines only 0 0 0 « • Other people only 0 4 0 • • Combination including television 71 31 31 29 Combination excluding television 17 8 0 19

♦Figures selected from Roper Organization, Inc., An Extended View of Public Attitudes Toward Television and Other Mass Media 1959-1971 tNew York: Rooer Organization. 1971), p. 2.

With respect to the sources on which they relied c Roper Organization, Inc., An Extended View of Pub­ lic Attitudes Toward Television and Other Mass Media 1959- 1*3171 (New York: koper Organization. Inc.. 1971). n. 2. 97 for most of their news, it was the non-Appalachian sample in this study which was atypical. Respondents in that sample were all newcomers in their community, and were thus just beginning to be really familiar with the local newspapers and broadcasting stations. It seems quite understandable that they should rely overwhelmingly on a combination of sources for their news in an effort to establish their personal norms in a new setting. It can be assumed that their media habits might be in a state of transition and probably did not faithfully reflect the habits which they possessed earlier or might develop later. By contrast, both the Central Appalachian and Northern Appalachian samples reflected very nearly the national averages reported by Roper. It was reassuring to recognize that any differences which they revealed in their perceptions of various concepts from the perceptions of non-Appalachians were therefore not likely to be mere reflections of a radical difference in the Appalachians' habitual sources for news. It seemed reasonable to assume that although a move to a new community may have temporarily altered the non-Appalachians' habitual dependence on particular sources for most of their news, their perception of the comparative credibility of various news media should not have been similarly affected. They were asked not only to which 98 source they looked for most of their news, but also which one they would believe in the event of discrepencies or contradictions between sources on a given news item. It was assumed that their consideration was directed to the intrinsic characteristics of the various media rather than to a current pattern of media exposure. With respect to the relative credibility of news media, the non-Appala­ chians more nearly paralleled Roperfs national sample.

TABLE 7 Comparison of Credibility of News Media

Most Believable Non Central Northern Roper* News Source Appal. Appal. Appal. Poll

Television 52% 8396 7196 4996 Newspaper 10 4 10 20 Radio 6 8 10 10 Magazines 27 2 4 9 Undecided or N/A 4 2 4 12

♦Figures selected from Roper Organization, Inc., An Extended View of Public Attitudes Toward Television and Other Mass Media 1959-1971 (New York: Roper Organization. 1971), p. 3.

Some of the departures from national statistics revealed in Table 7 were partially explained by comments volunteered by respondents in all three samples. A number of non-Appalachians indicated that since they had not yet become fully familiar with local news media, they were at present relying rather heavily on national news magazines with which they had formerly been familiar. This factor could have influenced their declarations that news maga­ zines were, for them, the most credible news source cur­ rently. Comments volunteered by both Central and Northern Appalachians revealed some interesting facets to their perception of news credibility. A substantial number of respondents qualified their answers by saying that they considered these (local) stations to be more credible than these (local) newspapers and radio stations. Some even went farther to single out a particular station which they regarded as worthy of belief. One respondent explained, "After all, we know those fellows that we see on the air every night. But we don't know some fellow who's only a name in the newspaper. He probably isn't even from around here." It would seem that local newspaper reporters were as likely to be native as broadcast newsmen, but the Appa­ lachian respondents apparently tended to perceive a man whom they saw regularly as one of "our own." The high belief in the credibility of television, then, was likely to be linked to the mountaineer's "person-oriented" phi­ losophy rather than solely the product of his experience with mass media. In any case, the credibility of tele­ vision as a news source was significantly higher among both Appalachian samples than among non-Appalachian re­ spondents or the national sample reported by Roper (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity for Central 100 Appalachians and non-Appalachians = 20.952, 1 df, p < .01; for Northern Appalachians and non-Appalachians = 6.954, 1 df, p < .01; for Central Appalachians and Roper respond­ ents = 25.494, 1 df, p < .01; for Northern Appalachians and Roper respondents = 9.794, 1 df, p < .01. No sig­ nificant difference between non-Appalachian sample and Roper Poll.) The fact that some respondents regarded the credi­ bility of television not as a characteristic of the medium but as a characteristic of a particular station seemed to influence their viewing habits. When asked whether they regularly selected a particular station for news, eighty- one per cent of all respondents, including eighty-five per cent of the better educated half, indicated that they did.

TABLE 8 Percentage in All Samples Who Regularly Selected A Particular Station for News

Particular Station Non Central Northern for News Appal. Appal. Appal

Yes 85% B3% 73 % No 15 17 27

Among those who reported that they regularly se­ lected a particular station for news, the preferences ex­ pressed among the three commercial stations in the area 101 were unbalanced. All stations are licensed to Huntington or Charleston, West Virginia, and the signals of all three were available to all three samples.

TABLE 9 Stations Regularly Selected for News by All Samples

Non Central Northern Station Appal. Appal. Appal.

Channel 3, WSAZ (NBC) 54% 54% 52% Channel 8, WCHS (CBS) 8 6 13 Channel 13* WHTN (ABC) 15 19 4 Either 3 or 8 8 4 4

One of the three stations, WSAZ-TV, Huntington, was designated by a disproportionate number from all samples as the station to which they tuned if they were among those who habitually selected a particular station for news. This might be considered an improbable proportion of the audience in a three-station, all-VHF market, but comparison with figures from national ratings services bears out the probable accuracy of the figures. The most recent American Research Bureau survey, for example, indicated that WSAZ's share of the total homes in the market was fifty-four per cent for the 6:00 p.m. newscast, when one of the other stations was broadcasting an entertainment program rather than news, and fifty-eight per cent at 11:00 p.m., when all three stations were programming news in direct competition 102

•7 with each other. Although the designated preferences were lop-sided, it seems probable that they reflected actual viewing practices. The factors which contributed to belief in the credibility of television as a news source may also have been influential in the high proportion of respondents who perceived television as "fair" in its handling of controversial opinion.

TABLE 10 Perception of Television's Fairness in Handling of Controversial Opinion

Non Central Northern Roper* TV Handling of Opinion Appal. Appal. Appal. Poll

Television is fair 73% 81% 73% 69% Television is unfair 27 17 27 21 Don't know or N/A 0 2 0 10

Among those who thought television unfair TV is too conservative a% 6% 10% 2% TV is too liberal 19 11 8 7 Unfair but unspecified 0 0 9 12 Total TV unfair 27% 17% 27% 21%

♦Figures selected from Roper Organization, Inc., An Extended View of Public Attitudes Toward Television and Other Mass Media 1959-1971 (New York: Roner Organization. 1^71)t pp. 12-13.

7 American Research Bureau, Audience Estimates in the Charleston-Huntirurton ARB Television Market. March. igTT TNew York; ARE) ■ ------103

Most respondents in this study had distinct opin­ ions on the fairness or unfairness of television as a purveyor of opinions on controversial topics. There was only one respondent in all of the samples who did not express a definite opinion pro or con. Thus, totals for both fairness and unfairness were higher than the national sample, except for the Central Appalachians who appeared less critical than the national average. Among those who perceived television as failing to live up to the obliga­ tions of the Fairness Doctrine, both non-Appalachians and Appalachians tended to object to a liberal bias more frequently than to a conservative bias. Unsolicited com­ ments made by some respondents tended to indicate that the perception of unfairness was more likely to be re­ lated to social issues than to political or economic ones. References to blacks or to "pot-smoking hippies," neither of which are prevalent in the local population, probably indicated a rejection of the unfamiliar as much as an assessment of unfairness or imbalance. It might have been expected that there should be some correlation between a perception of the fairness of television in the handling of information and the viewing hours reported by a respondent. It could be reasoned either that those who viewed television a great deal might do so in part because of confidence in the fairness of the medium, or else that those who were heavy viewers might 104 find more things which they found uncongenial and might therefore deem the medium unfair. In fact, no correlation was found. (rpbis = *090 for non-Appalachians, .037 for Central Appalachians, and .006 for Northern Appalachians.) In both of the Appalachian samples, those who perceived unfairness in the medium tended to be heavier viewers, but among non-Appalachians they viewed fewer hours. Television frequently came under fire during the period of 1968-1972 not because of its handling of contro­ versial opinion from newsmakers, but because some observers have perceived the reporters themselves as injecting per­ sonal opinion into news items. Accordingly, respondents were asked whether they thought newsmen on television gave their own opinions in news stories, as well as the opinions of those about whom they were reporting. A large proportion of respondents replied in the affirmative— fifty-four per cent of non-Appalachians, thirty-three per cent of Central Appalachians, and fifty-six per cent of Northern Appalachians. Far from discrediting the report­ ers, however, this question seemed to be asking for a distinction which most respondents did not make. When asked to supply examples of reporters who injected their own opinions into a news story, respondents overwhelmingly cited the regularly scheduled, plainly labelled "commen­ tary" segments on both local and network newscasts. More­ over, a number volunteered that they found such personal 105 opinion segments sin appealing feature of such programs since "it makes the reporter seem more human— as if you really knew him." It is possible, of course, that such responses were another msinifestation of the mountaineer's "person-oriented" outlook on life. In any case, when responses to this question were adjusted by subtracting the exsunples which referred to legitimate commentary rather than unwarranted personal opinion from the reporter, the results were markedly different. Those who indicated by their examples that they referred to actual "editorial­ izing by eyebrow or inflexion" comprised seventeen per cent of non-Appalachians, eight per cent of Central Appa­ lachians, and twenty-five per cent of Northern Appala­ chians. Again, the Central Appalachians seemed to be less critical of television newsmen than their counterparts in the other two samples.

Responses to Free Association Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the selected stimulus words of the study are summarized by content category in Tables 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, and 26. Before analyzing the findings with respect to individual stimuli, a number of factors which appeared across all stimuli should be recognized. Most obvious of the differences between samples in all of the continued free-association tasks presented 106 was that the non-Appalachians were markedly more verbal than either of the Appalachian samples. Nevertheless, the three samples tended to be similar in the weight or importance which they appeared to assign to the components of meaning for the various concepts. Because of the discrepency in the total number of words and phrases be­ tween samples, the percentage of total responses is given in each table together with the frequency of responses for each category in order to facilitate comparison of the proportion represented by each component of meaning. Another difference noted between samples was the tendency in both Appalachian samples to produce phrases rather than single words in response to a stimulus. Many of those with wide experience among mountaineers have Q pointed out that they are likely to be taciturn, and the comparative paucity of responses produced in free- association tasks in this study tended to reinforce that idea. But it might also be inferred from the nature of their responses that they did not readily clothe a single word with sufficient richness of connotation to be anxious to permit it to stand alone. They apparently felt more confidence in transmitting meaning by means of several words including more qualifiers than those employed by D Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (New York: Outing Publishing Co., 1913), p. 214; and Jack E. Weller, Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press," 1566), p. 29, 79. 107 non-Appalachians. In some cases there was complete un­ willingness to stop short of brief sentences as the only adequate means of responding to a stimulus. It can be assumed that free association behavior was unfamiliar to many of the Appalachian respondents and this may have inhibited their readiness to employ single words as re­ sponses. But a large proportion of non-Appalachians interviewed expressed total unfamiliarity with the task and yet were not similarly reluctant to produce single words or very brief phrases. It is possible that Appala­ chian respondents who produced comparatively few total responses to each stimulus felt greater necessity to qual­ ify or otherwise delineate their responses whereas the non-Appalachians with greater fluency at their command felt that the totality of their meaning could best be conveyed by variety in their responses. Respondents in both Appalachian samples were markedly resistent to lengthening the list of their responses to each stimulus when encouraged to do so, whereas non-Appalachians fre­ quently responded enthusiastically to what appeared to be an opportunity for further elaboration through added responses. The tendency of non-Appalachians to produce more components of meaning for each concept also appeared to reflect a greater richness of meaning than the fewer components produced especially by Central Appalachians. 108 If each of the categories of responses to a stimu­ lus constituted a component of the meaning assigned to that concept, there was considerable agreement in the rank­ ing of those components among samples. While a given component may have appeared larger, and thus more impor­ tant, to one sample than to others, all of the samples tended to perceive the components of meaning in generally the same rank order. Coefficients of concordance (W) between samples for each stimulus were all significant at the .01 level except for the ranking of components of meaning in ’government” which was significant at the .05 level. Despite agreement among samples on the priorities which they seemed to assign to the various components of meaning for each concept, each of the samples was sub­ stantially different in the weight they appeared to assign to those components. Even though a given component may have been ranked first by all samples, it might represent twenty-five per cent of all responses for one sample, but over fifty per cent for another. These discrepencies will be examined in some detail, since they appeared to reveal substantial differences in the perceptions of the respond­ ents in the three samples. One of the hypotheses of this study was that there would be little or no significant difference between Northern Appalachians and non-Appalachians in their per­ 109 ceptions of various concepts* That hypothesis had to be rejected. In fact Northern Appalachians were distinctly different from both Central Appalachians and non-Appala­ chians in all of their perceptions. It is possible that if the Northern Appalachian sample had been drawn from areas farther north, especially those including Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, or even the northern tier of West Virginia counties, that the differences between Northern Appalachians and non-Appalachians would have been less. But Northern Appalachians drawn from the mid-region of West Virginia appeared to have perceptions quite different from both non-Appalachians and Central Appalachians.

Perceptions of Stimulus Words I. "Television" Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "television" are summarized by content category in Table 11. For all of the samples, primacy of meaning for "television" seemed to derive from programs— either pro­ gram types or names of specific programs. When they thought about television, apparently they thought first and most frequently about programming. The relative priorities assigned to other com­ ponents of meaning were also similar for all samples. When frequencies of response were ranked by category, 110

TABLE 11 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to TELEVISION, by Content Category

h Non 3 6 H 4 H fl> c+ h fl>

Content Category Appalachian & W „ a) qj to (0 b0 G O to o to +> ft 0*3 atd at« ft 003 to S.

Program names and types 120 22.1 101 29.7 90 23.7 Positive value judg­ ments 85 15.6 45 13.3 69 18.2 News 73 13.5 49 14.4 54 14.2 Negative value judg­ ments 57 10.5 35 10.3 57 15.0 Equipment, color, tech­ nical 51 9.4 3 .9 11 2.9 Commercials, slogans 47 8.7 7 2.1 29 7.7 Neutral descriptions 29 5.4 23 6.7 19 5.0 Sports 19 3.5 47 13 *8 16 4.2 Activities while watching 17 3.1 13 3.8 3 .8 Roles and characters 12 2.2 12 3.5 5 1.3 Names of air person­ alities 9 1.7 0 0.0 5 1.3 Stations and networks 8 1.5 0 0.0 5 1.3 Merely time filler 7 1.3 5 1.5 15 3-9 Miscellaneous 8 1.5 0 0.0 1 .3

Totals 542 • • 340 * • 379 • •

♦Responses weighted to reflect salience as well as frequency in all tables. Ill there was significant agreement in ranking among the three samples (Kendall's W = .846, p < .01). While the three samples tended to rank the various components of meaning in approximately the same order, the frequency of responses produced in each component differed significantly among samples (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity = 124.067, 26 df, p < .01). Thus while a particular component was ranked fourth by all samples, it represented forty per cent more of Northern Appalachian responses than of non-Appalachian. In view of the abundance of criticism to which television has generally been subjected in recent years, it was interesting to note how high a proportion of the meaning of "television" for all three samples consisted of words and phrases reflecting approval of the medium ("exhilarating," "educational," "inspiring," "interest­ ing," "I love it," "couldn't live without it," "instan­ taneous contact with the whole world," "greatest medium ever developed"). For non-Appalachians and Northern Appa­ lachians, positive value Judgments made up the second largest component of their perception of the meaning of television, while Central Appalachians ranked them only slightly lower. Almost as large a component consisted of negative value Judgments ("repetitious," "over-commercialism," "dull," "sometimes boring," "over-rated entertainment," 112 "time-wasting," "addictive and bad for the public"). Although affirmative judgments outweighed negative for all samples, respondents were clearly ambivalent toward the medium. Many of the negative words and phrases con­ cerned the waste of time associated with television view­ ing, an idea reiterated since the pioneering profile of q the television viewer by Steiner. Some negative percep­ tions could be characterized as chiding ("need more pro­ grams on drugs," "not enough educational programs," "not enough exposure to real life," "should b^more worthwhile stuff on"). It would be pointless to examine such com­ plaints in the light of worthwhile program fare which was actually available but largely unwatched. The crux of the matter seemed rather to be a perception of television as a pleasurable, time-consuming occupation, and there­ fore not quite respectable, which required justification by enumerating redeeming features and suggesting reform of program content. To analyze why the same respondent would volunteer seemingly contradictory responses such as "uses up too much time" with "repetitious" or "boring" is, of course, irrelevant. The clear implication of the com­ bination seemed to be a real but unverbalized component of meaning in the concept "television": a proprietary attitude which justified the demand for program fare

q Gary A. Steiner, The People Look at Television (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963). 113 deemed appealing by each respondent and resentment if it was not forthcoming. There was little to indicate that respondents generally regarded television in terms of a purely optional activity. Although Appalachians have been characterized as unsure of their own opinions and reluctant to express them,10 no such tendency was apparent in these data. Strong, freely eaqjressed opinions, both affirmative and negative, made up almost a quarter of the responses to "television" for Central Appalachians and a third for Northern Appalachians. A large component of the meaning of television among respondents in all samples was news. Central Appa­ lachians produced a higher proportion of references to news than any category other than program names. News and pub­ lic affairs frequently make up the bulk of a television station’s locally produced programming. Thus, for those like the Appalachian Regional Commission staff who have been "wrestling with the problem of reaching Appala­ chians, particularly those living in isolated communities, with information concerning ways in which they and the com­ munities could participate in the development effort,"11

10Jack E. Weller, Yesterday’s People: Life in Con- temporarv Appalachia (Lexington:^diversity of Kentucky Press', l5sS5,pp. 44-49 and 78-83. 11Letter to the author from Howard Bray, Deputy Director of the Appalachian Regional Commission, Washing­ ton, D. C., dated July 16, 1971. 114 it is highly significant to recognize that for all re­ spondents and especially for Central Appalachians, when they thought of television they tended to think early and often of news. It is instructive to note the components ahout which the three samples differed in their perceptions. The greatest difference was the frequency of Central Appalachian responses related to sports. For them, far more than for others in the study, television was appar­ ently perceived as a medium for sports. This factor is probably related to the mountaineer's fondness for com- petitive sports cited frequently by sociologists. 12 Since the self-reported viewing hours for the men of Central Appalachia was nearly five hours per day on week­ ends, it is a logical inference that sports programming would be another fairly dependable avenue for those who sought the attention of Central Appalachia for socially useful purposes. The samples differed markedly in their perception of commercials as a component in the meaning of television. It is sometimes assumed that television commercials are abrasive to most of the audience and barely tolerated as the necessary price for entertainment. Perceptions

12 Jack E. Weller, Yesterday1s People: Life in Con­ temporary Appalachia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 196(f), pp. 110-111. expressed in these data failed to support such a conten­ tion. While non-Appalachian and Northern Appalachian references to commercials made up almost a tenth of their total responses to "television,” Central Appalachian per­ ception of commercials appeared to be minimal. It might be inferred either that Central Appalachians regarded commercials as unobtrusive, or that they were neither annoyed nor attracted by them. Among the few references to commercials from Central Appalachians, fully a third of them were in such terms as "learning about new prod­ ucts." The other two samples, while they did not include references to the educational aspect of commercials, revealed surprisingly little hostility to them. The pre­ dominant response was a clever slogan ("T can't believe I ate the whole thing!") delivered with a chuckle. While commercials constituted a component of the meaning of television for all samples, it was neither large nor predominantly negative. Northern Appalachians differed from the other samples in the proportion of their perceptions devoted to strong feelings about the medium. Both affirmative and negative judgments dominated their responses to a greater extent than those of other samples. Possibly related was the fact that they also appeared to have a much larger component of meaning referring to television's function of merely occupying time ("something to do when 116 there's nothing else to do"). Although their average daily listening was lower than that of Central Appala­ chians, their use of the medium appeared to be less socially sanctioned, which may have contributed to their strong but ambivalent feelings. In summary, all samples regarded television pri­ marily in terms of programs of various types. Second most important was their perception of television as a source of news. For Central Appalachians, and to a much lesser extent for the other samples, television meant sports. And for all respondents, more than a quarter of all responses were comprised of value judgments, with positive greatly outweighing negative. It would be interesting to discover whether a similar proportion of responses would involve value judgments if the stimulus were any other household appliance or the family automo­ bile. When the samples were partitioned according to demographic variables rather than geographically, the differences between sub-samples were smaller. For many of the components of meaning, there was no substantial difference in perceptions between men and women, higher and lower educational levels, older and younger respond­ ents, or those above and below the median income. Only five components elicited significantly different responses from one sub-sample than from its counterpart. TABLE 12 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Component of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Program names and types women N.S. N.S. N.S. Negative value judgments men higher N.S. N.S. Positive value judgments women higher older higher Activities/watching women N.S. younger N.S. Sports men higher N.S. lower

Except for the difference in the perceptions of men and women, even these five components did not consistently distinguish between demographic sub-samples. It might be concluded that Americans in general perceived television in remarkably similar ways whether they were young or old, richer or poorer, more educated or less.

II. "Radio" Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "radio" are summarized by content category in Table 13. For all samples of the study, the primary component of meaning attached to "radio" was music, with a strong secondary component of news. Priorities for other compo­ nents tended to be ranked concordantly (Kendall's W = .741, p <.01), although Central Appalachians ranked sports higher than either of the other samples. 118

TABLE 13 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to RADIO, by Content Category

Non m Northern - § § 1 h H H B> 3 <+ : !' Appalachian £ £ i Content Category Appalachian *8 j CO < 0 o <13 < D CO 0 3 < 0 CO h o C < 0 h 0 ( 3 0 3 OS O 0 3 < 0 O CO - P f t W + 3 ft oC w g s s ft o p i to U § • 0 3 <13 < H 0 3 0 3 < H of Responses Responses of

Percentage J Percentage g. O S f c O CLt o Responses

Music, types of music 122 23.0 140 45.2 104 32.4 News 76 14.3 90 29.0 64 19.9 4 15 4.7 Equipment, AM, FM 47 8.9 1.3 n c 0 0.0 8 2.5 Program names and types 45 8.5 A “ t Stations, call letters 40 7.6 15 4.8 30 9.3 Neutral description 38 7.2 10 3.2 19 5.9 Negative value judg­ ments 33 6.2 17 5.5 30 9.3 Cars, driving 27 5.0 2 .6 3 .9 Personalities on the air 21 3.9 0 0.0 9 2.8 Sports 18 3.4 20 6.5 1 .3 Positive value judg­ ments 17 3.2 4 1.3 18 5.6 0 0.0 0 0.0 Time signals 14 2.6 J Weather 11 2.1 6 1.9 11 3.4 Activities while lis­ 0 0.0 5 1.6 tening 11 2.1 j * § Commercials 10 1.9 2 .6 4 1.2

Totals 530 310 ft # 321 a • 119 While the priorities of components of meaning tended to he similar for all three samples, the frequency of response in the various components was significantly different among samples (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity = 165.211, 28 df, p < .01). Despite the fact that for all respondents the primary meaning of radio was music, a proportion of mean­ ing for both non-Appalachians and Northern Appalachians consisted of names and types of non-music programs ("The Lone Ranger," "The Tooth Fairy," "talk shows," "telephone shows"). For non-Appalachians, more than the other sam­ ples, a sizeable component consisted of equipment and modes of transmission ("AM," "FM," "portable," "tran­ sistor," "batteries"). Non-Appalachians produced far more responses dealing with driving cars and other activi­ ties while listening ("sewing," "homework," "housework") than respondents in other samples. While all samples considered weather reports an element in the meaning of radio, only non-Appalachians apparently thought of radio as a means for keeping track of the time ("time-signals," "reminding me when to go to work," "what time it is"). Northern Appalachians assigned far more of the meaning of radio to value judgments— both positive and negative— than did the other two samples. And they were somewhat more inclined than the other samples to think of radio in terms of specific stations. It is interesting to 120 note that in spite of the person-oriented nature of Central Appalachians, they assigned no part of the meaning of radio to particular personalities on the air, although both of the other samples did so. Comparison of the perceptions of "radio11 by the three samples to those of "television" revealed that the meanings of the two terms had a number of components in common. The common components were even weighted similar­ ly for the two terms in some cases.

TABLE 14 Meaning Components Common to Both RADIO and TELEVISION Summarized by Percentage of Responses in All Samples

% of Non- % of Cent. % of North. Content Categories Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian in Common Responses Responses Responses TV Radio TV Radio TV Radio

Programs and content 22.14 36.96 29.70 53.54 23.74 38.61 Positive value judg­ ments 15.68 3.20 13.23 1.29 18.20 5.60 News 13.46 14.33 14.41 29.03 14.24 19.93 Negative value judg­ ments 10.51 6.22 10.29 5.48 15.03 9.34 Equipment, technical 9.40 8,86 .88 1.29 2.90 4.67 Commercials 8.67 1.86 2.05 .64 7.65 1.24 Neutral description 5.35 7.16 6.76 3.22 5.01 5.91 Personalities on air 3.67 3.96 3-52 0.00 2.62 2.80 Sports 3.50 3.39 13.82 6.45 4.22 .31 Activities/listening 3.13 7.16 3.82 .64 .79 2.48 Stations, networks 1.47 7.54 0.00 4.83 1.31 9.34

A number of conclusions can be drawn concerning the meanings of the two terms by thus comparing the relative 121 weight assigned to a particular component. News was a larger component of the meaning of radio than television for all samples, possibly because the meaning of television involved more weight on other components. Sports con­ stituted approximately the same proportion of meaning for both radio and television in the non-Appalachian sample. And although the Central Appalachians apparently gave sports a more important place in their perception of both media, it played a markedly more important part in their perception of television than of radio. Northern Appala­ chians, too, gave more importance to sports in television and assigned an almost negligible role to sports in radio. Commercials, which are actually more prevalent on radio than on television 13^ were apparently far more obtrusive as a component of meaning in television than in radio for all samples. And for Central Appalachians, who weighted them lightly as an element of television, com­ mercials represented a negligible part of their meaning for radio. Radio apparently did not elicit the same intensity of feeling as television. Both positive and negative

13National Association of Broadcasters Code standards stipulate a maximum of eighteen minutes per hour for radio and sixteen minutes per hour for tele­ vision. Non-code stations, of course, are not bound to observe even these limits. (Source: NAB Code Authority, The Television Code. 14th ed., 1970, and The Radio Code. 1970 LWashington: The Associationj). 122 value judgments in all samples constituted almost three times as great a proportion of the meaning of television as of radio. For non-Appalachians, almost a tenth of the responses to both concepts involved equipment, in­ cluding the idea of possessions. That element of meaning was much smaller for Northern Appalachians and miniscule for Central Appalachians. Apparently for them, both radio and television connoted activities and judgments far more than possessions. In all three samples, an important component of the meaning of radio consisted of the call letters of particular stations. Only a small part or none at all, on the other hand, consisted of stations for television. For non-Appalachians, and to a lesser extent for Northern Appalachians, the activities in which they were engaged while listening constituted a substantial element in their perceptions of radio but a much smaller part for television. Interestingly, for Central Appala­ chians the reverse was true. It is possible that since the Central Appalachian level of television viewing was markedly higher than that of the other two samples, they actually spent more time engaging in other activities while viewing television than while listening to radio. One wonders if the remarkably few responses from Central and Northern Appalachians referring to cars or driving might be a reflection of the tortuous nature of many Appa­ lachian roads. Possibly while non-Appalachians considered 123 that their routine driving left room for concurrent radio listening, those who drove the more difficult roads of Appalachia had little attention to spare for anything else* Partitioning of the samples along demographic variables rather than geographic revealed greater dissimi­ larities among sub-samples for radio than for television.

TABLE 15 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

.tJ-A jr;, 'h-l i i 1 jjW JBJacaB! Larger Proportion of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Activities/listening women higher N.S. N.S. Sports men higher N.S. N.S. Positive value judgments women N.S. older higher Negative value judgments N.S. N.S. older lower Weather women N.S. younger N.S. Time women N.S. older lower Programs (not music) N.S. lower older lower Equipment men higher N.S. N.S. Cars, driving N.S. higher N.S. N.S. Music N.S. N.S. younger N.S. News N.S. N.S. older N.S. Personalities on air N.S. N.S. younger higher Stations N.S. N.S. younger N.S.

Age tended to distinguish between sub-samples more than the other variables. Younger respondents tended more than their elders to perceive radio in terms of music, personalities on the air, and particular stations, while 124 older respondents perceived radio in terms of news, time signals, non-music programs, and value Judgments. Re­ spondents with more education thought of radio in terms of ownership of equipment, sports, and activities while listening including driving. Those with less formal schooling thought of the medium in terms of non-music programs. Women, more than men, perceived radio as a source of information about time and weather, in terms of activities while listening, and with positive value Judg­ ments. Men thought of it in terms of sports and the equipment of listening. Those above the median income tended more than their counterparts to perceive radio in terms of air personalities and were more positive in their value Judgments, while those below the median were nega­ tive in their Judgments and had a higher proportion of meaning involved with non-music programs and equipment.

III. "Television News" Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "television news" are sum­ marized by content category in Table 16. Unlike responses to the stimuli "television" and "radio," responses to "television news" revealed less clear-cut primacy of meaning for the concept. While there was significant concordance in the ranking of components of meaning by the three samples (Kendall's W * .712, 125

TABLE 16 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to TELEVISION NEWS, by Content Category I Non Central H4 H4 J g-g g-g j s d s ■§• ■§• Content Category Appalachian Appalachian 'So*’ co 10 m CD CD CO CD CO CO h O c cuw hnj O o C CD (0 O w -P ft to -P ft a £ Eh CO o cu cd 0 CD 0) coft pU Pi coft U P Pi Responses a > CD C H CD CD C h of of Percentage Percentage g g. ai O. o 01 cu o Responses

Reporter's name 145 25-2 68 24.9 31 9.6 News items 121 21.0 71 26.0 85 26.3 Negative value judg­ ments 83 14.4 8 2.9 22 6.8 Neutral description 53 9.2 21 7.7 35 10.8 Equipment, techniques 42 7.3 0 0.0 1 .3 Characteristics of the medium 34 5.9 0 0.0 20 6.2 Stations and networks 29 5.0 55 20.1 15 4.6 Positive value judg­ ments 26 4.5 14 5.1 55 17.0 Negative credibility 17 3.0 0 0.0 18 5.6 Weather 8 1.4 8 2.9 11 3.4 Sports 7 1.2 5 1.8 6 1.8 Names in the news 5 .9 3 1.1 9 2.8 Positive credibility 3 .5 4 1.5 7 2.2 Commercials 2 .3 0 0.0 4 1.2 Refuse to answer 0 0.0 16 5.9 4 1.2

Totals 575 273 * « 323 m ■ 126 p < .01), the correlation was lower for this concept than for any other except "government." That fact, together with refusal of a few respondents to respond to the stimu­ lus at all, leads to the implication that while respond­ ents seemed to have a strong and fairly consistent meaning for television and radio, they were less homogenous in their personal meaning for the concept "television news." Since the samples correlated in ranking to a degree that was significant but low, it is not surprising that they varied substantially in weight which respondents assigned to the various components of meaning. For both non-Appalachians and Central Appalachians, almost half of the responses to "television news" consisted of references to news items or to the names of familiar television news­ men. For Northern Appalachians, on the other hand, al­ though they thought primarily of news items, the names of newsmen made up less than a tenth of their perceptions of television news. For non-Appalachians, almost a quarter of their responses consisted of value judgments, and for Northern Appalachians, who tended to be more judgmental on other concepts, the proportion was almost a third. Central Appalachians, on the other hand, appeared to feel less strongly either affirmatively or negatively, with less than a tenth of their responses assigned to that component. 127 If television news is viewed as a source from which listeners get the information necessary for civic decision-making, it is important to ascertain whether news is perceived as reliable rather than merely enjoy­ able. Responses were therefore categorized both as posi­ tive and negative value judgments about television news in general and positive and negative judgments referring to the credibility of television news. Responses such as "pictures are better than words,11 "necessary,11 "up to date," "makes you a real close spectator," and "informa­ tive" were deemed to refer to news in general; whereas "accurate," "unbiased," "you can depend on their honesty" were deemed to focus on the credibility of news. Negative judgments were similarly segregated: "shallow," "sketchy," "too brief to be informative" were considered references to news in general, while "distortion," "inaccurate," and "slanted" were considered judgments on the reliability and truthfulness of the news. It was impossible to ascer­ tain how much of the judgment represented by these re­ sponses reflected the personal assessments of respondents and how much reflected the influence of frequent current criticism of television news credibility. Responses such as "Agnew is right about them" and "they really do think they're an unelected elite" might lead to conjecture that such judgments were not solely the product of per­ sonal viewing experiences. 128 Non-Appalachians were extremely negative in their judgments on both credibility and news in general— more than three times as many critical responses as laudatory. Central Appalachians, on the other hand, perceived tele­ vision news in reverse terms— twice as much praise as blame, with no responses at all directed toward lack of credibility. Northern Appalachians were ambivalent. Although their positive value judgments on television news in general were twice as frequent as negative responses, they did not appear to be so sanguine about the credibil:ty of news, for which the proportions were reversed. It is possible that suspicion of news in Northern Appalachia could be linked to a factor which will be discussed later: their perceptions of Appalachia involved substantial resentment at what they perceived as misrepresentation of their area by all of the news media. In any case, Northern Appalachians seemed to indicate by the weight which they assigned to the judgmental components of mean­ ing that they liked television news far more than respond­ ents in other samples, but trusted it less. One group of critical responses further reinforced the proprietary attitude revealed in perceptions of "tele­ vision." Responses geared to preferences in program con­ tent ("I'm not interested in the stock market," "who says ball scores are news?") and responses of the "kill the messenger" type ("skyjackers would quit if they weren't 129 given so much publicity”) seemed to be another manifesta­ tion of the tacit notion that individual respondents had a right to demand program content tailored to their pref­ erences. For all samples, only a small part of the meaning of news concerned sports or weather— a standard feature of the newscasts of most stations— and the perception of commercials as a part of the concept "television news" was nonexistent for Central Appalachians and miniscule in the other samples. Two comparatively sophisticated elements in the composite meaning of news were characteristics of the medium ("immediacy," "recency," "high impact," "live coverage") and newsgathering techniques ("camera angles" and "close-ups"). While non-Appalachians and Northern Appalachians apparently perceived the former category approximately equal in importance, the latter category made up a substantial component only for non-Appalachians. For Central Appalachians, neither of these components comprised any part of their perceptions of television news, On the other hand, Central Appalachians assigned four times as much weight to the idea of the station which carried the news as either of the other samples. There may be some significance to an omission from the perceptions of all three samples. Not one response indicated that any of the respondents thought of television news in terms of activities in which they were engaged while watching. Since newscasts in the market are sched­ uled at times which might he expected to coincide with eating, dishwashing, or retiring, the absence of reference to any activity might be interpreted as a reflection of more undivided attention focused on news than on television in general. When samples were partitioned along demographic lines, only five items served to distinguish between sub­ samples .

TABLE 1.7 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Proportion of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

News items women lower younger N.S. Positive value Judgments women higher N.S. N.S. Negative value Judgments men higher N.S. higher Character of medium N.S. higher N.S. N.S. Techniques N.S. higher younger lower

In general, demographic variables did not appear to have a great deal of influence upon perceptions of "tele- vision news." Only educational level distinguished con­ sistently between sub-samples, with value Judgments, char­ acteristics of the medium, and newsgathering techniques constituting a significantly greater proportion of 131 responses for those who had had some higher education than for those who had not.

IV. "Appalachia11 Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "Appalachia*1 are summarized by content category in Table 18. Agreement among samples on the priorities which they assigned to the various components of meaning was comparatively high for this concept. It seemed apparent that both those whose perception of Appalachia stemmed largely from short-term or mediated experience and those whose perception was the product of life-long personal experience tended to order their perceptions in approxi­ mately similar ways (Kendall’s W = .813, p < .01). It was impossible of course to ascertain the extent to which the perceptions of Appalachian respondents had been shaped by the national spotlight focused on the region over the past decade, or the degree to which their perceptions may have been altered since the onset of intensive attention from mass media. While the three samples tended to rank the compo- * nents of meaning similarly, there was significant dif­ ference between samples in the weight which they assigned to the Individual components (Chi square with Yates cor­ rection for continuity = 136.1449, 28 df, p < .01. It 132

TABLE 18 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to APPALACHIA, by Content Category

Central <+ mjj y (DO Ml P M3 o 0 m Appalachian Content Category •S’ CO a> om w bo p a) cuo m -PP. P C w O OJ OJ ft poJ CQ t n CD of of Responses Percentage Percentage g* g. Responses Responses 3 of Responses Responses of Responses Responses tt Percentage g.13 ft ft o

Poverty 125 20.6 51 18.8 88 26.7 Scenery, mountains 120 19.8 105 38.6 67 20.3 Negative value judg­ ments 80 13.2 17 6.3 13 3.9 Neutral description 65 10.7 18 6.6 25 7.6 Coal, mining, stripping 49 8.1 16 5.9 6 1.8 Place names 48 7.9 22 8.1 31 9.4 Politics, political issues 25 4.1 5 1.8 8 2.4 Arts, crafts, folk cul­ ture 24 3.9 10 3.7 6 1.8 Positive value judg­ ments 20 3.3 0 0.0 4 1.2 Defensive statements 15 2.5 16 5-9 35 10.6 o Educational defi­ o ciencies 13 2.1 0 • 0 0.0 Disasters (floods, explosions) 7 1.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Population, migration 6 1.0 0 0.0 2 • 6 Recreation, camping 5 .8 0 0.0 7 2.1 Unemployment 3 .5 0 0.0 3 * 9 Power Company 1 .2 12 4.4 35 10.6

Totals 606 272 •- • 330 a ♦ 133 should be noted that Chi square was computed in this case without inclusion of the last component listed in Table 18, since that item appeared to have a meaning comparatively unique to these specific Northern Appalachians and highly unlikely to appear in samples drawn from other areas of Northern Appalachia. The factor will be discussed later.) For most of the non-Appalachian sample, personal contact with Appalachia, particularly the more inaccessi­ ble areas and people of Central Appalachia, was severely limited. Many non-Appalachian respondents volunteered qualifications for their perceptions such as "Remember, all I've seen of Appalachia is the cities," or "All I really know about Appalachia is what I've read or seen on the air." It could be assumed, then, that their concept of Appalachia probably paralleled that of most Americans, although probably reflecting a heightened interest in the region compared with those who had not taken up residence within its boundaries. For non-Appalachians, primacy of meaning for Appa­ lachia consisted of references to poverty ("poor people," "decrepit little shacks," "hunger") followed closely by references to the mountains and the awe-inspiring natural features ("magnificent scenery," "steep gorges," "breath­ taking beauty"). The next largest component of meaning was negative criticism ("inbred," "heaps of trash," "clannish," "stubbornly backward," "a wasteland for 134 youth")* There were four times as many critical responses as positive value Judgments ("slow easy pace to life," "lots of living space," "marvelous people," "hard work­ ers," "sense of pride," "interesting place to spend a few years"). Coal, mining, and strip-mining made up a substan­ tial element of their perceptions, together with political issues some of which were linked to coal ("black lung," "welfare fraud," "vote fraud"). Comparatively few responses to "Appalachia" dealt with the folk music, dancing, arts and crafts which private and governmental agencies have sought to publicize to more Americans, or the recreation potential of the area ("camping," "hunt­ ing") extolled by advocates of expanded tourism. Almost five per cent of non-Appalachian responses dealt with specific problems of the area— unemployment, inadequate education, migration, lack of family planning, and the disasters which have been widely associated with negligence ("Farmington #9," "Buffalo Creek," "Silver Bridge"). By contrast, Central Appalachians perceived their homeland primarily in terms of its physical nature, with many references to the beauty and tranquility of the mountains, but fewer to indicate that they found the terrain imposing. The second largest element in their perception of the region— almost as large for them as for the other samples--was poverty. 135 Surprisingly, in an area where mining is still the primary industry despite recent efforts to diversify, coal and mining made up a smaller proportion of the per­ ceptions of Central Appalachians than of non-Appalachians. And while their perceptions included some negative value Judgments, they tended to be critical of surroundings rather than inhabitants ("revenuers," "no place to go," "victims of circumstance"). They included no positive Judgments at all. Despite the bombardment of analysis and advice from social scientists and politicians, Central Appala­ chians produced no responses to indicate that they per­ ceived the region in terms of deficiencies— of education, employment, industrial or civic responsibility. It seemed particularly noteworthy that disasters played no part in their perceptions, although they were interviewed less than three months after a dam composed of mine refuse collapsed, leading to the flash flooding of Buffalo Creek which left more than a hundred dead in the same county in which many of the respondents themselves lived. Northern Appalachians were especially discrepant in their perceptions of the region. One unanticipated aspect which was repeated for more than a tenth of their total responses was "power company." While "Appalachian" is used as part of the name of a number of businesses and institutions in the area, none of them appeared to impinge 136 on respondents perceptions of the area except the Appala­ chian Power Company. Since the Kyger Creek power plant, a major producer of electric energy, is situated imme­ diately across the Ohio River from the counties from which this sample was drawn, and the Gavin plant is under con­ struction nearby, it can be assumed that the activities and plans of the Appalachian Power Company involved more of the energies and attention of the Northern Appalachian sample than would be likely if the sample had been drawn from other counties. Although the Northern Appalachians perceived Appa­ lachia in terms of mountains and poverty to an extent even greater than the non-Appalachians, they tended to include fewer value Judgments, negative or positive, in spite of their general tendency to perceive most concepts in Judg­ mental terms. Another striking difference in Northern Appalachian perceptions from the other samples was the weight which they assigned to the element of defensiveness ("the mis­ information about Appalachia is a shame," "it’s not neces­ sarily true," "the entire state is not poor!" "there's no more poverty here than elsewhere," "unfair criticism," "bad advertising," "New York gets most of the Appalachian funds," "it's not here, it's in Logan County"). The vehemence of the responses as much as the dimensions of that component amply supported the contention that many 137 Northern Appalachians were as unfamiliar with the hard­ core problem area of Central Appalachia as their counter­ parts outside the region. Some of them obviously resented being lumped with "hillbillies" in the public mind. When samples were partitioned along demographic lines, eight components were perceived as significantly more important by some sub-samples than by their counter­ parts.

TABLE 19 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Proportion of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Positive value judgments men higher N.S. N.S. Folk culture women higher older N.S. Defensiveness women N.S. older N.S. Political issues men N.S. older N.S. Poverty N.S. higher N.S. N.S. Coal N.S. higher N.S. higher Educational deficiencies N.S. higher N.S. N.S. Power company N.S. lower N.S. lower

While income level was not a particularly reliable indicator of perceptions of Appalachia, college educated respondents tended to perceive more positive value judg­ ments, folk culture, poverty, coal, and educational defi­ ciencies than those with less formal education. And while political issues loomed larger for men than for women, 138 they tended to make more positive assessments. Women were more aware of cultural characteristics and were more defensive than men.

V. "Government” Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "government" are summarized by content category in Table 20. Correlation between samples was lower for this stimulus than for any other. Not only were there great discrepencies in the weight assigned to various compo­ nents of meaning, but the samples did not agree as closely on the priorities they assigned to individual components except for the first two (Kendall's W = .685, p < .05). There was greater correlation between the younger half of the three samples (Kendall's W = .840, p < .01) and the older half of the three samples (Kendall's W = .764, P < .01) leading to the conclusion that although govern­ ment was a concept about which the three samples differed substantially, young people and their elders tended to agree more with their contemporaries across geographic lines than they did with each other. In addition to less concordance in the ranking of various components, there were discrepencies in the weight­ ing of various elements of meaning (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity - 113.887, 26 df, p < .01). 139

TABLE 20 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to GOVERNMENT, by Content Category

§ (DO d 5 M3 <+ p sa h 0 P * $ Content Category $ of Responses n-g Responses of of Responses g**-1 Responses of of Responses g* Responses of Percentage g Percentage g. Percentage g Percentage g. Responses Responses 3 Responses Responses o tt Responses Percentage g.3

Negative value judg­ ments 172 27.1 69 22.8 101 28.4 Federal branches and offices 155 24.4 61 20.2 65 18.3 Elections, campaigns 71 11.2 32 10.6 54 15.2 Neutral description 51 8.0 23 7.6 61 17.1 State branches and offices 41 6.5 37 12.3 14 3.9 Local branches and offices 32 5.0 11 3.6 0 0.0 Taxes, budgets 30 4.7 33 10.9 4 1.1 Law, law enforcement 23 3.6 17 5.6 13 3.7 Functions, services of government 18 2.8 0 0.0 1 .2 Political issues, dissent 14 2.2 4 1.3 15 4.2 Comparative forms of government 10 1.6 0 0.0 2 .5 Positive value judg­ ments 9 1.3 9 3.0 19 5.3 Power, authority 8 1.2 2 .7 7 2.0 Miscellaneous 1 .2 4 1.3 0 0.0

Totals 635 • • 302 • • 356 * • 140 Clear primacy of meaning for all samples consisted of negative value Judgments. While the recent political history of the United States would lead to the expecta­ tion that dissatisfaction would probably be a part of the perception of government for any group of Americans, the priority of this component was marked for all samples. Secondary in importance for all samples were references to branches and officers of the federal govern­ ment. Apparently among respondents in all samples, when they thought of government they thought negatively ("un­ responsive," "unwieldy," "crooked politicians") and that dissatisfaction attached first to federal government ("president," "congress," "supreme court"). Such nega­ tivism was only slightly mitigated by positive value Judgments ("necessary," "good on the whole," "better than that of any other country") among non-Appalachians, but more substantially for Northern Appalachians. Politics appeared to be perceived more in terms of elections and campaigning than as political issues for all samples, although the salience of that aspect would undoubtedly be lower in a non-election year. Both electioneering and political issues seemed markedly more important to Northern Appalachians, however, than to either of the other two samples. Money matters— taxes and governmental spending— might have been expected to represent an important element 141 in perceptions of government in a year when candidates for national office have claimed to sense a "ta^qpayers1 revolt” and have geared much of their campaign strategy to tax reform.^ Only among Central Appalachians was that apparently the case. Non-Appalachians accorded that element of meaning much lower priority and in the Northern Appalachian sample, where proposals for excess levies have recently been accrimoniously defeated, money matters appeared to represent a surprisingly small pro­ portion of the concept of government. Since government ultimately affects individual citizens most closely and constantly by way of its various functions ("garbage collection," "fire service"), it might have been expected that the functions of government would be an intrusive element in their perceptions. In fact, such responses made up a small component of meaning for non-Appalachians and virtually none for both Appala­ chian samples. Such marked lack of awareness of the services rendered by various governmental agencies prob­ ably should be disquieting to the Appalachian Regional Commission as well as other bodies who must seek support in terms of services rendered. The large component repre­ senting dissatisfaction, coupled with the remarkably

1 U "A Jarring Message from George." Time. Vol. XCIX. No. 13 (March 27, 1972), pp. 22-27; and "WhiPFHcGovem Would Mean to the Country," Time. Vol. XCIX, No. 26 (June 26, 1972), pp. 15-19. 142

small component representing an awareness of the services of government, was surely not coincidental. If, as the Appalachian Regional Commission has contended, progress in Appalachia must be geared to public recognition and utilization of the community resources provided by govern­ ment, then responses to this concept would tend to indi­ cate that the media of public information have not yet induced these respondents to think in terms of government as a source of vital services. One final difference between samples seemed to be particularly pertinent as an index of the relationship between citizens and their governing bodies. While all of the samples perceived federal government as important, non-Appalachians thought of state and local government as much lower but approximately equal in importance. Central Appalachians, on the other hand, perceived state government as substantially important— more than three times as important as local government, which was per­ ceived as a rather small element. Northern Appalachians appeared to perceive even state government as comparatively unimportant and there was no evidence to indicate that local government played any part at all in their percep­ tions. When samples were partitioned along demographic lines rather than geographic, the discordance within samples was graphic. 143 It was not solely age which tended to distinguish between sub-samples. All of the demographic variables provided indices to the disparate perceptions of govern­ ment among respondents.

TABLE 21 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Component of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Positive value judgments women higher older N.S. Negative value judgments men lower N.S. N.S. Political issues women N.S. younger lower Law and enforcement women N.S. younger N.S. Power, authority men higher older lower Taxes, money N.S. lower N.S. lower Federal N.S. higher N.S. higher State N.S. lower N.S. N.S. Local N.S. N.S. N.S. lower

There was, then, no significant difference between the dissatisfaction with government among younger respond­ ents and older ones. Older respondents did, however, perceive government in more positive terms than youth, and were more aware of the power and authority inherent in government. Younger respondents were more aware of political issues and law enforcement. Income tended to affect the perceptions of some components of meaning: those above the median income were more cognizant of fed­ eral branches and officers, while those below the median 144 were more likely to respond in terras of local government, political issues, power and authority, taxes and money. Men tended to be more negative and thought of government in terms of power and authority, while women were more likely to express approval and perceive government in terms of law enforcement and political issues. Respond­ ents with more formal education tended to be more approving of government, while those without higher education were negative. Those with some college also tended to perceive government in terms of power and authority, and chiefly at the federal level, while those without college were more aware of the state level and more concerned about money and taxes. It might reasonably be concluded that government, more than other concepts investigated in this study, evoked responses which reflected general dissatisfaction and unusual couplings among sub-samples in their percep­ tions of other elements of meaning— i.e., sub-samples which customarily view subjects similarly, did not neces­ sarily do so with respect to government.

VI. "Neighbors" Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "neighbors" are summarized by content category in Table 22. 145

TABLE 22 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to NEIGHBORS, hy Content Category

i :

: ; :

4 ■ Central 2 - M 4 c+ M (B h § (to o H2J ; (to

Appalachian £ Content Category & 0>CO

oP a>P w(U

P. o cr: ^ O p i CO P (U (U

Neutral description 122 24.4 23 9.6 62 19.3 Friends, friendship 95 19.0 125 52.3 39 12.1 Unpleasant relation­ ships 89 17.8 15 6.3 81 25.2 Avoidance, non­ relationship 57 11.4 16 6.7 17 5.3 Pleasant relationships 42 8.4 37 15.5 53 16.5 Activities, enjoyment 53 6.6 4 1.7 0 0.0 Concern, helpfulness 29 5.8 12 5.0 38 11.8 Mutuality, reciprocity 20 4.0 4 1.7 1 .3 Religious, moral ref­ erences 5 1.0 3 1.2 13 4.0 Inclusiveness of 4 .8 0 0.0 7 2.1 neighbor _ t Pets, animals 4 .8 0 0.0 11 3.4

Totals 500 • • 239 « • 322 ♦ • 146 The three samples were not discordant in their perceptions of the relative importance of the various components of meaning in this concept (Kendall's W = .790, P < .Cl) but there were marked disparities in the weight which they assigned to each element (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity = 235.178, 22 df, p <.01)„ And while respondents tended to order the elements simi­ larly over all, there was no clear cut primacy of meaning for all samples, and even second-order salience differed. Non-Appalachians tended to perceive neighbors largely in terms of neutral description of roles, objects, and places ("next door," "lawns," "automobile," "he's a school principal," "children"), while for Central Appala­ chians, neighbor overwhelmingly runnoted friendship ("friendly," "good buddies," "good friends"). In marked contrast, the primary component for Northern Appalachians was unpleasant relationships ("snobbish," "narrow-minded," "nosey," "gossips," "lack of privacy," "lawn fetishists," "I wish they'd leave me alone"). It might be inferred from the comparative neutrality of non-Appalachian respond­ ents that their perceptions were colored by the fact that they were comparatively new to their neighborhoods, but they were requested during interviewing to consider neighbor in terms of all of the neighbors they knew— former as well as present— - ■ it may be assumed that they regarded neighbors in general somewhat neutrally. 147 One facet of the meaning of neighbor for some Central Appalachians may have been revealed by unsolicited comments from a few respondents. One man, for example, expressed difficulty in responding to that stimulus be­ cause he had "really never had any neighbors." Since his home was close to many others, this was a puzzling remark until he explained that those who lived near him were really not neighbors, they were kin. The familial nature of Appalachian society has been noted repeatedly in litera- ture on the area. 15 Primary reference groups tend to be family-based,"^ so it is possible that the perceptions of "neighbor" in Central Appalachia were based on kinship rather than mere proximity, to a much greater extent than would be true of other groups of Americans. Relationship, whether good or bad, was obviously a far larger component for both Appalachian samples than for non-Appalachians, supporting the notion that they are "person-oriented." Pleasant relationships ("we get along well," "enjoyable company") represented twice as large an element for both Appalachian samples as for non-Appala­ chians • The non—Appalachians tended far more than Appa-

15James S. Brown, "The Conjugal Family and the Extended Family Group," American Sociological Review. Vol. XVII (June, 1952), ppT 29^-305. 16 Jack E. Weller, Yesterday1s People: Life in Con­ temporary Appalachia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), pp. 58-59. 148 lachians to think of neighbors in terms of avoidance ("cool and distant," "haven't spoken in two years," "clannish and exclusive," "they don't bother me and I don't bother them"). While non-Appalachians tended to perceive neigh­ borliness less in terms of friendship and concern than did their Appalachian counterparts, they were more likely to think in terms of mutuality and reciprocity ("good bor­ rowers, good lenders, good returners," "work each others' gardens") and activities shared with the neighbors ("pic­ nics," "Christmas Open House," "community projects"). Possibly the most interesting contradiction intro­ duced by these data was in the Northern Appalachian sample. While they perceived neighbor primarily in terms of un­ pleasant relationships, only moderately in terms of friend­ ship, and not at all in terms of shared activities, they were more likely than other samples to think in terms of moralisms ("to have a good neighbor, you must be a good neighbor") and in the inclusive, Good Samaritan aspect of neighborliness ("all men are neighbors," "even blacks are our neighbors"). Partitioning the three samples along demographic lines revealed that gender and age had a great deal more influence on perceptions of neighbor than either education or income. TABLE 23 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Component of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Concern, helpfulness women N.S. older N.S. Pleasant relations women N.S. older N.S. Unpleasant relations N.S. N.S. younger lower Avoidance men higher older higher Mutuality men N.S. N.S. N.S. Activities N.S. N.S. younger higher

Women were more likely than men to perceive neigh­ bors in terms of helpfulness and pleasant relationships, while men were more likely than women to think in terms of either mutuality or avoidance. Both activities and un­ pleasant relationships were more evident for younger people than for their elders, while older people tended more than youth to perceive either helpfulness and pleasant relationships or outright avoidance.

VII. "Home" Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "home" are summarized by con­ tent category in Table 24. There was greater concordance among samples in their perceptions of the various components of meaning in "home" than for any other concept investigated in this 1 5 0

TABLE 24 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to HOME, by Content Category

(+ ss * O H hJ H S> H ; 5 § 03 03 j h (U (0 (U H3 h 6 H H 03 5 Content Category § ts of Responses n-g Responses of Percentage Percentage g.g of Responses Responses of Responses Responses g Percentage g Percentage g. of Responses Responses of Responses Responses o «a Percentage Percentage g.3 Responses Responses

Family members roles and names 165 27.9 110 36.2 106 29.4 58 16.1 Acceptance, belonging 75 12.3 47 _15.5 __ * Refuge, respite 67 11.3 53 17.4 34 9.4 House, building 57 9.6 15 4.9 21 5.8 Responsibilities, obli­ gations 52 8.8 7 2.3 28 7.8 Activities, pleasure 46 7.8 2 .7 9 2*5 Possessions 37 6.3 6 2.0 8 2.2 Positive value judg­ ments 23 3.9 8 2.6 22 6.1 Negative value judg­ ments 17 2.9 0 0.0 20 5.6 Neutral description 13 2.1 41 13.5 41 11.3 Location 11 1.9 7 2.3 4 1.1 Animals, pets 10 1.6 8 2.6 3 .8 Memories 8 1.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 Religion, training 4 .6 0 0.0 6 1.6 Mi scellaneous 9 1.5 0 0.0 0 0.0

Totals 592 » * 304 • • 360 • * study (Kendall's W = .869, p ^ .01). Since respondents tended to agree on the relative importance of each element inherent in "home” even more than they agreed on the priorities in "family," it might be inferred that "home" connoted something of an abstraction whereas "family" may have evoked specific human situations. Samples were com­ paratively homogeneous, as well, with higher agreement between sub-groups of the same sample than between sub­ groups across samples. Thus, while older people across samples tended to rank the components similarly (Kendall's W = .761, p < .01), they agreed more with the younger people of their own sample. The young people of each sample exhibited substantial agreement with older respond­ ents in their own sample, but agreed less with the pri­ orities of their contemporaries in other samples (Kendall's W = .683, p < .05). This would seem to be at variance with the assertions of Weller and others that the young people of Appalachia are beginning to view life more in accord with the predominant American cultural patterns and could ultimately erase sub-cultural distinctions. 17 At least for their perceptions of "home," younger respondents tended to be less alike across samples than their elders. While there was substantial agreement between

^Jack E. Weller, Yesterday1s People: Life in Con­ temporary Appalachia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), pp^I:54-136. 1 52 samples in the priority they assigned to various elements in the concept, they differed significantly in frequency of responses in the respective categories (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity = 112.237, 28 df, p < .01). Much of the meaning of home, for all samples, stemmed from three components. More than a quarter of responses for all samples— and more than a third for Central Appalachians— consisted of names and roles of members of their own family ("Joe," "Elaine,” "grand­ children," "husband," "wife"). Not only did Central Appa­ lachians perceive that element as more important in their total perceptions, there was a qualitative difference to their responses in that category as well. Non-Appalachian and Northern Appalachian responses in that component tended to consist of a single word ("children," "husband") whereas Central Appalachians added a possessive pronoun to more than half of their responses ("my children," "my husband"). The familism of Central Appalachian society apparently included a suggestion of exclusiveness among these responses. Also important to all samples were two other components: acceptance and belonging ("love," "loyalty," "companionship," "emotional support") and refuge or respite ("relaxation," "comfort," "protection," "away from the jungle"). I

153 Beyond those similarities, other components of meaning seemed particularly indicative of the differences between respondents in the three samples. Activities ("dinner table conversation," "sitting around singing," "watching television") and possessions ("antiques," "lots of books," "mother's knick knacks") appeared markedly more important to non-Appalachians than to Appalachians, and for Central Appalachians activities hardly constituted an element of meaning at all. The house which contained the home ("remodeling," "house-proud," "big porch," "beautiful fireplace") appeared to be twice as important an element to non-Appalachians as to Appalachians. Responsibilities ("housework," "chores," "bills," "duties") was a substan­ tial component for both non-Appalachians and Northern Appalachians, but not for Central Appalachians. Religion and spiritual nurture ("God," "church," "discipline," "learning right from wrong") comprised an element of mean­ ing of home to both non-Appalachians and Northern Appala­ chians, but no responses indicated such perceptions among Central Appalachians, And only non-Appalachians included references to memories ("Christmas at home," "vacations at the beach," "my fifteenth birthday"). On this concept, as on others, Northern Appala­ chians tended to include more judgments in their percep­ tions than the other samples. They had half again as large a proportion of positive value judgments as non- 154

Appalachians and twice as large as Central Appalachians. Negative value Judgments, too, were twice as obtrusive for Northern Appalachians as for non-Appalachians. And interestingly, Central Appalachians apparently had no negative value Judgments at all as part of their percep­ tion of home. The literature on emigration from Central Appalachia includes many references to the frequency with which the migrants return home for visits and the strong T fl ties maintained with home. The omission of any negative value Judgments in their perceptions of home would seem to coincide with those observations. Partitioning of the samples along demographic lines revealed, as shown in Table 25, fairly predictable distinctions among sub-samples. Women tended to perceive home in terms of accept­ ance, positive values, and responsibilities more than men, while men were more likely than women to perceive negative values. Those with some higher education were more inclined to perceive home negatively than those with less formal schooling, while they perceived home more in terms of responsibilities and refuge than did those who had been to college. Younger respondents were more negative about home, while their elders perceived home

18 Harry K. Schwarzweller, "Parental Family Ties and Social Integration of Rural to Urban Migrants," Journal of Marriage and the Family. Vol. XXVI (November, 1964), pp. 410-416. 155 TABLE 25 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Components of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Acceptance, belonging women N.S. N.S. N.S. Negative value judgments men higher younger N.S. Positive value judgments women N.S. older N.S. Responsibilities women lower N.S. N.S. Refuge, respite N.S. lower older N.S. Activities N.S. N.S. older N.S. Possessions N.S. N.S. N.S. higher House N.S. N.S. N.S. higher more positively, more as a refuge, and more in terms of activities. Those above median income were more inclined to think of home in terms of house and possessions than those below median income.

VIII. "Family” Responses of the three samples in continued free association to the stimulus "family" are summarized by content category in Table 26. Agreement among samples on the relative importance of the components of meaning for "family" was significant, but not as high as for "home" (Kendall?s W = .776, p < .01). There were significant discrepencies in the weight assigned to each component by the three samples (Chi square with Yates correction for continuity = 128.731, 1 5 6

TABLE 26 Responses of Non Appalachian, Central Appalachian, and Northern Appalachian Samples to FAMILY, by Content Category 1

3 £ £ £ £ g- H 4 H fl) (+ Hfl) 3 H 3 o H o> •& § Content Category & of Responses £3 Responses of of Responses g n Responses of Percentage Percentage of Responses g- Responses of Percentage g.J Responses Responses 3 *c Responses Responses o Percentage Percentage g.3 Responses

Family member roles and names 210 36.4 166 49.6 130 37.5 Acceptance, belonging 123 21.3 98 29.3 96 27.7 Activities, enjoyment 51 8.8 10 3.0 23 6.6 Neutral description 51 8.8 34 10.1 32 9.2 Memorable occasions 28 4.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 Conflict, dissension 27 4.7 12 3.9 22 6.3 Negative value Judg­ ments 2 4 4.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Distance, separation 19 3.3 0 0.0 7 2.0 Size of family 17 2.9 4 1.1 20 5.7 Possessions 9 1.6 0 0.0 0 0.0 Responsibilities, obli­ gations 8 1.4 3 .8 4 1.2 Training, nurture 3 .5 0 0.0 5 1.4 Pets, animals 3 .5 4 1.1 0 0.0 Religious 2 .3 0 0.0 4 1.2 Death 2 .3 0 0.0 4 1.2 Refuse to answer 0 0.0 4 1.1 0 0.0

Totals 577 • • 335 347 a • 157 30 df, p < .01). Primacy of meaning for all samples consisted overwhelmingly of names and roles of family members. For Central Appalachians, that component represented almost half of the responses to the term. The samples agreed also on the importance of "acceptance and belong­ ing" as an element of meaning in family. But tertiary importance for all samples was neutral non-judgmental description ("old," "young," "recently married," "we have no family"). The component "refuge" or "respite" which was prominent in the meaning of "home," did not appear to be an element of the perceptions of "family." Perceptions of conflict in the family ("argu­ ments," "generation gap," "conflict of values") comprised a component of meaning for all samples. But negative value judgments ("unhappy," "no cohesiveness," "too closely knit," "domineering," "little communication"), a material element for non-Appalachians, were completely omitted from perceptions of "family" for both Appalachian samples. The omission seemed particularly significant from the Northern Appalachian sample, not only because they tended to view most concepts in markedly more judg­ mental terms, but also because negative value judgments comprised a substantial component of their meaning for "home." 158 Other elements of meaning significant to non- Appalachians hut entirely omitted by Appalachians were memorable occasions ("holidays,11 "reunions," "graduation") and possessions ("car," "clothes"). While possessions might be construed as a fairly materialistic element in "family," memorable occasions might have been expected to be a more obtrusive element in Appalachian thinking since family reunions are frequent and elaborate occasions in the hills. In any case, the three types of perceptions— memories, possessions and negative criticism— served to distinguish non-Appalachians from Appalachians altogether. There were four components of meaning which, though small, were present in non-Appalachian and Northern Appa­ lachian perceptions of family but apparently missing in Central Appalachian thinking: religion ("church," "God"), training ("learning by example," "teaching what is ex­ pected"), death ("loved ones who passed on," "deceased members"), and separation between family members ("lonely for them," "letters from home," "overcoming distance," "oh, those phone bills!"). The latter category appeared to be an especially unusual omission from Central Appala­ chian responses, since migration has caused the geographic scattering of many families and the number of young men in the armed forces is disproportionately higher than in 159 IQ other states- But other studies have noted the compara­ tive irreligious nature of mountain folk together with their disregard for systematic discipline in child rear-

When the three samples were partitioned demographi- cally, there were, as shown in Table 27, a large number of components of meaning perceived as significantly more important by some sub-samples than by others. All four variables served as indicators to the perceptions of the various sub-samples. Not surprisingly, young people were more likely than their elders to think in terms of conflict in the family, since older family members are usually the standard setters. Contemporary emphasis on population growth and family planning possibly contributed to their greater awareness of family size than that of older respondents. It was equally unsurprising, on the other hand, to discover that older people, more iq Migration is analyzed by state for the Appala­ chian region in James S. Brown, "Migration, Take It or Leave It: A Look at the 1970 Census," Appalachia in the Sixties, ed. by David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson TLexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1972), pp. 130- 144. The disproportionate level of West Virginia's contri­ bution to the armed forces, and also to casualty lists and medal winners, supplied by the office of the Honorable Kenneth Hechler, Congressman for the Fifth Congressional District of West Virginia, Washington, D. C. 2 0 Robert Coles, Migrants. Sharecroppers. Mountain­ eers. Vol. II of Children in Crisis (Boston: Little. Brown and Co., 1967), pp. 273-358 and 51^-549. Also Jack E. Weller, Yesterday1s People (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), pp. 64-67. 160 TABLE 27 Components of Meaning Perceived as Significantly More Important by Demographic Sub-samples in All Three Geographic Samples Combined

Larger Component of Meaning Sex Education Age Income

Acceptance women higher N.S. N.S. Religion women lower N.S. N.S. Training men higher N.S. lower Family size women lower younger lower Negative value judgments N.S. higher N.S. lower Responsibilities N.S. higher older N.S. Possessions women higher older higher Memorable occasions N.S. higher younger N.S. Distance N.S. higher N.S. N.S. Conflict N.S. N.S. younger N.S. than younger, thought of family in terms of both posses­ sions and responsibilities* Education, too, appeared to be a consistent indi­ cator. Those with more education were more likely to think in terms of acceptance, child training, responsibilities, possessions, memories, distance, and negative value judg­ ments. Those with less education were more cognizant of family size and religion in the family. Possessions as part of the concept of family was a high-income perception, while those below the median income tended more than their counterparts to think in terms of training, family size, and negative value judgments. The gender of the respond­ ent apparently also influenced perceptions, with women 161 more likely to think in terms of acceptance, religion, family size, and possessions, while men were more cogni­ zant of training.

Differences Between Heavy and Light Viewers Having ascertained that Central and Northern Appa lachians perceived some elements of life differently from non-Appalachians, it was also necessary to learn whether, as had been postulated by a number of observers, tele- 21 vision viewing had an influence on those perceptions. When responses of those in each sample who claimed above- average viewing were compared with those whose self- declared hours of viewing were below average, there were significant differences. If the question were asked, "Do those who view more television than the average in their area perceive certain aspects of their lives differently from others who view less television than average?" the answer would be consistently "Yes" in Central Appalachia, but only partially among respondents elsewhere. Northern Appalachians who were heavy viewers perceived some con­ cepts differently than light viewers, while some concepts were viewed similarly by all respondents irrespective of viewing habits. For non-Appalachians, the level of view-

21Michael Smathers, "Suspicion and Community in Appalachia," in Appalachia in Transition. ed. by Max E. Glenn (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1970),"p. 77, and many other Appalachian authorities who have made the same claim. 1 62 Ing appeared to make no difference in perceptions, except for the concept "home."

TABLE 28 Concepts Perceived as Significantly Different by Heavy and Light Television Viewers, Designated by Chi Square Values*

Concepts Perceived Non Central Northern Differently* Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian

Appalachia N.S. 27.96 55.40 Government N.S. 66.46 31.48 Home 39.49 34.55 N.S. Neighbors N.S. 21.02 N.S. Family N.S. 50.40 28.57

*A11 Chi square values significant at ,01 level.

Comparisons of response frequencies to the stimuli "Appalachia," "government," "home," "neighbors," and "family" from heavy and light television viewers in each sample are summarized by content category in Tables 29 through 33.

I. "Appalachia" Response frequencies of heavy and light television viewers to the stimulus word "Appalachia" are summarized in Table 29. With respect to perceptions of Appalachia, it could be assumed that non-Appalachians derived most of their meaning for the concept from various news media. 163 TABLE 29 Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to APPALACHIA, by Content Category

Non Central Northern Content Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian High Low High Low High Low N=20 N=28 N=24 N=24 N=22 N=26

Poverty 41 84 14 37 49 39 Scenery, mountains 44 76 47 58 37 30 Negative value judg­ ments 32 48 13 4 3 10 Neutral description 35 30 7 11 17 8 Coal, mining, stripping IS 31 14 2 6 0 Place names 19 29 15 7 0 31 Politics, political issues 8 17 2 3 1 7 Arts, crafts, folk cul­ ture 16 8 6 4 3 3 Positive value judg­ ments 8 12 0 0 3 1 Defensive statements 2 13 12 4 7 28 Educational defi­ ciencies 3 10 0 0 0 0 Disasters (floods, explosions) 2 5 0 0 0 0 Population, migration 2 4 0 0 2 0 Recreation, camping 3 2 0 0 3 4 Unemployment 2 1 0 0 3 0 Power Company 1 0 4 8 20 15

Totals *236 370 134 138 154 176 For them, then, it was entirely consistent that there was no significant difference in perceptions whether their viewing was heavy or light. For Central Appalachians, on the other hand, personal experience was assumed to constitute the most influential source of their percep­ tions with varying accretions from media sources. The difference in perceptions of heavy viewers could then be considered to represent an approximation of the influence of television exposure. If those assumptions were correct, the chief contributions of heavy television viewing seemed to be an increase in negative value judgments and an in­ crease in defensiveness. It seemed possible that both factors could be salutary in terms of the long term changes in attitudes about Appalachia recommended by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory study. 22 Dissatisfac­ tion with things as they are was certainly a necessary prelude to changes. Even defensiveness could be construed as a natural reaction to recognition of deficiencies, which could alter over time to increase willingness to make changes. The lower perception of poverty among heavy viewers, however, did not appear to represent any impetus toward change. It could even represent the

22Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Inc., Direc­ tions for Educational Development in A-ppalachla (Charles­ ton: Appalachia Educational Laboratory, November, 1971), pp. 44-45. 165 narcotizing dysfunction of heavy television viewing described by Lazarsfeld and Merton. ^ The relationship of Northern Appalachians to the concept "Appalachia" was different from both of the other samples. It seemed probable that many of them had some personal experience with Central Appalachia through busi­ ness or family relationships. Some respondents may even have come from Central Appalachia originally, although typical migration patterns have been from Central Appa­ lachia to large metropolitan centers such as Akron and Detroit. In any case, all Northern Appalachians have since 1965 been a part of the federally-delineated region designated for attention and developmental projects. As indicated earlier, the reaction of some Northern Appala­ chians has been both puzzled and resentful at this inclu­ sion. The differences between the perceptions of heavy and light television viewers in Northern Appalachia re­ flected that background. Heavy viewers were less likely than light viewers to think of Appalachia in terms of mere place names, and they were markedly less defensive. They were somewhat more aware of poverty than light viewers,

25 "Paul Lazarsfeld and R. K. Merton, "Mass Com­ munication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action," in The Communication of Ideas, ed. by L. Bryson (New York: Harper and Brothers, 19^*8). 166 and included more neutral descriptions and references to the natural attributes of the mountains. It might be inferred that heavier television viewing had enlarged their concept of Appalachia to Include problem and non-problem aspects of the region and areas other than their own, about which light viewers were not so aware. Heavy viewers not only appeared to assign dif­ ferent weight to various components of meaning than light viewers, but in some cases even the ranking of components was affected, indicating that for them even the relative importance of some components of meaning was different than for light viewers. Such differences, even among those whose primary source of information on Appalachia was life-long personal experience, would seem to indicate that television exposure did exert an influence on meaning.

II. "Government" Response frequencies of heavy and light television viewers to "government" are summarized for all samples in Table 30. As previously indicated, there was no signifi­ cant difference between the perceptions of heavy and light viewers among non-Appalachians. But both Appalachian samples produced responses from heavy viewers which dif­ fered significantly from light viewers. Heavy viewers in Central Appalachia were more aware of elections and all three levels of government than light viewers. In Northern 167

TABLE 50 Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to GOVERNMENT, by Content Category

Non Central Northern Content Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian High Low High Low High Low N=20 N=28 N=24 N=24 N=22 N=26

Negative value judg­ ments 60 112 27 42 39 62 Federal branches and offices 71 84 38 23 41 24 Elections, campaigns 23 48 20 12 31 23 Neutral description 20 31 13 10 27 34 State branches and offices 18 23 21 16 9 5 Local branches and offices 21 11 8 3 0 0 Taxes, budgets 8 22 8 25 4 0 Law, law enforcement 6 17 7 10 12 1 Functions, services of government 6 12 0 0 1 0 Political issues, dissent 8 6 0 4 7 8 Comparative forms of government 0 0 2 7 3 0 Positive value judg­ ments 2 7 0 9 8 11 Power, authority 0 8 0 2 3 4 Miscellaneous 1 0 4 0 0 0

Totals 251 384 1 4 6 156 182 174 168

Appalachia, heavy viewers included more perceptions of the same factors plus taxes and law enforcement. On the other hand, heavy viewers appeared to be less cognizant of taxes and law enforcement in Central Appalachia, and heavy viewing made no apparent contribution to awareness of political issues or the perception of the power or authority of government. The most striking difference between heavy and light viewers in both samples was that negative value Judgments represented a significantly smaller component of meaning for heavy viewers than for light. It seemed possible that television could have been serving one of two functions in this context: it could have provided a conduit for more information about government which re­ duced hostility toward it for some people, while for others heavy television viewing could have provided a distraction which obviated anxiety about governmental activities.

III. Neighbors Response frequencies of heavy and light television viewers to "neighbors" are summarized for all samples by content category in Table 31* Perceptions of heavy view­ ers did not differ significantly from those of light viewers for this concept among either non-Appalachians or Northern Appalachians. Only in Central Appalachia did television exposure apparently relate to the way respond- 169

TABLE 31 Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to NEIGHBORS, by Content Category

Non Central Northern Content Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian High Low High Low High Low N=20 N=28 N=24 N=24 N=22 N=26

Neutral description 51 71 4 19 33 29 Fri ends, fri endship 45 50 60 65 20 19 Unpleasant relation­ ships 34 55 8 7 38 43 Avoidance, non- relati onship 17 40 12 4 9 8 Pleasant relationships 20 22 18 19 18 35 Activities, enjoyment 11 22 0 4 0 0 Concern, helpfulness 18 11 7 5 24 14 Mutuality, reciprocity 9 11 4 0 1 0 Religious, moral ref­ erences 2 3 3 0 7 6 Inclusiveness of neighbor 4 0 0 0 0 7 Pets, animals 1 3 0 0 5 6

Totals 212 288 116 123 155 167 170 ents perceived their neighbors. Heavy viewers were less likely than light viewers to think of neighbors in terms of neutral description, they were slightly less likely to think in terms of friendship, and their responses indicated that avoidance was a much larger component of meaning for them than for light viewers. Causation could flow in either direction, of course. It seemed possible either that absorption in television tended to inhibit warm relationships with neighbors, or else that those whose relationships with neighbors were unsatisfactory tended to take refuge in heavy television viewing.

IV. "Home" Response frequencies of heavy and light television viewers in all samples to "home" are summarized by content category in Table 32. This was the only concept for which levels of television viewing seemed to affect the percep­ tions of non-Appalachian respondents. Heavy viewers in that sample appeared to have much smaller components of meaning reflecting acceptance, refuge, activities, and positive value judgments than light viewers had. While they apparently perceived responsibilities as a more important component of meaning than light viewers, they were markedly more negative in their perceptions of home than light viewers. Central Appalachian respondents who viewed more 171 TABLE 32 Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to HOME, by Content Category

Non Central Northern Content Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian High Low High Low High Low N=20 N=28 N-24 N=24 N=22 N=26

Family members roles and names 73 92 40 70 64 42 Acceptance, belonging 24 49 24 23 26 32 Refuge, respite 26 41 20 33 24 10 House, building 29 28 8 7 13 8 Responsibilities, obli­ gations 32 20 5 2 15 13 Activities, pleasure 10 36 2 0 2 7 Possessions 19 18 3 3 4 4 Positive value judg­ ments 9 14 8 0 11 11 Negative value judg­ ments 15 2 0 0 7 13 Neutral description 3 10 29 12 20 21 Location 5 6 7 0 0 4 Animals, pets 2 8 0 8 3 0 Memories 4 4 0 0 0 0 Religion, training 2 2 0 O 4 2 > Miscellaneous 0 9 0 O 0 0

Totals 253 339 146 158 193 167 172 television than the average also appeared to think of home as a refuge less than light viewers, but their percep­ tions of acceptance and belonging as components of home were apparently similar no matter how much time they spent watching television. Moreover, heavy viewers in Central Appalachia tended to weight responsibilities and positive value judgments more heavily than light viewers, and their responses included a much larger neutral component of meaning. For Northern Appalachians, television exposure did not appear to affect perceptions of home, since there was no significant difference in the frequency of responses in various categories between heavy and light viewers. It is interesting to note, however, that in that sample heavy viewers perceived home in terms of the names and roles of family members to a much greater extent than light view­ ers. In the other samples the reverse was true.

V. "Family" Response frequencies of heavy and light television viewers in all samples to "family" are summarized by con­ tent category in Table 33. For non-Appalachians, there was no significant difference between heavy and light viewers for this concept. Eut among respondents in both Appalachian samples, heavy viewers perceived family dif­ ferently than light viewers. Heavy viewers in both sam- 173

TABLE 33 Response Frequencies of Heavy and Light Television Viewers to FAMILY, by Content Category

Non Central Northern Content Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian High Low High Low High Low N=20 N=28 N=24 N=24 N=22 N=26

Family member roles and names 107 103 120 46 79 51 Acceptance, belonging 37 86 33 65 38 58 Activities, enjoyment 21 30 4 6 8 15 Neutral description 20 31 11 23 20 12 Memorable occasions 9 19 0 0 0 0 Conflict, dissension 12 15 4 8 8 14 Negative value judg­ ments 8 16 0 0 0 0 Distance, separation 4 15 0 0 7 0 Size of family 9 8 4 0 9 11 Possessions 1 8 0 0 0 0 Responsibilities, obli­ gations 2 6 0 3 0 4 Training, nurture 1 2 0 0 0 5 Pets, animals 1 2 0 4 0 0 Religious 1 1 0 0 4 0 Death 2 0 0 0 4 0 Refuse to answer 0 0 0 4 0 0

Totals 235 342 176 159 177 170 1 7 4 pies were markedly more likely than light viewers to think of family in terms of the names and roles of family mem­ bers. But they appeared to regard acceptance, family activities, conflict, and responsibilities as much smaller components in their meaning of "family" than light viewers. The composite meaning of family for heavy viewers appar­ ently consisted of fewer components, despite the fact that they had more total responses than light viewers. Thus the concept "family" seemed to have more richness of meaning for light viewers than for heavy. In summary, the extent of television viewing seemed to affect the perceptions of some respondents more than others. Among non-Appalachians, those who watched more television than average tended to perceive the various concepts in substantially the same way as those who watched less. Central Appalachians whose viewing was above aver­ age, on the other hand, perceived all concepts in sig­ nificantly different ways from those with fewer viewing hours. Northern Appalachians appeared to be neither as impervious to the influence of heavy viewing as non- Appalachians nor as susceptible as Central Appalachians. It was not clear from the evidence available whether differences in perceptions of some concepts were related to greater exposure to program content or simply to more hours spent watching television. For the concept "Appalachia," however, and to some extent for "government," 175 it seemed improbable that the differences between heavy and light viewers could have been the reflection of any­ thing other than program content.

Perceptions of Favorite Television Programs Respondents were asked to name their favorite television program and then to respond in continued free association using the name of that favorite program as the stimulus. A total of forty-six different continuing programs were named in addition to feature movies and various sports contests. Favorite programs are summarized by program type in Table 54. There was no significant difference in the rankings of various program types among the three samples (Kruskall Wallis's H = 1.52, 2 dft N.S.D.).

I. "All in the Family" Only one program, "All in the Family," was men­ tioned frequently enough to constitute a category by it­ self. Since that program was the most popular in national ratings as well as in the local market at the time of this 24 study, it was not unusual to have it named as the fav­ orite of more respondents than any other. Responses of

24American Research Bureau, Audience Estimates in the Charleston-Humtlngton ARB Television Market. March 1972 (New York: American Research bureau, 1972;. 176

TABLE 34 Favorite Television Programs, by Category

Non Central Northern Program Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian

All in the Family 10 10 7 Detective drama 8 7 6 News and public affairs 6 3 7 Movies 5 1 2 Soap operas 4 4 3 Medical drama 3 3 7 Sports 3 7 3 Westerns 2 2 3 Talk shows 2 2 0 Occult drama 2 0 0 Musical variety 1 6 3 Comedy 2 1 2 Game shows 0 1 1 Children*s shows 0 1 1 Animal, specials 0 0 3

Totals 48 48 48 177 the twenty-seven respondents who designated it as favorite to the stimulus "All in the Family" are summarized by con­ tent category in Table 35. Differences between samples in perception of the various components of meaning were substantial- All sam­ ples perceived the program primarily in terms of entertain­ ment ("funny," "enjoyable"), but beyond that common com­ ponent, both ranking and weight differed for each element among the three samples. Apart from entertainment, non-Appalachians per­ ceived the show in terms of the names of characters in the plot ("Archie," "Edith"). Prominant, but ranked third, was the perception of bigotry ("bigot," "prejudice" "intolerance"). More than a tenth of the responses con­ sisted of the perception of realism ("I know people like Archie," "there's a Mike living next door"). More than a third of the perceptions of non-Appalachians were made up of components of meaning which were not apparent among respondents in the other two samples: catch phrases from the show ("meathead," "dingbat," "stifle yourself"), comparatively sophisticated understanding of the nature of the production ("experimental," "surprisingly success­ ful"), names of actors, references to time or place of viewing, and a recognition of the stereotypes involved. A small proportion of responses were critical ("children 178

TABLE 35 Responses of Those Who Indicated ALL IN THE FAMILY as Their Favorite Program, by Content Category

Non Central Northern Content Category Appalachian Appalachian Appalachian (0 m to 0 0 0 o ea 0 CO 0 CO to ho c to ho c m hoc o m o 0 a) o 0 m o CO -P f t CO -P f t CO -P ft C c m C C co C C m O 0 0 O 0 0 O 0 0 f t p o ' f t p a l ft t ) ( U m c CO C to c 0 0

Humor, entertaining 22 18.0 39 57.4 16 36.4 Names of characters 21 17.2 4 5.9 4 9.1 Bigotry, prejudice 20 16.4 12 17.6 7 15.9 True to life, realistic 15 12.3 2 2.9 13 29.5 Catch phrases from program 9 7.4 0 0.0 0 0.0 Comments on program concept 9 7.4 0 0.0 0 0.0 o o Names of actors 5 4.1 0 0.0 0 • Critical, negative val­ ue judgment 4 3.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 Place or time of view­ ing 3 2.5 0 0.0 0 0.0 Stereotypes, generali­ zations 3. 1.6 0 0.0 0 0.0 New point of view 0 0.0 11 16.2 0 0.0 Escape 0 0.0 0 0.0 4 9.1 Mi scellaneous 11 9.0 0 0.0 0 0.0

Totals 122 ♦ • 68 » • 44 • • 179 donft need to be taught words like that," "Archie shouldn’t be pictured as a good guy"). Perceptions of both Appalachian samples had four components which paralleled those of non-Appalachians. Despite the fact that entertainment comprised a larger component for Appalachians, their perception of the bigotry of the program was approximately the same as for non- Appalachians. The names of characters in the show, while a material element in their perceptions, was not as large as that of non-Appalachians. Perceptions of realism were different both quantitatively and qualitatively from non- Appalachians . Realism was perceived by some in both Appalachian samples not as a rueful admission that there were people like Archie in the world, but as confidence that Archie spoke for most Americans ("tells it like it is," "tells the truth," "the only show that calls a nigger a nigger"). Most striking of the differences between samples was not only those components which were apparent only in the perceptions of non-Appalachians, but the components which appeared to be unique to the Appalachian samples. Almost a tenth of the total responses of Northern Appala­ chians consisted of references to escape ("gets your mind off your troubles," "gives you something to think about besides yourself"). And for Central Appalachians, the third largest component of meaning was recognition that 180 the program represented a viewpoint which was new and comparatively alien ("that's the way they think in the big cities," "liberal," "they are showing us how people aren't supposed to feel"). Despite the approval and dis­ approval of the program which has been prevalent in both 25 scholarly journals and the popular press, it seemed significant that one type of response from Appalachian viewers was the recognition that there were widely-held views on social issues which differed from views to which they had been accustomed.

II. "Detective Programs" Detective action-adventure programs cited as favorites included "Ironside," "The FBI," "Longstreet." Responses of the twenty-one respondents who designated a detective program as their favorite are summarized by content category in Table 36. Perception of roles and actors in the program was the most salient component for non-Appalachians and Northern Appalachians, but primary for Central Appala­ chians was the perception of mystery ("suspense," "chal­ lenging," "guessing who committed the crime"). The fact

25John Slawson, "How Funny Can Bigotry Be?" Educational Broadcasting Review. Vol. VI, No. 2 (April 1972J, pp. 79-82; and Arnold Hano, "Can Archie Bunker Give Bigotry a Bad Name?" New York Times Magazine. March 12, 1972, reprinted Tn the Reader1s Digest. Julv 1972, pp. 29-34. 181

TABLE 36 Responses of Those Who Indicated a DETECTIVE Program As Their Favorite, by Content Category

Central Northern § Content Category 0) O (B Appalachian Appalachian CO CO 0) 0) 0) CO <11 CO CO b0 g » bOg

Roles, actors 15 17.6 7 21.8 8 20.0 Explo it s, adventure 13 15.3 3 9.4 8 20.0 Understanding police procedure 13 15.3 4 12.5 0 0.0 Positive Judgment on characters 8 9.4 0 0.0 3 7.5 Technology, techniques 6 7.0 4 12.5 3 7.5 Mystery, suspense 5 5.9 8 25.0 4 10.0 Social problems 5 5.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 Only fiction, not true 6 7.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 Station, time of pro­ gram 4 4.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 Entertaining, relaxing 3 3.5 4 12.5 7 17.5 Realism, true to life 0 0.0 0 0.0 4 10.0 Mi scellaneous 7 8.2 2 6.3 3 7.5

Totals 85 9 9 32 • • 40 • • 182 that the program was considered enjoyable and relaxing represented a larger proportion of meaning for both Appa­ lachian samples than for non-Appalachians. Those components which represented a component of meaning for non-Appalachians but not for Appalachians were: a perception of the social problems which were frequently the basis of conflict in the plot ("drug addic­ tion," "illegal abortions"), the fundamental unreality of such neatly-solved problems ("if only real crimes could be solved that quickly"), and the mechanics of time and channel for the program. Northern Appalachians, by con­ trast, devoted a tenth of their responses to the basic realism of the plots ("true to life," "that's the way criminals really get caught"). One component which was substantial among both non-Appalachians and Central Appalachians, but entirely missing among Northern Appalachians, was the notion that detective drama was a good method for becoming familiar with police procedure,

III. "News and Public Affairs" The sixteen respondents who preferred a news or public affairs program included "Today" and "Sixty Minutes" as well as regularly scheduled local or network evening news programs among their favorites. Their response fre­ quencies are summarized by content category in Table 37. 183

TABLE 37 Responses of Those Who Indicated a NEWS OR PUBLIC AFFAIRS PROGRAM as Their Favorite, by Content Category

Central Northern

Content Category (B H o g P 3 Appalachian i Appalachian (0 <0 © © © CO © CO CQ bo fj DO bO c © (ti O © (DO CO -P ft W -P ft £ w o ® © cjo a © w© ft oft ft ooi CO CO u O u ©

Totals 73 ft m 18 t ■ 1 68 * © 184 Both the weight and ordering of the components of meaning for news programs differed markedly from one sample to the other. More than a third of the responses of non-Appalachians consisted of positive value Judgments ("I couldn’t start off the day without watching it," "really makes the news understandable"). For Central Appalachians, the most important element of meaning appeared to be individual reporters. And for Northern Appalachians, events in the news constituted the most important element. Non-Appalachians were apparently more aware than Appalachians of social issues covered in the programs. And Central Appalachians appeared to be obliv­ ious to four of the components which made up part of the meaning for the other samples: regular program features ("book reviews," "interviews"), editorializing, election news, and the perception of entertainment in the program,

IV, "Medical Programs" Thirteen respondents designated a medical program as their favorite, including such programs as "Marcus Welby, M.D." and "Medical Center." Their response fre­ quencies are summarized by content category in Table 38. Clearly the most important component in the per­ ceptions of a medical program was references to doctors and hospitals. For non-Appalachians and Central Appala­ chians, an element almost as important consisted of 185

TABLE 38 Responses of Those Who Indicated a MEDICAL Program as Their Favorite, by Content Category

,

\ 'I

ts ts O j Central

ct 3 3 pa o o ;j pa fa § M o> M Content Category > Appalachian to

O0 0)0C M P. p cd to P o o *h of Responses ££ Responses of Percentage J Percentage g. of Responses £ £ Responses of j Responses Responses 3 .1 Percentage Percentage g.3 t Responses Responses § ed cu o

Doctors, hospitals 18 36.7 4 19.0 24 46.2 Positive judgments on characters 13 26.5 3 14.3 2 3.8 Diseases 5 10.2 0 0.0 8 15.4 Enjoyment, excitement 5 10.2 4 19.0 9 17.3 Medical research 4 8.2 3 14.3 3 5.8 Helping people 3 6.2 3 14.3 0 0.0 Roles, actors 0 0.0 4 19.0 2 3.8 Miscellaneous 1 2.0 0 0.0 4 7.6

Totals 49 • » 21 • • 52 • • 186 positive value Judgments on characters in the story ("he actually makes house calls," "it seems as if they care about patients instead of fees"). That component was markedly smaller for Northern Appalachians, however, for whom secondary importance consisted of the enjoyment and excitement in the show. Since references to medical research appeared to represent a larger proportion of the perceptions of Central Appalachians than others, it was somewhat surprising that they omitted any reference to specific diseases, a category which was substantial for other samples. If attitudes toward medical facilities and personnel could be said to be influenced by fiction­ alized medical situations, it seemed important that a proportion of the responses of non-Appalachians and an even higher proportion from Central Appalachia dealt with medicine as a helping, supportive profession. But for Northern Appalachians, that component appeared to be missing from their perceptions.

V. "Sports" "Monday Night Football" and "Wide World of Sports" were among the programs listed by the thirteen respond­ ents whose preference was sports on the air. Their re­ sponse frequencies are listed by content category in Table 39. 187

TABLE 39 Responses of Those Who Indicated a SPORTS Program as Their Favorite, by Content Category 3 3 ■

Non h ; - h s i (BO 9 (D CD CD (D Content Category Appalachian H3 ; c+ » CO

(U co o CO -P ft C P! *o o a) a> COft P.oft d) a) *H of Responses Responses of of Responses Responses of '! Percentage Responses Responses a . £ Percentage g. ft ft o Responses ta *o

Activity, excitement 9 30.0 4 7.4 8 36.4 Organized violence 5 16.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 Mechanics of game, re­ play 5 16.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 Name of team 4 13.3 3 5.6 0 0.0 Time or day of program 3 10.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 Enjoyment, relaxation 2 6.7 7 13.0 7 31.8 Eat ing, drink ing 2 6.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 Name of sport 0 0.0 40 74.0 7 31.8

Totals 30 54 • • 22 • • 188 Both non-Appalachians and Northern Appalachians, when they thought of sports on the air, thought first of activity and the excitement of a game. For Central Appalachians, the name of a particular sport ("baseball," "basketball") comprised the overwhelming proportion of responses. While names of teams and references to enjoy­ ment and relaxation made up part of the perceptions of all samples, non-Appalachians perceived four other com­ ponents of meaning Which were not part of the meaning for Appalachians: the eating and drinking which were a part of viewing for them, the time or day of the sports event, the value of television as a means for mastering the mechanics of the game ("instant replay," "the announcer explains it if I missed what happened"), and most interesting, references to enjoyment of the organized violence of sports ("legal mayhem," "flattening the other guys").

VI. "Soap Operas" Eleven respondents, all women, indicated a soap opera as their favorite program, including "General Hospital" and "Days of Our Lives." Response frequencies to names of soap operas as a stimulus are summarized by content category in Table 40. Partly because responses to that concept were supplied by fewer respondents, but also because there 189

TABLE 40 Responses of Those Who Indicated a SOAP OPERA as Their Favorite Program, by Content Category

h 3 0 %

.3 .3 - - 03 ^ H § § 03 O 03

Content Category & v of Responses ^ Responses of Responses of Responses of Responses Responses ^ Responses o "o Responses Percentage Percentage g Percentage g Percentage g.

Roles, names of char­ acters 21 42.9 6 26.1 1 4.8 Problems in plot 18 36.7 3 13.0 7 33.3 Non-problem plot elements 6 12.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Positive attributes of characters 3 6.1 0 0.0 0 0.0 Identification, just like us 1 2.0 8 34.8 4 19.0 Enjoyment, loyalty to program 0 0.0 6 26.1 9 42.9

Totals 49 • • 23 • • 21 • • 190 appeared to be more homogeneity of meaning, there were comparatively few components of meaning for soap operas. The names of characters in the story appeared most important for non-Appalachians, and it was interesting to note that for soap operas, unlike other dramas, the actors who played the roles played no part at all in the perceptions of viewers. Northern Appalachians appeared to regard enjoyment and loyalty to the program ("I never miss it," "I've listened for years") as most important. But for Central Appalachians, the most important component was the perception of identification ("they're just like us," "I feel like a member of their family," "I really suffered when Audrey went on trial"). The agonizing problems prevalent in all soap operas were an important element for all samples, but apparently only non- Appalachians were cognizant of non-problem elements in the plot. Despite the intensity implied in protestation of loyalty and identification from all samples, it appeared that only the non-Appalachians perceived soap operas in terms of the positive, favorable attributes of characters in the story. If soap operas evoked strong feelings and loyalty, it would have been logical to expect some ref­ erences to attitudes or life-styles learned or adopted from them. But no responses indicated that soap operas served as models for living for any respondents no matter how personal they seemed. 191 Responses to favorite programs of other types were not summarized by content category. It was felt that program types selected by as few as ten respondents pro­ duced so few responses that content categories were some­ what arbitrary and could not legitimately be compared. While perceptions of all of the favorite programs produced some interesting, albeit disparate, responses, it was chiefly "All in the Family" and detective stories which revealed most graphically the differences between Appalachians and non-Appalachians. In general, however, it seemed reasonable to conclude that respondents in the three samples tended to perceive markedly different mean­ ings while viewing the same programs. Television has sometimes been viewed as a potent 26 instrument of subliminal education and attitude change. If only the program is regarded as appealing by a suf­ ficient number of people, according to that theory, and viewers can be induced to cooperate with enthusiastic attention, then a given idea or attitude can be "sold" to a whole society. Such a socialization process did not appear in the responses to the names of favorite programs

26 This widespread viewpoint is illustrated by such advocates as Cedric C. Clark, "Television and Social Controls," Television Quarterly. Vol. VIII, No. 2 (Spring, 1969), p. lS; Yale Roe, "A Toof for Social Action," Tele­ vision Quarterly. Vol. VII, No. 1 (Winter, 1958), p.“527 and Whitney M . Young, "The Social Responsibility of Broad­ casters." Television Quarterly. Vol. VIII. No. 2 (Sorin*. 1969), p. T. 192 among these respondents, although all three samples tended to perceive some of the same elements in a particular type of program. Appalachians did not consistently derive the same message as non-Appalachians from the same program, possibly perceiving realism where others perceived irony. Central Appalachians were particularly likely to perceive fewer components of meaning from a given program than respondents in the other two samples, thus perceiving mere enjoyment as a large component and possibly missing small components of meaning altogether. There was some reinforcement, however, for the idea that entertainment programs could introduce serious new ideas for later maturation. And since there was comparative uniformity in the types of programs which were found appealing, there appeared to be good reason to think that a sub-culture— even one which differed in its perceptions of fundamental aspects of life— could be reached successfully and possibly influenced over time by the same programs which reached most of the country's viewers. CHAPTER IV

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

"Appalachia," to many people, has come to stand for problems. The region is beset by economic and social problems, deficiencies of education and medical care, large-scale emigration of the upwardly mobile, over­ reliance on inadequately taxed extractive industries, and widespread dependence on public welfare. Its wealth of natural resources, magnificent mountains, and the legendary independence of its mountaineers have not been enough to offset its problems. Through private and governmental agencies, tax monies and contributions of private citizens, the problems of Appalachia have been assumed by all Americans. Reading about Appalachia could lead to the infer­ ence that the region is monolithic. Unquestionably the entire region is. depressed economically in comparison with the country as a whole. But Northern Appalachia has never been more than marginally below the national average and Southern Appalachia has been responding rapidly to infusions of federal assistance. Central Appa­ lachia, on the other hand, despite some recent economic 193 194 gains and highway construction which has lessened physical isolation, remains a pocket of privation. Central Appalachia is the home of the mountaineer celebrated in legend and literature. Historical, socio­ logical and psychological studies of the mountaineer have focused chiefly on the inhabitants of what is now called Central Appalachia. The same characteristics which made the mountaineer choose the mountains for his home origi­ nally and stoically refuse to leave also made him resistant to the usual stimuli toward economic growth and social progress. The inclusiveness of the federally drawn boundaries for Appalachia accounts for the fact that many citizens of Northern Appalachia are puzzled or resentful at being lumped with "hillbillies." Their bewilderment is genuine. Many Northern Appalachians are as unfamiliar with the people and problems of Central Appalachia as their com­ patriots outside the region. The Appalachian Regional Commission has tacitly recognized this anomaly by partitioning Appalachia into four sub-regions, each with different problems, different approaches, and different kinds of people. While many have some relationship with mountaineer history and cul­ ture, few of them are true mountaineers in the sense in which psychologists and sociologists have described them. 195 If the harsh circumstances of the mountaineer's existence are to be alleviated, some changes will prob­ ably have to occur not only in his physical surroundings, but also in his outlook on life. Authorities have repeatedly pointed out that the folk culture of the hills makes it difficult or impossible for the mountaineer to compete in today's fast-moving interrelated society or even to take full advantage of the health and educational facilities and other civic benefits being provided by governmental programs. The assumption is widespread that television is the most effective of the outside influences which impinge upon the mountaineer and is doing more to mitigate his traditional isolation than any other single element in his life. This study was designed to test that assump­ tion— to discover whether the mountaineer uses the medium to the same extent as other Americans, whether he regards the medium as credible, whether it has any effect on his perceptions of some aspects of his environment, and whether he perceives the same message from television as that per­ ceived by most Americans. A field study was designed to assess the percep­ tions of various basic concepts by non-Appalachians, Central Appalachians, and Northern Appalachians. Three samples of forty-eight subjects were drawn from three areas of West Virginia. Each sample was stratified 196 according to four demographic variables: sex, education, age, and income. Nine continued free-association tasks were presented to measure perceptions of various aspects of the subject's environment. Stimulus words presented to elicit perceptions of personal environment were "home," "family," and "neighbors," Perceptions of regional environment were measured by responses to "Appalachia" and "government." And perceptions of broadcasting were evaluated by means of responses to the stimuli "tele­ vision," "radio," and "television news." The stimulus for the final free-association task was the title of the television program named by the subject as his favorite, in order to examine whether the same program was per­ ceived in the same way by respondents in each sample. In addition to continued free-association tasks, ten questions were used to provide information about the availability of television to each respondent, the extent of television viewing, and the confidence of the subject in the credibility of the medium. Responses produced in continued free-association were classified by content category for each stimulus presented. Responses in each content category were assumed to represent a component of the subjective meaning of that concept for a particular population. Summaries of re­ sponses from each sample were compared to determine both magnitude and salience of components of meaning for each 197 concept. Differences revealed in dimensions of such com­ ponents among the three samples were assumed to repre­ sent basic cultural differences in perceptions of each concept. In addition to cultural distinctions in the subjective meaning for each concept, the three samples were combined and partitioned demographically to determine the relationship of demographic variables to the various components of meaning. In order to assess the influence of television viewing upon the perceptions of various concepts, responses of heavy and light television viewers in each of the cultural samples were compared. Differ­ ences thus revealed in the dimensions of components of meaning were assumed to relate to the level of television exposure. Finally, responses elicited by the name of a particular television program were compared to learn whether the program was perceived similarly by all re­ spondents. Findings in this study provided significant statistical corroboration for the observations of earlier psychological and sociological research. In terms of the concepts examined, Central Appalachians appeared to constitute a true sub-culture, perceiving various aspects of life in ways which differed markedly from non-Appala­ chian perceptions. However, the expectation that Northern Appalachians would not differ significantly from non- Appalachians was not supported. Northern Appalachian 198 perceptions appeared to be as distinct from those of non- Appalachians as from Central Appalachian perceptions. Differences in the dimensions of meaning between samples, some of which were striking, tended to be those of degree rather than kind, as if the perceptions of the three populations overlapped but did not coincide. Com­ ponents of meaning for all concepts tended to be regarded in generally the same order of importance for all samples, revealing similarity in the basic meaning and most salient components. Beyond such fundamental similarity, however, some components appeared to be important among respondents in one sample but much less intrusive elements of the composite meaning for others. Even when components were ranked similarly, samples differed in the size of compo­ nents, with one devoting a much larger proportion of total responses to a given component than others. Most notable were differences in^omposite mean­ ing revealed by omission of some components altogether by one or more samples. Non-Appalachians frequently perceived components of meaning in a given concept which did not appear at all in Appalachian perceptions. Thus each of the concepts appeared to have more facets— pos­ sibly more richness of meaning— for the markedly more fluent non-Appalachians than for their Appalachian counter­ parts. In addition to such quantitative differences, a 199 few qualitative differences were revealed by Central Appalachian responses in some components. With respect to perceptions of those concepts related to personal environment, contrasts between Central Appalachian and non-Appalachian respondents paralleled characteristics observed in earlier studies. Non- Appalachians tended to reveal greater orientation toward possessions and activities than Central Appalachians, but were comparatively neutral toward neighbors and Judgmental concerning family. Responsibilities appeared to be an element in both family and neighborhood for non- Appalachians, with a modicum of recognition for religion * and discipline. Central Appalachians were far more person-oriented in both family and neighborhood, with emphasis on pleasant relationships and a trace of posses­ siveness in interpersonal relations. They were familial and comparatively non-Judgmentalf yet they indicated little awareness of activities or responsibilities, possessions or religion. Perceptions of regional environment differed as well. Non-Appalachians tended to think of Appalachia primarily in terms of poverty and were harshly critical of attitudes and behavior of Appalachians. In addition, they were aware of objective deficiencies of the region— in education, employment, etc. Central Appalachians were also acutely aware of poverty but their criticism was of 200 circumstances rather than attitudes or practices. And they evinced no awareness of specific deficiencies. While "both groups perceived government chiefly in nega­ tive judgmental terms, Central Appalachians appeared to he more concerned with taxes and money matters than non- Appalachians. It appeared to be significant that Central Appalachians demonstrated only minimal awareness of local government, where community initiative would be required. Their perceptions of government appeared to be chiefly related to remote government— that of state or federal bodies. There were similar distinctions in non-Appalachian and Central Appalachian perceptions of broadcast media. Both by answers to questions and responses in free- association, Central Appalachians revealed more tele­ vision viewing and greater uncritical enthusiasm for the medium than either of the other samples. While non- Appalachians were suspicious of the credibility of tele­ vision news, Central Appalachians appeared to find it believable as well as enjoyable. Non-Appalachians were at least moderately aware of commercials as an element in television, although not especially hostile toward them. Central Appalachians appeared to be only minimally cognizant of commercials and regarded them at least par­ tially as consumer education. Both groups regarded news as a highly salient component of meaning in television. 201 For Central Appalachians, much more than for other respondents, sports was an important component in both broadcast media and especially in television. Least anticipated of the findings in this study were the perceptions of the Northern Appalachian sample. Instead of sharing non-Appalachian views as expected, this sample of Northern Appalachians drawn from the middle counties of West Virginia revealed perceptions as unlike non-Appalachians as they were unlike Central Appalachians. Perceptions of various aspects of personal environment were marked by moralistic and judgmental attitudes, less warmth of relationships than Central Appalachians, and less impersonal mutuality than non-Appalachians. Percep­ tions of neighbors consisted primarily of unpleasantness and even hostility. Perceptions of regional environment focused on the element of poverty and were marked by a high level of defensiveness. Despite their general judg- mentalism, they tended to render few value judgments on Appalachia, as if they were less sure of what was good and bad about the region than about other concepts. Although they viewed television less than Central Appala­ chians, they tended to share the Central Appalachians* uncritical enjoyment of the medium, except for television news. Although their judgments of news in general were highly positive, they were dubious about its credibility. 202 The distinctions between Central and Northern Appalachian perceptions appeared to be particularly striking since the samples were drawn from areas separated by as little as forty miles. In broad outline, Northern Appalachians appeared to have a view of their environment which might characterize them as a people in cultural transition— certainly hearing a different drummer than the Central Appalachians, but not yet marching with the non-Appalachians. Examination of the contrasts and similarities between the perceptions of heavy and light television viewers seemed to indicate that the authorities who had cited television as a potent influence on Central Appala­ chian thinking were probably right. Non-Appalachians revealed no significant differences between heavy and light viewers in their perceptions of most concepts. But among Central Appalachians, heavy viewers revealed significantly different perceptions from light viewers for every concept studied. Northern Appalachians, whose views seemed to be something of a compromise between the other samples on many concepts, appeared to be influenced by heavy viewing on some concepts but not on others. While heavy viewers in Central Appalachia did appear to view certain aspects of their lives differently than light viewers, the differences were not all salutary in terms of social or economic progress. There was 203 evidence of greater awareness of some problems, but it could also be inferred from some of the data that tele­ vision might be exercising a narcotizing rather than a sensitizing effect in some other areas. Preferences expressed for various program types did not differ significantly from one sample to another, indicating that Appalachians were as likely as any other segment of the population to be reached by the general program fare designed to appeal to the country's mass audience. Despite such similarity of program preference, however, the message perceived from a given program was not identical for all samples. Evidence in the responses to program titles tended to reveal differences between samples which were marked for some programs and moderate for others. Perceptions of realism in plot or characters appeared to be especially discrepant for some programs. The perception of relaxation or escape tended to obscure more subtle shades of meaning for others. But it seemed fair to conclude that the primary thrust of the program was understood, if not always accepted, by respondents in all samples. In summary, five of the seven hypotheses of this study were confirmed, one was partially confirmed, and one was rejected. It was hypothesized that Central Appalachians would perceive various aspects of their personal and regional environment in ways which differed significantly from the perceptions of Northern Appala­ chians and non-Appalachians; that hypothesis was confirmed since it was demonstrated by the data that the subjective meaning which they attached to the concepts studied dif­ fered significantly from the meaning for other samples. It was hypothesized that Central Appalachians would derive different components of meaning from the message of specific television programs from the meaning derived by other viewers; that hypothesis was confirmed since it was demonstrated that components of meaning differed in size and importance among samples, and some components of meaning were entirely unique to one sample or another. It was hypothesized that Central Appalachians would view more television and manifest greater confidence in the credibility of the medium than other viewers; that hypothesis was confirmed by the self-assessments of respondents of viewing time and perception of credibility. It was hypothesized that Central Appalachians who were heavy television viewers would perceive various aspects of their personal and regional environment in ways which differed significantly from the perceptions of light viewers, thus reflecting the acculturation effect of tele­ vision viewing; that hypothesis was confirmed. It was hypothesized that Northern Appalachians would not differ significantly from non-Appalachians in their perceptions of various aspects of their environment; that hypothesis was rejacted, since their perceptions differed signi­ ficantly from both non-Appalachians and Central Appa­ lachians and in some cases appeared to be something of * a compromise between them. It was hypothesized that Northern Appalachians would differ from non-Appalachians in the number of hours they watched television, but not in their perception of the credibility of the medium, their perception of the message from particular television programs, or in the influence of heavy viewing upon per­ ceptions of their environment; this hypothesis was par­ tially confirmed, since self-estimates of viewing time were higher for Northern Appalachians than for non- Appalachians. But the hypothesis was partially rejected, since Northern Appalachians differed from non-Appalachians in perception of the credibility of television and of the message from particular television programs, and differed in the influence of heavy viewing upon per­ ceptions of some aspects of their environment but not upon other aspects. It was hypothesized that cross­ partitioning of samples according to demographic rather than cultural variables would reveal significant differ­ ences between sub-samples in the perception of various concepts, but such differences would be few and would not be as large as cultural differences; this hypothesis was confirmed, since there were fewer significant dif- 206 ferences between demographic sub-samples than between cultural samples. The conclusion appeared to be warranted that television has been an influence in the metamorphosis of the Central Appalachian view of life. Whether the Central Appalachian uses the medium as a channel for socially use­ ful information or solely for diversion, the evidence tended to support the proposition that television exposure was related to modifications of traditional perceptions. However, if regional progress must be geared to regional self-image and to altered attitudes "within and about Appalachia," and television is expected to generate such an improved regional image and altered attitudes, the evidence would indicate that the task has not yet been accomplished. There was minimal evidence that television had induced a more favorable perception of the region, and little to indicate that television had sensitized heavy viewers to regional deficiencies or developed radically new views on social or political issues. Despite the fact that Central Appalachians tended to view and enjoy the same television programs as other Americans, there was little support for the notion that television had produced cultural homogeneity, since indi­ vidual programs appeared to be viewed through the filters of cultural viewpoints. It would be useful to reassess modifications in Appalachian thinking at regular intervals 207 in the future to determine whether the acculturation process increases or accelerates. Culturally conditioned patterns of thinking change slowly and not without difficulty. Two centuries of mountain-imposed isolation helped to shape the dis­ tinctive perceptions of mountain thinking. Television has been available in Central Appalachia only since 1949. If the modified perceptions apparent in this study can be attributed in part to the influence of television, it would seem to be too soon to assess the full impact of television upon the Central Appalachian mountaineer. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. BOOKS

American Research Bureau. Television U.S.A. New York: ARB, 1972. Ayer, Perley. Seeking a People Partnership: Eleven Speeches by Perley Aver! Edited by Alfred H. Perrin. Berea, ky.: Council of the Southern Mountains, 1969. Bowman, Mary Jane, and Haynes, W. W. Resources and People in East Kentucky. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Fre ss, 19637 Brooks, Maurice. The Appalachians. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1&637 Campbell, John C. The Southern Highlander and His Home­ land. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation, 1921. Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area, boston: LiTEle, brown, & Co., 1962. Caudill, Rebecca. Mv Appalachia. A Reminiscence. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 19bb. Cauthorn, Robert C., and Brown, Douglas M, Economic Struc­ ture of West Virginia. Morgantown: West Virginia University, Office of Research and Development, 1967. Clark, Thomas D. Kentucky. Land of Contrast. New York: Harper and Row, 1 9 0 8 . Coles, Robert. Migrants. Sharecroppers. Mountaineers. Vol. II of Children of Crisis'! Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 196 7. Commission on Religion in Appalachia, Inc, Proceedings: A United Approach to Fulfilling the Church's Mission in Appalachian Knoxville, Tenn., 1966. Deese, James. The Structure of Associations in Language and Thought. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965. 209 2X0 DeFleur, Melvin L. Theories of Mass Communication. 2nd edition. New York: bavid McKay Co., 1^0. DeJong, Gordon F. Appalachian Fertility Decline: A Demographic and Sociological Analysis. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968. Ferguson, George A. Statistical Analysis in Psychology and Education"! 3rd edition. New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1971. Fetterman, John. Stinking Creek. New York: Dutton, 1967. Fishman, Leo, ed. Poverty Amid Affluence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. Ford, Thomas R., ed. The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,

Games, Paul A., and Klare, George R. Elementary Statis­ tics: Data Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 19&7. Gazawav. Rena. The Longest Mile. New York: Doubleday, 1969. Glenn, Max E. Appalachia in Transition. St. Louis: The Bethany Press, 1970. Hoff*, Richard R. Report of the Finders of a Demonstration Retraining Project for Long-term Unemployed Per^ sons in a Rural Appalachian Mountain Area. Blue- field, V. Va.: Bluefield State College, 1965. Hyman, Herbert H. "Mass Media and Political Socializa­ tion" (chapter) in Lucien Pye. Communications and Political Development. Princeton, N. J. : Prince^-- ton University tress, 1963. Kephart, Horace. Our Southern Highlanders. New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1915. Klapper, Joseph T. The Effects of Mass Communication. Glencoe, 111.: The Free Pres¥, I960. Laffal, Julius. Pathological and Normal Language. New York: Atherton Press, 1965. Lantz, Herman R. "Resignation, Industrialization and the Problem of Social Change, A Case History of a >

211 Coal Mining Community." Bluecollar World. Studies of the American Worker. Edited by Arthur b. Shostak and William Gomberg. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Mandler, Jean Matter, and Mandler, George. Thinking: From Association to Gestalt. New York: John Wiley & Sons, inc., 1964. Matthews, Elmora M. Neighbor and Kin. Life in a Tennessee Ridge Community. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1^65. Miller, George A. Language and Communication. New York: McGraw Hill book Co., 1951. Nelson, Hart M. The Appalachian Presbyterian: Some Rural- Urban Differences. A Preliminary Report. SowTTng Green: Western Kentucky University, Office of Research and Services, 1968. Nesius, Ernest J. The Rural Society in Transition. Morgantown: West Virginia Center for Appalachian Studies and Development, 1966. Osgood, Charles E.; Suci, George J.; and Tannenbaum, Percy H. The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957. Pearsall, Marion. Little Smoky Ridge: The Natural History of a Southern Appalachian Neighborhood. University of Alabama Press, 1^59. Photiadis, John D. Rural Southern Appalachia and Mass Society. An Overview! Morgantown: tenter for Appalachia Studies and Development, West Virginia University, 1967. Powles, William E. "The Southern Appalachian Migrant, Country Boy Turned Blue-Collarite." Bluecollar World. Studies of the American Worker" Edited by Arthur B. Shostak and William GomEerg. Engle- wood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Preble, Jack. Land of Canaan: Plain Tales from the Moun­ tains of West Virginia^ Parkersburg: McClain Printing Co., l£bO. Research and Education for Regional and Area Development. Ames: Iowa State University Center for Agri- cultural and Economic Development, 1966. 212 Rice, Otis K. The Allegheny Frontier: West Virginia Beginnings. 1750-1830. Lexington: Universitv or Kentucky Press, 1570. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962. The Roper Organization. An Extended View of Public Attitudes Toward 'Television and Other Hass Media 1959-1971. New York: Television Information Office, 1971. Schramm, Wilbur; Lyle, J.; and Parker, E. B. Television in the Lives of Our Children. Stanford Universitv PFSiSTTSET: ------Stephenson, John B. Shiloh: A Mountain Community. Lex­ ington : University of Kentucky Press, 19b8. Vance, Rupert B. "Social Change in the Southern Appala­ chians" in pie South in Continuity and Change. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1§65. Walls, David S., and Stephenson, John B., editors. Ap­ palachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 19727 Weatherford, W. D., and Brewer, Earl D. C. Life and Religion in Southern Appalachia: An Interpreta­ tion of Selected Data from_We Southern Appala­ chian StudiesI Hew York: Friendship Press, 1962. Weller, Jack E. Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachi.su Lexington: University of Kentucky tress, 1965. Zeller, Frederick A., and Miller, Robert W., editors. Manpower Development in Appalachia. An Approach to Unemployment. New York: Praeger, 1968.

GOVERNMENT REPORTS

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Legislative Analysis: The Appalachian Regional Development BiXT. Washington, 19b5- Appalachia. A Report by the President's Appalachian Regional Commission, 1964. 213 Appalachia: AnEconomlc Report— 1970. Washington: Appala- chlan Regional Commission, 1971. Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Inc. Annual Report. 1968. ______. Appalachia Cooperative Program in Teacher Education. July a, 1967. Appalachian Profile. Charleston: Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Inc., June, 1970. Appalachian Regional Commission. Annual Report. Washing­ ton: ARC, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1965, 1970. ______. Appalachian Data Book Volume 13— West Virginia. 2nd edition. April, 1970. ______. The Appalachian Region: A Statistical Appendix of Comparative Socioeconomic Indicators. March, 156S. ------______. Appalachian Data Book. June, 1967. ______. Education Advisory Committee: Interim Report. No date. ______. Health Advisory Committee Report. March, 1966. ______. Preliminary Analysis for Development of Central Appalachia. By Central Appalachia Stu

PAMPHLETS

Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Inc. Their Own School at Home: Early Childhood Education Program. Charleston, Wesi Virginia: AEL, no date. Barker, Lawrence W., and Mink, Oscar G. The Mink Scale: An Aid in the Identification of Dropout Prone Students in the Appalachian Junior High Schools. Morgantown: Office of Research and Development Appalachian Center, West Virginia University, 1968, Boyd, Cleo Y. Detroit's Southern Whites and the Store Front Church. Detroit Council of Churches, 1958. Johnson, Cyrus M. Mountain Families in Poverty. Lexing­ ton: University of Kentucky, 1965. Nelsen, Hart M., and Nelsen, Anne K. Bibliography on Appalachia. A Guide to Studies; bealingDealing with___ Ap- palachia in General and Including Rural and Urban Working Class Attitudes Toward Religion, feduca- tion. and Social Change. Bowling Green, Western Kentucky university, The Queen's English. No author. No date. No publisher. 215 PERIODICALS

Alleger, Daniel E. "The Anomia of Rural People, Its Meas­ urement and Correlatives." Agricultural Science Review, Vol. IV (First Quarter, 1966), pp. 1-9. Anderson, Margaret. "Education in Appalachia: Past Fail­ ures and Future Prospects." Journal of Marriage and the Family. Vol. XXVI, No. 4, pp. TT4T-446. Anglin, Robert A. "The Characteristics and Attitudes of Juvenile Delinquents of Kanawha County (W. Va.)." Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Sci­ ence, Vol. XXXVIII (1966), pp. 144-150. Appalachia. A Journal of the Appalachian Regional Com­ mission, Vol. IV, No. 6 (March-April, 1971). "Appalachia Not Hurt by Veto— Moore." The Herald Dispatch. June 30, 1971, p. 1. "The Appalachian Child in Chicago Schools." Appalachian Advance (October, 1968). Baer, John, and Baer, Mary. "We Looked to the Hills." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 2 (Fall, 1966), pp. 16-2o . Best, Bill. "A Case for Appalachian Scholarship." Moun- tain Life and Work. Vol. XLVI. No. 10 (November. W O ) , " pp. 16-15. Blizzard, William. "West Virginia Wonderland." Mountain Life and Work. Vol. XLVI (November, 1970)7 pp. 4-11. Boiarsky, Carolyn. "Bringing Quality Education to a Region: Appalachia Educational Laboratory." Kentucky School Journal. Vol. XLV (February 30, 1967), p. 13. Branscome, James. "The Crisis of Appalachian Youth." The Junior League Magazine (November-Deeember, 196$), PP. 21-25. Briggs, Vernon M. "Manpower Programs and Regional Devel­ opment." Monthly Labor Review. Vol. XCI (March. 1968), pp. 5 5 - 6 1 . ------Brooks, Maurice. "The Other Appalachia." West Virginia Libraries. Vol. XX (March, 1967), pp. 1-15. 216 Brown, James S. "The Conjugal Family and the Extended Family Group." American Sociological Review. Vol. XVII (June, 1952), pp. 297-305. ______; Schwarzweller, Harry K.; and Mangalam, Joseph J. "Kentucky Mountain Migration and the Stem-family: An American Variation on a Theme by LePlay." Rural Sociology. Vol. XXVIII, No. 1 (March, 1963), pp. 48-6$. Caudill, Harry M. "Appalachia, The Dismal Land." Dissent. (November-December, 1967), pp. 715-722. ______. "The Dilemma in Appalachia, Rags in the Midst of Riches." Kentucky School Journal. Vol. XLIV (January, 1966J, pp. 12-1J5, 156-37. ______. "A Lament for the Appalachian Hills." The Junior League Magazine (November-December, 1969), pp. 15-19. ______. "A New Plan for a Southern Mountain Authority." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 1 (Summer, 1966"), pp. 6-11. ______. "Paradise is Stripped." New York Times Maga­ zine (March 13, 1966), pp. 26-27, 81-85. ______. "Poverty and Affluence." Appalachian South. Vol. I (Summer, 1965), pp. 33-36. Cirrillo, Marie. "When People Leave Appalachia." World Call. Vol. XLIX (November, 1967), pp. 14-151 Coles. Robert. "Growing Up Free." Appalachian Review. Vol. II, No. 1 (Fall, 1967), pp. 11-15. ______. "Life in Appalachia, The Case of Hugh McCaslin." Trans-action. Vol. V (June, 1968), pp. 23-33. ______. "Mountain Thinking." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 1 (Stunmer, 19567; pp. 1 2 -1 7 .— ______. "The Poor Don't Want to be Middle-Class." New York Times Magazine (December 19, 1965), pp. 7, 54—56, 58. ______, and Brenner, Joseph. "American Youth in a Social Struggle, (II) The Appalachian Volunteers." 217 American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Vol. XXXVIII (January, 1968), PP* 31-46. Cutler, M. Rupert. "The Tragic Story of Magic Mountain." Living Wilderness. Vol. XXIX (Summer, 1965), pp. 7- T* Dean, Robert L. "The Cumberland^, Mountains of Trouble, Pockets of Hope." S. K. and F. Psychiatric Re­ porter. Vol. XIX (March-April, 1965), pp. 4-8. DeJong, Gordon F. "Religious Fundamentalism, Socio- Economic Status and Fertility Attitudes in the Southern Appalachians." Demography. Vol. II (1965), pp. 540-548. ______, and Ford, Thomas R. "Religious Fundamentalism and Denominational Preference in the Southern Appalachian Region." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Vol. V (196#), PP* 24-33. Deutschman, Paul. "Renaissance in Appalachia." Think (September-October, 1967), pp. 3-7. (Reprinted in West Virginia University Extension Reader Series No. 162.) Dominick, Joseph R. "Television and Political Socializa­ tion." Educational Broadcasting Review. Vol. VI, No. 1 (February, 19*72), pp. 1, 48-56. Donohew, Lewis. "Communications and Readiness for Change in Appalachia." Journalism Quarterly. Vol. XXXXIV (Winter, 1967), pp. 679-687. ______, and Singh, B. Krishna. "Communication and Life Styles in Appalachia." The Journal of Communica­ tion. Vol. XIX (September, 1969), pp. 202-215. Ebersole, Gordon K. "Appalachia: Potential with a View." Mountain Life and Work. Vol. XLII (Winter, 1966), pp. 10-12. "Education and Regional Development." Appalachia. Vol. I, (September, 1967), pp. 13-14. Ernst, Harry W. "Washington Report." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring, 1967), pp. 3-5. "Washington Report." Appalachian Review. Vol. II, No. 1 (Fall, 1967), pp. 3-5. 218 Fetterman, John. "A Bold Idea for a New Appalachia." Appalachian South. Vol. II (Spring/Summer, 1967), pp. §-12. (fteprinted from Louisville Courier Journal Magazine.) Fischer, John. "Can Ralph R. Widner Save New York, Chicago, and Detroit?" (Regular column, The Easy Chair.) Harper's Magazine. Vol. CCXXxVlI, No. 1421 (October, 19bS), pp. 12-36. Fleming, Joel B. "Preschool in Appalachia: School With­ out a Schoolroom." Educational/Instructional Broadcasting (March, 1969), pp. Flora, Roger E.; Jarvis, Marilyn A.; and Chick, Ernest W. "Health Facility Utilization by People Living in West Virginia Hollows." West Virginia Medical Journal. Vol. LXIII (September, 1967), pp. 316-319. Ford, Thomas R. "Adapting Social Institutions in Appala­ chia." Farm Policy Forum. Vol. XVIII (1965-66), pp. 27-3FI Fotheringham, Wallace C., and Geizer, Ronald S. "Free- Association Responses and the Investigation of Meaning: A Technique for Instrument Development." Central States Speech Journal. Vol. XXII, No. 2 (Summer, 19^1), pp. t3-77. Greenstein. "The Impact of Personality on Politics." The American Political Science Review. Vol. LXI, No. 3 (September, 1967), pp. 629-641. Hedgepeth, William. "George's Branch, Kentucky: Appala­ chia is a Promise We Have Not Kept." Look. Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (March 4, 1969), pp. 25-357" Henderson, George. "Poor Southern Whites: A Neglected Urban Problem." Journal of Secondary Education. Vol. XLI (March, 1566),"pp. TTI-fH. Havanec, Vincent J. "A Radical Proposal for Appalachia." Wall Street Journal. Vol. CLXX (August 25, 1967), p. 6. Jarvis, Marilyn A., and others. "Health in a Semi­ isolated West Virginia Community." Archives of Environmental Health. Vol. XIII (October, 1966), pp. 422-428. 219 Jones, Loyal. "Appalachia— Discovered and Rediscovered.11 Berea Alumnus (March-April, 1969), pp. 4-9. Kaplan, Berton H. "The Model of Structural Differentia­ tion, An Extension to a Transitional Appalachian Community." International Review of Community Development. Vol. XV-XVI Tl9b6), pp. 117-131. ______. "The Structure of Adaptive Sentiments in a Lower Class Religious Group in Appalachia." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. XXI (January, 1 ® V p p * ------Kendrick, James E. "Out of the Dark Ages." Mountain Life and Work. Vol. XLIV (July, 1968), pp. 3-7. Lee, Dallas M. "Central Appalachia." Home Missions, Vol. XXXIX, No. 12 (December, 1968), pp. 8-23. Luyt^es, Jan B. "Appalachian Brain Drain: Note on the Impact of Increased Fduor iional Funds in Lagging Areas. " Growth and Gkai, ;__A_ Journal of Regional Development„ Vol. xi / Flo . _■ {J anuary, ' 1971) V pp. 38-41. Miemyk, William H. "Appalachian Development: The Long- run View." Poverty and Human Resources Abstracts. Vol. II (May-June, 1 9 6 7 pp’ 37-43. ______. "Needed: Appalachian Ghost Towns." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring, 1967), pp. 14-20”. "Migrants Still Have 'Mountain* Barriers." Appalachian Advance (October, 1968). Montell, Lynwood. "Death Beliefs from the Kentucky Foot­ hills." Kentucky Folklore Record. Vol. XII (July- September, 1966) , pp .” 81-869 Morrison, Chester. "Christmas Without Santa Claus." Look. Vol. XXIX (December 28, 1965), pp. 18-21. Mothner, Ira. "The Rougher Road of Russell Hicks." Look, Vol. XXXI (June 13, 1967), pp. 79-33. "Moving Mountains in Appalachia." Communities in Action, Vol. I (July, 1966), pp. 9-14“.'' Munn, Robert F. "Research Materials on the Appalachian Region." Mountain Life and Work, Vol. XLII (Sum­ mer, 1966), pp. 13-15. 220 Nesius, Ernest J. "Understanding Appalachia." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring, 1967), p. 2. Nevin, David. "These Murdered Old Mountains." Life. Vol. LXIV (January 12, 1968), pp. 54-67. Newman, Monroe. "Urhan Services and Future Growth, A Challenge to Appalachia." Appalachia. Vol. I (February, 1968J, pp. 18-20. Parrish, Thomas. "A Rope to Jump, A Veil to Dig." Reporter. Vol. XXXI (November 19, 1964), pp. 37-40. Pearsall, Marion. "Communicating with the Educationally Deprived." Mountain Life and Work. Vol. XLII (Spring, 1966J, pp. 8-11. Polansky, Norman A., and Brown, Sara Q. "Verbal Accessi­ bility and Fusion Fantasy in a Mountain County." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Vol. XXXVII '(July","" 1967), pp. 651-560. Porter, E. Russell. "From Mountain Folk to City Dweller." Nursing Outlook. Vol. XI (June-Julv. 196*5). p p . 418-420, 514-515. "Preschool Training— Appalachian Style." Appalachian Advance. Vol. II (April, 1968), pp. 13-14. Riccio, Anthony C. "Occupational Aspirations of Migrant Adolescents from the Appalachian South." Voca­ tional Guidance Quarterly. Vol. XIV (Autumn, 1965), pp. 26-30. Ridgeway, James. "Who Needs People?" New Republic. Vol. CLVI (May 13, 1967), pp. 10-12. Rigney, Montie R. "Poverty, Politics in West Virginia." Appalachian South. Vol. II (Spring-Suramer, 1967), pp. 38-41. Scher, Bernhard. "The War on Poverty in West Virginia, National Program and Regional Realities." Journal of Social Work Process. Vol. XVI (1967), pp. 53-68. Schrag, Peter. "Appalachia, Again the Forgotten Land." Saturday Review. Vol. LI (January 27, 1968), pp. 14-18. "The School and Politics." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 2 (Fall, 1966), pp. 6-10. 221 Schwarzweller, Harry K. "Parental Family Ties and Social Integration of Rural to Urban Migrants." Journal of Marriage and the Familv. Vol. XXVI. No. 4 ” (November? 19fcS), pp. 4161416. ______, and Seggar, John F. "Kinship Involvement, A Factor in the Adjustment of Rural Migrants." Journal of Marriage and the Familv. Vol. XXIX (November, 1967), PP* £>6 2 -6?!. Singleton, Carlton M. "AEL, A New Force in Education." Mountain Life and Work. Vol. XLII (Winter, 1966), pp. 5-9. Skinner, Vincent P. "The Literacy Problem in Appalachia." Education Digest. Vol. XXXIII (October, 1967), pp. 32-33. . "Why Many Appalachian Children are Problem Readers— We Create the Problems." Journal of Reading. Vol. XI (November, 1967), pp. 130-1^2. Slawson, John. "How Funny Can Bigotry Be?" Educational Broadcasting Review. Vol. VI, No. 2 (April, 1!^72), pp. 79-82. Solie, Richard J. "Employment Efforts of Retraining the Unemployed." Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Vol. Xkl (January, 1968), pp. 210-2^5. Stadt, Ronald W. "Which is it Going to Be— General or Vocational Education?" Journal of Industrial Arts Education (September^tTctober, 1967), pp. 22- 2?, 36. Stevie, Richard, and Uhlig, George. "Occupational Aspira­ tions of Selected Appalachian Youth." Personnel and Guidance Journal. Vol. XLV (January, 1967), pp. ^35-4^9. Striner, Herbert E. "Halfway House for the Hollows." Occupational Outlook Quarterly. Vol. IX (September, 1965,), pp. £-8. Stromsdorfer, Ernest W. "Determinants of Economic Success in Retraining the Unemployed, The West Virginia Experience." Journal of Human Resources. Vol. Ill (Spring, 1968), pp7 139-15&. * 222 Sugarman, Tracy. "A Summer to Remember for Appalachian Volunteers." Vista Volunteer. Vol. II (October, 1966), pp. 4-9. Sweeney, John L. "Where the Action is." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 3 (Winter, 1967), pp. 7-14. Szalay, Lorand B., and Brent, Jack E. "The Analysis of Cultural Meanings Through Free Verbal Associa­ tions." The Journal of Social Psychology. Vol. lxxii (1967 J7 Fp': T 6 1 -W: ------Theobald, Robert. "We Must Create the Future." Tape recorded interview conducted by Philip H. Young, present at the annual conference of the Council of the Southern Mountains. Printed in Mountain Life and Work: The Magazine of the Appalachian South (May. 1966). pp? £6-23'.------Vaughn, Roger. "Education in Appalachia." Appalachian Review. Vol. II, No. 2 (Winter, 1968;, pp. b-12. Walker, Eric A. "Research is Not Enough." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring, 1967), pp. 6-13. Weller, Jack E. "Changing Places." The Junior League Magazine (November-December, 1969), pp. '4—7. "Human Tragedy in Appalachia." World Call. Vol. XLIX (November, 1967), pp. 11-137 "Who is the Target Group?" Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 3 (Winter, 1967), pp. 15-26. West, John F. "Dialect of the Southern Mountains." North Carolina Folklore, Vol. XIV (November, 1 9 5 6 y,- pp. 3 1 -3 4 .------Widner, Ralph R. "Experiment in Appalachia." Pittsburgh Business Review. Vol. XXXVII (March, 1967), pp. 1- 7, 13-15. ______. "The Four Appalachias." Appalachian Review. Vol. II, No. 2 (Winter, 1968), pp. 13-19. "Political Implementation of Regional Theory in Appalachia." Growth and Change. Vol. II, No. 1 (January, 1971), pp. 7-8. Williams, Cratis D. "Moonshining in the Mountains." North Carolina Folklore. Vol. XV (May, 1967), pp. 11-17. 223 Wolfe, Harry C. "Human Resources are People." Appalachian Review. Vol. I, No. 2 (Fall, 1966;, pp. 11-15. Wright, Mary W. "Public Assistance in the Appalachian South." Journal of Marriage and the Familv. Vol. XXVI, No.'TTTHoVember, 1%5), pp. 4ofe-469. Wyker, Mossie A. "Yes, There is Hope for Rural Appala­ chia." World Call. Vol. XLIX (November. 1967). pp. 21-2?:

SPEECHES

Alden, Vernon R. "The University and Community Service." Speech presented to Community Services Seminar, University of South Carolina, March 14, 1968. Carmichael, Benjamin E. "New Means of Access to Educa­ tional Opportunity." Speech prepared for Workshop conducted by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory for the Association of Junior Leagues of America, Charleston, West Virginia, October 14, 1969. Caudill, Harry M. "Appalachia's Future— Development or Depopulation." Southern Regional Education Board Seminar at West Virginia University, 1968. Dial, Wylene P. "The Dialect of the Appalachian People." Charleston Area Appalachian Center, West Virginia University. _ . "Overview of Early Modem English." Prepared for West Virginia University's Mountain Heritage Weekends. John, Bruce M. "Appalachia— Problems and Solutions." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Southern Agricultural Workers, Dallas, Texas, February 1, 1965. _ . "Appalachia, Problems and Solutions." Associa­ tion of Southern Agricultural Workers, Agricul­ tural Economics and Rural Sociology Sections, Proceedings, 1965. Keith-Lucas, Alan. "The Art and Science of Helping." Speech delivered to West Virginia University -Extension Workers' Conference, October 28-31, 1963, at Jackson's Mill. 224 Ogletree, James R. ’'Appalachian Schools— A Case of Con­ sistency." Speech presented to the Southern Regional Education Board Seminar on Appalachia, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, June, 1969. Simpkin, 0. Norman. "Contemporary American Youth: Appa­ lachian Variety." Minutes of Faculty Meeting of Marshall University, November 7, 1967. (Mimeo­ graphed .) Weller, Jack E. "A Profile of the Appalachian Family." Speech presented at the Southern Regional Educa­ tion Board Seminar on Appalachia, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, June, 1968. Widner, Ralph R. "Appalachia: A Challenge to Citizenship." Keynote address to the Association of Junior Leagues of America, Fall Meeting, Pittsburgh, November 6, 1968.

UNPUBLISHED STUDIES

Cobb, Alice L. "Sect, Religion, and Social Change in an Isolated Rural Community of Southern Appalachia, with Case Story, Fruit of the Land." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1965. Corcoran, Martin. "The Attitudes and Values of the Appa­ lachian, 1965-67." Field study of the Appala­ chian neighborhood of Chicago and in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Marie Cirillo, field director for the project. Hirsch, Herbert. "Political Socialization in Appalachia." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1968. McKechnie, Graeme H. "Retraining and Geographic Mobility, An Evaluation." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1966. "Man and Community." Report of a Conference held at West Virginia University, June 28-29, 1967. Published by Office of Research and Development, Appalachian Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia. 225 Mullenex, Foster G. "Mass Media Use Patterns and Interests Among West Virginia Rural Non-Farm Families of Low Socio-Economic Status." Unpublished MS thesis, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Vir­ ginia, 1968. Munro, John M. "Transportation Investment and Depressed Regions, The Case of Appalachia." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1 9 6 6 . Myers, Wayne P. "The Effect of Neighborhood Youth Corps Upon Vocational Development Variables of Rural Southern Appalachian Youth." Unpublished Ed.D. thesis, University of Tennessee, 1966. Shapiro, Henry D. "A Strange Land and Peculiar People, The Discovery of Appalachia, 1870-1920." Unpub­ lished Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers, 1966. Simpkins, 0. Norman. "A Cultural Approach to the 'Dis­ advantaged'." Copyrighted May, 1968. Produced under a National Defense Education Act grant, Washington, D. C., 1968, as occasional paper #3. (Mimeographed.)