Abstract:
The importance of fried fatback in the diet of Southern African Americans and poor whites has long been recognized, but a Carolina colloquialism which describes it as Texas Chicken, seems to have escaped the notice of lexicographers, folklorists, and dialect scholars. The North Carolina phrase is an example of the ethnophaulism or ethnic slur that figures prominently in the folk speech of many regions of the United States. Study of such phrases not only sheds light on the foodways of a people, but also reveals latent attitudes toward outsiders.