Yokel

"Bumpkin" redirects here. For the pony in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, see Bumpkin (Middle-earth).

Yokel (also commonly known as "Hicks") is a derogotary term to refer to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people; the word is almost synonymous with Bumpkin.

Stereotype

In England yokels are traditionally depicted as wearing the old West Country farmhand's dress of straw hat and white smock, chewing or sucking a piece of straw and carrying a pitchfork or rake, listening to Scrumpy and Western music. Yokels are portrayed as living in rural areas of Britain such as The Yorkshire Dales, The West Country or Norfolk / Suffolk. English yokels speak a country dialect from some part of England. [1]

Yokels are depicted as straightforward and simple, but they aren't easily deceived as they easily see through false pretenses.

Yokels are also depicted as talking about bucolic topics like cows, sheep, fields, crops and buxom wenches to the exclusion of all else.

Etymology

The word may derive either from a comic mispronunciation of the word 'local', from a dialect word 'yokel' meaning 'woodpecker' or from the Somerset word 'yogel' meaning 'owl', owls being common in Somerset.

Usage

The development of television brought many previously isolated communities into mainstream British culture in the 1950s and 1960s. The Internet continues this integration, further eroding the town/country divide. In the 21st century British country folk are less frequently seen as yokels. In British TV Show The Two Ronnies, it was asserted that despite political correctness, it is possible to poke fun at yokels as nobody sees themselves as being one.

Origins for "Hicks"

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term is a "by-form" of the personal name Richard (like Dick) and Hob (like Bob) for Robert. Although the English word "hick" is of recent vintage, distinctions between urban and rural dwellers are ancient.

According to a popular etymology derives from the nickname "Old Hickory" for Andrew Jackson, one of the first Presidents of the United States to come from rural hard-scrabble roots. This nickname suggested that Jackson was tough and enduring like an old Hickory tree. Jackson was particularly admired by the residents of remote and mountainous areas of the United States, people who would come to be known as "hicks."

Though not a term explicitly denoting lower class, some argue that the term degrades impoverished rural people and that "hicks" continue as one of the few groups that can be ridiculed and stereotyped with impunity. In "The Redneck Manifesto," Jim Goad argues that this stereotype has largely served to blind the general population to the economic exploitation of rural areas, specifically in Appalachia and the South.

Recently, in Australia, the term has been used to describe people from the Sutherland Shire in Sydney. This usage describes a more suburban idiot-other. As the demographic and political landscape changes in Australia due to drought, desert dwelling peasantry have become more sacrosanct. This is seen by academics as an ethno-cultural reaction to the recent race riots and wedge-political tactics of the present government.

Further Information

Famous fictional yokels

• Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, a character from The Simpsons.
• The name of the villain in the film Cars is Chick Hicks, a trash-talking southern anthropomorphized car.
• The Yokels portaryed by Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett in The Two Ronnies.
• Former NBA player Larry Bird often describes himself, with pride, as "A hick from French Lick"; which, of course, is a reference to the fact that he is an unpretentious, humble man from the small town of French Lick, Indiana.
• The nurse in South Pacific describes herself as a "hick" from Little Rock, Arkansas.

See Also

• Hillbilly, a term with similar connotations in North America.
• Cletus Spuckler
• Mountain men
• Redneck
• Village idiot

External Links

• Wiltshire Poems(English Poems: This web site has an illustration of the traditional Wiltshire/Somerset smock and floppy hat.)

• The Man from Ironbark, (An Aussie Poem)
  Note for readers who speak English as a second language, Aussie means Australian.

• [2] (yokel mentioned here, elucidating to some, maybe)

References

• Yokel

Further Reading

Goad, Jim. (1997). The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684838648