Yokel

"Country bumpkin" redirects here. For the pony in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, see Bumpkin (Middle-earth). For the song by country music singer Cal Smith, see Country Bumpkin (song).

Yokel is a derogatory term referring to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people.

Stereotype

In the US, it is used to describe someone living in rural areas. Synonyms for yokel include country bumpkin, hayseed, chawbacon, rube, redneck and hick.

In the UK, 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 West Country, East Anglia, the Yorkshire Dales, the Scottish Highlands and Wales. British yokels speak with country dialects from various parts of Britain.[1]

Yokels are depicted as straightforward, simple and naive, and they are easily deceived as they fail to see through false pretenses.^{[citation needed]} They are also depicted as talking about bucolic topics like cows, sheep, goats, wheat, alfalfa, fields, crops, tractors, and buxom wenches to the exclusion of all else. They don't seem to be aware of, or at least show interest in, the world outside their own surroundings.^{[citation needed]}

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 no one sees oneself as being one.

Similar terms

Teuchter

In Scotland, those from the Highlands and Islands, Moray, Aberdeenshire, and other rural areas are often referred to by urban or lowland Scots as teuchters.

Origins of "hick"

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, the South, and parts of the Midwest.

Famous fictional yokels

• The Beverly Hillbillies
• Green Acres
• L'il Abner
• The Dukes of Hazzard
• Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, a character from The Simpsons.
• Rose Nylund, portrayed by Betty White, one of the four lead characters from The Golden Girls was from the midwestern town of St. Olaf, Minnesota who often told stories from her time living in St. Olaf.
• The name of the villain in the film Cars is Chick Hicks, a trash-talking southern anthropomorphized car.
• The Yokels portrayed by Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett in The Two Ronnies.
• The nurse in South Pacific describes herself as a "hick" from Little Rock, Arkansas.
• In All the King's Men, Willie Stark often uses the word hick in his speeches to describe the poor voters and himself, for being fooled by the elite. He calls upon them to vote for him, promising them to be the voice of the hicks.

See also

• Moonrakers
• Hillbilly, a term with similar connotations in North America
• Mountain men
• NASCAR dad
• Redneck
• Moonshiner
• Boondocks

References

Further reading

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

External links

• Yokel, definition at askoxford.com
• Wiltshire Poems, website has an illustration of the traditional Wiltshire/Somerset smock and floppy hat
• The Man from Ironbark, an Australian poem