Lewis Grizzard was a prolific author from Georgia, having published a total of twenty books while he was alive and an additional five books were published posthumously.  In addition to his comedy books, Grizzard was also in the newspaper business, becoming at the age of twenty-three, the Atlanta Journal’s sports editor.  Later in his life he wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and those humorous columns often made their way into his books.  He is a solid example of a Southern author who takes the English language and uses tools such as prefixing, infixing, and suffixing, to show the rest of the world how "us folk down here" communicate.  The dialect in the South that he writes of is that that has been handed down from generation to generation.  His morphology and syntax can be puzzling at first, but once the reader becomes accustomed to it, reading his books such as Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night, My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun, and Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes can be like eating your Gramma's grits and gravy.  These three books tell the stories of toothpaste squeezing habits in relationships, a Southerner’s look at sex, Dead Daddy Drunk, and many more.  Southern authors, such as Grizzard, have a unique literary voice in part because of their linguistic heritage and this literary voice is unique not just because of the topics that they cover but because of the language tools that they use to impart their tales.
	People in the South are fond of forming new words, particularly using prefixing and suffixing. In some parts of the country Sally would tell her new neighbor that her husband works at the electric plant. The prefixing in that sentence might make the speaker seem ignorant, but in reality the application of prefixing highlights the resilance and diversity of the speakers who use it.  There are generations at work in Southern language.  Little girls have been calling their brothers Bubba for generations.  Great-great-great-great-great grandparents went and sat a spell on the front porch, even if there was no swing to sit on.  The language of the South is part of the heritage, and Lewis Grizzard tapped into that with his writing. 
In Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night, Lewis Grizzard tells a tale about a local good ole boys club that realizes that they just might have to let women join their ranks if they so desire.  In this piece of dialogue Grizzard illustrates a trait that is common in the South, dropping the last letter of a word.  Could this be, in a way, a negative suffix as a letter is being removed from the end of the word?  At any point, it is exceptionally common in the South, both in writing and especially in speaking.  This could have to do with the heat and humidity bringing on a much more laissez-faire attitude, but that’s just one theory.  The quoted dialogue is certainly informal and casual, which is one of the times that the Southern language comes out.  After all, there are Southern professionals that are able to speak without a country fried accent.
