I am in Savannah this week for a talk at the city’s fabled school of arts and design. It’s my second visit to the city, and almost as soon as I set my bag on the ground at the airport taxi station, I was overcome with the irresistible urge to speak in a Southern accent. I almost did — a lady on line ahead of me asked a question, and it was all I could do to hold onto my New York/New Jersey/Northern California cadence, a 50-year plus work-in-progress that one would think is undoable. But undo I almost did. I’ve seen it happen to others. Years ago, a college girlfriend whose family hailed from New England moved to South Carolina, and 18 months later she easily could have passed for a lady in a Tennessee Williams play (”lemonade, lemonade … made in the shade!”). Didn’t make sense — and it didn’t seem right. But over the years I noticed the effect on other people.

So what is it about southern accents that make them contagious, if in fact they are contagious? I’ve decided to crowdsource this question, here on this blog and through several social networks. But to get things started, here are a few pet theories of mine, developed at different times over the years, reflecting the different stages of evolution of my cynical self, which leans neither North, South, but probably East:

–Southern accents demand that we slow down our conversations … and slowing down has a natural, positive, sedative effect. That’s especially true if you are a fast-talking Yankee on vacation. You want to slow down. “Set a spell. Take your shoes off. Y’all come back now, y’hear?”

–Southern accents demand that we speak more poetically. If you are a fast-talking yankee on vacation in a Southern city — particularly an elegant Southern City like Savannah — chances are you need to act more civilized, want to act more civilized. Nothing more civilized, you notice, than adding a little lilt in your voice when you ask for something. “A bit more foam in that latte? Much obliged.”

–Southern accents are like forbidden fruit — you cannot, will not resist them. Imagine you are a teenage girl in the 50’s, and your parents warn you to stay away from the dangerous, brooding Fonzie type who hangs out with his even more dangerous friends outside the corner drugstore. He was interesting before your parents spoke up. But he’s even more interesting now. Same goes for Southern accents. You know they are contagious — people have warned you — and you know you are too smart, too disciplined to give in. Which is why you give in. For there’s nothing stronger than the time-stopping, poetic, song of the people whom we fought and parted with so long ago that the whole thing seems like a myth. In the end, what makes Southern accents so contagious is the desire that we have to connect with the unconnectable. Especially, again, if you’re a Yankee on vacation. You are more than happy to forget your busy, fast-talking, prosaic life — for a spell – and imagine you’re at home with long-lost relatives.