When I watched the re-make of 'True Grit' a few years back, I wondered how they came up with the accent and general manner of speech of the characters. It was, you may recall, rather stilted and clunky to the modern ear, but struck me as closer to the speech you find recorded in contemporary documents (court transcripts, etc.) of the 19th C. West - as opposed to the 'Texas drawl' standard in the horse opries. I wondered if it was a serious attempt to re-create 'cowboy' speech as it would have been.