There is an excellent discussion of this topic in Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of America, a popular but very perceptive book that came out in 1981. Garreau would include East Texas, part of Oklahoma, part of Missouri, Kentucky, Southern Illinois (around Cairo), half of Indiana, Cincinatti, West Virginia (except maybe the part around Wheeling), Eastern Maryland and southern Delaware. (Western Maryland is south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It is also Barbara Frietzche [SP?]country). He argues that it does not include South Florida. I've lived in Ozark Missouri and Western Kentucky. No doubt in my mind they are in Dixie. But Kansas City, MO, is definitely not Dixie!!!

Garreau remarks that "Perhaps what most folk realize is that Dixie's boundaries are defined more by emotion than any other nation." He observes that the area is extremely heterogeneous. And from observation, Mary in Kentucky is absolutely right. They don't all talk the same; The Eastern Tidewater, South Carolina, and Mississippi sound almost like Englishmen to me. The country-music twang is something entirely different than said aristocratical drawl.

The book is still stimulating today.