Soft Drink Debate

Image Gallery Map shows the regional variations in soft-drink language by county. map courtesy Greg Plumb and Matthew Campbell

A debate rages beneath the surface of our country. It’s not about red states and blue states; it’s not even about Coke or Pepsi. It’s about what we call Coke and Pepsi. Whether a soft drink is a “soda,” a “pop” or a “coke” can become a concern in geographically mixed households.

“Soda” supporter Karen Talbott-Wood says, “If my husband (who is from southeastern Kansas) asks for a ‘pop,’ I tell him his father isn’t here, and neither is mine. He does not find that amusing.”

The question has captured the imagination of at least a few researchers.

Greg Plumb, a professor with the Department of Cartography and Geography at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, and his student Matthew Campbell have used their mapping skills and an informal Internet survey by Alan McConchie to get to the bottom of the issue. They’ve created maps (available at www.OKAtlas.org/okatlas/vernacular/usa/softdrinks.htm) to chart “soda,” “pop” and “coke” speakers in the United States.

The map suggests soft-drink dialect differences are very regional (with a few exceptions). Speakers on the East and West coasts use the word “soda” to refer to a carbonated beverage that is nonalcoholic, flavored and sold in bottles or cans. Midwesterners and those in the Pacific Northwest drink “pop,” and in the South, you can order a “coke” and be asked, “What kind?”

A quick perusal of the map shows St. Louis as the great bastion of “soda” speakers in the Midwest. St. Louis native Fernando Vigil says, “I have a surprisingly deep – even to me – certainty that ‘soda’ is right and the other options are wrong.”

We asked a few St. Louis natives why. Stephanie Howe cites relocation to St. Louis from the East and West coasts. She says “St. Louis is sometimes called the westernmost Eastern city.”

Mary Haselbauer agrees. “St. Louis just sounds different from the rest of the state. More than once I’ve had people in outstate Missouri ask if I was from the East Coast,” she says. She also wonders if the preponderance of engineers in St. Louis has caused a trend toward the “precision” of the term soda.