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The Wikipedia entry on rhotic and non-rhotic accents gives a pretty good overview of which countries and states are rhotic or non-rhotic. What I want to know is what the pattern (or link) between the rhotic countries and states is, or even if such a link exists.
Regardless of any link, why is it distributed the way it is? What are the factors lying behind the development of the rhoticity?
Rhoticity distribution in the US has both historical and social reasons. The first-found colonies in the North (New Hampshire, Mass., Connecticut, Rhode Island) and South (Maryland, Georgia, N&S Carolina, Virginia) were non-rhotic right from the start, because the English who settled there came from regions which at that time were already non-rhotic (esp. London and Middle-England). Moreover, they stayed in touch with they home country so that their non-rhotic accent was kept alive. The Midland American English Founder colonies, however (Pennsylanvia, Delaware, NY, New Jersey) was settled by nonstandard-speaking people from Northengland, Scotland and Ireland, thus a rhotic region separated non-rhotic southern and northern founder states. These rhotic states played a major role during the westward movement, so that most of the US became rhotic and has remained so until nowadays.
Yet for a fact, rhoticity is viewed differently in different parts of the US: There are still some relic areas in the South in which postvocalic [r] is socially marked. In non-rhotic New York, however, rhoticity has gained prestige and is increasingly used by young and upwardly mobile people (LABOV 1966).
The sources I have read and heard claimed that /r/-dropping in English began after the colonization of the US, and that /r/-dropping later started in London, and spread thence to the port-cities of the US (Boston, New York City, Charleston, Savannah). I learned this in my phonology-class in grad-school, and I have seen sources since then that agreed with it (I will attempt to dig some up if desired), although the exact time-frame claimed for the spread of non-rhoticity in Britain varied from the 1770's to the 1820's.
BTW, /r/-dropping in the Southeastern US is almost gone now. I'm 45, and I just have it in stressless clusters like "horror" > "horra", while my daughter pronounces every /r/ everywhere. Contrast this to what's left of my grandparents' generation from the Florida/Georgia border, who are full /r/-droppers.
