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This article explores the Northern Cities Shift, a vowel rotation that has significantly impacted the vowel systems of the Great Lakes region, and its connection to cultural patterns and political ideologies. It discusses the historical origins of the shift and its correlation with the settlement history of the North.
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LLanguage Change in America: Yankee Cultural Imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift William Labov October 15, 2008 Penn Humanities Forum
The argument (1) • The Northern Cities Shift is a rotation of six vowels which has radically altered the vowel systems of the Great Lakes region. • The triggering event for this shift took place in western New York during the construction of the Erie Canal, when a variety of dialect differences were leveled in a general raising and fronting of short-a words. • The direction of the changes that followed can be accounted for by general principles of chain shifting of vowels, as well as by the tendency to maximum dispersion in vowel sub-systems. • Yet the coincidence of the Northern Cities Shift territory with the Blue States of the last two presidential elections leads us to look further into the cultural patterns of Northern settlement history .
The argument (2) • The formative period of the sound changes coincided with the Second Great Awakening, a period of intense evangelical activity with a strong focus on the abolition of slavery. • Although the cultural style of these Yankee evangelists was similar to that of the New Christian Right today, the region defined by their modern linguistic legacy is now dominated by liberal Democratic voting. • The reversal of Republican and Democratic voting patterns in the North and South appears to have been motivated by the Democratic Party’s endorsement of civil rights legislation. If so, the same ideological opposition may be associated with the Northern Cities Shift and the sharp linguistic differentiation across the North/ Midland line.
Project on Cross-Dialectal Comprehension: Gating Experiment Word Phrase Sentence 1. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 2. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 3. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 4. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 5. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 6. _________ ________________ ___________________________
The Northern Cities Shift desk busses mat head boss block socks
Phonological space with peripheral and nonperipheral tracks back high front beet boot block low
Sabrina K., 37, Detroit MI, TS 176 • short o fronting • short a raising • oh lowering The--the way I got hired for this one job was really weird, ‘cause I went in for a . . . secretarial position is what I went in for, and they had hired. . .ah-- somebody else that didn’t know anything, but it was a buyer’s daughter, so then she got the job. And uh--they called me because I had done shipping and receiving as far as--the paper work, and they had asked me if I‘d help out ‘cause their--shipper had just had a heart attack and she wasn’ comin’ back for a while.
A large scale phenomenon The Northern Cities Shift is found throughout the Inland North, an area of 88,000 square miles. A population of over 34,000,000 speakers of American English are participating in this shift.
U.S. at Night The Inland North Grand Rapids Milwaukee Syracuse Chicago Rochester Flint Buffalo Detroit Cleveland Kenoshat Joliet Toledo Omaha Columbus St. Louis CIncinnati Indianapolis Kansas City
The North and the Inland North defined by the Northern Cities Shift: the raising of short-a in MAT and the backing of short-u in BUS
Map 11.15. Dialect regions defined by the Atlas of North American English.
Age distribution of F2 of /^/ in the North and the Midland North Midland age coefficient = - 2.05 p = .026 age coefficient = 1.39 p = .033
Red States and Blue States in U.S. 2004 Presidential election
States for Kerry in 2004 and dialect areas: solid line = Northern dialect region: dashed line = Inland North and Northern Cities Shift
Democratic vs. Republican vote for counties surveyed by dialect in presidential election of 2004. Inland North Midland New North England Kerry majority 20 15 8 12 Bush majority 6 7 13 2
County vote for Kerry 2004 by county size and dialect Kerry Bush
Regression analyses of county percent vote for Kerry in 2004 by dialect groups with and without total votes as independent variable. Residual group: Midland
Settlement patterns, 1840-1860, as reflected in house construction North Midland Upland South --Kniffen & Glassie 1966. Fig. 27
The impact of the Erie Canal The impact on the rest of the State can be seen by looking at a modern map. With the exception of Binghamton and Elmira, every major city in New York falls along the trade route established by the Erie Canal, from New York City to Albany, through Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse, to Rochester and Buffalo. Nearly 80% of upstate New York's population lives within 25 miles of the Erie Canal. The Erie Canal: A Brief History No established village had ever mushroomed so rapidly [as Rochester], growing from 1507 to 9207 within a ten year span - Blake McKelvey, A Panoramic View of Rochester History. Rochester History 11:2-24.
Growth of population along the Erie Canal Erie canal
The formation of a koine (common dialect) among settlers of western New York State
Phonological space with peripheral and nonperipheral tracks back high front beet boot block low
Nasal short-a system of Diane S., 37 [1996], Providence, RI back bag cash laugh ask
Continuous short-a system of Jesse M., 57[1996], New Britain CT, TS465
Split short-a system of Nina B., 62 [1996], New York City, TS 495
Input of short-a systems to cities on the Erie Canal, 1817-1825 nasal (W.N.E) broad (Boston) continuous (SW N.E). split (NYC)
General raising of /æ/ for Sharon K., 35 [1995], Rochester, NY, TS 359
Coincidence of the North/Midland lexical line and NCS isoglosses
Three stages of the NCS for Martha F., 28 [1992], Kenosha, WI TS 3 mat handy sock talk dawn hot
Community movement in the migration from New England Mass migrations were indeed congenial to the Puritan tradition. Whole parishes, parson and all, had sometimes migrated from Old England. Lois Kimball Mathews mentioned 22 colonies in Illinois alone, all of which originated in New England or in New York, most of them planted between 1830 and 1840. --Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee in the old Northwest, 1953. P. 14.
The individualism of the Upland Southerner The Upland Southerners left behind a loose social structure of rural “neighborhoods” based on kinship; when Upland Southerners migrated--as individuals or in individual families--the neighborhood was left behind. Tim Frazer, “Heartland” English., ed. T. Frazer, U. of Alabama Press, 1993. p. 63.
Migration patterns of Yankees and Midlanders Yankee Midland Settlement Towns Isolated clusters House location Roadside Creek & spring Internal migration Low Very high Persistence 75-96% 25-40% David Hackett Fischer 1989. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 814.
“The Yankee Confession” • Life is a struggle, a test of will. • The individual, not the government or any other social unit, is responsible for his or her own well-being. • Success is a measure of character. • The righteous are responsible for the welfare of the community. While conversion of the sinner to the higher path was the preferable means of reform, it was sometimes necessary to use the legal authority of the state by making immoral activities illegal. --Morain, Thomas J. 1988. Prairie Grass Roots: An Iowa Small Town in the Early Twentieth century. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. P. 45
The meddling Yankee Taxed with being busybodies and meddlers, apologists own that the instinct for meddling, as divine as that of self-reservation, runs in the Yankee blood; that the typical New Englander was entirely unable, when there were wrongs to be corrected, to mind his own business. --Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee in the old Northwest, 1953, P. 6.
A Yankee view of the Midland In McLean County, Illinois, “the Northerner thought of the Southerner as a lean, lank, lazy creature, burrowing in a hut, and rioting in whiskey, dirt and ignorance” --History of McLean County 1879:97
The Yankee historian’s view Along with their crackers, their codfish, and their theology, they carried their peculiar ideas of government and managed, in spite of Kentucky statutes in Illinois, to impose their township system throughout the state . . . [T]hey did the same to or for Michigan, and also established the whipping post, in words taken from Vermont’s original laws. Stewart H. Holbrook 1950. The Yankee Exodus: An account of migration from New England New York: MacMillan.
Civil war rhetoric “We are to have charge of this continent. The South has been proved, and has been found wanting. She is not worthy to bear rule. She has lost the scepter in our national government, she is to lose the scepter in the States themselves; and this continent is to be from this time forth governed by Northern men, with Northern ideas, and with a Northern gospel” --Henry Ward Beecher, 1865.
Correcting Midland speech patterns At Greensburg in southeastern Indiana, the Reverend J. R. Wheelock advised his eastern sponsors that his wife had opened a school of 20 or 30 scholars in which she would use “the most approved N.E. school books,” to be obtained by a local merchant from Philadelphia. “She makes defining a distinct branch of study and this gives her a very favorable oppy. of correcting the children & thro’ them, the parents of ‘a heap’ of Kentuckyisms.” --Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee in the old Northwest, 1953, p. 114.