Yankee Cultural Imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift

1. Yankee Cultural Imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift William Labov October 20, 2008 Yale University

2. 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 .

3. 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.

4. The Northern Cities Shift

5. Project on Cross-Dialectal Comprehension: Gating Experiment Word Phrase Sentence 1. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 2. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 3. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 4. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 5. _________ ________________ ___________________________ 6. _________ ________________ ___________________________

6. The Northern Cities Shift desk busses mat head boss block socks

7. The Northern Cities Shift

8. Social factors

9. 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.

10. The U.S. at night

11. 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

12. Map 11.15. Dialect regions defined by the Atlas of North American English.

13. Two questions to be resolved (1) Why is the North/Midland line located where it is? (2) Why do the cities of the Inland North all follow the Northern Cities Shift, while dialects of Midland cities--Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis -- differ considerably from each other? Matters of settlement history. . .

14. The Inland North and the Blue States

15. Red States and Blue States in U.S. 2004 Presidential election

16. States for Kerry in 2004 and dialect areas: solid line = Northern dialect region: dashed line = Inland North and Northern Cities Shift

17. 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

18. Where did the Northern Cities Shift come from?

19. Settlement patterns, 1840-1860, as reflected in house construction North Midland Upland South --Kniffen & Glassie 1966. Fig. 27

20. The Erie Canal, constructed 1817-1825

21. 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 The impact of the Erie Canal 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.

22. The formation of a koine among settlers of western New York State

23. Nasal short-a system of Diane S., 37 [1996], Providence, RI back bag cash laugh ask

24. Short-a/broad-a system of Denise L., 21[1995], Boston MA, TS 427

25. General raising of /æ/ for Sharon K., 35 [1995], Rochester, NY, TS 359

26. The general raising of short-a as a koine formation is not a theory but a summary of the facts • none of the input dialects have a general raising of short-a • the general raising is consistent throughout the central and western New York State • the general raising is consistent in all the speech communities created by the westward expansion from New York State

27. The westward expansion

28. The North/Midland lexical isogloss

29. Coincidence of the North/Midland lexical line and NCS isoglosses

30. Three stages of the NCS for Martha F., 28 [1992], Kenosha, WI TS 3 mat handy sock talk hot

31. Yankee and Midland settlement patterns

32. Settlement patterns, 1840-1860, as reflected in house construction North Midland Upland South Kniffen & Glassie 1966. Fig. 27

33. The Upland South Contiguous area in which persons of German, African, French, or Hispanic ancestry do NOT constitute majorities or pluralities, 1980 Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov, The Upland South 2003, p. 13.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. Migration patterns of Yankees and Midlanders Yankee Midland/Upland South Settlement Towns Isolated clusters House location Roadside Creek & spring Internal migration Low Very high David Hackett Fischer 1989. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 814.

37. Yankee and Midland cultural styles

38. “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

39. The meddling Yankee Taxed with being busybodies and meddlers, apologists own that the instinct for meddling, as divine as that of self-preservation, 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.

40. 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

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. “The language of Yankee Cultural Imperialism” ...we must learn what led to the establishment of Inland Northern as a prestige dialect in the Great Lakes region; we need to understand as well why scholars like Kenyon, George Phillip Krapp and Hans Kurath . . . embraced the concept of Inland Northern as a General American.” Perhaps the language of “Yankee cultural imperialism” was appropriate for a century of corporate expansion, leveraged buyouts, and American military intervention in the Philippines, Central America, the Caribbean, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Tim Frazer, in “Heartland” English., ed. T. Frazer, U. of Alabama Pres, 1993, pp. 60, 66.

44. Yankee ideology and American reform movements Imbued with the notion that their was a superior vision, Yankees dutifully accepted their responsibility for the moral and intellectual life of the nation, . . . with or without an invitation from the uneducated, the undisciplined, the disinterested, or the unmotivated. Cultural uplift Yankee style also meant attacking sin and sloth. The initial settlement of Iowa coincided with three very active decades for American reform movements. Health fads, prison reform, women’s rights, crusades for new standards of dress---the northern states teemed with advocates of one cause or another. Most important among the reform movements of the day were the issues of abolition and temperance. Morain, Thomas J. 1988. Prairie Grass Roots: An Iowa Small Town in the Early Twentieth century. The Henry A. Wallace Series on Agricultural History and Rural Studies. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.

45. The evolution of Yankee ideology

46. Red States and Blue States in U.S. 2004 Presidential election

47. Presidential elections in which the Northern States [NY, MI, WI, IA, MN] have been opposed to the Southern States [TX, AK, LA, MI, AL, GA, FL, SC, NC, KY,TN, VA]

48. The role of the Northern States in the history of efforts to abolish the death penalty

49. 1846-1876 First wave of death penalty abolition

50. 1878-1883 First wave of death penalty abolition receding