Yankee Cultural Imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift

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

Power. Point can be downloaded from www. ling. upenn. edu/~labov

Principles of Linguistic Change Vol III: Cognitive and cultural factors Ch. 1. Introduction Part A. Cross dialectal comprehension Ch. 2. Natural misunderstandings Ch, 3. Replication of the Peterson-Barney Experiment Ch. 4. The Gating Experiments Part B. The life history of linguistic change Ch. 5. Triggering events Ch. 6. Governing principles Ch. 7. Forks in the road Ch, 8. Divergence Ch. 9. Driving forces Ch. 10. Yankee cultural imperialism and the Northern Cities Shift Ch. 11. Experimental evidence on evaluation of the NCS Ch. 12. Endpoints Part C. The unit of linguistic change Ch. 13. The binding force in linguistic change. Ch. 14. Words floating on the surface of sound change Part D. Transmission and diffusion Ch. 15. The diffusion of language from place to place Ch. 16. The diffusion of language from group to group¯

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.

The Northern Cities Shift

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

The Northern Cities Shift desk mat busses head boss block socks

The Northern Cities Shift

General principles of chain shifting In chain shifts, I. Tense nuclei rise along a peripheral track II. Lax nuclei fall along a non-peripheral track

Means of 14 vowels in peripheral/nonperipheral phonological space. IN = Inland North IN IN /æ/ /ʌ/ IN /e/ IN /o/

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.

Social factors

Gender and social category determination of five elements of the Northern City Shift in a Detroit suburban high school æ ^ Source: Eckert 2000

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 speakers of American English are participating in this shift.

The U. S. at night

The Inland North U. S. at Night Milwaukee Grand Rapids Chicago Syracuse Rochester Flint Buffalo Detroit Cleveland Kenoshat Joliet Toledo Omaha St. Louis Kansas City Columbus CIncinnati Indianapolis

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 F 2 of /^/ in the North and the Midland North Midland age coefficient = 1. 39 age coefficient = - 2. 05 p =. 033 p =. 026

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. . .

What makes the water move? An image of the swimmer in the bay. . . who does the Australian crawl, the breast stroke, backstroke, the butterfly, back to the crawl again and thinks to himself, “I am really making this current move!”

The Inland North and the Blue States

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 Northern Cities Shift

Democratic vs. Republican vote for counties surveyed by dialect in presidential election of 2004. Inland North Midland Kerry majority 20 15 8 Bush majority 6 7 13 New England 12 2

County vote for Kerry 2004 by county size and dialect Bush Kerry

Regression analyses of county percent vote for Kerry in 2004 by dialect groups with and without total votes as independent variable. Residual group: Midland

Where did the Northern Cities Shift come from?

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

The Erie Canal, constructed 1817 -1825

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 Mc. Kelvey, A Panoramic View of Rochester History 11: 2 -24.

Growth of population along the Erie Canal Erie canal

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

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, TS 465

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

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

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

The westward expansion

The North/Midland lexical isogloss

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

Yankee and Midland settlement patterns

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

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

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

Yankee and Midland cultural styles

“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 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 Mc. Lean 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 Mc. Lean 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: Mac. Millan.

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.

“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.

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.

The evolution of Yankee ideology

Red States and Blue States in U. S. 2000 Presidential election

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]

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

1846 -1876 First wave of death penalty abolition

1878 -1883 First wave of death penalty abolition receding

1887 Re-abolition of the death penalty in Maine

1897 -1915 Second wave of death penalty abolition

1916 -1939 Second wave of death penalty restoration

1957 -1969 Third wave of death penalty abolition

FURMAN v. GEORGIA 408 U. S. 238 (1972) U. S. SUPREME COURT Decided June 29, 1972 PER CURIAM The Court holds that the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

1973 -1982: Restoration of the death penalty after Furman 1972

Evangelical politics and the anti-slavery movement

The “Burned-Over” Districts of western New York Entire communities of young New Englanders. . . emigrated to the area of New York west of the Adirondack and Catskill mountains [arriving] in western New York, often by means of the Erie Canal. . . The restless settlers of the “Burned-Over District” readily sought release in millennial and communitarian religion. --M. Carnes & J. Garrity, Mapping America’s Past: A Historical Atlas. NY: Henry Holt, 1996, P. 90.

Slavery the central issue in the Burned-Over District In February 1841, [an interdenominational convention] adopted a totally ultra-ist position, condemning the Baptist Register and all others who acknowledged evil without taking action, and concluded that “the abolition cause. . . must prevail before the halcyon day of millenial glory can dawn upon the world. ” No other section of the country would throughout the years before the Civil War prove to be so thoroughly and constantly sensitive to antislavery agitation. As the major issue of the century, furthermore, this crusade attracted more attention than others. Cross, Whitney R. 1950. The Burned-over District: The social and intellecual history of enthusiastic religion in western New York, 1800 -1850 Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. P. 224 -5

R-correlations between New England origins and county voting for abolitionist parties Year 1840 Ohio Liberty Party 0. 539 1842 New York Liberty Party Black Suffrage 0. 349 0. 419 1844 0. 521 1846 0. 374 0. 521 John L. Hammond, The Politics of Benevolence, 9091 0. 697

19 th century pietists vs. liturgicals Liturgicals stressed the positive values of the institutionalized formalities of the old orthodoxies. . Pietists were revivalists, emphasizing the experience of personal conversion, and flatly rejecting ritualism. Pietists worked for Sunday blue laws, the abolition of saloons, and before the Civil War, a check to the growth of slavery, or even its abolition. When American political parties re-formed to an opposition between Republicans and Democrats, around 1850, “the great majority of. . . pietists entered the Republican Party, while the great majority of liturgicals became Democrats” -- Carwardine, Richard J. 1993. Evangelicals and Politics in Haven: Yale University Press. p. 69. Antebellum America New

The Democratic position [was designed to appeal to] lower-class rural folk, particularly but not exclusively in the rural South. . . who deeply resented the imperialism of the Yankee missionaries, their schemes for temperance, Sunday Schools and other reforms. --Carwardine 1993: 111 -12

The Republican position The emergence and ultimate success of the Republicans were dependent on a particular understanding of politics, one which evangelicals had played a major role in shaping. That political ethic was rooted in the. . . theology of the Second Great Awakening, marked by an optimistic postmillennialism and an urgent appeal to disinterested action. --Carwardine 1993: 320

Republican percent of popular vote in Indiana by counties, 1880 -1896 County category 1880 1884 1886 1888 1890 1892 1894 1896 49 most rural 48 47 48 43 most urban 50 49 19 urban Yankee 54 53 52 24 urban non. Yankee 48 46 Statewide Winner 48 45 45 49 49 49 48 49 53 49 50 55 55 47 49 49 45 46 51 53 47 42 44 49 51 49 45 46 50 51 GOP Dem GOP

Continuity Behind this change in regional alignments lay a striking continuity in their environing cultures. Walter Dean Burnham. . . found that [in the New York election returns of 1964] the counties which voted Democratic and supported civil rights were the same as those which had voted Republican and opposed slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. David Hackett Fischer 1989, p. 882

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]

Conversation between John F. Kennedy and Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, 1960 JFK: But this isn’t 1876. Because what happens is it will become the most publicized thing. . . everybody’s looking, now what is this president promising this group and pretty soon you’ve got the Goddamndest mayhem. Long: . . . the Negro vote might be the key vote. . . JFK: At least I could count it. . . I think it’s crazy for the South because this way I’m concerned about Georgia and Louisiana and these places, here’s where we got a chance to carry them, but if I end up with no chance to carry them then I gotta go up north and try to do my business.

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]

An experimental approach to the ideological correlates of Inland North and Midland speech

Passage 1 in Experiment 1 (from 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.

The Northern Cities Shift of Sabrina K. , 37 [1994], Detroit MI, TS 176 Short-i Short-u Short-a Short-e Long open o Short-o

Passage 2 in Experiment 1 (from Mimi P. , 45 [2000], Indianapolis IN, TS 775) • short o back of center • tense a before nasals; lax a, e in that • aw fronting • ^ fronting I read, a-n-nd like most women, I like to go shopping and play card games with family and friends and that kind of thing, nothing really exciting. We used to go camping quite a bit on the weekends, but our lives have shifted enough that we don’t do that much right now, but uh that’s what we do.

Dialect areas in which U. of Indiana subjects were raised [4 -13 yrs of age] Dialect area of listeners N Inland North 9 Chicago 9 North (outside of IN) 1 Transitional (Ft. Wayne) 3 Midland 58 Indianapolis 4 Indiana 50 Other Midland 4 Mid-Atlantic 6 Canada 1 South 4 West 6 Mixed 2 90

Cities assigned to Detroit and Indianapolis speakers by student listeners at Indiana University [N=90]

Political opinions ascribed to an Inland North (Detroit) and Midland (Indianapolis) speaker by students at U. of Indiana, Bloomington [N=90] No significant difference in judgments of intelligence, trustworthiness, education; Midland speaker judged more friendly (p <. 00001)

The argument (1) • The triggering event for the Northern Cities 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 tensing of short-a words. • The direction of the changes that followed can be accounted for by • general principles of chain shifting of vowels and • the tendency to maximum dispersion of members of vowel sub-systems.

The argument (2) • 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 formative period of Northern Cities Shift coincided with a period of intense evangelical activity with a strong focus on the abolition of slavery. • Counties with high concentrations of Yankee settlers have shown consistent opposition to slavery and racial inequality. • The reversal of Republican and Democratic voting patterns in the North and South appears to have been motivated by the promotion of civil rights legislation by the Democratic Party. If so, the same ideological opposition may be associated with the Northern Cities Shift and the sharp linguistic differentiation across the North/Midland line.

Ideological, political and linguistic developments, 1817 -2008 Yankee settlement 1817 -1825 1830 -1860 -1956 Yankee ideology Expansion in western NY Evangelical movement Westward expansion No’n Cities Shift Party of racial equality 1825 -50 Raising of short-a Perfectionism Opposition to racial inequality 1856 Republican 1967 Fronting of /o/ first reported 1960 -1995 2000 -2008 Switch of political allegiance Blue States /Red States redefined 1986 Backing of /ʌ/ first reported 1960 Democratic