Languages for America”: Dialects, Race, and National
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE “LANGUAGES FOR AMERICA”: DIALECTS, RACE, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By THOMAS LEE WHITE, JR. Norman, Oklahoma 2011 “LANGUAGES FOR AMERICA”: DIALECTS, RACE, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY Dr. Daniel Cottom, Chair Dr. Francesca Sawaya Dr. Timothy Murphy Dr. Ronald Schliefer Dr. Benjamin Alpers © Copyright by THOMAS LEE WHITE, JR. 2011 All Rights Reserved. Acknowledgements To my God, thank you for your grace. To my beautiful wife, Tara, and family, thank you for your love. To the members of my committee, specifically Dr. Daniel Cottom, thank you for your patience. iv Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………1 “By Shaint Patrick”: Irish American Dialect in H.H. Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry ……………………………………………………...……………..26 “Ain’t Princerple Precious?”: Yankee Dialect in James Russell Lowell’ s The Biglow Papers …………………………………………………………74 Cooking the “Liddle Tedails”: German American Dialect in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Hans Breitmann Ballads ………………………………………122 The “Melican Man”: Asian American Dialect and Bret Harte’s Truthful James Poems…………………………………………………….……………….165 “Delinquents of Some Kind”: White and Black Dialect in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Colonel’s Dream…….………………………………….. 191 v Abstract I argue the process of institutionalizing linguistic stereotypes began as authors during the nineteenth century pursued ways of characterizing the voices of literary figures using nontraditional languages. Literary dialects became a method for visualizing perceived racial differences among various minority groups and influenced the stereotypes associated with each discourse community. In addition, several authors used dialects in literature to challenge these stereotypes and to create alternative narratives of the linguistic history of the United States. Consequently, this dissertation examines the development of a linguistic national consciousness as it evolved from the early national period to the first decade of the twentieth century. Authors such as Hugh Henry Brackenridge, James Russell Lowell, Charles Godfrey Leland, Bret Harte, and Charles W. Chesnutt contributed to the growth of the American languages in significant ways. Brackenridge, for example, although considered one of the leading advocates of genocidal racism toward the treatment of Native Americans, used a number of dialects in Modern Chivalry , to capture the varieties of social discourse found on the American frontier during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Lowell, in The Biglow Papers , used a homespun Yankee dialect to question the political correctness of the US-Mexican War of 1847. After years of studying the social nature of languages such as Shelta and Romany, Leland created a dynamic German American immigrant named Hans Breitmann to question the correlation of languages with the essence of a person or ethnic group. Both Harte and Chesnutt used dialectal humor to illustrate the similarities and differences among minority cultures and mainstream society. vi Harte’s Truthful James poems illuminated the racial tension between Caucasians and Asian Americans in the western frontier while Chesnutt’s irony revealed the arbitrary nature of the color line that separated African Americans and white society at the turn of the twentieth century. Each of these authors used language to demonstrate that no single language, national identity, or racial stereotype could characterize the history of the American people. Dialect, as Walt Whitman said of language, is not “an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.” For Whitman and the authors in this study, language belonged to the people, and their choices to create linguistic change had a root cause in their desire to let it represent what they wanted to say and how they wanted to represent themselves. vii Introduction: “Languages for America”: Dialects, Race, and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature 1 Among trends in American studies, the analysis of dialects in literature occupies a relatively minor position. While a great deal has been written about certain authors, such as Mark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose literary dialects have left a tremendous mark on the development of American literature, very little has been said about those authors who viewed nonstandard languages as more than just a method for character development. For those authors who viewed dialects as a medium for creating a uniquely American national consciousness, very little has come in the way of understanding these dialects on their own terms and not in relation to the numerous genres popular during the nineteenth century. The rugged voices of Twain’s characters and the dialects of Dunbar’s poetry are often acknowledged as pre-eminent examples of an American style, but during the nineteenth century, there existed a host of other writers whose written dialects were simply considered popular fiction, unqualified to reach the ranks of true literature. There also existed a multitude of writers whose dialects were seen as characteristic traits of popular genres, and the social and historical impact of their dialects are often overlooked by the ongoing preoccupation with American realism in all of its various strands, local-color, regionalism, and so on. Thus, for many valid and complicated reasons, dialects in these particular writers are viewed as a minor trend in the shadows of much larger issues. 1 This is not to imply that dialects have gone unnoticed in nineteenth-century American literature or that they do not deserve critical attention. Quite the opposite 1 Holger Kersten makes the argument that dialects during the second half of the nineteenth century have been neglected because of their minor position. For further discussion, see Kersten’s “The Creative Potential of Dialect Writing in Later-Nineteenth-Century America.” 2 is true. In fact, a small field of past and present scholars has recognized the presence of dialects throughout the history of American literature. Attempting to categorize the various nineteenth-century dialects, these scholars generally agree that dialects can be organized into two separate categories – those dialects appearing before the Civil War and the post-bellum blossoming of regional and vernacular discourses. Both of these categories contain even smaller subcategories, but for the most part, American language and literary historians have accepted the Civil War as the moment of transition between two distinct trends in literary dialects. For some critics, this transition is an important one. It recognizes that after the Civil War literary dialects became more hostile, more apt to stereotype and ridicule rather than to create a realistic or comical character. However, from the beginning of our nation’s literary imagination, dialects have mattered precisely because they have been used to stereotype certain discourse communities and criticize those stereotypes. Dialects during the antebellum period were not used solely for humorous purposes but were an integral part in many authors’ attempts to define America in contrast to other nations and their languages. Dialect authors created characters whose voices represented nontraditional ways of defining an American linguistic consciousness, and their efforts helped shape what we now consider an American literary vernacular style. Since the early National period, literary dialects have influenced the way Americans perceived the numerous discourse communities that exist within the United States. They are important to understanding later post-bellum dialects, and they help twenty-first-century critics discuss the history and politics of linguistic stereotyping. 3 This dissertation argues that although the writings of early national and antebellum authors such as Hugh Henry Brackenridge, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Godfrey Leland are considered comical representations of nonstandard literary languages, they are also quite political in obvious ways. Their stories illustrate the conflict among the many linguistic and ethnic communities struggling to be heard as American authors sought to create an American voice and language. Consequently, these authors and many like them created a legacy that later dialect authors continued to develop. Bret Harte and Charles Chesnutt, while considered members of the post-bellum “political” trend, also relied heavily on the comical aspects of dialect literatures. Although the political impact of their dialects is felt and seen even today, their use of humor is frequently ignored or considered secondary to the larger purposes of their writing, purposes that included arguing for racial equality among Caucasian, African, and Asian ethnic groups in the United States. Languages for America explores the similarities and differences among these authors and examines the influence American literature has had on the development of linguistic stereotyping. Language differences have always existed in America, and for some people, these differences are used to justify attitudes of racism and exclusion. David Crystal