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
PowerPoint can be downloaded fromwww.ling.upenn.
edu/labov
3
Principles of Linguistic ChangeVol 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
4
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 .
5
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 Partys 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.
6
The Northern Cities Shift
7
Project on Cross-Dialectal Comprehension Gating
Experiment
Word Phrase
Sentence 1. _________ ________________
___________________________ 2. _________
________________ ___________________________ 3.
_________ ________________ ____________________
_______ 4. _________ ________________
___________________________ 5. _________
________________ ___________________________ 6.
_________ ________________ ____________________
_______
8
The Northern Cities Shift
desk
busses
mat
head
boss
block socks
9
The Northern Cities Shift
10
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
11
Means of 14 vowels in peripheral/nonperipheral
phonological space. IN Inland North
IN /æ/
IN /?/
IN /e/
IN /o/
12
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 didnt
know anything, but it was a buyers 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 Id
help out cause their--shipper had just had a
heart attack and she wasn comin back for a
while.
13
Social factors
14
Gender and social category determination of five
elements of the Northern City Shift in a Detroit
suburban high school

æ
Source Eckert 2000
15
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.
16
The U.S. at night
17
U.S. at Night
The Inland North
Grand Rapids
Milwaukee
Syracuse
Rochester
Chicago
Flint
Buffalo
Detroit
Cleveland
Kenoshat
Joliet
Toledo
Omaha
Columbus
St. Louis
CIncinnati
Indianapolis
Kansas City
18
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
19
Map 11.15. Dialect regions defined by the Atlas
of North American English.
20
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
21
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. . .
22
An image of the swimmer in the bay. . .
What makes the water move?
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!
23
The Inland North and the Blue States
24
Red States and Blue States in U.S. 2004
Presidential election
25
States for Kerry in 2004 and dialect areas solid
line Northern dialect region dashed line
Inland North and Northern Cities Shift
26
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
27
County vote for Kerry 2004 by county size and
dialect
Kerry
Bush
28
Regression analyses of county percent vote for
Kerry in 2004 by dialect groups with and without
total votes as independent variable. Residual
group Midland
29
Where did the Northern Cities Shift come from?
30
Settlement patterns, 1840-1860, as reflected in
house construction
North
Midland
Upland South
--Kniffen Glassie 1966. Fig. 27
31
The Erie Canal, constructed 1817-1825
32
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 112-24.
33
Growth of population along the Erie Canal
Erie canal
34
The formation of a koine among settlers of
western New York State
35
Nasal short-a system of Diane S., 37 1996,
Providence, RI
back
bag
cash
laugh
ask
36
Continuous short-a system of Jesse M., 571996,
New Britain CT, TS465
37
Short-a/broad-a system of Denise L., 211995,
Boston MA, TS 427
38
Split short-a system of Nina B., 62 1996, New
York City, TS 495
39
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)
40
General raising of /æ/ for Sharon K., 35 1995,
Rochester, NY, TS 359
41
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
42
The westward expansion
43
The North/Midland lexical isogloss
44
Coincidence of the North/Midland lexical line and
NCS isoglosses
45
Three stages of the NCS for Martha F., 28 1992,
Kenosha, WI TS 3
mat
handy
sock
talk
dawn
hot
46
Yankee and Midland settlement patterns
47
Settlement patterns, 1840-1860, as reflected in
house construction
North
Midland
Upland South
Kniffen Glassie 1966. Fig. 27
48
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.
49
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.
50
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.
51
Migration patterns of Yankees and Midlanders
Yankee Midland/Upland South Settlement Town
s Isolated clusters House location Roadside Cree
k spring Internal migration Low Very high
David Hackett Fischer 1989. Albion's Seed
Four British Folkways in America. Oxford
Oxford University Press, p. 814.
52
Yankee and Midland cultural styles
53
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
54
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.
55
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 187997
56
The Yankee historians 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 . . . They did the
same to or for Michigan, and also established the
whipping post, in words taken from Vermonts
original laws.
Stewart H. Holbrook 1950. The Yankee Exodus An
account of migration from New England New York
MacMillan.
57
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.
58
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.
59
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, womens 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.

60
The evolution of Yankee ideology
61
Red States and Blue States in U.S. 2000
Presidential election
62
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
63
The role of the Northern States in the history of
efforts to abolish the death penalty
64
1846-1876 First wave of death penalty abolition
65
1878-1883 First wave of death penalty abolition
receding
66
1887 Re-abolition of the death penalty in Maine
67
1897-1915 Second wave of death penalty abolition
68
1916-1939 Second wave of death penalty restoration
69
1957-1969 Third wave of death penalty abolition
70
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.
71
1973-1982 Restoration of the death penalty after
Furman 1972
72
Evangelical politics and the anti-slavery movement
73
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 Americas Past
A Historical Atlas. NY Henry Holt, 1996, P. 90.
74
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
75
R-correlations between New England origins and
county voting for abolitionist parties
John L. Hammond, The Politics of Benevolence,
90-91
76
19th 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 Antebellum America
New Haven Yale University Press.p. 69.
77
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 1993111-12
78
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
79
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 48 45
45 49 49 43 most urban 50 49 49 49
45 46 51 53 19 urban Yankee 54 53
52 53 49 50 55 55 24 urban nonYankee 48
46 47 47 42 44 49 51 Statewide 49
48 49 49 45 46 50 51 Winner GOP
Dem GOP GOP Dem Dem GOP GOP
80
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
81
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
82
Conversation between John F. Kennedy and Senator
Russell B. Long of Louisiana, 1960
JFK But this isnt 1876. Because what happens is
it will become the most publicized thing . . .
everybodys looking, now what is this president
promising this group and pretty soon youve got
the Goddamndest mayhem. Long . . . the Negro
vote might be the key vote. . . JFK At least I
could count it . . . I think its crazy for the
South because this way Im concerned about
Georgia and Louisiana and these places, heres
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.
83
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
84
An experimental approach to the ideological
correlates of Inland North and Midland speech
85
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 didnt
know anything, but it was a buyers 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 Id
help out cause their--shipper had just had a
heart attack and she wasn comin back for a
while.
86
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
87
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 dont do that much right now, but uh
thats what we do.
88
Dialect areas in which U. of Indiana subjects
were raised 4-13 yrs of age
89
Cities assigned to Detroit and Indianapolis
speakers by student listeners at Indiana
University N90
90
Political opinions ascribed to an Inland North
(Detroit) and Midland (Indianapolis) speaker by
students at U. of Indiana, Bloomington N90
No significant difference in judgments of
intelligence, trustworthiness, education Midland
speaker judged more friendly (p lt .00001)
91
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.
92
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.
93
Ideological, political and linguistic
developments, 1817-2008
Party of racial equality
Yankee ideology
Yankee settlement
Non Cities Shift
Expansion in western NY
1825-50 Raising of short-a
1817-1825
Evangelical movement
Westward expansion
Perfectionism
1830-1860
Opposition to racial inequality
1856 Republican
1860-1956
1967 Fronting of /o/ first reported
1960-1995
1960 Democratic
Switch of political allegiance
1986 Backing of /?/ first reported
2000-2008
Blue States /Red States redefined