\"the creative potential of dialect writing in later-nineteenth-century america\"

$: \"The Creative Potential of Dialect Writing in Later-Nineteenth-Century America\"$
The Creative Potential of Dialect Writing in Later-NineteenthCentury America HOLGER KERSTEN

.. ~ 10 me id is vun of der grandest sights

imaginationable to see der Enklish lankvich running around der unionverse, pure und undefied," declared Diederich Dinkelspiel, a German-American character invented by George V. Hobart in the 1890s.1 Openly displaying deliberate irony and self-deprecating humor, Dinkelspiel verbalized the concerns of many Americans at the turn of the century. The comment marked a backlash that occurred after writing in nonstandard language had achieved an unprecedented popularity in the United States.

From its first manifestations to the phenomena of recent times, the language of American literature has undergone significant changes. Mter the humorists of the 1830S and 1840S had developed a homegrown alternative to the dominant British style of writing, authors of the post-Civil War period strengthened and secured the development toward the use of the vernacular in literature. As a matter of fact, nonstandard language

Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 55, No. I, pp. 92-117. ISSN: 089 1-9356. © 2000 by The Regents of the University of California/Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Pernrissions, University of California

Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

1 George V. Hobart, D. Dinkelspiel: His Gonversationings (New York: New Amsterdam

Book Co., 1900), p. 23·

92

CREATIVE POTENTIAL OF DIALECT WRITING 93

became such a popular form of literary expression in the 1880s that Hamlin Garland spoke of "a cult of the vernacular in 1888."2 From an artistic point of view, the phenomenon reached a climax in 1885 when Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn demonstrated "that the vernacular was adequate to meet any demand a serious writer might make on it."3

This supposedly tolerant attitude, however, was not extended to all types of dialect writing. For some critics the linguistic diversity that Thomas Bailey Aldrich termed "accents of menace alien to our air" endangered the English language and the unity of the American people.4 As mass immigration and urbanization brought together different peoples and thus created an enormous amount of linguistic variation, language was increasingly regarded as a cornerstone of national identity and an index of cultural health.5 People started thinking about instituting language policies to protect the English language from linguistic contamination. Even William Dean Howells, always sympathetic to linguistic variation in literature, felt it necessary to distinguish between "true dialect" and "the broken English of partly Americanized immigrants." 6 This attitude was also conveyed humorously in one of Hobart's dialogues. In a fictitious conversation between Dinkelspiel and Howells, the arbiter of American letters sends his German-American fellowcitizen on a linguistic crusade:

"Go, Dinky!" set Villum Dean Howells, ... "go ouid, Dinky, und reformation der cidy uf der Greatness uf New York from dem vot sandbag der English lankvich .... Go dare ad any hour uf der night or day und you vill hear der shrieks uf der vounded vords as dey faIl from der lips uf dose mens. You viII hear der

2 RoadsideMeetings (New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. 104. 3 Henry Nash Smith, "The Widening of Horizons," in Literary History of the United

States, ed. Robert E. Spiller, et al. (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 650; see also Richard Bridgman, The Colloquial Style in America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966),

Pp·9-10. 4 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Unguarded Gates," Poems of American History, ed. Burton

Egbert Stevenson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), p. 659; see also Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth- Century Literature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), p. 17.

5 See North, pp. 14-18. 6 Elsa NetteIs, Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America (Lexington: Univ.

of Kentucky Press, 1988), p. 67.

94 NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

groans uf der mangled sentences, und der moans uf der dying grammar vill fill your heart mit a pitifulness .... Id is a awfulness, Dinky, und id is eating ids vay into der heart uf der Enklish lankvich mit a sureness vich is a certainty."

(D. Dinkelspiel, pp. 23-24)

Just as prominent representatives of turn-of-the-century American culture found what they regarded as an incompetent use of the English language unacceptable, so modern scholars of American litera~ure have for the most part ignored literary representations of "ethnic dialect." Yet it is difficult to understand exactly why there has been such a reluctance to accept works written in "ethnic dialect" as legitimate objects for research. Margaret Atwood suspects that there is a political element in the rejection of dialects based on the mixing of languages: "This kind of dialect now makes good liberals cringe," she writes in reference to a Canadian dialect writer.7 While there can be no doubt that some literary works of this sort do have a potential for denigrating ethnic groups, there is no reason to denounce ethnically inflected speech as a whole. It seems to be the case, however, that this type of language has become what psychologist Gordon W. Allport calls a "label of primary potency," 8 a symbol that acts like a shrieking siren and renders a neutral approach to the content impossible. As a result, critics magnify the alleged prejudice-producing characteristics and never attempt a close reading of the works within an appropriate literary or historical context.9

In dealing with the subject of dialect, an additional problem emerges: that of the terminology itself. Scholars of literature and linguistics alike have disagreed over the connotations of the terms "ethnic" and "dialect," suspecting a derogatory po-

7 Margaret Atwood, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 77. The reference is to the work of William Henry Drummond (lowe this quotation to my colleague Tamara Pianos) . An attempt to analyze Drummond's dialect work in a different light can be found in Holger Kersten, "William Henry Drummond and American Dialect Poetry," in Informal Empire?: Cultural Relations between Canada, the United States and Europe, ed. Peter Easingwood, Konrad GroB, and Hartmut Lutz (Kiel: I & fVerlag, 1998), pp. 149-67.

8 See The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1954),

P·179· 9 See William]. Mahar, "Black English in Early Blackface Minstrelsy: ANew Interpre

tation of the Sources of Minstrel Show Dialect," American Quarterly, 37 (1985), 261, 283.


tential in both designations. For the purposes of this essay, "dialect" simply designates linguistic forms that depart from the dominant literary language of the period; and "ethnic dialect" refers to a form of nonstandard language that can be attributed to speakers of non-Anglo-Saxon background.

There seems to be a consensus that "ethnic dialect" is "fundamentally offensive [and] insulting to minority groups, who are presented as striving comically to ape their betters." 10

Critics assume that the selection of dialect as a literary medium implies derogatory if not racist intentions. ''American writers reinforced barriers between speakers of English by creating dialects for certain groups within the United States," says Elsa Nettels in her study Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America; and she believes that "the lingos of the comic Germans and Irishmen establish their inferior status" (pp. 72, 76).

It is true that adopting a stylized version of ethnic speech involves a serious dilemma: the use of dialect in literature bears a stigma of coarseness, vulgarity, and general inferiority.ll In addition, the representation of dialect on the printed page or the theatrical stage has often been associated with humorous intentions that, in combination with a view of humor as an act of aggression, prompted another type of unfavorable response: "The attitude of those who engage in dialect humor is one of disdain towards their target. The speech being made fun of is considered 'inferior,' 'crude,' or 'primitive' and its characteristics are often attributed to backwardness, stupidity, and other negative qualities." 12

10 Morris Bishop, "Light Verse in America,» in The Comic Imagination in American Literature, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1973), p. 263. Ethnic dialect has traditionally been regarded as a fundamental component of "ethnic humor," which places it in a context that seems especially given to negative connotations. With hardly any exceptions "ethnic humor" is identified with hostile purposes, even though the precise definition of what the term designates remains vague (see, for example, the essays collected in section VI, "Ethnic Humour," in It's a Funny Thing, Humour, ed. Anthony]. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot [New York: Pergamon Press, 1977], pp. 237-89;and see also the more recent essay by Joseph Dorison and Joseph Boskin, "Racial and Ethnic Humor," in Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics, ed. Lawrence E. Mintz [New York: Greenwood Press, 1988], pp. 163-93)'

11 See Norman Page, Speech in the English Novel (London: Longman, 1973), p. 54. 12 M. L. Apte, "Dialect Humor," in The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed.

R. E. Asher, 10 vols. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994), II, 907.

II


Yet while dialect depictions have indeed been used for crude representations of racial stereotypes, the use of deviant language is by no means an uncontested signal for negative connotations. As Nettels notes, "Occasionally someone pointed out that an ungrammatical speaker was not necessarily a fool, that 'crudity of diction is not always indicative of crudity of thought'" (p. 70) .13 The basic problem lies in the tendency to devalue certain forms of language use with reference to a standard form. Within such a context, deviant forms are regarded as inferior-a view that has serious consequences for the status of such language forms and, by extension, for their users. As long as one upholds a prescriptive dualism that contrasts "correct" usage with supposedly "inappropriate" forms of linguistic expression, there can be no favorable appreciation of literary forms based on these radical types of nonstandard language.

Linguists have insisted for quite some time that there is no basis for regarding one speech variety as superior to another. Research in language contact, code-switching, and codemixing, as well as the scholarship on postcolonial literatures, has addressed the issue of a privileged form of English from new and profitable perspectives. The results have shown that the new forms of language can actually be more effective than conventional speech. The underlying assumption is that the use of the nonstandard is "a type of skilled performance with communicative intent." 14

In this essay I argue in favor of accepting certain types of nonstandard language as legitimate forms of literary expression, just as they are. I reject a deficiency model that regards deviance from "correct" language as inferior, and instead I assume that a writer creates for himself new forms and patterns of literary expression in order to free himself from the strictures of the literary tradition and to explore the communicative potential of innovative linguistic forms. My argument attempts to make available for the writer of dialect works what linguist John J. Gumperz posited with regard to speakers of nonstan-

13 Nettels quotes Charles C. Abbott, "The Unlettered Learned," Lippincott's Magazine,62 (18g8), 125.

14 Carol Myers-Scotton, Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 6.


dard language in oral communication: "Rather than claiming that speakers use language in response to a fixed, predetermined set of prescriptions, it seems more reasonable to assume that they build on their own and their audience's abstract understanding of situational norms, to communicate metaphoric information about how they intend their words to be understood." 15 In a similar way, the usage of nonstandard language in literature has established itself as an alternative type of discourse and set up the conditions for possible understanding along lines of reasoning that differed from those applicable to conventional writing.16 As American audiences of literature became acquainted with a wide variety of imaginative representations of dialect in the course of the nineteenth century, and developed new notions of code or grammatical systems substantially different from the dominating notions of a literary standard, they acquired a framework of understanding that allowed them to transcend a one-dimensional interpretation of dialect as a marker of ethnicity. With the realization that the quality of a text or a performance was independent of whether or not it conformed to the rules of the standard language, the public was able to focus on literary works and performances and on their respective communicative intent. In this way communicative processes came into sight, replacing an attitude that treated literary productions as merely reflecting other, presumably more basic, forces.

Taking my cue from these concepts, I want to suggest that deciphering the unfamiliar spelling and decoding the unusual language in dialect writings is worth the effort because it can shed a revealing light on a hitherto-neglected body of literary works and on American literature as a whole. In fact, the unconventional language served as a device to extend an author's creative possibilities. It permitted him or her to engage in role-

15 John J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), p.61. '

16 This argument tries to adapt for the current purpose Gumperz's explanation for the effect of code switching: "To say that code switching conveys information ... does not mean that a switch can be assigned a single meaning in anyone case. What is signalled are guidelines to suggest lines of reasoning for retrieving other knowledge" (Gumperz, p. 96).

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playing: speaking from the perspective of an ethnic character offered the advantage of presenting American life from the outside, thus creating an opportunity for revealing things otherwise invisible to members of the dominant culture. Although the resulting observations could produce a satirical effect, its impact was cushioned by the humorous framework.

Furthermore, writing in dialect provided opportunities for creative deviations from standard speech, generating opportunities for language experiments and linguistic innovation. The dynamism inherent in such linguistic virtuosity had the potential to challenge prevailing literary patterns and conventions and to turn its creative energies to productive use in the future development of American literature. I7

The amount of material that offers itself for a study of the forms and functions of dialect writing is simply overwhelming. Therefore, I would like to confine myself to sketching the phenomenon in its broad outlines. For this purPose I have selected four writers who shunned standard English as a medium for their literary ventures and replaced it with its varieties based on black, native-American, Irish, and German speech.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first writer in this survey of dialect renditions, became famous through his literary representation of Mrican-American speech. His fate is a vivid illustration of the dilemma plaguing a writer who had to face a tradition of black dialect writing: most of his popular work was collected in eleven volumes of poetry, covering the period from 1893 to 1915, when his Complete Poems were published in a posthumous edition. The poems that contemporaries regarded as his most famous writings were written in a linguistic form that was supposed to represent the speech of Mrican Americans. Here is an example from ''When Malindy Sings":

G'wayan' quit dat noise, Miss LucyPut dat music book away;

17 See Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Censent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 251-53.

CREATIVE POTENTIAL OF DIALECT WRITING

What's de use to keep on tryin'? Efyou practise twell you're gray,

You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin' Lak de ones dat rants and rings

F'om de kitchen to [d]e higwoods When Malindy sings. IS

99

Dunbar's writing style won him a large audience and attracted the attention of William Dean Howells, a major critical force in nineteenth-century America. Howells praised Dunbar as "the only man of pure Mrican blood and of American civilization to feel the negro life aesthetically and express it lyrically." 19 Dunbar's representation of Mrican Americans, Howells stated, was full of humor, sympathy, and truthfulness, and his "refined and delicate art" won him the interest and the favor of a wide audience (Howells, "Introduction," p. ix).20 . Despite these laudatory comments and despite the praise

from prominent Mrican Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois, Dunbar's dialect poetry was regarded as very controversial. Critics of his dialect poems saw him as a successor to Irwin Russell, Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, and other white writers who had assumed an Mrican voice. Although these authors made use of Mrican -American folk material, the purpose of their writings is usually identified with an ideology that attempted to valorize and idealize life in the antebellum South.21

The fact that white writers had appropriated black folk material and created a voice that posed as a truthful rendition

18 Paul Laurence Dunbar, "When Malindy Sings," in The Complete Poems of Paul LaurenceDunbar (1895; rpt. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1980), p. 82.

19 William Dean Howells, "Introduction to Lyrics of Lowly Life," in Dunbar, Complete Poems, p. viii.

20 See Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying- The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that TransformedAmerican Culture, from Slavery to RichardPryor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 406; and Darwin T. Turner, preface to Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), p. v.

21 See William R. Nash, "Dialect Poetry," in The Oxford Cempanion to African American Literature, ed. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), p. 214; and Joanne M. Braxton, "Dunbar, Paul Laurence," in The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, p. 241.


of Mrican-American vernacular presented a dilemma for Dunbar, but he recognized the importance of nonstandard speech for the transcription of the oral tradition to which he had been exposed in his formative years. If he wanted to give adequate expression to the stories his family had told, then his language would have to reflect the characteristic elements of black speech. At the same time, he felt shackled by this literary medium, which, bearing the imprint of blackface minstrelsy and the plantation tradition, was a constant reminder of slavery and of the political and cultural repression that followed emancipation. For this reason, dialect became highly problematic for any serious black poet, even though the decade after the publication of Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life ( 18g6) saw a large number of African-American poets attempting to write their own dialect verse.22

In recent years the predominantly negative attitude toward literary works written in Mrican-American dialect has been reassessed. Modern critics have emphasized the connection between the early poets and their successors: as William R. Nash contends, writers such as Langston Hughes, Sterling A. Brown, and others "adapt[ed] the rhythms and modalities ofvernacular expression to effectively present and preserve certain unique aspects of Mrican American cultural life" (p. 213). This observation suggests that the phenomenon of black dialect writing should not be confined to the regional boundaries and the racist intentions often attributed to it. As a matter of fact, there have been attempts to analyze such writing in a larger context, and recent contributions to research in this field have pointed out the connection of black dialect writing to the work of nonSouthern white dialect writers in the nineteenth century. It is important to remember that Bret Harte's Southwestern dialect stories, James Whitcomb Riley's "Hoosier" poems, John Hay's Pike County Ballads (1871), and the work of Eugene Field, Sam Walter Foss, Sidney Lanier, and others all enjoyed an immense popularity and presented in dialect a wide range of regions in

22 See North, pp. 10-11; Braxton, "Dunbar, Paul Laurence," p. 241; Jeffrey C. Stewart, IOOI Things Everyone Should Know about African American History (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 255; and Nash, "Dialect Poetry," p. 215.


the United States.23 Since these popular writings were widely distributed by newspapers and magazines, it is reasonable to assume that Dunbar and other producers of dialect writings were aware of these efforts.

If one extends the list of influences beyond the regionalists to include those writers who chose the voices of other ethnic groups as their literary medium, it becomes clear that Mrican-American dialect writing was not an isolated phenomenon. Before this background, one might consider black dialect writing as "one point in the evolution of a form that has transmogrified into the urban vernacular poetry of the present age" (Nash, p. 214). In his study of the functions of black dialect writing in the development of American literature, Michael North takes the argument even further. For him, dialect, with "its insurrectionary opposition to the known and familiar in language," determined the future development of literature written in English and exemplified by such writers as T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and others.24

But the list of influences and interrelations does not end here. Anyone trying to draw a faithful picture of American literature in dialect cannot afford to ignore those· writers who chose the voices of other ethnic groups as their literary medium. As dialect writings multiplied tremendously in the two final decades of the nineteenth century, nonstandard language unfolded its innovative potential in various guises. Frequently these literary creations featured as their speaker an ethnic character who shared a social stigma similar to that attributed to Mrican Americans. "Mr. Dooley," for example, an Irish-American character, can in some respects be seen as a counterpart to Dunbar's figures.

Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" is a fictitious proprietor of a small saloon in a predominantly Irish section of Chicago. He started out as a commentator on local affairs, but his true significance began when he turned his interests to national affairs. This moment came with the advent of the Spanish-American War in 18g8: all of a sudden, the local sage changed into an out-

23 See Nash, "Dialect Poetry," p. 214. 24 North, "Preface," p. [i]; see p. 195.


wardly naive but actually very shrewd observer and commentator on American politics. As Dunne's columns were syndicated, his protagonist's voice reached readers across the entire United States.25

In his preface to Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War (18g8), Dunne's first book, the author introduced his protagonist as a "traveller, archa::ologist, historian, social observer,· saloonkeeper, economist, and philosopher," a man who "reads the newspapers with solemn care, heartily hates them, and accepts all they print."26 His function was that of an observer who w~tch~d life as it passed by him, and this spectacle provided hIm With abundant material for his meditations and comments. Dooley found a convenient place in society, "for he ha[d] mastered most of the obstacles in a business career, and by leading a prudent and temperate life ha[d] established himself so well that he own[ed] his own house and furniture" (p. xi). Moreover, Dooley had attained the position of a respected citizen: "He has served his country with distinction. His conduct of the important office of captain of his precinct (1873-75) was highly commended, and there was some talk of nominating him for alderman" (p. xii). Mr. Dooley lived in a neighborhood that stopped being exclusively Irish when immigrants from other countries began to arrive in ever-larger numbers. Nevertheless, this little world, in which Dooley was surrounded by his friends, was "the most generous, thoughtful, honest, and chaste people in the world" (p. x), and had retained a distinctly Irish flavor. This is above all made clear by the particular language in which Mr. Dooley expresses himself.

Dunne's use of dialect produced both positive and negative reviews for him. While the first collection of Mr. Dooley sketches had a favorable reception, some reviewers objected to the author's use of the Irish brogue. Even a cursory reading of the sketches, however, makes it clear that the dialect was not employed as a device to denigrate its speakers. Judging from the preface to Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, Dunne seems to have

25 Se.e Kenny J. W~l~iams and Bernard Duffey, eds., Chicago's Public Wits: A Chapter in the Ameruan Comzc Spznt (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1983), p. 177.

26 [Finley Peter Dunne,] Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1898), p. x.


intended a truthful rendition of the language of his characters. In his remarks about the various Irish accents represented in the community surrounding Mr. Dooley's saloon, Dunne speaks of "the mild and aisy Elizabethan English of the southern Irishman, and all the exquisite variations to be heard between Armagh and Bantry Bay" (p. viii). In an 18gg interview Dunne expressed himself even more clearly: he had tried, he said, "to make Dooley talk as an Irishman would talk who has lived thirty or forty years in America, and whose natural pronunciation had been more or less affected by the slang of the streets~"27 This background seems to support those critics who praised Dunne for "the 'realistic,' true-to-life impression it [the dialect] conveys-that is, for what we take to be Dunne's gifts as a transcriber of the Irish-American speech of his day."28

Faithful representation of an actual linguistic variety was, however, only one aspect of Dunne's usage of the lrishAnierican dialect. Dunne was fully aware of the potential that his idiom had as a literary device. It enabled him to clothe his critical and satirical comments on municipal and financial evils, corruption, and other social vices in a foreign dress.29 To shield himself and his employer, the publisher of the Chicago Post, from possible attacks, he decided to put his criticism into the mouth of a comic Irishman. "It occurred to me," Dunne explained, "that while it might be dangerous to call an alderman a thief in English no one could sue if a comic Irishman denounced the statesman as a thief. ... If I had written the same thing in English I would inevitably have been pis tolled or slugged, as other critics were." 30

Despite his assaults on American politics and mentality, Mr. Dooley enjoyed the favor of the American reading public. Much of this popular acceptance may have been due to the

27 W. Irving Way, "Mr. Martin Dooley of Chicago," Bookman, 9 (1899),217. 28 John Rees, "An Anatomy of Mr. Dooley's Brogue," Studies in American Humor, n.s. 5

(Summer and Fall 1986), 145. Again, William Dean Howells was one of those who praised the literary rendition of the dialect (see Howells, "Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction," North American Review, 176 [1903],734-46).

29 See Norris W. Yates, The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twentieth Century (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1964), p. 97.

gO ?unne, quoted in Walter Blair, Horse Sense in American Humor: From Benjamin Franklzn to Ogden Nash (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1942), p. 244.


entertainment value of his sketches. Dunne himself attributed the favorable reception of his sketches to the fact that the Dooley pieces "reflected the feeling of the public" on the SpanishAmerican War.3l

In view of this popularity it is important to keep in mind that Mr. Dooley, as an American of Irish descent and a Catholic, actually belonged to two minority groups, both of which had traditionally faced considerable opposition and even physical abuse.32 The stage tradition of the comic Irishman, and the countless jokes and anecdotes about the hard-drinking, fighting, and blundering foreigners, made it highly improbable that a member of their ranks would come to embody a type of "'ordinary' American," a man who represented the ''voice of the people" (Yates, pp. 86, 81). And yet Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley succeeded in making his voice heard. In his own way he mirrored the myth of the successful immigrant when he converted himself "from a commentator on local affairs to national and, at the end, even timeless concerns" (Williams and Duffey, pp. 178-79).

Shortly after Dunne won the attention of a large reading public, another ethnic voice appeared in the letters of fictitious characters authored by Alexander Posey. As the son of a white father and a Chickasaw-Creek mother, Posey grew up in a remote section of the Creek Nation and spoke the Creek language at home, only later learning to speak English. Mter having worked as superintendent of public instruction for the Creek Nation, in 1902 he bought the IndianJournal, a weekly newspaper, and became ajournalist. There he turned away from writing poetry, his earlier interest, and devoted his literary efforts to the development of his journalistic prose style, in which he used humorous techniques for news reporting. This particular style won the favor of the local reading public and eventually established his reputation on a national level. In 1904 he interrupted his career as a journalist to work for the federal government.

31 Dunne, quoted in Blair, p. 245. 32 See Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum

America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Vniv. Press, 1986), pp. 138-42.


Posey is recognized as a figure of some historical importance, but, although his poems were frequently printed in major newspapers and journals of the Indian Territory and in some U.S. publications, his literary achievements were quickly forgotten after his death. His Fus Fixico letters remained hidden in the various periodicals where they originally appeared, and they were not collected in book form until 1993.

Even though the body of his published work is rather small, in the Fus Fixico letters Posey established himself as a wellknown political humorist.33 Fus Fixico was a fictitious correspondent who wrote letters in Creek English to the IndianJournal, at first addressing topics related to Creek Indian domestic affairs but soon broadening his scope to include Creek national issues. In the course of time, Fus Fixico enriched his own observations with reports of conversations between his friends, who discussed Creek politics, corruption by officials, the approaching statehood, and other issues.34

Early on, other journalists noted the features that made Posey's newspaper work attractive. They commented on the originality of his expression and his humor, which was based on his clever use of literary allusions, coined words, slang, western expressions, understatement, puns, and other plays on words.35

Many of these features can be found in a letter describing a presidential visit to Indian Territory in April 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt gave an eight-minute address to a crowd of fifteen-hundred listeners and within this brief period managed to talk about the duties of good citizenship, statehood, decency, and the need to elect honest men. For Alexander Posey this was a prime example of an irresponsible politician who raced through the territory and saw few of the people, yet claimed to know what was best for them. Consequently, the letter exhibits an irreverent attitude. Mter some introductory remarks, Hotgun, the central character in the letters, provides a burlesque summary of the president's speech:

33 See Carol A. Petty Hunter, "Preface," in Alexander Posey, The Fus Fixico Letters, ed. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., and Carol A. Petty Hunter (Lincoln: Vniv. of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. xiii.

34 See Littlefield and Hunter, "Introduction," in Fus Fixico Letters, pp. 8-9, 16. 35 See "Introduction," FusFixicoLetters, p. 10.


"Well, so, like I first start to say, Colonel Clarence B. Duglast he was dee-lighted and Chief P. Porter he was dee-lighted, and Charley Gibson he was dee-lighted and Alice M. Lobbysome she was deelighted too. They was all butt in before the reception committee could see if they badges was on straight. They was put the Great White Father on they shoulders and histed 'im upon the grand stand, and he was made a talk to the multitude. He say, 'Well, so I was mighty glad to see you all and hope you was all well. I couldn't complain and I was left Secretary Itscocked enjoying good health .... Look like you all was had a fine country down here. You all ought to had statehood and let Oklahoma show you how to run it .... I want everybody to had a square deal down here .... You all was had a fine town here too. You could run flat boats up to it from Ft. Smith, and deliver the goods over lots of railroads, and pump out oil, and develop salt-licks and float bee-courses. But I didn't had time to talk any more, , cause I couldn't stop here but two minutes and I have been here put near five. So long.'''

(Fus Fixico Letters, pp. 203-4)

All of Posey's writing was couched in a version of English that Creek writer Charles Gibson called "este charte" or "red man" English.36 Gibson had very strong feelings about the use of this type of language-presumably because he was aware of the fact that distorted English could be used as a means to portray American-Indian characters unfavorably. Consequently, he commented with aversion on a series of newspaper letters that he suspected to have been written by a white man: "It's the poorest dialect stuff that was ever forced upon the reading public. Don't dodge behind 'Este Charte,' white man, but get up your rot in straight English, if you can write it." Posey himself also dismissed the low-grade imitation in harsh words: "Those cigar store Indian dialect stories .... are the product of a white man's factory, and bear no resemblance to the real article."37 It is interesting that neither Gibson nor Posey had fundamental objections to the use of this peculiar brand of English. Apparently their only stipulation was that the version was "accurate,"

36 Gibson, "Este Charte," IndianJournal, 1 May 1908; quoted in "Introduction," Fus Fixico Letters, p. 17.

37 Gibson, "Este Charte"; and Posey, IndianJournal, 1 May 1908; both quoted in "Introduction," Fus Fixico Letters, p. 17.


rather than some incompetent imitation of what they perceived as a communicative form actually used by speakers in Indian Territory.

Posey was aware of other forms of dialect humor. As a newspaper editor he received exchange copies of newspapers and thus was in a position to survey the wide range of dialect commentators that populated the columns of many publications. The Muskogee Daily Phoenix gave a short overview of the journalistic dialect multitude:

We have philosophers in all kinds of dialect. The Irish, Mr. Dooley; the negro, Uncle Remus; the slang of George Ade; the Dutch Yacob Undervider, and even the Norwegeian [sic] or the Sweed [sic] in Ole Oleson or Yonny Yonson. Not last of all, yet oldest of all, we have the Indian and the disciple is Fus Fixico of Eufaula.38

The listing of all these "philosophers" makes it clear that they were seen as different manifestations of the same phenomenon: commentators on American life who chose to express themselves in nonstandard language. To the Kansas City Times the proximity seemed so close that it referred to Fus Fixico as "the Dooley of Indian Territory politics." 39

Alexander Posey was not the only writer who availed himself of the possibilities afforded by writing in American-Indian dialect. His predecessors published newspaper sketches as early as 1878, and in rival publications contemporary fellow-journalists offered their observations on issues relating to native-American affairs. Therefore, "the Fus Fixico letters were not an isolated phenomenon but were part of a continuing Indian literary tradition in dialect humor" ("Introduction," Fus Fixico Letters, pp. 29-30 ). Posey's Fus Fixico letters, however, stood out among the literary productions of the other American-Indian dialect writers because Posey surpassed them both in the quantity and the quality of his output. His writings distinguished themselves in quality of style, in the selection of an engaging protagonist, and

38 Muskogee Daily Phoenix, 21 April 1903, reprinted with changes in IndianJournal, 24 April 1903; quoted in "Introduction," Fus Fixico Letters, p. 20.

39 Indian Journal, 8 May and 26 June 1903, quoting Kansas City Times; quoted in "Introduction," Fus Fixico Letters, p. 20.


in the set of characters that surrounded him. Based on his mastery of humorous techniques, Posey succeeded in blending editorial comment with humor and thus created political satires that gained him a widespread reputation.40 In fact, "Posey was one of the earliest American Indian writers of satire and humor and was the best known before Will Rogers" ("Preface," Fus Fixico Letters, p. xiv).

This positive evaluation of Posey's achievement includes the use of his nonstandard version of English. He had a keen ear for dialects and succeeded in transferring the characteristic type of American-Indian English to the printed page. The fact that it was popular among local readers as well as a national audience attests to Posey's talent as a writer of dialect. Like any other vernacular speech artist, he stylized some elements of the language when he took words and phrases from the Creek language and from Creek history, folk belief, and traditional tales and merged them with colloquial expressions, American slang, and grammatical anomalies. His letters are also rich in allusions to the Bible, classical history, English and American literature, and current events. This mixture was an element that gave his writings the humorous potential that contributed to their popularity, but it never clouded the distinctness of the social and political criticism that Posey conveyed in the comments of his characters. In his version of "red man" English, Posey captured native shrewdness and homely common sense and reflected the speech, geography, occupations, politics, and customs of ordinary people of the Indian nations.41

Even though Posey's dialect humor enjoyed its greatest popularity at the beginning of the cen tury and then disappeared into the newspaper archives, the tradition of writing in Indian dialect did not vanish with his death. Throughout the following decades other American-Indian writers used the device of nonstandard English to create a type ofliterature that reflected their preoccupations and their world, which was in fact a meeting point of two linguistic systems. Seen from this perspective, American-Indian dialect can actually be regarded as a dis-

40 See "Preface," p. xiii; and "Introduction," Fus FixicoLettrrrs, pp. 1, 11,30-31. 41 See "Introduction," Fus Fixico Letters, pp. 39-41.


course strategy that enabled its speakers to negotiate their position between two cultures. It functioned as a social-indexing device: even though the speakers lived in a country that was dominated by an Anglo-American culture, they chose to express themselves in a linguistic code that retained some of the elements of their native culture. In this way, "they remind[ed] the addressee of another identity apart from the dominant one" and "index[ed] the nuances of social relationships byexploiting the socio-psychological associations of the languages employed."42

When the Fus Fixico letters first came out in 1902, another ethnic voice was making its last appearance. After a literary life of almost fifty years, Charles Godfrey Leland's "Hans Breitmann" took his leave from the literary scene in three chapters in Leland's book Flaxius: Leaves from the Life of an Immortal.43 "Hans Breitmann" was probably the first literary figure who appeared in a literary work written entirely in the dialect of a more or less recently Americanized foreigner. He sprang to life in 1857 when "Hans Breitmann's Barty" appeared as the first of many ballads that presented the adventures and escapades of an energetic hero who, by his language and his cultural background, was clearly identifiable as an American of German extraction.

Although Leland was an incredibly prolific writer with a staggering range of topics, his fame and popularity rested entirely on his German dialect productions. The humor of the episodes and the quaint language made his writings attractive to a large readership. Some critics, it is true, condemned the idiom that formed the linguistic basis for Leland's poetic endeavors, but as can be seen in a review published in Harper's, this opposition seems to derive from a general distaste of dialect writings rather than an opposition to Leland's Breitmann alone:

We had already, as a nation, carried the doubtful humor of perverted grammar and bad spelling to the utmost verge which a rea-

42 Carol Myers-Scotton, Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 234, 1.

43 See Charles Godfrey Leland, Flaxius: Leaves from the Life of an Immortal (London: Philip Welby, 1902), pp. 28-35, 163-74,318-20 .

....... _ .. _--------- .. ,._._-_.-.. _-_ ..


sonable regard to literary refinement could permit. Hans Breitmann carries it beyond that bound into the realm of clownish vulgarity.44

Readers with a better understanding of what Leland was trying to do reacted in a way that is exemplified by Bret Harte's review. "The great charm of Hans Breitmann is that he is something more than funny," Harte wrote in the Overland Monthly, calling Breitmann "a character in American literature-as distinct, if not in some respects even more original than Mr. Lowell's Conservative Yankee." 45

Such a positive appraisal was based on the realization that Leland's poems had much more to offer than their perplexing outward appearance. Readers willing to accept the challenge of the unfamiliar language encountered works that, apart from exhibiting a wide range of humorous techniques, displayed a wealth of allusions to German literature, German history, and German culture. Moreover, the ballads also addressed topics that were of a more immediate relevance to an American audience: in "Breitmann in Battle" Leland began a series of poems that dealt with the American Civil War, and in another sequence of poems, entitled "Breitmann in Politics," he satirized American election campaigns and the gullibility of American voters.46

As Breitmann outlines his "political program," he makes the following promise to his audience:

"Und dat ve may meed in gommon, I deglare here in dis hallUnd I shvears mineselfto holt to it, votefer may pefall-Dat any man who gifes me his fote-votefer his boledics peShall alfays pe regartet ash bolidigal friendt py me." ... "Dese ish de brinciples I holts, and dose in vitch I run: Dey ish fixed firm und immutaple ash de course of de 'ternal sun: Boot if you ton't approve of dem-blease nodice vot I say-

44 "Editor's Book Table" [rev. of Hans Breitmann's Ballads], Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 39 (1869),770 .

45 [Bret Harte], [rev. of Hans Breitmann About Town, and Other Ballads], Overland Monthly, 3 (1869), 196.

46 See Charles Godfrey Leland, Hans Breitmann's Ballads; Wzth an Introduction by Elizabeth Robins Pennell (New York: Dover, 1965), pp. 57-88 and 103-28. Further references, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition and are referred to in the text as Ballads.


I shall only pe too happy to alder dem right afay." (Ballads, pp. 118-19)

A thorough look at the linguistic form of the Breitmann ballads reveals that Leland did not employ his mixture of Ger~an and English simply to produce a humorous response in ~IS. ~eaders. One reviewer, obviously concerned about the posSIbIlIty that readers might reject the ballads because of their linguistic complexity, cautioned the author to keep his verbal virtuosity in check: "Mr. Leland rather overdoes the dialect in some parts, making it so obscure ... that the English reading ~erson for whom it is principally intended will find it imposSIble to understand what is meant unless he happens to be familiarwith the German language."47 Leland, however, had very c.lear ideas about his literary medium. He saw his representatIon of German-American dialect as a truthful rendition of how G~~an Americans really spoke. In his preface to a complete edItIon of the Breitmann Ballads Leland felt called upon to address the criticism that had been directed against what app~ared as an inconsistent use of the unconventional language. ~Ith a ~een insight into linguistic principles, he explained the drfficultIes that arose from his endeavor:

There is actually no well-defined method or standard of "German-English," since not only do no two men speak it alike, but no one individual is invariably consistent in his errors or accuracies .... it would consequently have been a grave error to reduce the broken and irregular jargon of the book to a fixed and regular language, or to require that the author should invariably .write exactly the same mispronunciations with strict consistency on all occasions.48

By the time his last book was published in 1902, Leland had lost nothing of his conviction that Breitmann's version of

47 ~eview of Hans Breitmann's Ballads; undated clipping of unknown origin; preserved In Charles G. Leland Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Yi2 2536F, envelope labeled "Proofs and Clippings-Newspaper Critical Reviews of Breitmann, 1."

48 Charles Godfrey Leland, The Breitmann Ballads: A New Edition (London: Tnibner & Co., Ludgate Hill, 1889), p. xiii; reprinted in Ballads, p. xix.


English was indeed a language in its own right. When critics complained that his 1895 book Hans Breitmann in Germany, Tyrol contained so much German as to render it unintelligible, he mocked them by stating that such criticism "was much like declaring that there is too much Latin in the poems of Virgil or Horace" (Flaxius, p. 173).

Leland's list of publications does indeed show his interest in and his qualifications for serious studies in linguistics and folklore. In 1873, shortly after the Breitmann poems had appeared, Leland published The English Gipsies and Their Language.49 This book was followed two years later by English-Gipsy Songs: In Rommany with MetricalEnglish Translations.50 Commenting on Leland's publication of Indian tales in The Algonquin Legends of New England and a collection of Algonkin poems in translation,51 American philologist John Dyneley Prince wrote that "Leland was indeed the pioneer in examining the oral literat':lre of the northeastern Algonkin tribes." 52 At the end of the 1880s Leland collaborated with Albert Barrere on A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant,53 and he wrote an introduction for a collection of voodoo tales current among the blacks of the

49 Charles Godfrey Leland, The English Gipsies and Their Language (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1873); see also "Charles Godfrey Leland," in Bibliography of American Literature, ed.Jacob Blanck, 9 vols. to date (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1955-), V; 363 (hereafter referred to as "Blanck"). Leland is also credited with discovering Shelta, a language used by Travelling People (tinkers) in Ireland and Britain (see Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Charles Godfrey Leland: A Biography, 2 vols. [Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1906], II, 214-18).

50 Charles Godfrey Leland, E. H. Palmer, and Janet Tuckey, English-Gipsy Songs: In Rommany with Metrical English Translations (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1875); see Blanck, p. 364-

51 Charles Godfrey Leland, The Algonquin Legends of New England, or Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Tribes (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1884); see Blanck, p. 371. Leland also read a paper entitled "The Mythology, Legends, and Folk-Lore of the Algonkins" before the Royal British Society of Literature (See Leland, 28 June 1887 letter to Elizabeth Robins Pennell, in Pennell, Charles Godfrey Leland, II, 295). The text of the lecture appears in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Second Series, l-VL Xlv, Part I (London, 1887), pp. [68] - 91; see Blanck, p. 373.

52 Prince, quoted in Pennell, Charles Godfrey Leland, II, 239. 53 Albert Barrere, and Charles G. Leland, eds., A Dictionary ofSlang,Jargon and Cant;

Embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian Slang, Pidgin English, Tinkers'Jargon, and Other Irregular Phraseology, rev. ed., 2 vols. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1897); see Blanck, pp. 375, 382.


American Southwest, which presented its material in MricanAmerican dialect. 54

Leland's achievements in linguistic and folklore studies were commented upon in an obituary by F. York Powell that appeared in the journal Folklore in 1903. Here Powell compared Leland to the leading scholars in the field: "He possessed the linguistic gifts of Palmer, but with finer literary instinct. He had something of Burton in his delight in natural human beings ... , and he had something of Schuchardt's warm instinct for the 'tongues of transition' and the 'life of transition' between indigenous and imported civilisation." 55

The same type oflinguistic interest is apparent in Leland's little volume entitled Pidgin-English Sing-Song, first published in 1876. To a reader flipping through the pages of this small volume, the cover illustration of a pig-tailed Chinese man and the extreme departures from standard English might suggest another publication intended to ridicule Chinese Americans or the Chinese themselves. At closer inspection, however, the book reveals itself as one of Leland's attempts to capture another variety of the English language. With the interest of a linguist, Leland in his introduction provides his readers with factual information about the language mix. As in the preface to the Breitmann ballads, Leland here addresses the problematic issue of language representation, emphasizing again "the difficulty of spelling a jargon for which no standard is established, and which varies with every speaker."56 To bolster his claim of linguistic accuracy, Leland refers to the comments of two prominent English Orientalists:

Two distinguished Anglo-Chinese scholars, Professor R. K. Douglas and H. A. Giles, ... were so kind as to take great interest in this work while it was in progress, aiding me by correction, criticism, and contribution of material of every kind, and ... they

54 See Charles Godfrey Leland, introduction to Mary Alicia Owen, l-Vodoo Tales as Told among the Negroes of the Southwest: Collected from Original Sources (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), pp. v-ix; see Blanck, p. 379.

55 F. York Powell, "In Memoriam: Charles Godfrey Leland," Folklore, 14 (1903), 163; a clipping is in Leland's Memorial Scrapbook at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

56 Charles Godfrey Leland, Pidgin-English Sing-Song, or Songs and Stories in the ChinaEnglishDialect. With a l-Vcabulary (London: Tnibner & Co., 1876), p. 7.


consider the language of the songs and stories as generally ap-propriate and correct. (PP.5:-6)

Contemporary scholars did indeed acknowledge Leland as a specialist in this field: at the Oriental Congress, held in London in September 1891, he was referred to "as being 'beyond question at the very head of Pidgin English learning and literature.'" 57

In the poems and stories collected in Pidgin-English SingSong Leland mean t to preserve some of the material that circulated in oral form among speakers of pidgin English. At the same time, the book also had a very practical purpose: published complete with a "Pidgin-English Vocabulary" and a listing of "Pidgin-English Names," it was designed as a textbook for potentiallearners of the dialect. ''For those who expect to meet with Chinese," Leland wrote in his preface, "either in the East or California, this little book will perhaps be useful, as qualifying them to converse in Pidgin" (p. 8). Judging from the fact that the book went through at least ten editions, covering a time span of more than forty years, it must have appeared useful to a specialized audience.58

Besides the linguistic and pseudo-ethnographic elements, Leland's writings also show affinities with macaronic literature, a tradition that he was familiar with because of his interest in German and Italian culture, especially in their medieval periods. Macaronic writing, in its widest sense, can be defined as "everything ... that is written by the aid of more than one language or dialect."59 In its creative use of languages it often achieves a comic effect. In "Breitmann Interviews the Pope," for example, Leland fused English, German, Italian, and Latin words in his rhymes:

"Sit verbo venia," said Hans, "permitte, Sancte Pater, Num verum est ut noster rum gemixta est mit water?

57 Leland, 11 September 1891 letter to Elizabeth Robins Pennell, in Pennell, Charles Godfrey Leland, II, 349.

58 The tenth edition of the book was published twenty-one years after Leland's death: see Charles Godfrey Leland, Pidgin-English Sing-Song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect. Wzth a Vocabulary, 10th ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1924).

59 James Appleton Morgan, preface to Macaronic Poetry, ed. Morgan (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1872), p. ix.

CREATIVE POTENTIAL OF DIALECT WRITING

In cedis wo die gotter live, non semper est sereno, Nor de wein ash goot ash decet in each spaccio di vino."

(Ballads, p. 223)

115

This example well illustrates why a reviewer doubted that "one out of every ten persons who read the poems will understand" them.60 Locating the value of the ballads in their content rather than their linguistic form, this critic feared that, deprived of a meaningful narrative, the poems would lose their charm. He did not take into account, however, that discursive meaning and logical sense are not the only aspects that readers enjoy. "Nonsense" writings hold an immense potential for pleasure and interpretive speculation.

This link to "nonsense" writings also connects Leland with his literary predecessors Rabelais and Swift and his contemporaries Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Like them, Leland loved to engage in extreme forms of language play, but this inclination was not a self-serving stratagem: Breitmann's fantastic verbal exploits were a perfect linguistic equivalent to his outrageous adventures.

In addition to this broad outline of end-ofthe-century dialect writings, it is important to keep in mind that a comprehensive survey of literary works in nonstandard English would have to include the names of Charles Follen Adams,61 Charles H. Harris,62 George V. Hobart,63 and Kurt M.

60 Review of Hans Breitmann's Ballads, undated clipping of unknown origin; preserved in Charles G. Leland Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Yi2 2536F, envelope labeled "Proofs and Clippings-Newspaper Critical Reviews of Breitmann, I."

61 E.g., Charles Follen Adams, Leedle Yawcob Strauss and Other Poems (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1877); Yawcob Strauss and Other Poems (Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1910).

62 E.g., [Charles H. Harris], Carl Pretzel's Komikal Speaker: A New Collection of Drol~ Whimsica~ Laughable and Odd Pieces for Recitation, in Schools, Exhibitions, Thung People's Societies, and Parlor Entertainments. PreparedExpressly for this Series, Speaker Series, vol. 15 (New York: Beadle and Adams, 1873); Carl Pretzel's Vedder Brognostidikador und Almineck Kalinder, I873 (New York: Robert M. De Witt, 1872).

63 E.g., George V. Hobart, D. Dinkelspiel: His Gonversationings (New York: New Amsterdam Book Co., 1900); Heart to Heart Talks mit Dinkelspiel (New York: G. W. Dilling-


Stein,64 who all wrote in German dialect; Montague Glass 65 and Milt Gross,66 who created popular characters expressing themselves in Yiddish English; and William Henry Drummond,67 the writer who used the English-French language mix of the FrenchCanadian habitants. It would also include Wallace Irwin, who attained a high popularity with the Japanese-English idiom that he used for his Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy; 68 Thomas A. Daly, who published Italian-English poems in collections such as Carmina, Canzoni, and McAroni Ballads; 69 and George T. Springer and others who wrote in Scandinavian dialect.70

Even these names and titles, however, constitute only a fragmentary catalog. As a matter offact, at present there may be no such thing as a complete list of dialect writings, simply because much of this material is difficult to access. Libraries are notably weak in collections of this type of popular culture, and what they have is not necessarily the best material. For the purpose oflocating relevant dialect material, flea markets, paper collec-

ham Co., Ig00); Eppy Grams by Dinkelspiel (New York: G. W. Dillingham Co., Ig04); Dinkelspiel's Letters to Looey (New York: G. W. Dillingham Co., Ig0S).

64 E.g., Kurt M. Stein, Limburger Lyrics: Oder Odes in Die SchOnste Lengevitch (New York: Covici, Friede, 1932); Die Schonste Lengevitch (New York: Covici Friede, Publishers, Ig25); Die Allerschonste Lengevitch (New York: Crown Publishers, Ig53).

65 E.g., Montague Glass, Abe and Mawruss: Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter ( Ig0g; New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Ig11); Potash and Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Igll); Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things (New York: Harper & Brothers, Iglg).

66 E.g., Milt Gross, Nize Baby (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Ig25); Dunt Esk! (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1926); Hiawatta Witt No Odder Poems (New York: George H. Doran Co., Ig26); Dear Dollink: Momma Writes to Her Frankie at the Front (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ig44). .

67 E.g., William Henry Drummond, The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, ISg7);johnnie Courteau and Other Poems (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ig01); The Voyageur and Other Poems (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, Ig05).

68 Wallace Irwin, Letters of a japanese Schoolboy ("Hashimura Togo") (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., Ig0g).

69 T[homas] A[ugustine] Daly, Canzoni and Songs of Wedlock (lg06; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., IgI6); Carmina (lg06; New York: John Lane Co., IgIS);McAroni Ballads and Other Verses (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Iglg).

70 E.g., George T. Springer, Yumpin' Yimminy: Scandinavian Dialect Selections (Long Prairie, Minn.: Hart Publications, Ig32); Eleonora Olson and Ethel Olson, Yust for Fun: Norwegian-American Dialect Monologues (Minneapolis: Lund Press, Ig25)' A reference to other Scandinavian immigrant stories can be found in B. A. Botkin, ed., A Treasury of Western Folklore, rev. ed. (New York: Crown, Ig75), pp. 23-27.


tors, and used and antiquarian bookstores are better sources than the traditional research libraries.71

In the final analysis, the value of what contemporary critics saw as the "bastard sounds" of literary dialect went far beyond its capacity of representing what more sympathetic reviewers had called the "natural speech of emotion."72 In the hands of a host of skilled writers interested in the language of the folk, it became a medium for transcribing the mixed codes of ethnic groups. As a device for characterization, it suggested unaffected simplicity or rugged independence.73 It also created a form of expression differing sufficiently from the dominant language to serve as an index of a special identity that merged elements from the two linguistic and cultural systems involved.

More important still, as writers used these unconventional linguistic forms to disrupt the routines of linguistic perception, they provided their audiences with a different kind of aesthetic experience and created opportunities for new and surprising insights and sensations. With the help of a language that drew attention to itself in a most striking fashion, the dialect writers placed in the foreground the act of expression and made audiences aware of their own automatized actions and preconceptions. The linguistic endeavors of these writers created their own texture and tone, tracing new themes and meanings and promoting general creativity and change in society. With this contribution, dialect writing became a stepping stone in the development of modern writing. On the threshold to the twentieth cen tury, the fractured language of the dialect writers embodied an opposition to an orderly, coherent, and standardized linguistic universe. With the unconventionality and the flexibility it offered, and its implicit rebellion against the stifling authoritarianism of the standard language, dialect literature "became the prototype for the most radical representational strategies of English-language modernism."74

Kiel University

71 See David E. E. Sloane, "Dialect Poetry in Later Nineteen~Century America: Bibliographical Influences on Interpretation," typescript of a paper read at the MLA Conference in Toronto, Canada, 27 December 1997, pp. [1], [2]; quoted by permission.

72 See North, The Dialect of Modernism, pp. Ig, 134· 73 See Page, SPeech in the English Novel, p. 73. 74 North, preface, p. [i]; see also pp. 27, 195.

\"the creative potential of dialect writing in later-nineteenth-century america\"

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