Contestation and Enregisterment in Ohio’s Imagined Dialects

Abstract

This article examines the contestation of a partially enregistered variety, namely, the “Cleveland accent” or “northern accent” in Ohio. Speaker perceptions of language variation within Ohio were collected from eighty-nine visitors to a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. Participant responses reflect Ohio’s complex dialect situation, dividing the northern and southern areas of the state out from a purportedly neutral, normative center. Accent-free speakers are positioned in central Ohio cities and presented as racially unmarked, while Southern, rural speakers and African American, young, urban speakers are presented as stigmatized and linguistically deficient Others. This stigma contrasts strikingly with the value-free discussion of otherwise unmarked speakers in northern Ohio, whose language differences, when noted, are presented less negatively, marked as less widely known, and, in some cases, downplayed as idiosyncratic variation. These results suggest that, for Ohio speakers, the North Midland/Inland North boundary is incompletely enregistered and would therefore be a promising site for the examination of enregisterment in progress and of the strategies speakers use to try to counter potential enregisterment.