Abstract
In Pittsburgh, there is a recognizable, socially meaningful way of speaking, popularly known as Pittsburghese. Through a number of metapragmatic and metadiscursive practices, Pittsburghese has become enregistered (Agha, 2003, 2007), and thus ideologically linked to a specific persona, the authentic Pittsburgher (Johnstone, 2009, 2011; Johnstone et al., 2006). In this paper, I explore the enregisterment of Pittsburghese in the local African American community, and the ways in which the dialect is a site for the expression and reproduction of cultural values linked to Whites in the city. For African Americans, Pittsburghese is not only indexical of localness but specifically of White localness, which also has the effect of erasing social class distinctions that may otherwise be important to the meanings of Pittsburghese for White residents of the city.
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