The Contempt for Provincial Life

Abstract

Abstract The disdain of city people for their country cousins is an ancient story that reoccurs in every urbanizing society. The perennial drama was played out in the century and a half from the emergence of the early industrial city in the United States, through its evolution into a metropolis in the decades around 1900, its maturing after 1920, and its decentralization after the late 1940s down to the present time. The cultural and political conflict between the City of New York and upstate is a classic case in point. The cultural conflict between the center and the periphery arising from these changes was widely reflected in literature and folklore, including the slang of the day. City people expressed their contempt for rural and small-town people and places with more than a hundred pejorative names. Some of the oldest terms are borrowed from British English and were given new turns of meaning in the American urban setting.