Toward a Folklife Approach to American Dialects

Abstract

N COMMENTING on American dialect studies, Raven I. McDavid (1966, p. 13) has said: an explanation of dialect differences we are driven back, inevitably, to social and cultural forces. [?] most obvious force is the speech of the original settlers. burden of proof in dialect questions does not then rest on language alone. In fact, the findings of the historian and the cultural geographer have been very helpful to students of American dialect patterns. Hans Kurath, perhaps the most influential dialect scholar in America, observes in A Word Geography of the Eastern United States (1949, p. v): The geographic and social distribution of words results from population movements, the development of trade areas and transportation systems, the growth of cultural centers and institutions, and the stratification of society. For this reason a realistic history of the vocabulary can be written only with reference to these phases of population history. Kurath depended largely upon historical analysis of the American past to establish correlations between dialect and settlement areas, but he could have used folklife traits as Such aspects of culture are trustworthy documents of everyday life as much as, and perhaps even more than, written records. Henry Glassie (1972, p. 30) comments: The spoor of culture on the land is amazing and easily followed. dangers in interpreting from artifact back through behavior to culture are obvious, but it is the best means we have; we will never understand the eighteenth century if we read only books. By reading artifacts, if we will read enough of them and not be trapped by a shapely cabriole leg or a scrap of molding, we can learn of past culture, the repertoire of learned concepts carried by those people who framed not only our basic law, but our environment and social psychology as well. student of material culture has as his basic concern those artifacts for which the dialect fieldworker elicits names. Since folklife scholars and dialectologists cover the same ground, they should be able to join forces when faced with problems involving the discernment of cultural pattern. Albert H. Marckwardt (1957, p. 8) has stated in reference to the dialect situation in the Midwest, It is clear that we are dealing with a challenging and highly complex dialect situation: one which will require our drawing upon every available facet of cultural and settlement history to give it meaning and to make it understandable. Folklife scholars, concerned as they are with the