Michael Silverstein

The race from place: Dialect eradication and the linguistic 'authenticity' of terroir

On 19 November 2010, an article in the New York Times by reporter Sam Roberts sympathetically described the almost Sisyphean task of native speakers of Newyorquais to achieve that point at the stratificational top and center of their language community’s sociolinguistic imaginary, the dialect-less voice “from nowhere” in the register sometimes labeled “General American.”  It became an instant flashpoint in online publication, stimulating over 600 comments before such responses were editorially terminated.  This naturally effervescent stream of ethno-metalinguistic reflexivity, richer, in its way, than any sociolinguistic interview, reveals what we might term the post-“dialectal” (Gumperz) status of “dialect” in American English – cf. “Pittsburghese” (Johnstone, Kiesling, et al.).  Indeed, “accent” has become a naturalized – if not natural – fact about an ineffable inner identity, a fact of human terroir, as it were (compare upscale menus with their Israeli couscous, Wisconsin farm-rasied organic veal, Florida oranges, genuine Idaho potatoes, etc., let alone appellation and DOCG wines), that people seem to cherish and hold on to as much when contemplating its suppression or eradication as when celebrating its properly contextualized performance.