Online ISBN:
9780199369836
Print ISBN:
9780199945689
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
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Barbara Johnstone
Barbara Johnstone
Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics
Carnegie Mellon University
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Oxford Academic
Published:
25 November 2013
Online ISBN:
9780199369836
Print ISBN:
9780199945689
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
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Johnstone, Barbara, Speaking Pittsburghese: The Story of a Dialect (
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Abstract
This book explores the history of Pittsburghese, the local dialect of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area as it is imagined and used by Pittsburghers. Sociolinguist Barbara Johnstone asks what happened during the second half of the 20th century to reshape a largely unnoticed way of speaking in the southwestern Pennsylvania region into a highly visible urban “dialect” called Pittsburghese, linked to local identity so strongly that Pittsburghese is alluded to almost every time people talk about what Pittsburgh is like or what it means to be a Pittsburgher. Treating Pittsburghese as a cultural product of talk, writing, and other forms of social practice, Johnstone shows how non-standard pronunciations, words, and bits of grammar used in the Pittsburgh area were taken up, over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries, into a repertoire of words and phrases and a vocal style that became one of the most resonant symbols of local identity. She describes the constellation of linguistic, historical, and ideological factors that came together to make Pittsburghers aware that there was a distinctive way of speaking in the area and to encourage them to circulate ideas and attitudes about this way of speaking in conversations and stories, in the newspaper, on TV, and on the internet, on t-shirts and in talking dolls, and by performing Pittsburghese on the radio and in everyday moments. To understand this process, the book draws on and adapts Peircian semiotic theory. Written in an accessible, non-technical style, this book will interest Pittsburghers and language scholars alike.
Keywords: Pittsburghese, Pittsburgh, dialect, sociolinguistics, region, identity, semiotics, history, C.S. Peirce
Subject
Sociolinguistics Historical and Diachronic Linguistics European Languages
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
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