English in Maine:
The Mythologization and Commodification of a Dialect
Lindsay Ann Reid
©
2007
Overview
Bordered by New Hampshire, Québec, New Brunswick, and the
Atlantic Ocean, Maine is the largest of the New England states in the
northeastern U.S. Like many other coastal or isolated regions along the North
American Atlantic seaboard (i.e. Appalachia or Newfoundland), the state has
acquired a reputation for being linguistically conservative. The local speech
is commonly presumed to retain many of the features of the region’s original,
primarily British settlers; this widespread perception is, no doubt, reinforced
by the state’s geographical isolation, relative homogeneity, and comparatively
long history.
This article investigates the
historical and cultural bases for Maine’s sociolinguistic stereotypes. It
examines how the idea of a unique Maine dialect has evolved and manifested
itself. Beginning with a look at the state’s historical demographics, and
moving to consider the state’s ongoing mythologization in tourist literature,
it probes the connections between tourism, the idea of authenticity, and
dialect. Examining the characteristics commonly attributed to local speech in
both popular, scholarly, and literary texts, the article then moves to a
consideration of Maine’s contemporary language ecology and, finally, to a
reflection on the use of Maine dialect as a local commodity.
The Historical
Demographics of Maine
Prior to
the onset of European colonization in the early 17th century, the
area which has become modernday Maine had long been inhabited by native
peoples, including the Wabenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Penobscot, and
Passamaquoddy. In 1604, a French outpost was briefly established on
Saint Croix Island, and in 1607 – the same year in which the settlement at
Jamestown, Virginia was established – an English group established a similarly
short-lived settlement at Popham. It was not long before the groups clashed, as
French, English, and indigenous populations competed for dominance in the
region.
In 1622, the first patent establishing the British
Province of Maine was granted. This covered much of modern day southern and
central Maine, and similar patents were renewed several times during the 17th
century. A number of English settlements were established along the southern
Maine coast in the 1620s, with varying degrees of success. The
early settlers consisted primarially of English Protestants, and throughout the 17th
century, a number of English-speaking colonists from other parts of New
England, primarily Massachusetts, moved northwards into Maine. Meanwhile,
portions of what has become modernday Maine were part of New France’s province
l’Acadie, and the boundaries of the respective French and English colonial
claims remained blurry until New France was surrendered to Britain in 1713.
After mass deportations of French Acadians from Canada’s present-day Maritime
Provinces in the eighteenth century, large numbers of francophone deportees
began to settle northern Maine’s Saint John Valley, where they were
subsequently joined by additional settlers from the St. Lawrence River valley.
Wars with both French and indigenous
peoples in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries slowed attempts
at permanent settlement by the English colonials. The population of Maine according to the census of 1790 was a mere
96,540. However, by 1820, when Maine separated from Massachusetts to become the
nation’s 23rd state, the population of Maine had reached nearly 300,000 (Fobes
67).
The precise boundaries and ownership
of Maine continued to be disputed between the United States and England in the
early 19th century. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 had left the northern border of the state
ambiguous, and the line between Maine and
New Brunswick remained a particular matter of debate; both claimed the area of
northern Maine that is now Aroostook County. In 1839, in the only instance of a
U.S. state declaring war on a foreign power, Governor Fairfield initiated the
short-lived and bloodless “Aroostook War” between Maine and England over the
ongoing boundary dispute, and it was not until 1842 that the matter was
definitively resolved.
Maine’s early economy was
based primarially on forestry, fishing, shipbuilding, and fur trading, and the
state experienced a relative degree of prosperity throughout the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. By 1800, the state was attracting its first Irish
immigrants. The rapid growth of the state’s
emerging textile industries in the nineteenth century created a constant demand
for manpower, and many of the state’s Irish immigrants worked on construction
projects and in the region’s factories.
The nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries also witnessed waves of French-Canadian migration into Maine; by
1910, there were approximately 35,000 Canadian born francophones residing in
the state (Avila and Stewart 462). Like the Irish immigrants of the same era,
these French-Canadians were attracted by the booming textile industry in the
region, and many suffered from poor working conditions and ethnic
discrimination.
Tourism and
The Mythology of Place
At the same time that Maine’s textile production began to
decrease at the turn of the twentieth century, tourism emerged as a major
industry in the state. Since 1936, the license plates in Maine have sported the
state’s unofficial motto: “Vacationland”. The state has long been home to a
host of seasonal luxury resorts, picturesque coastal regions, and ski hills
which attract thousands upon thousands of visitors each year. Today, tourism is
Maine’s largest industry, and its evidence abounds, particularly in coastal
areas, which are dotted with souvenir shops, outlet stores, and chowder houses.
Known for its dense forests, rugged coastline, plentiful
lakes, mild summers, and abundant wildlife, Maine provides the promise of a
tranquil and scenic outdoor holiday. The state’s most enduring image in popular
culture is as an unspoiled, rural paradise. On its official website, the Maine Office
of Tourism promises prospective visitors:
From the
first hint of spring through the lazy days of summer, Maine is an outdoor
wonderland. You can explore the coast, mountains, woods, rivers and lakes by
kayak, bike or seaplane. Spot a majestic moose while camping or hiking. Relax
at one of our sandy beaches. Board a boat for whale and puffin watching. Get to
know the locals at a summer festival. Savor the ocean’s bounty at a Maine
lobster bake. Tee off at a lakeside course. Or indulge in wild blueberry pie.
Summer in Maine is everything you’d expect and so much more.
Much of
Maine’s enduring image as a pastoral and idyllic ‘outdoor wonderland’ has been
constructed in and propagated by precisely this type of tourist literature, in
which getaways to ‘Vacationland’ are highly romanticized and overtly associated
with themes of escapism and relaxation. Richard Judd – who has noted how,
historically, “[r]usticity itself…became an important commercial resource” in
Maine – writes: “Contrasting this landscape to the noxious and crowded
industrial centers most vacationers were fleeing, tourist literature presented
Maine as the true poetical conception of the wilderness in all its wild beauty,
unpolluted by the march of modern progress” (184).
The myth
of Maine in tourist literature extends beyond the charm of its picturesque
landscape, however. As the Maine Office of Tourism’s invitation
‘Get to know the locals at a summer festival’ reminds us, the state’s
inhabitants are frequently mythologized along with its scenery. It is thus that we find
references to meeting the locals and adopting their easy-going and wholesome
lifestyle in much of the available tourist literature. The introduction to
Kathleen M. Brandes’ guidebook on coastal Maine states:
Along this coast are 64 lighthouses, 90 percent of the nation’s
lobsters, and the eastern seaboard’s highest peak. And then there are the
coastal Mainers who lend this place its specialness. No individuals are more
rugged than the umpteenth-generation fishermen who make their honest living
from these bone-chilling waters (1).
Prospective
visitors are promised glimpses of and interactions with the people in
their native habitats, just as they are tantalized by the possibility of
spotting a moose or two. There is a sense in which Maine’s residents are cast
in the role of live tourist attractions; the natives – invariably characterized as
friendly and bucolic – become an element in what Roland Barthes would call the ‘decor
of place’. One rental
website, which advertises coastal accommodation, grandiosely
proclaims:
Vacation in a place where family and friends can
experience the real ‘Downeast way of life.’ This newly renovated home is
located in Cutler, Maine, a quaint coastal fishing village, where life is
simple and the locals are friendly. Awake to a breathtaking sunrise that marks
the beginning of the working day for fishermen. Spectacular ocean views can be
found around every turn in this spacious cottage. Spend time relaxing on the
cottage’s deck, overlooking the day to day activity of the harbor and the community.
Or, within just a two-minute walk you can stop to say good morning to the
locals on one of the several nearby wharfs, while buying some freshly caught
lobster for the evening’s feast.
George
H. Lewis remarks that such characterizations reduce the Maine residents to
idealized stereotypes, and he further remarks the “quaint folkways, down east
humor and the Maine accent” attributed to the cartoonish local characters found
in the literature of the tourist industry. Lewis’s reference to the so-called
‘Maine accent’ in the above quotation is significant, for the idea that
Maine’s rustic natives speak in an idiosyncratic, archaic, nasal and twangy
regional dialect (variously referred to as ‘Down East’ and ‘Yankee’ in addition
to ‘Maine’ speech) is a prevalent one in tourist literature and that
experiencing the unique local dialect is an integral part of the authentic
tourist experience. For example, Earl Brechlin’s Adventure Guide to Maine
suggests:
In addition to its spectacular scenery and pristine
wilderness Maine has also earned a reputation as a homeland for quirky
characters born with quick wits and extraordinarily dry senses of humor.
Combined with the famous Down East accent… it becomes the foundation for a
truly original experience (65).
In
a similar vein, Brandes’ guidebook – which goes so far as to include a glossary
of local lexical variants and idioms entitled “A Coastal Maine Dictionary” –
informs prospective tourists:
In Maine, there are natives and natives. Every
day, obituary pages describe Mainers who have barely left the houses in which
they were born – even in which their grandparents were born. We’re talking
roots! Along with this kind of heritage comes a vocabulary all its own – lingo
distinctive to Maine or at least New England” (16).
These
linguistic stereotypes have spawned numerous – and often comedic – guides to
Maine culture and dialect, such as Gerald E. Lewis and Tim Sample’s
How to Talk Yankee.
Characteristics Commonly Attributed to Maine
Dialect
Like all stereotypes, the idea of
Maine dialect that is perpetuated so strongly in tourist literature is born out
of overgeneralizations made by both natives of the state and outsiders. Several
distinctive characteristics of the region’s traditional speech patterns have
been perceived and validated by non-linguists and linguists alike. Although, as
Naomi Nagy and Julie Roberts note, the regional dialect is “in many ways
similar to that heard in many other regions of the United States” (258), they
clarify that “[t]here are a number of both consonantal and vowel patterns that
preserve the distinction between [the English of New England] and other
varieties present in the U.S.” (264-265).
In an article on pronunciation in
New England written in 1899, C.H. Grandgent claimed: “The distinctive features
of the present New England speech are the suppression of the consonant r unless
it precede a vowel, the use of a [i.e. /ɑː/ where an /ɑ/ or /æ/ might be found
in other dialects]…and the shortening of ô to ò [i.e. /ɒ/]” (208). Grandgent’s interest in identifying,
categorizing, and cataloguing the distinctive features of regional speech
patterns was typical of early twentieth century linguists. Although, as Nagy
and Roberts have lamented, there has been a “dearth of recent research in New
England English” (255), there were numerous academic articles on the varieties
of New England – and Maine – Englishes published prior to 1950.
Hans Kurath’s massive, six volume Linguistic
Altas of New England, completed between 1939 and 1943, was the most
comprehensive of these early twentieth century efforts to characterize Maine
dialect. His work divided New England into seven linguistic subregions and
Maine into two subregions, and it made a distinction between General Maine
dialect and Upper Maine dialect (the latter representing the north and far
eastern sections of the state). Many of Kurath’s subregions, however, exhibited
only minor variations from one another. Thus, in most of the later scholarly
material, Maine dialect has been treated more-or-less uniformly and most often
been labeled ‘Eastern New England English’ or ‘Northern New England English.’ It is
generally observed that, though it has a few similarities to the varieties of
English used in neighbouring Canadian provinces (such as the so-called cot-caught
merger and ‘Canadian raising’ in words such as price), the traditional
dialect of Maine has more profound resemblances to the dialects spoken
elsewhere in northern New England; it is closely related to the well-known
dialect of Boston, the area’s closest urban centre.
The most frequently remarked
characteristic of Maine English is its lack of rhoticity; there is variable
vocalization of post-vocalic r among the population. Although /ɹ/ is always
pronounced when the letter r begins a syllable, an r at the end
of a syllable is typically silent or pronounced as the neutral vowel /ə/. This means
that shot and short are homonyms, both pronounced [ʃɔːt]; other
characteristic examples of non-rhotic Maine speech are [kɑː] for car
and [bɑːn] for barn.
The exception is the so-called linking r, which comes at the end of
a word and is pronounced /ɹ/ when the
following word begins with a vowel.
Other striking phonological
characteristics attributed to Maine English involve its use of a greater number
of vowels than are found in General American speech. For example, the
Marry-Mary-Merry merger seen throughout most of North America is not complete
in Maine, though it may be starting to take hold. Although the aforementioned
vowel /ɒ/referred to
by Grandgent in 1899 seems to have passed out of common usage, a large number
of speakers continue to exhibit the use of /ɑː/ where an /ɑ/ or /æ/ might be
expected in General American; this affects words like trap, bath,
dance, and glass.
Maine dialect is also characterized
by an intrusive /ɹ/, which can appear after vowels at
the end of words including idea or banana; the substitution of /i/ for the
final vowel in words including Florida; the omission of the final sound
in words ending in an unaccented –ing; and using glottal stops in middle
of words like kitten and mitten or at end of words like Vermont,
perfect, or kept. The /j/ is dropped in
some words like new, duke, and tune, but it is kept in others,
such as Tuesday. In oral discourse, syncope, or losing a syllable, is
also common in words like didn’t, company, or Saturday.
Initial unstressed syllables are sometimes also dropped in words like appeared,
another, or remember, making these sound like ‘peared’ ‘nother’ and ‘member’.
In terms of morphology, it has been
noted that some speakers of Maine English occasionally use nonstandard verb
forms. Examples include the past tense forms brung (brought), drownded
(drowned), dremp (dreamed), growed (grew), heared (heard),
rid (rode), swum (swam), and writ (wrote). Some speakers
also use nonstandard past participles, including boughten (bought) and soaken
(soaked).
Maine
dialect is also associated with a number of localisms and lexical variants,
some of which are also used elsewhere in Northern New England. The two
expressions most often used to satirize or characterize local speech are ayuh,
an affirmative and wicked used as an intensifying adjective. Other lexical alternatives and local expressions
associated with Maine dialect appear in the following table.
|
alewives |
n.,
herring |
|
blinker |
n.,
vehicle indicator light |
|
bulkie |
n., a sandwich roll, like a kaiser roll |
|
bureau |
n.,
dresser or chest of drawers |
|
chicken
dressing |
n.,
manure |
|
cunning |
adj.,
cute |
|
dinner
pail |
n.,
lunchbox |
|
dooryard |
n.,
area in front of a house, which might include the driveway |
|
down
cellar |
exp.,
‘in the basement’ |
|
elastic |
n.,
rubber band |
|
fart |
n.,
a meticulous person, usually prefaced by ‘old’ |
|
flatlander |
adj.,
someone from out of state |
|
frappe |
n.,
milkshake |
|
from
away |
adj.,
‘not born in Maine’ |
|
gawmy |
adj.,
awkward |
|
gorry |
exc.,
gosh! |
|
hot
top |
n.,
pavement or asphalt |
|
Italian |
n.,
a sub sandwich with cold cuts |
|
jimmies |
n.,
dessert sprinkles |
|
johnny |
n.,
hospital gown |
|
Masshole |
n.,
derogatory term for someone from Massachusetts |
|
middling |
adj.,
fairly or halfway, as in the assertion ‘he’s middling tall’ |
|
notional |
adj.,
stubborn |
|
rotary |
n.,
traffic circle or roundabout |
|
spleeny |
adj.,
oversensitive |
|
summer
complaint |
n.,
a tourist or retiree who visits Maine for the summer season |
|
summercater |
n.,
a tourist or retiree who visits Maine for the summer season |
Writing in Maine Dialect
Since at least the nineteenth century, a number of
authors have tried to approximate the speech patterns of Maine natives in their
writing. Perhaps the most significant early attempts to represent Maine dialect
in literature can be attributed to Seba Smith, the founder and editor of the
state’s first daily newspaper. Writing under the pseudonym Jack Downing, Smith
composed a number of satirical sketches in a broad Maine dialect. For just one
example, in Smith’s “Letter from Squire Downing to the Editor of the
Leveller”, which was purportedly sent from the fictional locale of
“Downingville. In Catnip County State of Maine” and dated “Feb. 185 [*: ]”, we find a number of
transcribed pronunciations and localisms: ‘Pennsylvany’ (Pennsylvania); ‘hoss’
(horse); the loss of the initial e in especially; the past participles
‘heered’ (heard) and ‘rit’ (wrote); frequent use of the word critter;
and an attempt to represent the spoken truncation of -ing words by
spelling words like going as ‘goen’, voting as ‘voten’, promising
as ‘promisen’, and nothing as ‘nothen’.
Sarah Orne Jewett, a Maine author of
the Gilded Age, also consciously evoked localisms in her writing. Jewett makes
extensive use of regional dialect in the dialogue between her characters, as
exemplified in the following passage from her short story “An Only Son” (1883):
I didn’t
undertake to wash yesterday mornin’, because I didn’t want the clothes
a-layin’and mildewin’, and I kind of thought perhaps I’d put it off till next
week, anyway, though it ain’t my principle to do fortnight’s washes. An’ I had
so much to do, gettin’ ready to start, that I’d gone in early and made up your
bed and not put a clean sheet on; but you was busy takin’ out the hoss after
you come home at noon, and had your dinner to eat, and I had the time to spare,
so I just slipped in and stripped off the bedclothes then, and this come out
from under the pillow.
More modern attempts to approximate
local speech in literature share many of the characteristics of these
nineteenth century examples, such as the use of local lexicon, replacement of –ing
with –in’ or –in endings, and syncopation. However, in recent
literary representations of local dialect, the lack of rhoticity associated
with Maine English tends to be emphasized and is conventionally represented by
a –uh, –a, or –ah ending on words where one would normally
expect a written r. This tendency is well-exemplified in Carolyn Chute’s The Beans of
Egypt Maine (1985). The following
excerpt from Chute’s novel represents a conversation between Roberta
Bean, an uneducated speaker of rural Maine dialect and a man who is,
presumably, ‘from away’:
The
moon rises slightly like a self-illuminating craft idling up there to observe
the town of Egypt, Maine. And out of it clamors the black fenderless
pickup…making the sound of a half-dozen cowbells.
He
says to himself, “Oh no! Not again.”
The
truck squeals to a stop.
Then
there’s the face with the squirming beetle eyes. The mouth opening: “You in the
cul-vet, huh mistah?”
“Yes,
I’m in the culvert,” he says softly.
………………………………………………………………………………………
“Ayuh,
she’s in the hole, says Roberta Bean. She wears a visor cap which says,
MERTIE’S HARDWARE. She puts her hands on her hips. “Mistah…I got a chain on me,
but my little Chevy ain’t no match for that…that thing…what is it there…oh, a
Chrysler?”
“A
Lincoln,” he says.
“Same
thing,” she says.
He
narrows his eyes.
……………………………………………………………………………………
“Well,
mistah, the best I can do is give you a ride ta my nephew Rubie’s place. He’s
got a loggin’ rig an’ all the chains your little Lincoln desires…Aye? Just hop
right up here an’ I’ll give ya a lift.”
“I’ve
got Triple A,” he says flatly. He glares at the open door of the truck. “I just
need a phone.”
Stephen King – perhaps Maine’s most
prolific and widely-read author – has often used Maine dialect in his novels
and short stories. As the following passages from The Colorado Kid
(2005) demonstrate, King has often gone to great lengths in his writing not
only to approximate Maine’s speech patterns and lexical variants, but also to
emphasize the complexities – and sometimes unintelligibility – of indigenous
pronunciations. He achieves this by incorporating explicit commentary on the
Maine dialect spoken by his colouful characters:
Fair came out fay-yuh,
which more or less rhymed with ayuh, the Yankee word which seemed to
mean both yes and is that so. Stephanie was from Cincinnati,
Ohio, and when she had first come to Moose-Lookit Island [in Maine] to do an
internship on The Weekly Islander, she had nearly despaired…which, in
downeast lingo, also rhymed with ayuh. How could she learn anything when
she could only understand one word in every seven? And if she kept asking them
to repeat themselves, how long would it be before they decided she was a
congenital idiot (which, on Moose-Look was pronounced ijit, of course)?
………………………………………………………………………………… ‘He boarded the summer and half the
fall in there. Then, when November come around
and the body was still unnamed and unclaimed, they decided they ought to bury him.’ In Vince’s Yankee accent, bury
rhymed with furry.
…………………………………………………………………………………
Stephanie
asked Dave to spell Mrs. [Arla] Cogan’s first name. In Dave Bowie’s thick Maine
accent, all she was hearing was a bunch of a-sounds with an l in
the middle.
As the above excerpts indicate, Maine dialect is often
used in literature to achieve certain effects. It is frequently exploited to
add local flavour and a distinctive sense of place to stories set in Maine. It
is also variously employed to emphasize characters’ lack of education or stress
their rustic identities.
Maine’s
Archaisms
Much of Maine’s mythology is based
on the idea of its isolation. The state has been characterized as “a territorial cul-de-sac, a
sizeable chunk of the northeastern United States existing somewhat apart
geographically from the rest of the country” (Uhl 3). The author of one
guidebook gushes “[i]t’s as if Maine really were an island where life is just a
little bit different” (Gold 1). This idea
that Maine is culturally as well as geographically distinct from the rest of
the United States is closely tied to mythologized versions of the region’s
comparatively long history and deeply entrenched traditions. In tourist
literature, Maine is often represented as a state which has been unsullied by
outside contact and remains virtually untouched by modern progress. In Country
Roads of Maine, readers are informed that “Maine frequently skids back and
forth among the centuries, texturing present with past” (2). Similarly, The
Coast of Maine Book claims that “visitors find in a coast and a people that
have much in common with the Maine coast and people who lived here in the 19th
century” (1) and Exploring Maine on Scenic Roads and Byways asserts that
it is “the living tableaux of simpler times” (10). Adventure Guide to Maine
concurs:
Most of all, Maine is a seemingly timeless rural place.
The names of families in the oldest cemeteries can still be found in the phone
books today. Tiny villages on back roads continue on as always with little more
than late model pick up trucks in the driveways and the occasional satellite
dish in the dooryard to betray the fact they are not the exact same community
you could have experienced six generations ago (2).
As
the scholar George H. Lewis has noted, local characters and caricatures are
oftentimes “valued by outsiders as more than mere objects of curiosity – they
are touchstones to historical roots that others feel they have lost.” It is
hardly surprising that, as a New England state, Maine is culturally associated
not only with the days of yore, but also, and more specifically, with a
distinctly British cultural and linguistic heritage. Anne E. Perkins’ assertion
that that many of the expressions used in
Maine are “quaint, and generally provincial English expressions” (141)
is typical in this respect.
In
the early twentieth century, Maine author Robert P. Tristram Coffin
journalistically described the picturesque landscape and people of Maine in Yankee
Coast, which highlighted both the isolation and apparent Britishness of
regional culture. Coffin’s writings suggest that one of the most distinctive
features of local culture is its speech, and he makes numerous and explicit
comparisons between pronunciations in Maine and Britain. At one point, he
pointedly and romantically reminisces:
I remember how my wife, a
Bostonian, woke up one morning when I was new to her. ‘Rob,
Rob! – Come down here. There’s a man here who looks like a thug. He’s selling
mackerel, but says he knows you and went to school with you. And he has an
Oxford accent!’ I
went down. He did. It was Jim Blaisdell. I did go to school with him. I grew up
with him. He does have an Osonian accent, come to think of it. Most Maine men
do. The coast vowels are as broad and as smooth as the best English ones (143).
There is a scholarly basis for the observations of
writers such as Perkins and Coffin. The
generally accepted position on dialect formation in North America, first
proposed by Kurath in the 1920s, is that the varieties of American English
reflect the settlement patterns of early colonists in various regions.
Thus – given that the majority of the state’s early settlers were of English
origins and that, historically, few other significant ethnic groups settled in
the region – it is hardly surprising that stereotypical Maine dialect exhibits
several features reminiscent of contemporary and obsolete British dialects.
Particularly notable parallels include the characteristic use of non-rhotic
speech, broad /ɑː/, and seemingly outmoded lexis.
Though there is some credence to assertions that Maine
dialect sounds more archaic and British than most other varieties of English in
the United States, the ostensible Britishness of Maine dialect has been
disproportionately emphasized in popular culture and tourist literature. An
emerging subfield of study known as folk dialectology or perceptual
dialectology has – which studies the ideas that nonlinguists (as opposed to
professional linguists) hold about language – has begun to examine where and
how people commonly perceive dialect boundaries. This kind of approach is
a helpful way to think about the attributions of archaism and Britishness
associated with Maine’s mythologized culture and dialect. As Erica J. Benson
explains, “[f]olk perceptions of dialects have been compared to traditional
dialectological and sociolinguistic findings, and such comparisons have
revealed that the folk employ factors other than linguistic differences in
constructing their mental maps” (307). Folk dialectology has demonstrated that
particular regions are often associated with populations and ways of speaking
which may or may not be reflected in the region’s actual demographics and
speech patterns. It seems that this may be becoming increasingly applicable to
the – often overexaggerated -- popular and literary mythologizations and
representations of Maine dialect, which is typically associated with a
particular iconic social group: people of British extraction and limited formal
education whose families have been living in the region for generations.
The Social
Demographics and Language Ecology of Contemporary Maine
The image of the archetypical Maine resident has some
foundation in reality. Throughout the twentieth century, the majority of the
state’s residents were Caucasian, monolingual, and of English heritage. This
demographic – combined with the historical suppression and devaluation of
French in regional culture – has only helped to reinforce local stereotypes.
However, this situation may be starting to change.
According to the most recent United States census, conducted in the year 2000, the
population of Maine was 1,274,923. 1,236,014, or 96.9% of the state’s
population, identified their racial identity as “White”; this statistic tied
Maine with neighbouring New Hampshire as the least racially diverse state in
the nation. Only 36,691 people living in Maine were foreign born, and an
overwhelming number of the state’s current residents – 67.3% – had been born in
Maine, a percentage that was actually significantly lower than the 70.6%
reported a mere ten years earlier in the 1990 census.
The census also collected data about the ancestry group
or groups with which Maine’s residents most closely self-identified. In the
year 2000, more than one in five of Maine’s residents reported having “English”
ancestry; nearly one in six “Irish” ancestry; one in seven “French” ancestry;
and more than one in twelve “French Canadian” (a category which includes
Acadian) ancestry.
The
vast majority of Maine’s residents are monolingual. In 2000, 92.2% of the
population spoke English only. Of the remaining 7.8% who spoke a language other
than English at home, a mere 2% reported not being able to speak English “very
well”. Given the state’s history and the high percentage of French and
French-Canadian ancestries reported to the census, it is hardly surprising that
the bulk of non-English speakers in the state – approximately 5% Maine’s total
population – were francophones: the Acadians of the Saint John Valley and the
so-called Franco-Americans of central and southern Maine, the descendants of
French-Canadian immigrants.
Traditionally,
English has been the sole prestige language in Maine, and this, along with the
relative homogeneity of the state’s population, accounts for lack of linguistic
diversity. French-speakers have long been
stigmatized and caricatured in the local, Anglo-dominated culture. In
the early twentieth century, there were many attempts to anglicize and
assimilate the state’s large groups of francophone residents. From 1919 to
1960, state law required that English was the only language that could be used
for instruction in the public schools of Maine. Public school teachers, some of
whom were themselves native speakers of French, found themselves obligated to
punish children who violated the English-only regulation. The English-only
policy of the public schools had the greatest impact on the state’s significant
francophone minority; this policy not only propelled the overall decline of
French in Maine, but also contributed to and reinforced the low status of
French in the region. As recently as 1980s
and early 1990s, the radio station WBLM-FM, based in Portland, ran a program
which featured an obtuse Franco-American character named Frenchie.
It is only in recent years French language and culture
have begun to gain a renewed prestige in Maine. Since the early 1970s, various
individuals and groups have been voicing concerns about maintaining Acadian
culture, and in 1990, the Maine Acadian Culture Preservation Act was
passed by the U.S. Congress. Responding to similar concerns, the Franco-Americans
in central and southern Maine have also taken steps to preserve their own
heritage, language, and culture. For example, L’Institut
des femmes franco-américaines was founded in Brewer in 1996; the Franco-American
Heritage Center opened in Lewiston in 2000; and, in 1990, Jackman,
Maine and St. Theophile, Québec began to jointly sponsor the annual Festival
sans Frontière. Renewed interest in Maine’s French heritage over the
past few decades has also had an impact on public education in the state, which
has witnessed experiments with bilingual programming since the 1970s. The most
widely publicized and successful of these publicly-funded projects have been
established in Acadian communities in the Saint John Valley. In addition,
several non-public French immersion and reacquisition programs have been
introduced statewide.
Since the 2000 census, there has
been a new wave of immigration to Maine which has further impacted the state’s
demographics. In 2001, thousands of Somali refugees began relocating to
Lewiston, a city which had once been a hotbed for French-Canadian immigration.
Today, one in twenty of the residents in Maine’s third largest city is of
Somali heritage. This mass migration of Somalis is a phenomenon which has
prompted religious tensions, accusations of xenophobia, and scores of
demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in the area. As exhibited by the city
of Lewiston’s decision to add an AT&T language translation line for Somali
callers indicates, this recent migration has already begun to impact Maine’s
language ecology in significant ways.
The Maine
Department of Education’s 2003-2004 Report on Language Minority Students
revealed that 5014 students enrolled in Maine schools spoke a language other
than English at home, and 3245 of these students had limited English proficient
status. A full 17% of the Language Minority Students in Maine spoke Somali, and
an additional 7% spoke other African languages; school age speakers of Somali
far outnumbered Maine’s school age speakers of French, who represented a mere
10% of the state’s Language Minority Students. These statistics show that a
marked change is occurring in the state’s language ecology, since, as recently
as the 1997-1998 Report
(prior to the mass Somali migration), 22% of Language Minority Students
spoke French, while only 5.5% spoke African languages of any variety.
Maine’s demographics will continue
to change in the near future, and this may also impact the local social and
linguistic identity. The high-profile revival of French in the region will no
doubt have an effect on popular perceptions of the state’s historical
Britishness. Moreover, increasing levels of immigration will continue to make
Maine’s traditionally homogenous population progressively more multilingual and
multicultural.
Maine
Dialect as Commodity
Given that the existence of a
distinctive Maine dialect is accepted as fact in tourist propaganda, popular
culture and literature, and that its features are confirmed by a body of
linguistic scholarship, the questions naturally arise: just who is using this
traditional dialect, and in what contexts are they using it? Clearly, it is
neither the recent Somali immigrants nor the established francophone
communities in Maine. Moreover, there has long been an idea that people in
Maine have collectively been losing many of the distinctive characteristics of
their speech; it is commonly accepted as fact that Mainers simply are not speaking
as they once did. As early as 1920s Ezra Kempton Maxfield noted “there are many
people [in Maine], especially among the better educated, whose accent is
indistinguishable from that of outsiders” (77) and Perkins mentioned the
existence of “curious expressions, words, and phrases, some of which have now
been lost, while others are falling into disuse” (134). More recent scholarship
continues to make similar claims that the “rural, regional dialects [of New
England] appear threatened with obsolescence”, and attributes this to “the
increase in in-migration by speakers from other states” (Nagy and Roberts 257).
There are perceptible differences
between the speech patterns of the state’s older and younger residents, urban
and rural dwellers, and speakers of various educational backgrounds. In
general, heavy use of dialect is associated with the area’s elder, rural, and
uneducated natives, while the younger, urban, and more educated speakers
generally talk in ways which are much closer to – and sometimes indecipherable
from – General
American English. [To hear relevant samples of two Maine speakers, one farmer
born in 1916 and one student born in 1984, please click here.]
In
Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger examine the
phenomenon of European state-sponsored image-making campaigns and conclude that
many of the ‘authentic’ images and material artifacts – such as kilts which are
sold to tourists in Scotland – have little connection with regional folk
traditions. Rather, such images and relics were fabricated and/or cultivated by
commercial and tourist industries, which intentionally romanticize the
experience, history, and products of regions which are seen as quaint and
charming. Stuart Ewen, examining similar social and cultural myths in a more
specifically American context, comes to related conclusions; he notes that
contemporary cultural myths in America rival with real life experiences, and
that often images portray “a representation of reality more compelling than
reality itself – even perhaps throwing the very definition of reality into
question” (25). It seems that the observations of scholars such as Hobsbawm,
Ranger, and Ewen are particularly apt and relevant to the linguistic situation
in Maine.
The
mythologization of Maine and its characteristic dialect has, in large part,
been encouraged and perpetuated by the state itself, which has long been aware
of the importance of tourism for the local economy. As early as 1922, the Maine
Publicity Bureau was formed by a group of local entrepreneurs and members of
the hospitality industry with the express purpose of advertising recreation in
the state, and, by 1927, the state legislature established the Maine Development
Commission “to promote business of all sorts, with special attention to
tourists” (Clifford 264). This trend of economically-spurred and self-conscious
mythologization has continued into recent times:
Governor Angus King once said that if he could just
strategically position a suitably
crusty yet benign ‘Mainah’ on the porch of every general store or end of every lobster wharf, giving people asking for
directions the standard reply of ‘You can’t
get theyah from heyah,’ tourism revenue would triple (Brechlin 65).
Evidence suggests that advertisements for Maine-made
products frequently make use of the cultural mythology of Maine. The classic
example is L.L.
Bean, the nearly century-old sporting goods company based out of
Freeport, Maine. The image of the company – which caters primarily to
out-of-state consumers and which relies mostly upon mail-order (and, more
recently, online) sales – is inextricably intertwined with local stereotypes.
M.R. Montgomery, author of In Search of L.L. Bean, refers to Maine as
“the state on which the whole mystique of L.L. Bean rests” (4) and notes that
“the appeal of L.L. Bean [is] that it represents the possibility of wilderness,
the scent of pine, the rush of bright water” (61). Montgomery further
elucidates:
[M]aintaining the illusion that
[the state and company] are inseparable today is the major marketing problem facing L.L. Bean, Inc….So we must
talk of [L.L. Bean products
like] Maine Hunting shoes and shipping docks and skiing wax as well as Atlantic salmon, black flies,
the big woods, float planes, and
back roads – for it is an
inseparable weave There is no L.L. Bean without Maine, and…there is no Maine without L.L. Bean, the
state’s best advertisement (4-5).
In addition to the stunning panoramic landscapes and
charming rural cottages used as backdrops throughout L.L. Bean’s catalogue,
Maine dialect is often employed to lend L.L. Bean’s products an air of quality,
regional flavour, and an air of authenticity. The company offers, amongst its
most popular products, ‘Wicked Good®
Moccasins’, which appear under the caption “Here in Maine, Only
the Best Are Called ‘Wicked Good.’” The company’s line of ‘Wicked Good’
footwear also includes moc boots, slippers, scuffs, clogs, and booties. This
is in addition to L.L. Bean’s ‘Wicked Good Bolstered Dog Bed’, ‘Wicked Good Pet
Bed’, ‘Wicked Good Fleece Throw’, ‘Wicked Good Hand and Toe Warmers’, ‘Wicked
Tough Waders’, and the childrenswear items called ‘Wicked Warm Pants’ and ‘Wicked Warm Top’.
This phenomenon – using Maine dialect and mythology to
promote products outside of the state – is widespread amongst local businesses.
Greenbush
Soapworks, a small company based out of Greenbush, Maine, touts its
“wicked good” handmade soap online. The
website, which contains as much information about the soap-makers’ family and
life in “a small rural town” as their available line of products, is complete
with a short “Maine Dictionary for Tourists.” Isamax
Snacks, based in Gardiner and Farmingdale, Maine – the winner of
Maine’s Best of the Web in the e-commerce category in July 2005 – advertises
baked goods called “Wicked Whoopies” using the following slogan: “In Maine,
when something’s good, we call it ‘good.’ When something’s great, we call it
‘wicked.’” At Grampa’s
Garden, customers can purchase a variety of Maine-made natural
therapy and comfort products, including a hot/cold pack in the shape of a
“Lobsta”; a relevant caption assures potential buyers that it is
“Microwaveable, Ayuh!” At www.cafepress.com, one finds an array of T-shirts,
mousepads, mugs, ball caps, coasters, throw pillows, aprons, and boxer shorts
reading “Ayuh, I’m a Native Maine’ah”; this is roughly equivalent to the
phenomenon of ‘kiss me I’m Irish’ merchandise, which – though frequntly
purchased by tourists – would never be sported by a native of Ireland.
It
is thus that, regardless of the state’s changing demographics, and whether or
not Maine natives continue to speak like true ‘Maine-uhs’ are reputed to, Maine
dialect is being preserved and perpetuated. Maine’s dialect, like its friendly
residents and stunning wilderness, has become mythologized and authenticated.
It has become codified in tourist brochures and product captions and,
regardless of its actual prevalence in the twenty-first century, the idea
of a distinctive Maine dialect has become and continues to serve as an
important part of the region’s identity and a valuable local commodity.
Select
Further Reading
The History and Settlement of Maine
Abbott, John
S. C. The History of Maine. Ed. Edward H. Elwell. Rev. ed. Augusta, ME:
E.E. Knowles &
Company, 1892.
Brunelle,
Jim. “A Brief History of Maine.” Online extract
from The Maine Almanac (1980). Reprinted online by the Maine
Historical Society. Accessed 20.11.06.
Clifford,
Harold B. Maine and Her People. Freeport, ME: The Bond Wheelwright
Company,
1957.
Fobes,
Charles B. “Path of the Settlement and distribution of population in Maine.” Economic
Geography 20.1 (1944): 65-69.
Scott,
Geraldine Tidd. Ties of Common Blood: A History of Maine’s Northeast
Boundary Dispute with Great
Britain 1783-1842. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1992.
Maine
Travel Guides
Ackermann, Rick and Kathryn
Buxton. The Coast of Maine Book: A Complete Guide. Stockbridge, MA: Berkshire House Publishers,
1999.
Brandes, Kathleen M. Moon
Handbooks: Coastal Maine. Emeryville, CA: Avalon Travel Publshing, 2002.
Brechlin, Earl. Adventure
Guide to Maine. Edison, NJ: Hunter Publishing, 1999.
Gold, Donna. Country Roads of
Maine. Castine, ME: Country Roads Press, 1995.
Uhl, Michael. Exploring Maine
on Scenic Roads and Byways. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1991.
Features of Maine and New England Dialect
Cutts, Richard. “Observations of
‘Ayuh’.” American Speech 23.3/4 (1948): 310-311.
Duckert, Audrey R. “The Speech of
Rural New England.” Dialect and Language Variation. Eds. Harold Byron Allen and
Michael D. Linn. Orlando: Academic Press, 1986. 136-141.
Grandgent,
C.H. “From Franklin to Lowell. A Century of New England Pronounciation.” PMLA
14.2 (1899): 207-239.
Hendrickson, Robert. Yankee Talk: A
Dictionary of New England Expressions. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2002.
Kurath, H. The Linguistic
Atlas of New England. 3 vols.
1939-1943. New York: AMS, 1972.
Labov, William. “The Organization of Dialect Diversity in North America.”
Online version of a presentation
at the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 1996. Accessed 20.11.06.
Lewis, Gerald E. and Tim Sample. How
to Talk Yankee. Throndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 1986.
Maxfield,
Ezra Kempton. “Maine Dialect.” American Speech. 2.2 (1926): 76-83.
Nagy, Naomi. “’Live Free or Die’ as a Linguistic
Principle.” American Speech 76.1 (2001): 30-41.
Nagy, Naomi
and Julie Roberts. “New England phonology.” A Handbook of Varieties of English.
Volume 1: Phonology.
Eds. Schneider et al. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004. Reprinted online. Accessed 20.11.06.
Penzl, Herbert. “Relics with ‘Broad A’ in New
England Speech.” American Speech 13
(1938): 45- 49.
Perkins, Anne E. “Vanishing
Expressions of the Maine Coast.” American Speech 3.2 (1927): 134-141.
Mythologizing
Place
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Jonathan
Cage, 1972.
Ewen, Stuart. All Consuming Images. New York:
Basic Books, 1988.
Hobsbawn, Eric and Terence Ranger. The Invention of
Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983.
Mythologizing
Maine
Coffin, Robert P. Tristram. Yankee
Coast. New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Judd, Richard. “Reshaping Maine’s
Landscape.” Journal of Forest History 32.4 (1988): 180-190.
Lewis, George H. “The
Maine That Never Was: The Construction of Popular Myth in Regional Culture,” Joumal of American Culture
16.2 (1993). Reprinted online. Accessed
20.11.06.
Montgomery,
M.R. In Search of L.L. Bean. Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown &
Co., 1984.
Francophones in Maine
Acadian
Culture in Maine. University of Maine at Fort Kent. Online
version of 1994 National Park Service publication. Accessed
20.11.06.
Allen, James
P. “Migration Fields of French Canadian Immigrants to Southern Maine.” Geographical
Review 62.3 (1972): 366-383.
Avila,
Lilian E. and Alice R. Stewart. “French in Maine.” The French Review
27.6 (1954): 460- 466.
Belluck,
Pam. “Long-Scorned in Maine, French has Renaissance.”
The New York Times. June 4, 2006.
Accessed 20.11.06.
Jacobson,
Phyllis L. “The Social Context of Franco-American Schooling in New England.” The
French Review 57.5 (1984): 641-656.
Podea, Iris Saunders. “Quebec to ‘Little Canada’: The Coming of the French
Canadians to New England in the Nineteenth Century.” New
England Quarterly 23.3 (1950): 365-380.
Maine’s Irish Immigrants
Patrick,
Andrew. “Irish Immigrants in Nineteenth Century Maine.”
Maine Memory Network: Maine’s
Online Museum. Accessed 20.11.06. \
Maine’s Somali Immigrants
Bouchard,
Kelley. “Lewiston’s Somali surge.” Portland Press
Herald. April 28, 2002. Accessed
20.11.06.
City of
Lewiston. “Understanding our Somali Community.” Online
brochure. March 2003. Accessed 20.11.06.
Martin,
Susan Taylor. “A collision of cultures leads to building bridges in
Maine.” The St. Petersburg Times Online.
March 13, 2005. Accessed 20.11.06.
Folk
Dialectology