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A pahticulah way of talking

The Word

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 29, 2012|By Ben Zimmer

(istockphoto; Globe Staff…)

Three hundred and fifty years ago, using the wrong pronouns in Massachusetts could land you in hot water.

If you were a Quaker living in a Massachusetts Bay settlement circa 1660, your transgressive language would have made you a target for the governing Puritans. Quakers rejected the hierarchical pronoun system that required ye, you, and your to be used as a sign of deference to superiors. Instead, they used the more familiar thee, thou, and thy with everyone, regardless of social position. And for the Puritanical powers-that-be, that was enough to cause a person to be banished, or even put to death. (Mary Dyer and three other Quakers became known as the “Boston Martyrs” when they were hanged for expressing their religious beliefs.)

This is just one of many fascinating linguistic vignettes revealed in the new book “Speaking American: A History of English in the United States,” by the late University of Michigan scholar Richard W. Bailey. A preeminent figure in the study of American English, Bailey died last April after a four-year health struggle following a near-fatal car accident. Determined to see his final book through to completion, he submitted the manuscript to Oxford University Press just a few months before his death. Among other things, the book he left behind demonstrates that the distinctive speech styles of New England--from words like selectman to the dropping of r’s--run centuries deep.

Bailey struck upon an ingenious organizing principle for his book. Each chapter covers a 50-year period of America’s language history, from 1600 to 2000. For each half-century, Bailey focused on one geographical center, moving from the Chesapeake Bay area and Boston in the 17th century, on to Charleston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York, and finally to Chicago and Los Angeles in the 20th century. Grounding this historical journey in specific cities allows Bailey to infuse his narrative of American English with local color, no more so than in his chapter on Boston.