Speech And Dialect

There have been no studies of the speech and dialect of Indianapolis, however, studies including Indiana and the Midwest give some indication of the colonial settlement patterns, cultural backgrounds, and social structures that influenced the speech and dialect of Hoosiers living in and around Indianapolis today. As early as 1900, scholars divided rural Indiana into two distinct speech areas represented by the northern and southern parts of the state. This division only applied to Indiana’s rural areas; city speech was considered nearly uniform with that of other large cities in the country, for reasons that included greater population mobility, better schools, ready access to books and newspapers, and technological advances in communication. It was not until 1920 that the state’s urban population reached 50 percent, leaving considerable rural influences in city areas.

Further, scholars disagreed on where to draw the line between northern and southern influences. The major study in Indiana was done by Albert H. Marckwardt several years before World War II with elderly informants. It was published in 1940 as part of the Linguistic Atlas of America project. Marckwardt found that the southern influence extended well above the state’s midsection; Raven I. McDavid Jr. supported this view in a 1958 study. Marvin D. Carmony’s study in 1972 argued for a line running approximately through the middle of the state, while Robert F. Dakin’s 1971 study considered the central part of the state to be a transition area. James M. Bergquist’s 1981 study also considered the central part of the state as an area distinct from its northern and southern extremes, with mixed language characteristics reflecting an amalgamation of northern and southern cultures.

Marckwardt and his supporters used early census data to base their conclusions on non-Native American settlement patterns in the state. For example, in 1860 Indiana had only 41,000 New York- and New England states-born citizens, while 140,000 were born in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. These earlier scholars drew fairly clear language use lines based on the northern culture-southern culture dichotomy, and they also felt that the distribution was influenced by people moving west from Pennsylvania along the old National Road.

Later scholars who view the central part of the state (including Indianapolis) as a transitional area also base their conclusions on these settlement patterns, but their reasoning is more complex. Dialectologists believe the strongest influence upon an area’s language comes from its first settlers (in Indiana, this excludes Native American societies and focuses on white settlers). Those who come later, even in larger numbers, have difficulty displacing the earlier patterns.

Central Indiana was settled primarily by this group between the end of the War of 1812 and the Panic of 1837, and many of the settlers who came originally from the South stopped in Ohio before moving into central Indiana. The middle Ohio Valley area around Cincinnati was well developed before the War of 1812 and attracted northern and upland-southern settlers. The area became the first great meeting place for these two cultures, and after the War of 1812, it became a major gateway into central Indiana. With the New Purchase of 1818 and the sale of lands in central Indiana beginning in 1821, the Indiana legislature decided to move the state capital to the center of the New Purchase lands, recognizing that the flood of new settlers would radically change the state’s population hub.

The hybrid Ohio Valley culture became the basis for the settlement of central Indiana. Many settlers stopped in Ohio until Indiana opened up, and they became accustomed to this mixture of northern and southern cultures. Children of Southern parents born into this mixed culture grew up not knowing pure Southern culture. Further, a strong economic and cultural connection existed between central Indiana and the Cincinnati area from about 1820 through the Civil War. Early central Indiana farmers, mostly from the upland South, moved from subsistence to commercial farming. Cincinnati, already an important source of supplies and materials from the East, became an important outlet for corn and hogs. This economic tie formed the basis for the corn-belt culture in central Indiana and included the cultural traits of speech and dialect.

The speech and dialect patterns of the central Indiana culture area, including Indianapolis, were indeed based upon a synthesis of northern and southern patterns; even the larger diverse, non-white ethnic populations that settled in the area could not change the earlier established pattern except in ethnic neighborhoods. Today, Indianapolis is open to the same leavening influences of speech and dialect cited at the beginning of the century—improved education, transportation, and media access. Language is one of humanity’s most rapidly changing cultural traits, and the speech and dialect of Indianapolis will continue to change as an important part of its history.

*Note: This entry is from the original print edition of the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (1994). We seek an individual with knowledge of this topic to update this entry.