Talking American in the Midwest: Linguistic diversity and authenticity in the twentieth-century United States

Abstract

During the early twentieth century – when the United States was receiving an influx of non-English-speaking immigrants, and “standardization” was a dominant, yet polarizing, concept – having a single national language that unified Americans became a controversial topic in public discourse. In The Odyssey of a Nice Girl, Ruth Suckow, like many authors at the time, used immigrant language as a foil for midwestern speech to demonstrate its “standard” Americanness. But, as this essay will show, by using other regional American dialects in a similar manner, she questioned how “Americanness” was being understood and recognized during this period in the United States.