The Language of St. Louis, Missouri:: Variation in the Gateway City

The Language of St. Louis presents the findings of a dialectological and sociolinguistic survey of the phonology, morphology and syntax, and lexicon of one of the leading urban centers in the midwestern United States. Thomas Murray’s study is based on exhaustive data: he provides all the raw scores from all the demographic groups of informants for each linguistic feature investigated. Murray then compares these data with similar studies to allow the language of St. Louis to be understood in relation to dialects spoken on the East Coast, in the Central Midwest, and in the rest of Missouri. He also addresses the question of why the language of St. Louis is as it is, and offers evidence that the answer may lie in St. Louisans’ collective psychosocial attitude toward talking like a hoosier.