The Geographic and Linguistic Identity of the American Midwest

Research English At Durham

Do you walk on a sidewalk or a pavement? Eat fries or chips? The differences between American and British English can seem trivial at times, but they point to a deeper debate around language and identity that has been fought in the literary sphere as well as in everyday life.

What differentiates American writers from their English literary counterparts? And even looking within America rather than across the Atlantic, since America is a diverse and huge nation comprising many different forms of speech, how can one writer ever hope to represent the ‘American’ language or a quintessential American self?

Molly Becker charts how the American Midwest ended up as the pin at the centre of a complex map of language and identity. This region was memorably treated by writers such as Sinclair Lewis, whose novels of midwestern small town life, such as 1920’s Main Street, came not unproblematically to be seen as representative of the nation in the mainstream.

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