Geography Commons^™

Pittsburghese Shirts: Commodification And The Enregisterment Of An Urban Dialect, Barbara Johnstone

Barbara Johnstone

This article considers a type of material artifact that circulates ideas about regional speech in the United States: T-shirts bearing words and phrases thought to be unique to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I argue that Pittsburghese shirts, seen for themselves and in the context of their production, distribution, and consumption, are part of a process leading to the creation and focusing of the idea that there is a Pittsburgh dialect. To describe how particular locally hearable forms have become linked with the city, I invoke Asif Agha’s concept of “enregisterment.” To understand why this has happened at the time and in the …