Understanding St. Louis’ Love for Hoosier

Abstract

While the American English demonym hoosier refers to Indiana residents, it means “poor, rural, white trash” in St. Louis, Missouri. This paper uses discourse analysis of several texts across a range of registers and formalities to explore why its use persists despite less-localized alternatives (redneck, etc.) and why it has become enregistered as a feature of the local dialect. Findings show hoosier is used to police the behavior of the target. Unlike similar slurs, its use requires knowledge of St. Louis’ social geography. Hoosier allows speakers to demonstrate localness while positioning themselves and St. Louis as cosmopolitan compared to the derided target. As such, hoosier asserts positive values for St. Louisans who use it.

Keywords:

• Slurs
• enregisterment
• localness
• demonyms
• St. Louis

Acknowledgements

This paper was developed in a seminar on Language, Place and Space taught by Rudi Gaudio, and was presented at the 2017 ANS Annual Meeting. Comments from Isaac Bleaman, Olga Verlato, Mary Robinson, the NYU Sociolinguistics Lab, and two anonymous reviewers were especially helpful in development. The author also wishes to thank the ANS Emerging Scholar Award committee for their helpful comments, and particularly Jan Tent for his role in ushering the paper along.

Notes

1. This is not meant to suggest this is the only possible scale, nor, for that matter, that the relevant scale for hoosier only has these three levels. One could conceive of the scale having more local levels—the neighborhood, for instance—or more global levels. The given levels are those that emerge based on the texts analyzed in this paper.

2. This, of course, is putting aside the fact that the St. Louis area has a large African American population, in addition to other minorities. Because hoosier predominantly concerns whites, I have done so as well in this paper. However, the 2014 events in the suburb of Ferguson show that such issues in St. Louis extend far beyond class or an urban/rural divide. Ethnicity is clearly one more arena in which St. Louis is wrestling with these questions.