Story #17
Mary, Marie and Arthur the Rat
“A full understanding of the richness and diversity of American culture is dependent upon a comprehensive record of the language of our people...”
Those words are part of a statement that sparked a special research project founded by Frederic G. Cassidy that resulted in the creation of the Dictionary of American Regional English published by Harvard University Press. Cassidy was the professor of English at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The initial reference work of six volumes documented over 60,000 words, phrases, and pronunciations that varied from one place to another place across the United States. Over the years subsequent volumes were added. The work has become the recognized authority on American English
Initial formal research began in 1965, and continued through 1970, consisting of face-to-face interviews carried out in all 50 states. Written materials (diaries, letters, novels, histories, biographies, newspapers, government documents, etc.) were used to cover the colonial period to the present time. DARE demonstrated that there are many thousands of differences that characterize the dialect regions of the U.S. A striking feature of the dictionary is its inclusion of selected maps that show where words were found in the communities investigated.
Fieldworkers were sent out to gather examples of regional dialects and word usage through interviews and a questionnaire. There were more than 1,600 questions that could be used, depending on the interests of those being interviewed.
It was designed to address as many areas as possible of our daily lives: from time and weather to household items, farming, trees and flowers, birds and insects, school, courtship and marriage, religion, health, and money. During the six years, interviews were conducted with 2,277 people in 1,002 communities across the country.
Participants were also asked to make an audiotape recording. There were 1,843 people who agreed to do so. They each read a short story titled “Arthur the Rat”, designed to include important pronunciation variants in American English for later comparison.
They then were asked to talk about any topic of interest which provided a record of a large body of conversational speech and a diverse sample of oral history.
Three people from Peebles were among the participants. Recordings of two of the people are available at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries archives department. To provide anonymity for the research, they are identified only by a code number and only their first name is given in the archived recordings..
The identity of Primary Informant OH051 has been confirmed by a family member as being Mary Wickerham. Her recordings can be found at:
