Professor dissecting Yooper dialect and identity

Upon crossing the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it's common to hear phrases like "You betcha," and "Say yah to da U.P., eh," or words pronounced distinctively, such as "sow-na" instead of "sauna."

The uniqueness of this regional dialect is predominately associated with the idea of the Yooper — a term used to describe natives of the U.P. and their dialect. The origin of the term Yooper dates back to 1979 when a newspaper in Escanaba had a contest to see what people in the U.P. would call themselves, and Yooper won.

Since 2000, Kathryn Remlinger, professor of English at Grand Valley, has been conducting a historical and contemporary examination of the development of the Yooper dialect, its relationship to the U.P. and the idea of the Yooper identity.

The culmination of Remlinger's 16-year project is her forthcoming book, Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Prior to the book release, Remlinger has been presenting her findings at various national conferences, including the recent Linguistic Landscape 8 International Workshop at the University of Liverpool in the U.K. She will also present a paper documenting her research to faculty at the Meertens Institute in the Netherlands.

Remlinger has been focusing her research in the northwestern area of the Upper Peninsula, specifically from the greater Marquette area up into the Keweenaw Peninsula.

"When people hear what they think is Yooper talk, that's the most iconic area," Remlinger said. "It's the most isolated area, so there hasn't been as much contact with other dialects that could affect Yooper dialect."

During her initial research from 2000-2002, Remlinger interviewed 75 lifelong residents ages 12-92. Since then, she has revisited these residents to see if their perceptions of the Yooper identity have changed over the years. She has also spent many hours researching information from the vast historical archives at Michigan Technological University, Northern Michigan University and Finlandia University.

Remlinger said the migration of Finnish-speaking people in the early 1900s greatly impacted the development of the Yooper dialect, including the exclusion of prepositions when talking about movement toward a place.

"Instead of saying 'I went to the post office,' people would say, 'I went post office,' or they would say, 'Let's go casino,' instead of 'Let's go to the casino,'" Remlinger said. "Finnish doesn't use prepositions, so that's a direct language transfer."

Aside from immigration patterns, Remlinger said tourism and the media have had major impacts on the Yooper identity, especially since construction of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 made traveling to the Upper Peninsula more accessible.

"Over the past 16 years, I've noticed there is more Yooper-themed merchandise than I've ever seen before, so it's becoming really recognizable, even on a national scale," Remlinger said. "For example, a lot of people have the 'Say yah to da U.P., eh!' bumper sticker who aren't from the U.P., and Yooper was even the topic of a few questions on 'Jeopardy' in both 2003 and 2014."

Yooper received even more national attention when the word was added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2014.

"This came about after years of a man playing Scrabble who wanted to use Yooper, but his friend wouldn't accept it because the word wasn't in the Scrabble dictionary," Remlinger said. "So, he solicited dictionaries to include it until Merriam-Webster finally did."

While Remlinger's research focuses more on identity rather than details of the dialect, the idea of a Yooper doesn't exist without both.

"My research demonstrates how relationships among identity, language and place have emerged since the early 1900s to shape the idea of Yooper as both a way of speaking and a regional identity," she said. 

For more information about Yooper Talk, contact Remlinger at [email protected].