Historical Social Stratification Within Manhattan's Lower East Side Dialect

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Social Stratification Within Manhattan’s LES Dialect

Manhattan’s Lower East Side is a neighborhood known for its gritty alleyways, tenement-style buildings, and popular nightlife attracting hundreds of thousands yearly. Tourists can visit famous historical sectors such as the East Village, Chinatown, and Little Italy. However, this look wasn’t always as aesthetically and historically pleasing as it is today. LES was known for its discrimination, exploitation, division, and neglect going as far back as the late 19th century. These elements cast upon its residents were established specifically through the structure and slang in the neighborhood's dialect. Differences in phonology, morphology, and lexicon reveals its historical representation of social stratification, struggling immigrants, and institutionalization in order to be accepted by society.

One of the infamous phonological staples with Lower East Side (LES) speakers is leaving out the /r/ sound after a vowel, also called “r-lessness.” An example is the word “flavor.” As many, including certain New Yorkers, would pronounce the /r/ sound at the end, those from LES would drop it and end with a vowel sound such as /ə/. William Labov, famous linguist and author of The Social Stratification of English in New York City, conducted an experiment on social stratification and r-lessness via observing 3 department stores’ (Saks, Macy’s, and S. Klein) customer-worker exchanges. The conclusion revealed that S. Klein, the cheapest department store with the highest traffic of LES’s lower-income customers, had the lowest percentage of r-pronunciation with only 21% (compared to Saks which had 62%). This experiment reflected the Lower East Side’s social stratification concluding that most of those shopping at low-end stores carried a specific dialect categorized as inferior, uneducated, and affiliated with poverty.

The r-lessness pronunciation has been one of the main phonological staples regarding social stratification within the Lower East Side and continues to this day. According to Michael Newman’s New York City English, many LES residents have been making an effort to pronounce their r’s “as overcompensation and...[to hide] this class’s deep linguistic insecurity” (47). Those who would not pronounce the /r/ after a vowel sound are considered subordinate and ignorant. Society’s indoctrination of this systemic ideology brainwashed New Yorkers into thinking that “droppings r’s is a serious flaw” (Newman, 83). Depending on social class, some New Yorkers developed biases declaring that “anyone who did not pronounce their r’s could not possibly qualify for a professional job...” (83). Missing phonemes, such as r-lessness, was a representation of LES’s socio-economic status associated with poverty and unscholarly speaking.

An alternate experiment conducted by Labov in his book Dialect Diversity in America: The Politics of Language Change gathers information regarding phonological pronunciation of the -ing morpheme based on different LES socioeconomic classes: lower, lower middle, upper middle, and upper working class. The study was further specified by focusing on controlled environments such as casual conversation or excerpt reading. Labov’s studies declared two conclusions: “the lower the social class, the more –in' [and]...[a]ll social class groups decrease their use of –in' with increasing attention paid to speech” (9). Correlating with what Newman wrote regarding r-lessness, this study shows that those who are in lower classes, when reading, specifically focus on pronouncing the morpheme –ing in order to sound more educated.

One of the biggest lexical staples within the LES dialect is the unique vernacular stemming from immigration and social class. Many words derived from Yiddish, Italian, Russian, and Polish stem back as early as the late 1800s. The late 19th to early 20th century was a time when immense waves of Eastern European immigration was occurring within America. The number of Jewish immigrants that settled in the Lower East Side was so drastic that it became known as the Jewish capital of America. These European immigrants are who mainly established and developed the LES neighborhood as well as the dialect.

Newspapers have been known as a source of current events; however, in the Lower East Side, they were used for more than just entertainment. According to Irving Lewis Allen’s The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech, these different usages created alternate slang terms recorded as early as the 1860s. Fish wrappers was a part of the LES lexicon indicating the newspapers that were used to package purchased seafood. Considering people could not afford proper packaging such as plastic bags, brown paper bags, or Styrofoam, these sheets of reused newspapers would have to suffice. Toots are the newspapers that were wrapped into “horn-like cones” (Allen, 108), but instead of traditional British fish and chips, hot chick-peas were dispensed. This nickname for the street food was created by the neighborhood children and was picked up among the LES folk. Like fish wrappers, toots were pieces of newspaper used as an economically attainable scapegoat for businesses’ food packaging due to the Lower East Side’s financially struggling status.

Sweatshop is another LES term from the late 1860s that derives from the British rag trade. LES decided to personalize the term based on the ideology that “sweat is key” (Allen, 124). Specifically within the Jewish immigrant community, workers were exploited via extremely low wages, atrocious working conditions, and long hours of labor. Many women and young children were known to have been working under these conditions due to their low-income status and financial need. Considering work was drastically needed among the LES community, the sweatshops obtained high traffic. Terms such as Sweaters (those hiring) and Sweated (workers) were coined. Pig Market is another phrase that developed around the 1880s which represented the area where Sweaters would hire Jewish immigrants for work. These lexical terms represent LES’s struggling society and exploitation of the lower class, particularly Jewish immigrants, during the late 19th century. Specifically in Chinatown, sweatshops continue to run to this day.

Candy stores were initially introduced in New York; however, the alternate name cheap charlies originated in the Lower East Side between 1890 and 1918 (WWI). These stores served as social centers for the Jewish population and “sold more newspapers, magazines, tobacco, and egg creams than candy” (Allen, 101). As represented by its nickname, the stores weren’t established simply for selling candy. They were corner stores that offered a variety of goods at a cheaper and more affordable price for the struggling LES residents living off a lower income.

Even the product known as egg cream does not insinuate any creamy, milk chocolate egg (e.g., like today’s Kinder egg) nor is it anything involving eggs or cream. In fact, this product is “simply a special syrup and a little milk frothed with lots of seltzer water.” The purpose of titling this drink as egg cream is to make it sound rich and extravagant because “both eggs and cream connotated luxurious living in poor neighborhoods” (Allen, 101). People in LES back in the 19th to early 20th century could not afford indulgences such as these two products. Feeling excluded, poor, and belittled, the folk would create nicknames such as this one to make them feel as though they could consume a fancy beverage or snack.

Another prime example of the LES’s dialectal lexicon is the term Buttinsky. Coined around 1902, it represented “a busybody who walked the streets of the Lower East Side asking ‘How’s business?’” (Allen, 21). The term is a compounding of “butt in,” as in to be nosy and intrusive while the morpheme -sky is a Slavic suffix indicating a surname (usually Russian or Polish). This term represented the European discrimination by associating a negative term with a commonly used Slavic affix. Therefore, anytime a person would use the word, there was this jab directed towards the Eastern Europeans, specifically Russians and the Polish, that associated them with being meddlers or gossips.

Continuing into the 20th century, LES’s notorious nightlife began to grow. Dance halls were established prior to the 1900s; however, it wasn’t until the turn of the century that they became more respectable and popular areas of the neighborhood’s social life. New dancing styles emerged that symbolized the freedom of sexual expression such as rough dancing. This style became popular after 1905 and represented the concept of sexual intercourse when performed. The dances were performed at dancing parties known as rubs or in cheap dance halls called rub joints. These social events, specifically when pertaining to women, were frowned upon by many and considered skanky. Women should not have been portraying themselves in such inappropriate manners. Especially considering “[t]ough dancing had its origins in the houses of prostitution,” (Allen, 68) many women associated with the social night life in the Lower East Side were stereotyped as sleazy and promiscuous tramps.

Many other terms have been established over the years such as words like Schmuck, a Yiddish term for penis, Schlep, a Yiddish term for carrying or travelling something an annoying distance, Guido, an Italian word for “an ignorant Italian American tough guy” and Papichulo, “a suave, well-dressed Latino ladies’ man” (Newman, 85). These expressions were developed by the peoples that immigrated to the country and have become a staple associated with New York. As Newman states, the “key to understanding the disparagement of New York pronunciations is similarly that they symbolize lack of integration into the American mainstream, and so being stuck in the working class” (85). LES is completely aware of its incorporation of foreign languages into the English language. That is what gives the dialect its uniqueness and individualism. The fact that it refused to succumb to mainstream English and continued to develop its lexicon led society to outcast it as an uncivilized dialect associated with uneducated individuals.

In total, the Lower East Side dialect has been socially stratified for centuries. The extremities got to the point where fellow New Yorkers would discriminate against Lower East Siders. Newman’s chapter in American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast describes his high school years back in the early 1970s regarding his New Yorker classmate who was told he needed a speech class after taking a diagnostic speech exam. Those with a strong New York accent, especially from LES, were considered a minority. According to state institutions, they needed to be reinstated in the department of proper English speaking. These rules were put into effect not only in schools but professional fields as well. Throughout the late 20th century, “a person with too many of these features [strong New York dialect] was not allowed to teach in the New York City public schools” (Newman, 83). In the eyes of society, those that spoke in an “uneducated” manner were not allowed to teach in fear of spreading the improper dialect to future scholars.

The Lower East Side is a neighborhood that was discriminated against, exploited, and outcasted from America, neighboring boroughs and fellow residents within the LES area since the late 19th century. The unique dialect stemming from immigrants and lower-class Americans created division and neglect. Evaluating the difference in phonology, morphology, and lexical terminology, the dialect reveals its historical representation of struggling immigrants, social stratification, and institutionalization in order to be accepted by society.

Works Cited

Allen, Irving L. The City in Slang New York Life and Popular Speech. 1st ed.,

Oxford University Press, 1995, Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/elmhurst/detail.action?docID=1591185,

Accessed 06 May 2024.

Labov, William. Dialect Diversity in America: The Politics of Language Change.

University of Virginia Press, 2012, Ebsco Host, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=e000xna&AN=235835 1&site=ehost- live&scope=site&custid=s8887025&ebv=EK&ppid=Page-__-5,

Accessed 09 May 2024.

Labov, William. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. 2nd ed.,

Cambridge University Press, 2006, EBCSOHost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=e000xna&AN=206810 &site=ehost- live&scope=site&custid=s8887025&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_Cover,

Accessed 08 May 2024.

Newman, Michael. New York City English. 1st ed., vol. 10, De Gruyter Mouton, 2014, Ebook

Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/elmhurst/detail.action?docID=990695, Accessed 09 May 2024.

Newman, Michael. “New York Tawk (New York City, NY).” American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006, pp. 82–87.