SOURCE: Randall, Dale B. J. “Dialect in the Verse of ‘The Hoosier Poet.’” American Speech 35 (1960): 36-50.

In the following essay, Randall provides a linguistic analysis of dialect in five poems by Riley, noting a controversy around whether Riley invented or faithfully reproduced his particular Hoosier dialect.

An admirer of James Whitcomb Riley has claimed that ‘for his dialect poetry he kept notebooks as accurate as a scientist's. … The philologist of the future, studying Middle-Western colloquialisms of the late-nineteenth century, may depend on Riley's transcription of them as the most exact ever made.’¹ Yet another reader maintains that Riley's dialect verse depicts ersatz Hoosiers who speak ‘a dubious dialect as yet unidentified by any philologist.’² As such comments suggest, no very diligent search is necessary to find Riley criticisms ranging over the entire spectrum of opinion and prejudice. Since no study of the poet's dialect, so far as I...