BOSTON

BOSTON. The capital of the state of Massachusetts and cultural centre of NEW ENGLAND, one of the earliest areas of English settlement in what is now the US and a focal point from which English spread. Its social leaders are called Boston Brahmins, a wry allusion to the priestly caste of India. In the 19c, they included such literary figures as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell, whose tastes were European and unsympathetic to the majority of 19c US writers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman. Boston represented a ‘genteel’ tradition in literature and language that has not survived. Currently, Bostonian speech is most widely known from the usage of President John F. Kennedy and his brothers, as stereotyped for example by the long ‘flat’ vowel and r-lessness of expressions like paak the caa (park the car) and the intrusive r of Cuba/r is a problem. Bostonian speech ranges from low-prestige to Boston Brahmin, which, although educated and cultured, is not widely admired outside the city. Compare NEW YORK. See DIALECT IN AMERICA.