The American Language

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The American Language

H. L. Mencken 1919

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Key Figures
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
Further Reading

Introduction

As a journalist, Henry Louis (H. L.) Mencken had little work during World War I because of his pro-German sympathies. To stay busy, he explored a subject that fascinated him: the evolution of American English from British English. The result, The American Language, was published in 1919. Mencken began working on the book in 1910, while still working for the Baltimore Sun. After the book's publication, Mencken received additional material from people all over the country. As a result, revised editions of the book were published in 1922, 1923, and 1936, and supplements were released in 1945 and 1948. These additions included more examples and explanations of regional expressions, dialects, and other speech developments and characteristics. Mencken's interest in identifying uniquely American cultural features is evident in his work in The American Language. He sought to discover traditions native to the United States, and his exploration of American English turned up many such traditions.

To Mencken's—and his publisher's—surprise, the lengthy volume was an immediate bestseller. With an initial release of only fifteen hundred copies, the book sold out rapidly. Its popularity is attributed to the logical, easy-to-follow presentation of research and theories couched in Mencken's characteristically witty, spirited prose. Today, it is read mainly by students, as it has retained its value as a seminal work in American linguistic study.

Author Biography

H. L. Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 12, 1880, the eldest of Anna Margaret and August Mencken's four children. August co-owned a cigar factory with his brother, and their success enabled him to buy a three-story brick home for his family. Mencken spent most of his life there, living elsewhere only during the five years he was married to Sara Powell Haardt (1930-1935). August paid special attention to his sons, fostering their talents and praising their accomplishments. When he was eight, Mencken developed a keen interest in reading and writing, which led to exceptional study habits. At the age of almost sixteen, he graduated at the top of his class at Polytechnic Institute.

Reluctantly, Mencken joined his father and uncle in their business, but when August died suddenly in 1899, the boy pursued his interest in journalism. He began working for the Baltimore Morning Herald, becoming an editor in 1903, but when the paper closed in 1906, he went to work for the Baltimore Sun as the manager of the Sunday edition. Mencken's lengthy career with the Sun (1906-1917 and 1920-1948) included a widely-read column called "Free Lance" that lasted from 1911 to 1915. This column gave Mencken a forum for his witty, irreverent commentary. By 1909, he was also a book reviewer for The Smart Set magazine. This led to his association with two other men with whom he launched American Mercury magazine in 1924. Mencken's personality was a major force behind American Mercury's success with critics and readers. The publication was also a proving ground for up-and-coming writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, Somerset Maugham, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Eugene O'Neill, Ezra Pound, and Sara Teasdale.

Mencken maintained consistent views throughout his career and, as a result, his work went in and out of favor. His glib writing style, for example, was unappealing to readers during World War I and the Great Depression, but it was vogue in the Roaring Twenties. During World War I, Mencken stayed busy by writing The American Language (1919). The evolution of American English fascinated him, and his book is still considered a major contribution to the field of linguistics. During the Depression, Mencken continued to work by covering political conventions. Despite fluctuations in his popularity, he covered every convention from 1920 to 1948 (except for 1944) and was especially visible during the 1930s.

Mencken's career ended in 1948, when he suffered a serious stroke that left him unable to read, write, or speak clearly. For a man whose life was enriched by words, this was a severe blow. He lived for eight more years in his childhood home until he died of heart failure on January 29, 1956.

Plot Summary

Chapter 1: The Two Streams of English

Americanisms began with the early settlers' need to describe their new land. Increasing awareness of changes happening to English resulted in two camps, one supporting the development of Americanisms, and the other staunchly protective of British English. With the American Revolution came a "national conceit" that led Americans to reject anything British and embrace anything uniquely American. As America grew, new words and new pronunciations of existing words emerged. British critics were suspicious, resentful, and hostile, resulting in a great rivalry.

Americanisms first made their way into literature by way of humorists such as Benjamin Franklin and Washington Irving. Later, dialect writers such as Mark Twain introduced regional humor.

Chapter 2: The Materials of the Inquiry

In this chapter, Mencken reviews the ways that scholars have defined and recorded American English. He explains that American English is characterized by its consistency across the country, its disregard for precedents and rules, its inclusion of words and phrases from outside influences, and its inclusion of new words and phrases.

Mencken devotes a section to reviewing the earliest attempts at defining and recording Americanisms in dictionaries, glossaries, and articles.

Chapter 3: The Beginnings of American

In this chapter, Mencken provides a historical context for American English. He discusses "loan-words" taken from Native-American languages and explains that colonists from other countries brought new words with them. Americans also invented words for new foods and for innovations in architecture, agriculture, and hunting.

Other words were assigned new meanings, and obsolete words were revived. American colonists, lacking current literature, adopted many archaic words from the Bible and from commentaries on the Bible.

Chapter 4: The Period of Growth

In chapter four, Mencken describes how the language changed as America became more settled. After the Revolutionary War, Americans were determined to define themselves and their new country on their own terms. American literature was beginning to take shape, and because of anti-British sentiment, many writers looked to other European influences, such as Spain, Germany, and the classical writers.

Mencken discusses the different types of new words in detail. He writes about verbs, adjectives, and then nouns, noting differences between British English and American English. Among the areas in which American English and British English possess very different vocabularies are politics, drinking, and religion.

Certain areas of the country were more impacted by non-English influences than others. Increased immigration resulted in Irish, Jewish, Slavic, and Chinese cultures introducing words into American English.

Chapter 5: The Language Today

Despite efforts to direct the evolution of American English, it has its own direction and momentum. Suffixes and prefixes are one way in which words evolve. Back-formation is another method; an example of this is forming "to resurrect" from the existing noun "resurrection." Mencken observes that the press, in the interest of being concise and conforming to space limitations, often creates words through back-formation and abbreviation (as with "ad" and "gas"). Verbs are often created through back-formation, using nouns as verbs (such as "author") and adding-ize or-en to nouns or adjectives (such as "hospitalize" and "mistaken").

Chapter 6: American and English

Chapter six explores the presence of British English in America and American English in England. After the Civil War, the popularity of American humorists such as Mark Twain in England made Americanisms more accepted. Around the beginning of World War I, American movies became very popular in England, further infiltrating England with American English. Radio, theater, and newspapers were other sources of Americanisms.

To illustrate the differences between the two strains of English, Mencken presents a lengthy table of British English words in everyday life alongside their American counterparts. He then discusses areas in which there are significant vocabulary differences; these include schools, business, professions, nature, sports, music, and honorific titles.

The American tendency to use euphemisms is especially apparent with regard to professions and features of daily life. For example, Mencken observes that Americans prefer "mortician" to "undertaker" and "help" to "servant." The opposite tendency is evident in the terms Americans have for people of various ethnicity, and a table of derogatory terms for people of various origins illustrates this point. On the subject of forbidden words, the American tolerance for crude language is inconsistent across time and location. Mencken provides various examples of words considered profane in England but not in America, and vice-versa.

Chapter 7: The Pronunciation of American

The next few chapters contain a wealth of detail and factual information. Pronunciation is difficult to study because of the subtle differences within individual regions. Mencken cites the work of various phonetic experts and their methods.

Examples of differences in American and British pronunciations include differing syllable stress (as in "advertisement"), the American drawl and nasal tone, and the pronunciations of some vowels and consonants (such as the British tendency to drop the sound of "r").

Mencken again notes that American English is amazingly consistent. In fact, some researchers have found that dialects are on their way to conforming to the general speech patterns in America. Still, Mencken claims that there are three basic dialects: Western American, New England American, and Southern American.

Chapter 8: American Spelling

In early America, there was no authoritative guide to spelling. Noah Webster's work answered this need. English purists resisted American spellings. Mencken boldly states that "American spelling is plainly better than British spelling," citing the example of "jail" versus "gaol."

Americans are generally liberal in their spellings of loan-words. They frequently drop accent marks and do not italicize foreign words in common use. They are also unlikely to use masculine and feminine forms of words (like "blond" and "blonde") or to capitalize as often as the British.

Chapter 9: The Common Speech

Common errors in everyday American speech include the use of double negatives ("don't do nothing"), misuse of adjectives as adverbs ("Look up quick!"), and mismatching pronoun cases and verb tenses ("she have been"). Mencken comments that most grammatical errors in common speech relate to verbs and pronouns. Errors also are made in combining pronouns and adverbs (as in "that there"). The most common problems with nouns occur in making compound nouns and noun-phrases plural (as in "son-in-laws" instead of "sons-in-law") and with the genitive (as in "That umbrella is the young lady I go with's"). Adjectives pose few problems, although Americans often double the comparative or superlative (as in "more better").

Mencken observes that American English expanded so quickly that certain oddities arose. Examples include strange compounds, (such as "that'n" and "woulda"), the contraction "would've" being broken back out to "would of," and the insertion of an "a" between two words (as in "that-a-way").

Chapter 10: Proper Names in America

American surnames represent a wide range of nationalities, but they also reflect the efforts of immigrants to comply with American styles. Many immigrants changed their surnames (and first names) to similar-sounding American names. When family members were born on American soil, they were often given American first names. As Native Americans entered the mainstream society, they often left their tribal names behind.

There are regional differences within the United States in first names. Americans also have a propensity to give unusual first names to their children.

Colonists originally named places after places in England or after landscape features. Today, there are eight categories of place-names: people's names; names of other places; Native-American names; European names; biblical or mythological names; names describing the location; names of the flora and fauna of the area; and "purely fanciful names."

Chapter 11: American Slang

In this chapter, Mencken draws distinctions between slang and argot. The first refers to colloquial language considered below educated standards of language; the second refers to vocabulary specific to a group or profession, and it often includes slang. Mencken discusses some of the major contributors to American slang. Besides the French, Americans are the most prolific users of slang. At the time of Mencken's study, there was little serious study of slang in American English.

Mencken devotes an entire section to a discussion of the argot of criminals, noting that this type of language is international. Differences among the argot of criminals, prostitutes, and vagabonds are explained.

Chapter 12: The Future of the Language

In the final chapter, Mencken asserts that English, especially American English, is destined to remain the most widely spoken language in the world. English is the primary language spoken in the world's most influential nations and is the second language spoken in numerous others. The ongoing spread of English further ensures its importance in the future. Mencken contends that foreigners find English easy to learn because of its straightforward nature.

Key Figures

John Adams

The American statesman John Adams proposed in 1780 that the United States government establish an academy dedicated to the improvement and assessment of the English language. He argued that there were similar institutions in France, Spain, and Italy, but England had never established one, leaving the way clear for America to do so. Adams expected Americans to take the English language to new heights, and thus it made sense to him that America should be home to an academy of English. Years later, in 1806, a bill was proposed to establish this academy, but it did not pass. In 1820, however, the American Academy of Languages and Belles Lettres was established in New York, presided over by John Quincy Adams, John Adams's son. The purpose of this academy was to gather uniquely American words, terms, and sayings in an effort to promote the American language.

Charles Astor Bristed

Charles Astor Bristed was the first American to write a full-length defense of Americanisms. His treatise appeared in a volume of Cambridge Essays, Contributed by Members of the University in 1855. Bristed graduated from Yale University in 1839 and from Cambridge University in 1845.

W. W. Charters

Dr. W. W. Charters was the first researcher to seriously study the common English spoken by most Americans on a daily basis. He was a professor at the University of Missouri and then served as director of the Bureau of Educational Research at Ohio State University. He gathered data by having teachers record incidents of grammatical errors made by their students in and out of the classroom. His work resulted in a wealth of new data that revealed patterns in the types of errors made in everyday speech.

Benjamin Franklin

The American statesman Benjamin Franklin was a strong supporter of the social and political developments taking place in the young United States. Still, he was concerned about most of the changes in the language. He was one of the first to attempt to compile a spelling guide to help standardize spelling in America.

George Philip Krapp

George Philip Krapp, a professor at Columbia University, was the first person to research thoroughly the history and practice of American pronunciations. He used existing materials (dictionaries, glossaries, and spelling books) along with original research to conduct his studies. In a later edition of The American Language, Mencken credits the second volume of Krapp's The English Language in America (1925) as being the first exhaustive and authoritative collection of American pronunciations.

John Pickering

John Pickering was the first to compile a comprehensive list of Americanisms. This is distinct from Webster's dictionary, which included British English words along with American words. Pickering divided Americanisms into the following three categories: new words, new meanings for existing English words, and revived words no longer used in England.

Richard H. Thornton

In 1912 Richard H. Thornton compiled his American Glossary, which was one of the most thorough dictionaries of Americanisms. Mencken comments that its value is in its use of quotations, all dated, and its corrections of common misunderstandings about American English. Mencken adds, however, that because of its reliance on quotations, it is more valuable as a record of the written than the spoken language.

Noah Webster

In 1828 Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language was published. This was the first formal dictionary of American words and grammar. A supporter of John Adams, Webster maintained that America would be larger and more important than England and thus should take the initiative in redefining the standards of the language.

Webster's work was particularly important in establishing standards of spelling in American English. Prior to his work, there was little consistency in how words were spelled.

Themes

National Pride

Mencken carries the theme of American independence from England throughout the book. Besides breaking away from the British government, economy, and culture, early Americans soon broke away from the British English language. Just as Americans created a new way of life and self-government, they created new ways of expressing themselves. In some cases, they even took British words and revived or redefined them to make them American. Early American settlers took great pride in differentiating their English from that of England. They took great offense at being considered ignorant and barbaric by British visitors for their new words, pronunciations, terms, and dialects. As they struggled to establish a new nation, many Americans were unwilling to accept anything that seemed too British, including speech. The increasing tension between the two countries in America's early years led to hostility toward the British and created a strong sense of American solidarity.

Mencken also paints a clear picture of British pride. Early British travelers to the United States reported on the inferior manners of speech adopted by Americans, reflecting the protective pride they felt for their language. Although there was much resistance to Americanisms in British English, they eventually became accepted parts of the British vocabulary.

Inevitable Outcomes

Mencken demonstrates how the changes to the English language were a matter of course in America. New animals, foods, and landscapes, for example, required new words. The influence of the Native-American population was also an inevitable source of change in the American language. Once Americans started organizing themselves into new social and civic groups, new terms were necessary to describe these groups.

Settlers from all over the world brought their own languages, all of which eventually contributed to American English. Immigrants naturally grouped together in cities (or sections of cities) so they could continue to enjoy their native cultures. Wherever ethnic groups were concentrated, it was inevitable that some of their words would become part of the language of the area. Today, Americans all over the country use words derived from Native-American languages, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages. Changes in pronunciation were also inevitable because of the "melting pot" nature of American society. With so many immigrants accustomed to different speech patterns and accents, words were subject to various pronunciations.

In America there are obvious influences of British English, but Americanisms are also present in British English. This, too, was inevitable. Mencken explains that British resistance to Americanisms was ultimately powerless to keep them out of everyday speech. Because of the introduction of American writing and entertainment (such as movies) along with British commentary about America, it was inevitable that some words and phrases would cross over into British usage.

Style

Humor

Mencken uses his trademark wry sense of humor to make his linguistic treatise entertaining. Prior to completing this book, Mencken had poked fun at American scholars, but with this book, he found himself among them. Still, he applied the same writing style to his scholarly work that he had used in so many other forums. The result is a meticulously detailed book that is accessible and enjoyable to the general public. What could be very bland reading comes to life in Mencken's editorial comments. In chapter one, Mencken observes, "In every age, of course, there have been pedantic fellows who outschoolmarm the schoolmarms in their devotion to grammatical, syntactical, and lexicographical niceties." In chapter five, he writes, " Outstanding began its career among the pedagogues, and they still overwork it cruelly, but it is now also used by politicians, the … clergy, newspaper editorial writers, and other such virtuosi of bad writing."

Mencken aims his humor at the British and Americans alike. Commenting on the effects of the American cinema on British English, Mencken writes that American movies were "terrorizing English purists." In chapter one, he pokes fun at a British traveler in the United States who was baffled by a sign reading "Coffin Warehouse." In chapter four, he mocks the British for lacking imagination. He comments:

The English, in naming their own somewhat meager inventions, commonly display a far more limited imagination. Seeking a name, for example, for a mixture of whiskey and soda-water, the best they could achieve was whiskey-and-soda. The Americans, introduced to the same drink, at once gave it the far more original name of high-ball.

Mencken also had a reputation as a humorous commentator on American culture. This is evident in chapter two, where he writes, "Such a term as rubberneck is almost a complete treatise on American psychology." In chapter three, he comments on American disregard for decorum: "The early Americans showed that spacious disregard for linguistic nicety which has characterized their descendants ever since." Commenting on American arrogance, he writes in chapter six on the subject of euphemisms:

The American, probably more than any other man, is prone to be apologetic about the trade he follows. He seldom believes that it is quite worthy of his virtues and talents; almost always he thinks that he would have adorned something far gaudier.

Historical Survey

To support his presentation of the development of American English, Mencken introduces a wealth of historical and linguistic information. He writes about developments in the language by explaining how and why they came about, what writers or scholars had to say about them, what sort of debates arose between the Americans and the British (or among Americans), and what publications were relevant. Extensive footnotes, an appendix, a glossary, and an index further support the text.

Topics for Further Study

Create a glossary of terms for a subject area not covered in The American Language. For example, you may want to create a glossary of teenage slang or technology terms. Add an introduction in which you give some background or historical information about the terms.
Choose another aspect of culture, besides language, and explain how America has differentiated itself from England in that area of life. You may choose to write about fashion, entertainment, literature, or government. Prepare a presentation tracing and explaining the development of the differences over time.
Research ebonics, a method of teaching based on Black English. Based on your understanding of the arguments for and against this approach, what do you think Mencken would think about it? Write a letter to a newspaper editor as if you were Mencken, describing your opinions on the matter.
Linguistics is a lesser-known field of study but one with many practical applications. Interview (in person or by phone or email) a college professor of linguistics to learn about the scope and importance of this discipline. You may want to ask about the future of linguistics, too.
Review chapter six, in which Mencken discusses euphemisms and forbidden words. Consider his comments in the modern context of political correctness. Do you see any differences between the examples Mencken provides and what you see in today's society? What value, if any, do you see in shaping language to avoid offending or belittling anyone?

Mencken uses a logical progression of ideas to guide the reader through his treatise. The organization of the book along historical lines gives the reader a clear framework for understanding complicated material. Beginning with an overview of the issues explored in the book, he introduces the reader to the tensions between American English and British English. Next, he explains how scholars have attempted to define and record Americanisms as the field has expanded over the years. Once he provided the reader with this overview, Mencken delves into the evolution of American English in greater detail.

Mencken chooses a chronological approach, beginning with the earliest settlers and their struggle to redefine English to suit their new needs. Next, he explains how America's growing population and changing attitudes led to alterations in the language. Addressing modern-day usage, he reviews various parts of speech, demonstrating how each has changed so significantly that stark differences between American English and British English are evident.

The next section of the book explores the minutiae of language; Mencken describes American pronunciations and spellings and how they came to differ from those of British English. Next, Mencken addresses everyday speech by breaking it down into grammar, parts of speech, and peculiarities of everyday American English. After a review of the rules of proper names in America, Mencken returns to the subject of informal speech by discussing slang. Appropriately, he concludes the book by commenting on what he sees as the future of American English. Up to this point, he has demonstrated its ability to change and adapt, and he leaves the reader with the understanding that it will continue to do so.

Historical Context

Reading Habits in America during the 1910s

The 1910s saw significant changes in the reading habits of the American public. The market for books grew substantially. In order to sign on the best writers, many publishers approached them with ideas for planned works rather than waiting for completed manuscripts to consider. Books about war had an immediate audience in the years leading up to, during, and after World War I. Houghton Mifflin released more than one hundred war-themed books between 1914 and 1919. Means of distribution had to change with expanding readerships. Before World War I, 90 percent of books were sold by door-to-door salesmen and through catalogs. The rise of the bookstore followed; in 1914 there were 3,501 bookstores, mainly in urban areas, but this number soon grew and locations spread. A new generation of publishers entered the business, including Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher of The American Language.

Americans also enjoyed a new breed of magazines, called the "smart magazines" by writer George Douglas. Publications such as Vanity Fair, the Smart Set, The New Yorker, and Esquire combined elements of humor magazines and society magazines. Aimed at an intelligent, elite audience, these magazines offered information on a variety of topics alongside satire and opinion pieces.

Newspapers were changing, too. The press was shaped less by newspaper owners and more by editors. The result was more variety among newspapers, as different editors chose to cover and comment on news based on their own principles. Oswald Garrison Villard's approach to editing the New York Evening Post and The Nation was based on moral standards, while Adolph Ochs and Carr Van Anden edited the New York Times in hopes of producing a literary paper that presented news objectively. Still others were focused primarily on making money. A code of professional ethics emerged in the field of journalism around this time. This was due in part to the "yellow journalism" (the practice of exaggerating and sensationalizing news in order to boost readership) of the late nineteenth century, and in part to new university programs in journalism.

On the literary front, the years after World War I resembled other postwar eras. Disillusionment and the impulse to portray American life gave rise to works with American settings, American protagonists, and themes of individualism and overcoming adversity. In The American Language, Mencken notes that Mark Twain and James Fenimore Cooper rose in popularity. Most of the major writers in the 1910s were from the Midwest. Willa Cather was from Nebraska; Booth Tarkington and Theodore Dreiser were from Indiana; Carl Sandburg was from Illinois; and Sherwood Anderson was from Ohio. Not surprisingly, much of the literature of this time is set in rural communities. Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, published the same year as The American Language, takes place in a small Midwestern town. Some of the war-related novels of this period have become enduring fixtures of American literature. Cather won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a story of a Midwestern boy who finds his place in the world when he goes off to war. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1929) is based on his personal experiences during the war.

American Linguistics

American linguistics has its foundation in the works of Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Leonard Bloomfield. Sapir and Bloomfield dominated the study of descriptive linguistics, which asserts that languages are related by basic units and structures (such as phonemes, the basic unit of sound in a language; morphemes, the basic unit of meaning; and syntax, the rules governing sentence structure) but are best studied as independent entities. Noam Chomsky took their ideas and developed his own theory of generative grammar. This theory states that language and cognition develop together because language is innate and thus becomes more complex as humans become more complex. Bloomfield spearheaded structural linguistics, which focuses on structures such as those mentioned above as language components. Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield formed the Linguistic Society of America in 1924. Mencken mentions this organization briefly in The American Language (chapter one, section five).

Another major area of study within American linguistics is historical-comparative linguistics, which compares Indo-European languages (which include European languages along with their forerunners from Iran and parts of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent) and also studies the development of American English and its dialects. It is this area in which Mencken's work is considered a tour de force.

Compare & Contrast

1910s: The experience of World War I forever changes the way Americans feel about their position in the world. Never having been involved in a conflict of this magnitude, Americans feel patriotic but also disillusioned and fearful.
Today: In 2001, terrorists attack the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. These attacks on American soil leave Americans feeling disillusioned and fearful but also patriotic and united.
1910s: There is not yet a comprehensive linguistic history of the United States. Although the topic has received attention and study over the years, no one has compiled all data into a single volume.
Today: Mencken's The American Language is considered one of the most informative and thorough treatments of American linguistics. The field has broadened, and books are available containing up-to-date terms, slang, and influences. To date, however, no other author has compiled another volume as ambitious as Mencken's work.
1910s: Bookstores are just becoming an important element of the publishing business. In 1912, the Washington Square Bookshop in New York City's Greenwich Village offers the Little Leather Library, a series of excerpts from the classics. This set is also sold through Woolworth's and sells an unprecedented one million units in a year.
Today: Bookselling is highly competitive, with large traditional stores that carry tens of thousands of titles and online booksellers that offer, literally, millions. Sales have skyrocketed. In 1994, for example, a record seventeen titles sold over a million copies each.

Critical Overview

The American Language was a surprise bestseller upon its publication in 1919 and is still respected as a classic work today. While some linguists dismiss the book as the work of a talented amateur, its admirers out number its detractors. Mencken's contemporaries praised the work as thorough, scientifically sound, intriguing, and entertaining. Praising the book for its scientific approach, W. H. A. Williams of Twayne's United States Authors Series Online describes it as "a work of solid, painstaking research." Brander Matthews, a founding member and president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, comments in a 1919 review for the New York Times Book Review that Mencken is "armed at all points" in this authoritative work. He describes the book as "interesting and useful; it is a book to be taken seriously; it is a book well planned, well proportioned, well documented, and well written," adding that he read it "with both pleasure and profit." Matthews goes on to note that while the differences between British English and American English are apparent, "nobody has ever marshaled this host [of divergences] as amply, as logically, or as impressively as Mr. Mencken has done." The only flaw the critic finds in The American Language is that Mencken is at times overly disrespectful of some of his predecessors.

Critics often comment on Mencken's ability to ease into the intellectual world after mastering popular writing. In the Virginia Quarterly Review, Willard Thorp reviews Mencken's various writing styles and observes, "Of Mencken's learned style little needs to be said. It has been praised, deservedly, since the first edition of The American Language appeared in 1919. Who would have supposed that a treatise on language could be so lively that the reader has to remind himself that he is being educated as well as entertained?" According to Williams, the book is important not just to the field of linguistics but also as a historical piece. He explains:

As a historian of language, Mencken was also a historian on an important aspect of American culture. That he produced such a brilliant and original work years before American cultural history had become a recognized and established field is merely one token of his achievement.

Edmund Wilson, Jr., a respected critic of literary and historical works, also applauds Mencken as a scholar and finds him to be a patriot in spite of himself. Wilson writes in a 1921 issue of New Republic:

The truth is that in the last few years Mencken has entered so far into the national intellectual life that it has become impossible for him to maintain his old opinions quite intact: he has begun to worry and hope with the American people in the throes of their democratic experiment.… This phenomenon seemed to make its appearance toward the last page of The American Language ; and if it does not come to bulk yet larger we shall have one of our strongest men still fighting with one arm tied behind his back.

Criticism

Jennifer Bussey

Bussey holds a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor's degree in English Literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, Bussey demonstrates that the characteristics of the American language, as described by H. L. Mencken, point to other important features of American culture.

The United States is unique in a number of ways, but to historians and cultural commentators, it is especially interesting for its relative newness. America is unlike any other nation in its beginnings because it grew not out of circumstance and geography but out of intention. The first American settlers deliberately left their native countries and traveled to a new land to start a new way of life in almost complete isolation from their traditional cultures. These circumstances allow historians to trace the development of American culture in a way that no other country's culture can be studied. In The American Language, Mencken examines the evolution of language in the United States. His study is thorough and compelling, and it is particularly intriguing when compared to other important aspects of American culture because there are so many similarities. The American Language deepens the reader's understanding of American culture because the qualities that define the language characterize other American institutions and attitudes. According to Mencken, American English is adaptable, uniform, multicultural, individualistic, and influential, and has its own momentum. All of these qualities also appear in other segments of American culture.

First, American English is adaptable; this is, in essence, the thesis of Mencken's book. Vocabulary is the area in which the most change continues to take place. As society changes with the times, new words are needed, just as the first colonists needed new words to describe their new circumstances. Another important pillar of American culture that is flexible is the Constitution, on which America's unique form of government is based. The oldest document of its kind, the American Constitution could not have survived so long without being flexible. The spirit of the document has remained intact over the years, and the wording of the core document has remained unchanged, but amendments have been added as needed. For example, the founders did not allow women to vote because their society did not consider voting a woman's right. In 1920, however, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. This is only one example of the Constitution's ability to expand to meet the needs of its changing people, just as the American language has done and continues to do.

Second, Mencken describes American English as uniform. At the beginning of chapter two, he writes that everyone who has studied American English has noticed that it is remarkably consistent across the country. While there are regional dialects and vocabularies, these are not as disparate as they are in many other countries, especially countries as large as the United States. He illustrates the point by claiming that a taxi driver from Boston could work in Chicago without facing a language barrier with his riders. By contrast, a taxi driver in India who moved a similar distance would likely have to learn a new language.

This linguistic consistency is reflected politically in the positive feelings most residents have about the American form of government. While many countries face disgruntled masses longing for a newer, fairer form of government, most Americans agree that the constitutional republic in which they live is fair and empowering. The way a nation's people feel about their government is an important contributor to overall well-being and contentment within its borders.

Third, Mencken also comments in chapter two that everyone who has studied American English has noticed "its large capacity for taking in new words and phrases." In numerous contexts throughout the book, Mencken emphasizes the multicultural qualities of American English. From the first settlers' encounters with Native Americans to the flood of immigrants from Europe in the nineteenth century, foreign languages have had a profound impact on English in America. This notion of the "melting pot" is a critical aspect of American culture. Americans take great pride in living in a country that welcomes people from all over the world and allows those people to bring the richness of their cultures with them. By folding in so many cultural influences, America becomes a fascinating mosaic of words, foods, music, clothing, customs, religions, and every other part of American life. The multicultural elements of American culture are impossible to miss. In America, these differences are not only encouraged and often celebrated, but they inspire new blends of cultures. Music, for example, offers a mixture of ethnic styles. In literature, many writers base their works on what it is like to be in America as a member of another culture.

Fourth, Mencken describes the American spirit as defiantly independent, a spirit that has been the force behind many of the changes in the language. Americans' determination to be different from the English and to assert their liberties made them unwilling to adopt British English intact. Instead, Americans created new words, gave new meanings to existing English words, and rescued other English words from obscurity. Independence is a core feature of American culture, and its effects reach into American economics, business practices, and policy-making, as well as law. The United States imposes fewer legal restrictions on both individual expression and on businesses than virtually any other nation.

Fifth, Americanisms have influenced other languages. In chapter six, Mencken discusses the many ways in which Americanisms have made their way into British usage. Later, he observes that American English is also used in other countries around the world. Despite being a relative newcomer on the language scene, American English is very influential. Similarly, America is extremely influential in the world, especially in terms of economics and the military. America's strong economy makes it a major player in the world market, and the well being of other countries depends on the strength of the American economy. America buys from and sells to numerous nations worldwide, in addition to offering humanitarian aid to countries faced with famine, drought, oppression, and other strains. When the American economy was crippled by the Great Depression, European countries like Germany, England, and France were impacted. Militarily, America is also extremely influential. The Cold War, in which the Americans and the Soviets faced off in a sort of staring contest while they built up reserves of nuclear weapons, is evidence of the importance of American military strength to the world. Without it, many believe that communism would have gained too much power during this time. More recently, there are examples of other countries (such as South Vietnam and Kuwait) relying on the United States for help in fighting their wars.

Finally, Mencken notes in chapter five that American English has a momentum of its own. It has not been subject to the efforts of those who have attempted to control its development. For such a young culture, the American way has demonstrated considerable momentum. A specific aspect of American culture that continually demonstrates momentum is the American dream of economic betterment. Immigrants and natives alike are drawn to the idea that in a land of opportunity, hard work and determination are rewarded with a better life. This dream is so strong that it propels people from harsh situations (at home or abroad) to create goals for themselves and pursue them even when faced with setbacks.

What Do I Read Next?

Edited by Frederic Gomes Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, Dictionary of American Regional English Vol. 1: Introduction and A—C (1985) is considered the most comprehensive collection of words and terms unique to the United States, complete with definitions, pronunciations, alternative forms, dates, and examples of use. The book also includes articles, maps, and other relevant resources. Cassidy and Hall released subsequent volumes with additional information; volume two was published in 1991, and volume three was published in 1996.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949) and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (1995), edited by Terry Teachout, contain selections of Mencken's unpublished works. Critics describe these books as valuable collections of Mencken's writing.
Bruce Mitchell's An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England (1995) is an introduction to Old English for readers who find the language confusing and intimidating. Mitchell includes historical information to provide a context for the discussion, helping the reader to understand how the roots of the English language have become the English of today.
Peter Trudgill reviews the various manners of speech in England in Dialects of England (1999). Trudgill includes dialects from the distant past to the present, encompassing fifteen hundred years of language development. The style is not technical, and he provides historical and geographical information to further aid the student's understanding.

That the qualities that make up the American language are shared by so many other aspects of the culture should not be surprising. These are the qualities possessed by the people who perpetuate the language and the culture, after all. Americans, like their culture, accept change, possess similarities and differences, value independence, influence one another and the world, and have the opportunity to apply cultural momentum to their lives. In any cohesive culture, there is consistency among different elements—language, economy, government, art, attitudes—no matter how unrelated they may seem. Perhaps Mencken's contemporaries embraced The American Language because they saw themselves in it and thus believed in the integrity of the work. And perhaps this is why the book is so enduring; Americans continue to see themselves in it.

Source:

Jennifer Bussey, Critical Essay on The American Language, in Nonfiction Classics for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Raymond Nelson

In the following essay excerpt, Nelson examines the difficulty scholars have had in evaluating the impact The American Language and Mencken have had on linguistics.

Probably no one would take exception to [Raven] McDavid's observation that "a tremendous growth took place in American linguistics between the first edition of The American Language in 1919 and the fourth in 1936", but not everyone would feel entirely comfortable with his implication of a causal relationship. Mencken's influence on linguistics has proved difficult to evaluate, in part because it has been primarily literary and inspirational. Mencken kept to his own haunts and developed his own procedures, in which circumstance or accident sometimes played a part. He had no students who would institutionalize his ideas and developed no subfield to be identified with him. That is to say, he did not behave in ways that would make him comparable to the specialized, scientifically oriented linguists of the twentieth century.

The American Language is closer in kind to nineteenth-century scholarly enterprises on the grand scale, which aspired to be definitive rather than incremental. Mencken's contribution to his discipline, then, comes from an ancestral distance and is not so much practical as it is spiritual, if we may allow ourselves so unmenckenian a concept. He is at his best as a cheerleader, an antagonist, and an exemplar—someone who points to great possibilities by assuming great tasks. In these qualities, as in little else, he most resembles Noah Webster among the doctors of the national language.

The book itself goes Webster one better. It remains approachable as a treatise on sociolinguistics, as a testimony of its peculiar time and place, or as an artifact, which is still powerful even though it may no longer be timely. It also remains just out of reach of any one of those approaches. The judgments that it or aspects of it have attracted over the years, while often shrewd, have almost of necessity been either stringently localized or too sweeping. Almost everybody would agree, probably, that The American Language is monumental; some might find it glorious in its way; but surprisingly few have felt able to identify its premises or weigh its evidence with any great degree of confidence.

One favorite way to duck the risk of evaluating a man who goes off on tangents, shuffles his assumptions, and writes, as Louis Kronenberger complained, in "a style in which it is impossible to tell the truth", has been to announce that he is an amateur, not subject, somehow, to the demands linguists might legitimately make on other linguists. Mencken himself made clever use of this evasion, which has the added benefit of placing him in good company. Much of the seminal philological work in America has been and continues to be done by dedicated amateurs. Roger Williams was one. Thomas Jefferson was another. John Bartlett was another. And so on. What amateurism may mean with regard to Mencken, however, except that he worked on his own, is not entirely clear. He was every bit as learned and at home with his learning as any academic linguist, although he may not have shared the academic's trust in methodology. It is true that he turned to philology for love more than money, but it is also true that he almost certainly made more money at it than any of his professional contemporaries. Perhaps he may appropriately be called amateur because he was a man of letters rather than a scientist, who, like Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster, used philology as a way of expressing a personal vision of national and civilized values.

"In any cohesive culture, there is consistency among different elements—language, economy, government, art, attitudes—no matter how unrelated they may seem."

Such speculations and associations may yield a glimpse of the public man in the light of his discipline, although disagreements about his stature will continue to be sharp. The personal man is a different matter. Analysis can be a touchy business when dealing with so resolutely superficial a character as Mencken. Nevertheless, the book is so much of the man, and judgments about the man and the book are so inextricably linked, that curiosity, if nothing finer, would look for answers in Mencken's distinctive personality. It was the personality, of course, that earned him his great influence and celebrity. He was boisterous, supremely self-confident, and assertive to a fault, one of the most colorful self-promoters of his era, so cocky that, if he had thought of it, Wallace Stevens might have written his swashbuckling poem of 1922, "Bantams in Pinewoods," specifically about him. However attractive his psychic strut might have made him to his contemporaries, and many were infatuated with him, it could also lead him to snap judgments, not always good ones, or to aggressiveness for its own sake. The attitude was at least largely responsible for his indifference to the humility, patience, and disinterestedness that are implicitly required by any scientific inquiry.

The radical individualism is ultimately not so much an issue of style—how much of a noisy personality can one take?—as of character—at what juncture does cockiness become egotism, indifferent to introspection, inaccessible to correction? Mencken regarded himself as a man apart. That attitude, which he advertised blatantly, frequently involved the assumption that he was right and the world wrong simply because he was Mencken, born to the purple, so to speak, even if he was pretty much a party of one. It was at first partly a mask, of course, but over time the man grew into it. At its best, his Toryism made him a tough, courageous champion of individual liberties. However, the impulses that led him to confront with a kind of chivalric gallantry lynchers and comstockers alike also inclined him to arrogance, facetiousness, and a contemptuous dismissal of lesser breeds. His reputation will always be tainted by the meanspirited bigotry he seemed eager to record for posterity during the last years of his creative life, after his outrage at the ascendancy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal embittered him, and he almost spitefully made himself into a smaller man than our admiration wants him to be.

Walter Lippmann asserted that if the clamorous personality were suppressed Mencken would be reduced to "a collection of trite and somewhat confused ideas." The division of mind and character is perhaps too sharp, but the observation that the personality indeed preceded and usually dominated the thought is unexceptionable. Mencken's self-consultations and characteristic impatience, not only with the subtleties but even the procedures of public debate, did indeed often result in reductionism. He would bring a slogan to the table, elevate his volume, and refuse to acknowledge amendments from the floor. Such tactics were useful for getting attention but ultimately impossible to sustain.

Both the strengths and weaknesses of Mencken's reductionism are displayed in his basic argument about the divergence of American and British English. In a brisk retrospective review of the 1963 abridgment. W. V. Quine suggested that Mencken's showy dichotomy was in fact a careless fusion of five separate contrasts that were the book's true subjects: between U.S. and British English; between well-defined grammar and the older Latin grammar; between speech (which is basic) and writing (which is derivative); between colloquial and literary language; and between descriptive and prescriptive lexicography. Some process of reduction is obviously necessary to any imposition of order on accumulations of data. That Mencken's could be effective is clear from the power his dichotomy held over two generations of reviewers. However, as Quine's example insists, Mencken often risks turning argument into caricature, and sometimes he succumbs to the risk.

"Mencken's influence on linguistics has proved difficult to evaluate, in part because it has been primarily literary and inspirational.… That is to say, he did not behave in ways that would make him comparable to the specialized, scientifically oriented linguists of the twentieth century."

His mind was not supple in ways that would allow him to be educated by the particular requirements of a task. By the time he had reached his young manhood, so he claimed, he had developed all of the important opinions he would ever find necessary, and he went on repeating them until he lost the power to speak. They were the prejudices he cheerfully acknowledged in the titles of his famous series of opinionated books, an arrangement of set responses that lent his utterances great strength and forthrightness, and enabled him to produce a preter-natural amount of lucid, consistent, usually entertaining prose. They narrowed his mind as they focused it.

In a celebratory essay, Raven McDavid argued that intellectual flexibility was in fact one of Mencken's strengths, demonstrated in part by his persistent corrections of his text. It is about as strong an argument in Mencken's favor as could be made from the evidence, but it eventually arrives at a dead end. Although his passion for collecting facts and noting them accurately was among his few wholly uncomplicated virtues, it did not move him to rethink the assumptions that held his facts together. His discussion of African loanwords, for example, has attracted some troubled commentary, particularly in recent years. When he contended in 1919 that the slaves brought only gumbo, goober, juba, and voodoo to the lexicon, and had "probably helped to corrupt a number of other loan-words", he was probably saying no more or less than might be expected of him. Such assumptions were of a piece with his milieu's alternately supremacist and indifferent attitudes toward African-American culture.

In succeeding editions the argument remained where Mencken left it in 1919, even though he had a surprising amount of interaction over the years with such African-American intellectuals as James Weldon Johnson and George Schuyler, whom he encouraged to make aggressive cultural statements on behalf of their race (Scruggs). He added to his original word list only a few explanatory sentences to the effect that Africanisms otherwise survived exclusively in Gullah, while African-American English derived either from poorly assimilated white speech or comic dialect-writing.

When he returned to the subject in Supplement I. Mencken filled out the record by noting the important new studies of the early forties about African cultural survivals and what Melville Herskovitz (whom Mencken cited) called "the myth of the Negro past." He acknowledged Lorenzo Turner's researches in Gullah and his arguments about the influence of African languages upon specifically Southern African-American dialect, and he expanded on the etymologies of the loanwords on his list, which was essentially unmodified. It is surely to his credit that he gave Turner's important studies some exposure. There is no reason to suspect him of being personally sympathetic to revisionist arguments about issues of race in the U.S. At the same time, his description of Turner's work was simply part of an accumulation of data, without interpretation or application, so that he left unqualified his own original contention that African-American speech is derivative and its contribution to the common tongue limited to some half dozen marginal words.

He saw flexibility of mind as a sign of weakness, even when he encountered it among contemporaries who had rethought their positions because of the strength with which he argued his own. Charles Fecher and Fred Hobson have been among Mencken's most sympathetic and sophisticated observers, and both make a point of emphasizing, with approval, the absolute consistency of his basic ideas throughout his career. It was the same single-mindedness Edmund Wilson had described in 1921. "Mencken," he wrote, "once having got his teeth into an idea, can never be induced to drop it, and will only shake his head and growl when somebody tries to tempt him with something else." In the diary he maintained sporadically during the thirties and forties Mencken himself noted: "It always distresses me to hear of a man changing his opinions, so I never seek conversions. My belief is that every really rational man preserves his major opinions unchanged from his youth onward. When he vacillates it is simply a sign that he is stupid."

The formidable qualities of mind and personality, then, from which Mencken drew much of his strength, could by indiscriminate application turn to infirmities. They are the source of the two major faults in The American Language. The first is almost entirely a matter of the surface and derives from Mencken's fixation on the British, their incorrigibility, their airs of superiority, and the prestige enjoyed by their variety of the language. Once he had made his emotionally charged calls for liberation from British authority into an organizational principle, he was for practical purposes incapable of keeping his argument responsive to changes in the situation. Henry Bosley Woolf described the anachronistic stereotypes about British attitudes ("even when allowances are made for Mencken's tendency to exaggerate") that persisted into the McDavid abridgment of 1963. Particularly after the beginning of the Second World War, Mencken's fulminations about English traits increasingly assumed a decided, not necessarily unpleasant, period flavor.

He did not know the British vernacular or its distribution well enough to justify his a priori argument. Forgue, among others, has noted that Mencken's comparative nationalism compares unlike entities: a standard British, more often written than spoken, implicitly considered as monolithic, to colloquial American in all its wild irregularity. Mencken himself acknowledged then dismissed the problem in his preface to the 1921 edition. Over the years many critics have amused themselves by listing some of Mencken's inaccuracies or inconsistencies regarding British usage.

Errors in detail, however, in a study so rich with detail, are an incidental shortcoming of every edition of The American Language and are easily corrected. The more serious and enduring fault of Mencken's preoccupation with the competition of languages is the disproportionate importance it awards the British. Against his own volition, or so it seems, Mencken establishes the bases of his study in British English and in effect makes British usage normative, the referent from which linguistic change is measured and according to which comparisons are drawn. A similar distortion of emphasis in the extended lists of comparative vocabulary sometimes results in the comparison of strictly British usages or the chronicling of their changes. We learn, for instance, that in British schools the "lower pedagogues used to be ushers, but are now masters or assistant masters (or mistresses) ", or we are provided a substantial word list from the "archaic and unintelligible [British] nomenclature" of music. While such matters can be interesting and valuable in themselves, pages of them are merely distractions in a study of American English.

The other major fault in The American Language lies at its heart. Mencken never could clarify or escape the contradictions inherent in his personal definition of American. He invoked, often in crude terms, breeding and the spontaneous authority of superior men to resist the biological and political implications of democracy, but he insisted on American freedoms, rejoiced in expressions of democratic energy—the more grotesque the better—and immersed himself in his American milieu as few people have. His conflicted feelings about his citizenship and emotional allegiances were often noted. "What Mr. Mencken desires," Walter Lippmann asserted in a review of Notes on Democracy,"is in substance the distinction, the sense of honor, the chivalry, and the competence of an ideal aristocracy combined with the liberty of an ideal democracy. This is an excellent wish, but like most attempts to make the best of both worlds, it results in an evasion of the problem".

Incompatible assumptions also result in an evasive model of the American language. Mencken, perhaps tactically, declined ever to address the question about the organic relationship of vulgate and standard his own analyses begged. In other words, how do yokels and gaping proletarians, who are more or less involuntarily spawning a language, also manage to make the language great: imaginative, metaphoric, daring of wit, and so on? He sidestepped the issue by identifying linguistic energy with American loutish ingenuity while assigning linguistic form to the British and their ill-fitting Latin grammars. Like so much of Mencken's behavior, that polarization reflects a need for unambiguous positions that shifts him back and forth between the Old World and the New, the past and the present. In the study, it leads to the conclusion that energy is good, or at least good fun, while form is bad.

Mencken, of course, would not have acknowledged so lame a proposition, but his tacit applications of it reduce to brittle allegory what should be the dialectical interplay of description and prescription, usage and sanction. In particular, the dualism drains his practical theory of the creative tension that would be generated by a rigorous ongoing interaction of the savage force with civil authority, be it academic, literary, or merely conventional, so that both form and energy are constantly limited and constantly renewed.

The observer of language who risks becoming, like Mencken, equally (and only) disdainful of both the schoolmarm and the yokel is left with nothing of the creative process to value except raw energy, pretty much for its own sake. The inconsistencies between the making and what has been made are left irreconcilable. Forgue attempted to reconcile them by arguing that Mencken intuits and makes us feel a kind of vitalistic model whereby the linguistic élan vital imitates the abundance and randomness of nature, thus becoming subject to a Darwinian process of natural selection, which sorts out the anarchic flux and sustains what fittest elements of language may survive.

Forgue's ingenious analysis of Mencken as an evolutionist abandons the search for Homo faber altogether, but it offers a uniquely plausible, internally consistent explanation of the relationship between Mencken's vulgar and standard American. Unfortunately, it was not Mencken's explanation. He understood from the first that he had a problem, as he acknowledged to F. C. Prescott in relating the American of educated people to that of the masses. In edition after edition, however, the intractability of the problem provoked him less to brilliant solutions than to virtuoso performances of the shell game. In his preface to the 1921 edition he acknowledged that his assumption in 1919 of two American dialects (which he did not define) had confused some readers, and he proceeded to discuss a four-dialect model, "a language of the intellectuals, another of the fairly educated (business men, Congressmen, etc.), another of the great American democracy, another of the poor trash." However, he attributed these categorizations to an anonymous "American scholar," was noncommittal about it, and apparently never consulted it again, even in the edition of 1921.

In his chapter on "The Common Speech" in 1923 Mencken employed a cursory, occasional distinction of vulgar American, correct American, and correct English, and he reported the same categories in 1936. These are precisely the formulations at work in 1919, and they remain wholly arbitrary. Over the years he made not even a gesture toward distinguishing standard (or correct) American from its vulgar ancestor. In fact, in all editions, after discussions of the early federal period are concluded, American almost exclusively connotes "vulgar American," and one need not be among the muddleheaded Britons Mencken scolded in 1936 to draw conclusions from the usage. An American Ph.D., the only one to study Mencken as a philologist, suggested that "the Vulgate is the language that the genuine American aristocrat will use naturally, both in his writing and his speech".

To the degree that Mencken is to blame for such howlers, he is so first because he could not resist comedy, with its inherent homogenizations, and second because he both conceived and represented a far too monolithic impression of what American might be. He had no real interest in a standard variety. Of what concern to him were the intellectuals, businessmen, and Congressmen nominated by the "American scholar" of 1921? Those fellows were learned idiots, pedants, Rotarians, boobs, Methodists. He had made a career out of making them howl.

So he allowed vulgar American to become a synecdoche for the language itself, but even then he remained indifferent to distinguishing among its many forms of vulgarity. The characteristic of American he identified first in all of his editions was its uniformity throughout the country. It was unlike old-world languages because it lacked dialects. He appears to have obscured the distinction between two ideas about dialect when he assumed that because American was not fragmented into mutually unintelligible regional varieties, as might be found in England or China, it lacked significant geographical or social peculiarities altogether, except in a few items of the lexicon.

His inaccurate assumption, noted by McDavid, that "folk grammar" was consistent throughout the U.S. was at least in part also attributable to his indifference to the formal and empirical resources of science. Forgue pressed hard on that point. Mencken uses linguistics to express himself, Forgue complained; he relies on energy, enthusiasm, and humor instead of the tools of dispassionate inquiry and notation; he overdoes his reflexive defiance of authority. It is not easy to contradict Forgue. No one, probably, would care to deny that in his philological work Mencken was often attracted to curiosities rather than norms, used exaggeration as a method of judgment, and could resist anything better than an opportunity to crack wise.

Fair enough. He worked by memory, inference, and symbol. His vernacular dream of deep structure as a uniform vulgate, lying beneath standard forms like some volcanic substratum, battering and illuminating them, resembles other modern dreams of creative force. Such abstracted and idealized emblems in The American Language should remind us that Mencken was essentially an artist with an artist's conscience, poking among the secrets of origins and evolutions, who gathered evidence in order to substantiate the insights of art. His artifact displays the ambition as well as the messiness and inconsistency of many classic American books.

The American Language was from the first sui generis. Perhaps it will always be inimitable. Whatever its future, Mencken's future depends heavily on it. The unsealing and publication in recent years of his private autobiographical writings have taken the bloom off his personality. The passing political scene of 75 years ago that he so well loved and recorded so brightly seems remote now, even quaint. He never did amount to much of a rigorous thinker. But in his philology he found ways to coordinate all of his virtues, outsmart most of his shortcomings, and achieve a durable integration of vision and nourishment. The art remains, as always, more reliable than the artist.

Source:

Raymond Nelson, "Babylonian Frolics: H. L. Mencken and The American Language," in American Literary History, Vol. 11, No. 4, Winter 1999, pp. 668-98.