Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1990

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Bethany K. Dumas

Committee Members

Allison Ensor, Henry Kratz, William Shurr

Abstract

Slang in the popular Western novel has heretofore been poorly documented. For this study a glossary on historical principles was compiled containing more than 850 slang terms. The terms were collected from a corpus of 100 novels by authors deemed by critics of the popular Western to be the most successful and influential in the genre. The novels span a period from the dime novel Westerns of the late nineteenth century to the present. The historical glossary shows that a special slang vocabulary has been a defining feature of the Western since its inception in the dime novels. This slang vocabulary plays a major role in creating the colorful fictional vernacular the Western has made familiar to the American public. An analysis of the terms in the glossary reveals that most of them fall within a limited number of semantic domains. The use of slang serves as a rhetorical device that highlights these domains, and by doing so helps the Western achieve a number of important literary aims: to present violence in a socially acceptable manner, to help the reader interact with the Western as they would with a game-like social ritual, and to represent the Old West as a land of boundless opportunity for the courageous individual.

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