Catcher

The American Dialect Society

The Language of 'The Catcher in the Rye' Author(s): Donald P. Costello Source: American Speech, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Oct., 1959), pp. 172-181 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/454038 . Accessed: 30/01/2011 11:19
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THE LANGUAGE OF 'THECATCHER IN THE RYE'
DONALD P. COSTELLO
RooseveltUniversity

TheCatcher theRye can be in ofJ. D. Salinger's justified not only on the basis of literary interest, but also on the basis Finn of linguistic significance.Today we study The Adventuresof Huckleberry in (with which many critics have compared The Catcher the Rye) not only as a great work of literary art, but as a valuable study in 1884dialect. In coming in decades, The Catcher the Rye will be studied, I feel, not only as a literary also as an example of teenage vernacularin the 1950s. As such, the work, but book will be a significanthistoricallinguistic record of a type of speech rarely made available in permanentform. Its linguistic importance will increase as the American speech it records becomes less current. in Most critics wholooked at The Catcher the Rye at the time of its publication thought that its languagewas a true and authentic rendering of teenage colloquial speech. Reviewers in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, the London the Times LiterarySupplement, New Republic, the New York Herald Tribune and Review BookReview, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Saturday all specificallymentionedthe authenticity of thebook's language. of Literature Various aspects of its language were also discussed in the reviews published in America, the Atlantic,the Catholic World,the ChristianScienceMonitor,the and the Manchester Guardian, Nation, the New Statesman the LibraryJournal, and New YorkTimesBookReview, Newsweek,the Spectator, Time.' Nation, the Worldand the Christian Of these many reviews, only the writers for theCatholic ScienceMonitor denied the authenticity of the book's language, but both of these are religious journalswhich refused to believe that the 'obscenity' was in realistic. An examinationof the reviews of The Catcher the Rye proves that

A

STUDY OF THE LANGUAGE

I. See reviews in America, LXXV (August 11, 1951), 463, 464; Atlantic, CLXXXVIII Part 4, p. 3; ChristianScienceMonitor, July 19,195 1, p. 9; Library journal, LXXVI (i95 i), 1125; Times [London] LiterarySupplement,September 7, 1951, p. 561; Manchester Guard-

CLXXIV World, July 15, '951, (195i), 8z; Catholic (i95I), I54; ChicagoSundayTribune,

ian, August o10,195, p. 4; Nation,CLXXIII (Septemberj, 1951), 176; New Republic, and CXXV (July i6, 195s), zo, z ; New Statesman Nation,XLII (August i8, 1951), 185;
New York...