Walt Whitman: Multiplicity of Speech in American Language and Literature

“Language, Whitman argued, must express the multiplicity of habits, heritages, and races that make up the American nationality: ‘The immense diversity of race, temperament, character—the copious streams of humanity constantly flowing hither—must reappear in free, rich growth of speech. From no one ethnic source is America sprung: the electric reciprocations of many sticks conspired and conspire. This opulence of race-elements is in the theory of America.’ Into the purity of New England English, Whitman introduced the ethnic and idiomatic color of American speech. His desire to keep language and literature open and responsive to the multiethnic sources of American nationality corresponded to his political desire to keep the country open to the immigrants who, after 1850, began coming to America in ever-increasing numbers.” —From Whitman: The Political Poet by Betsy Erkkila (Oxford University Press, 1989)