Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect Barbara Johnstone 10.1184/R1/6469688.v1 https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Pittsburghese_shirts_Commodification_and_the_enregisterment_of_an_urban_dialect/6469688 This article considers a type of material artifact that circulates ideas about regional speech in the United States: T-shirts bearing words and phrases thought to be unique to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I argue that Pittsburghese shirts, seen for themselves and in the context of their production, distribution, and consumption, are part of a process leading to the creation and focusing of the idea that there is a Pittsburgh dialect. To describe how particular locally hearable forms have become linked with the city, I invoke Asif Agha’s concept of “enregisterment.” To understand why this has happened at the time and in the way it has, I draw on Arjun Appadurai’s model of the “commodity situation.” I suggest that Pittsburghese shirts contribute to dialect enregisterment in at least four ways: they put local speech on display, they imbue local speech with value, they standardize local speech, and they link local speech with particular social meanings. 2009-01-01 00:00:00 t-shirts commodification dialect Pittsburgh