Profiling the Female Emigrant: A Method of Linguistic Inquiry for Examining Correspondence Collections

摘要

Mass emigration from Ireland to the United States in the nineteenth century has beenexamined in terms of its economic, political and social impact on both home andthe New World. Drawing on a range of sources such as census information, shippingrecords and other public documentation, research suggests that during this period therewas an increase in migration amongst females, mostly single women in their late teensand early twenties.1 Knowing that it was unlikely they would ever return to Ireland,the letter was the main method through which these young women kept in touch withloved ones back home.Over the past few decades there has been a growing interest in the emigrantletter and how this type of source might inform our understanding of social historyduring the postal era of globalisation. The sourcing, preservation and documentationof emigrant letter collections are growing, and whilst their value as sociohistoricalartefacts is generally accepted, finding the best means to exploit such resources is yetto be agreed upon. For David Gerber, emigrant letters have generally been used inone of two ways: to ‘provide color and drama in historical narratives, or to documentsocietal-level and group-level generalizations’, or as edited collections which ‘let theletter-writers speak for themselves, while providing some background information thatenables readers to place the [author] in the general societal framework of a certain placeand time’.2 Influential studies such as William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s ThePolish Peasant in Europe and America, Charlotte Erickson’s Invisible Immigrants: TheAdaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America, KerbyMiller’s Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America, andWalter Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Helbich and Ulrike Sommer’s News from the Landof Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home, have demonstrated the value in usingpersonal letters to gain a fuller, multi-perspectival understanding of both the complexsocial processes of emigration (such as push/pull factors and the role of institutionsand communities) and the conditions and daily lives of the emigrants themselves.