On a Sunday afternoon in November I am at the Benedum Center with hundreds of fellow Pittsburghers watching a performance of Mozart’s *The Magic Flute*. It’s the second act, and Papageno the bird-man has just found his true love. The English super-titles help us decipher what he is saying as he starts to exit the stage. But then the English words over our heads stop matching what we’re hearing: Papageno is telling us that the “Stillers are playin’ dahntahn n’at, and they’re only four points down!” The audience bursts into laughter. Papageno has updated us on the score of the Pittsburgh Steelers game, and he’s done it in Pittsburghese. It’s a Pittsburgh moment in an event that could otherwise have been anywhere, a low-culture moment in an otherwise high-culture afternoon, a moment that reminded us of who we were and where we were.

Such moments are common here in the Steel City. People put on performances of Pittsburghese when they talk about the Steelers and the Pirates, when they talk about what Pittsburgh is like and what Pittsburghers are like, when they want to show they are Pittsburghers and when they want to mock Pittsburghers. Why? How has the local dialect become such a powerful symbol of local identity?