the phrase 'the Americans' - subtleties [closed]

'Americans,' when you refer to them generically, lots of times go without 'the.' In-depth research finds that 'Americans' without 'the' is perceived more as a nation that is driven by individuals; individual differences are felt more in the noun phrase.

My question is why do you think 'the Americans' was chosen as the title for this photo collection: The Americans. The photographer Robert Frank traveled around the nation, extensively depicting daily moments of America's men and women, boys and girls in 1955 and 1956. My take is that while the noun phrase 'the Americans' carries a sense of the nation as a whole, maybe a bit lessening the salience of the existence of individual differences, it covers everyone on the land of the United States - completeness, and so that he wanted to tell the audience his book is all-inclusive, inclusive of everyone, relying on the latter nature of the phrase 'the Americans.' Maybe he also wanted to have the title carrying the sense of 'individual differences,' but maybe he took the completeness aspect over the other.

Am I on the right track? Is my interpretation of 'the Americans' sufficient?

Solution 1:

My take is that while the noun phrase 'the Americans' carries a sense of the nation as a whole, maybe a bit lessening the salience of the existence of individual differences, it covers everyone on the land of the United States - completeness, and so that he wanted to tell the audience his book is all-inclusive, inclusive of everyone, relying on the latter nature of the phrase 'the Americans.'

Close.

A better reading, however, would be that "The Americans" refers to a collective ethnic "people" or political "nation" as a single concept, with certain discoverable characteristics that distinguish this "people" from another ethnicity, rather than to a collective group of specific people who could be counted up in a census. Also, it would not necessary include everyone in America. For example, it wouldn't include casual tourists from abroad.

The intent of the phrase is to conceptualize, and to invite the listener to define, this "People".

It is analogous to "the Jews" in the sense of the Jewish people, or "the Iroquois" in the sense of the Iroquois Indian Nation of Native Americans as a cultural and political people and nation, rather than as a legally defined entity.

But, the term "the Americans" in particular also carries a certain sense of irony or paradox to it that similar constructions would not, because unlike most ethnicities or nations or "peoples", "the Americans" is inherently defined as a diverse and multiethnic population. To some extent, using the term embraces the concept of America as a "melting pot" with some ultimate commonality that emerges from the different peoples who contribute to the whole, rather than a "mixing bowl" concept of America as a place where different groups of people merely happen to share territory and co-exist. In other words, "the Americans" implies that a process of ethnogenesis has occurred.