Dialect Maintenance, Accommodation, and Development in Sociohistorical Isolation

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines the dynamics of dialect maintenance, accommodation, and change in three contrastive insular settings which vary in geographical location, contact dynamics, and sociohistorical circumstances. Mainland Hyde County in coastal North Carolina represents a longstanding, isolated bi-racial community situated within a unique dialect area--the Outer Banks. African Americans and European Americans have now lived together in relative isolation for almost three centuries, thus providing an opportunity to examine the role of local dialect in the historical development of African American English. Cherokee Sound, located on a remote peninsula of the Abaco region of the Bahamas, presents a mirror image of Hyde County--a small community of transplanted Anglo Americans who fled the United States in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War and have lived in relative isolation for two centuries surrounded by a majority Black population speaking a distinctive Bahamian English variety. Tristan da Cunha is the world's "loneliest island," located in the South Atlantic 1500 miles from the nearest settlement. It was settled by a small group (75-200) of British and American whalers in early 1800s who then had virtually no contact with outside groups for almost 150 years. Thus, it offers a perspective on the development of language in a small community relatively free from external language influence. Sociolinguistic data in these different settings provide an ideal empirical base for comparing the relative role of dialect accommodation and innovation in contrastive insular language settings and for examining the dynamics of ethnolinguistic accommodation in contrastive situations. This study will further our understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie language contact, language innovation, and language maintenance.