Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect

Southern Classics

by Lorenzo Dow Turner, Katherine Wyly Mille, Michael B. Montgomery

The first—and still most important—book on Gullah language

A unique creole language spoken on the coastal islands and adjacent mainland of South Carolina and Georgia, Gullah existed as an isolated and largely ignored linguistic phenomenon until the publication of Lorenzo Dow Turner's landmark volume Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. In his classic treatise, Turner, the first professionally trained African American linguist, focused on a people whose language had long been misunderstood, lifted a shroud that had obscured the true history of Gullah, and demonstrated that it drew important linguistic features directly from the languages of West Africa. Initially published in 1949, this groundbreaking work of Afrocentric scholarship opened American minds to a little-known culture while initiating a means for the Gullah people to reclaim and value their past. The book presents a reference point for today's discussions about ever-present language varieties, Ebonics, and education. For readers today the book offers important reminders about the subtleties and power of racial and cultural prejudice.

In their introduction to the volume, Katherine Wyly Mille and Michael B. Montgomery set the text in its sociolinguistic context, explore recent developments in the celebration of Gullah culture, and honor Turner with a recounting of his life and scholarly accomplishments.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Anthropology, Linguistics, Research

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1949

Reviews

[Amy Firestone]

Excellent introduction to a really important work. Most of this book is a reference book for technical linguistics so is a good reference to have but most of it is highly technical and very traditional linguistics writing Turner was quite ahead of his times and this book should be required for all language and linguistics students note that it was written in the 40s