Best Selling Books by Michael Montgomery

The ten essays in The Crucible of Carolina explore the connections between the language and culture of South Carolina's barrier islands, West Africa, the Caribbean, and England. Decades before any formal, scholarly interest in South Carolina barrier island life, outsiders had been commenting on and documenting the "African" qualities of the region's black inhabitants. These qualities have long been manifest in their language, religious practices, music, and material culture. Not surprisingly, the influence of the pioneering linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner is reflected in many of these essays. The work presented in this volume, however, moves beyond Turner in dealing with the discourse and stylistic aspects of Gullah; in relating patterns of Gullah to other anglophone creoles and to various processes of creolization; and in questioning the usefulness of "retention," "survival," and "continuity" as operational concepts in comparative research. Opening new and advancing previous areas of research, The Crucible of Carolina also contributes to a further appreciation of the richness and diversity of South Carolina's cultural heritage.

"Often considered merely a repository of archaic or even Elizabethan English, the language of southern Appalachia represents a distinctive American dialect that is both conservative and innovative. This dictionary marks the first comprehensive, historical record of the traditional speech of this region. Focusing on the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, it features more than six thousand names, usages, meanings, and folk expressions that are found in the region, exemplified by more than fifteen thousand documented quotations." "The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English is the product of more than sixty years' work by the late Joseph S. Hall, a scholar who spent much of his life documenting Smoky Mountain speech and lore beginning in 1937, and Michael B. Montgomery, who assumed editorship of the dictionary in 1990. It is based on hundred of recordings and written sources that date as far back as the late eighteenth century and includes interviews with elderly residents in the 1930s, early church minutes, Civil War letters, local fiction, and written commentaries on mountain speech." "The dictionary is rich in the terminology of traditional mountain culture, illuminating regional practices connected with herbal medicine, moonshining, farming, cooking, music, religious customs, and many other areas. Popular nomenclature for flora and fauna forms a major component of the dictionary. Grammatical forms and patterns are covered in particular detail because they are often hallmarks of southern Appalachian English." "Each entry contains a headword or phrase with variant forms and spellings, one or more definitions, dated citations, and etymology. The volume includes a user's guide and an overview of the grammar, which covers points of usage regarding nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prefixes and suffixes, and other grammatical elements of Smoky Mountain speech."--BOOK JACKET.