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Pragmatics
Vol. 13:4 (2003) ► pp.539–549

The “value” of dialect as object

The case of Appalachian English

This paper focuses on whether the concept of “speech variety” has value as a material-like “object” and whether academic research and outreach study a particular variety can “profit” both community residents using the variety and the academic community valuing the research on it. It examines these issues by exploring how economic processes of “valuation” apply to the discursive circulation of the proper noun Appalachian English and its logotype AE in communities using grammatical forms diagnostic of it. It draws upon ethnographic and interview data from southeastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia communities to argue that linguistic misrecognition of these forms constitute a redirected system of valuation that contradicts and undercuts the overt denotational function of Appalachian English in the academic or popular discursive contexts in which they appear. Examining the pragmatics and semantics of possessive pronoun construction, this paper further concludes that Appalachian English does not and cannot circulate as a valued noun in the existing verbal repertoire of the communities examined. What constitutes acceptable and authoritative knowledge instead becomes “stored” in Appalachian English so that its value is in its potential monopoly of knowledge sparingly distributed under specific protocols distributed by “professionals”.

Keywords: Appalachian English, Language and materiality, Language awareness, Political economy
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 December 2003
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.13.4.05puc
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Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Reed, Paul E.
2018. The Importance of Appalachian Identity. American Speech 93:3-4 ► pp. 409 ff. DOI logo
Reed, Paul E.
2020. The Importance of Rootedness in the Study of Appalachian English. American Speech 95:2 ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Tulloch, Shelley
2006. Preserving Dialects of an Endangered Language. Current Issues in Language Planning 7:2-3 ► pp. 269 ff. DOI logo

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