Seldom Ask, Never Tell: Labor and Discourse in Appalachia (review)

This book deals with language and socioeconomic relations in Appalachia, the mountainous area of the eastern United States which includes parts of twelve states and all of West Virginia, with a total population of approximately 22 million. It is a revised version of Puckett’s PhD dissertation of the same title but subtitled ‘Speech acts and socioeconomic relationships in a rural eastern Kentucky community’ (University of Texas-Austin, 1993). In the author’s own words: ‘This book … focuses on how tropes, expressions, and other conventionalized verbal forms (metapragmatic designations) designate and interpret imperatives and other speech forms that effect a division of labor for the production, circulation, and consumption of resources in the rural eastern Kentucky community I have given the pseudonym of Ash Creek’ (vii). P’s fieldwork was carried out in rural Kentucky from 1985–87; in addition, she lived close to Ash Creek (with a useful map [18]) from 1987–93, with the exception of one year. This was most fortunate; since she stayed in close touch with members of the community, many things could later be checked and verified. Following federal guidelines as well as the American Anthropological Association’s Statement on Ethics (1990), all 36 linguistic consultants were given pseudonyms (227, n. 2), although one can understand why some of them wanted their real names to have been used. Appendix A presents information on all of them, accurate for 1986 (217–20). These informants supplied 180 hours of audiotaped discourse in what many would stereotypically refer to as ‘hillbilly talk’ (here it is easy to make reference to the vintage American television series The Beverly Hillbillies).

The volume is valuable for several reasons, not the least of which are the transcribed texts which make for marvelous reading by themselves, for example, ‘Wake him up—Now ya got my keys on ya—An don’t lose εm—Cause I couldn’t gIt in the house if ya do—Go with Im Tommy’ (171). P explains her transcriptional system for the conversational analysis presented here (xiii–xv). I think a phonetic transcription would have resulted in a more accurate rendition, since ‘don’t’, for example, would, in all likelihood, not be pronounced with a /t/.

This work may profitably be consulted by sociolinguists and English dialectologists alike. One of the many conclusions offered as a result of the painstaking analysis of the gathered data is that ‘get’ is pronounced with epsilon more often by women than by men. This is rightly considered a genderlect, and also ‘in some cases, a register shift to more proper speech’ (xiv). (The use of the word ‘proper’ is prescriptive, in my view, and should have been avoided.) Another fascinating observation has to do with the use of the imperative. It was surprising to learn that adult men do not use an imperative or other order constructions with other adult men (169). Imperatives in the aforementioned context are ‘not only inappropriate but highly abrasive as well’ (169). Of course, this does not mean that imperatives do not occur in the Ash Creek texts; they do.

Ch. 6 focuses on the nonrequesting uses of imperatives (117–29). Cindy once told the author ‘Come to supper’ (117), and then when the response was, ‘I can’t. Not tonight.’, Cindy further remarked to Anne: ‘Does she think I’m really askin her to supper?’ (117). Imperatives often merely mark social amiability; in this particular case, the ‘Come to supper’ signaled leave-taking (other ways to do this include ‘Come see us’ [= English ‘see ya’], ‘Come home with me’, ‘Stay now/You stay’ [122]). These examples are reminiscent, in my opinion, of the Firthian ‘context of situation’ and reinforce the perspective that trying to analyze language without constant reference to meaning is absolutely meaningless (to paraphrase the famous quote by Roman Jakobson).