Isolation Within Isolation: A Solitary Century of African‐American Vernacular English

Abstract

The nature of language diversity in small, isolated communities is considered by examining a unique sociolingustic situation in which a one African‐American family has resided for over 130 years on a small island community located off the Southeastern coast of the United States. The Anglo‐American community maintained a distinctive dialect due to their isolation from the mainland United States, while the sole African‐American family maintained a variety heavily influenced by African‐American Vernacular English. Although some assimilation to the surrounding Anglo‐American variety has taken place, a number of salient African‐American Vernacular English features are still used by the single African‐American resident of the island. At the same time, the most marked items of the Anglo‐American Outer Banks variety have not been assimilated, thus demonstrating the symbolic exclusion of the African‐American speaker from the Anglo community despite her life‐long residency.