English

ERIC ED373565: The "Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English" as a Resource for Southern Appalachia.

This paper argues that one important reflection of a culture's status is the existence of general reference books on it. To this end, it discusses the forthcoming "Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English," a book designed to address the lack of a comprehensive reference work on Appalachian speech and language patterns in this region. The paper examines the background, rationale, sources, and main features of the dictionary, along with some of the special considerations that have emerged in the production of the work. The dictionary is largely based on the research of Joseph Sargent Hall, who studied and recorded the speech of the area beginning in the 1930s, along with 20th-century local and historical literature, interviews, glossaries, and local fiction. The dictionary entries contain information on pronunciation and etymology, details of grammatical patterning, cross-references to general works on Appalachia, and calibration of entries to other works, such as the "Oxford English Dictionary" and the "Dictionary of American Regional English." (MDM)

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