Heritage Lecture Series - Good English: Three Southern and African Language Features in Barracoon
Schedule
Thu May 16 2024 at 05:30 pm
Location
2465 Wimbush St, Mobile, AL 36610, United States | Mobile, AL
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Africatown Heritage House is hosting its third 2024 Heritage Lecture Series event, a collection of speeches designed to touch on topics related to the Black experience. Leah Nodar will present her lecture entitled Good English: Three Southern and African Language Features in Barracoon on Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 5:30pm.From Leah Nodar: "The language we speak carries our history, showing where we are from and what we’ve come through. All languages deserve respect, but they do not always receive it. Like many other marginalized groups before and after, the African founders of Africatown were described in their time as speakers of “bad” or “broken” English. This is not true now and it was not true then. They did not speak in a jumble of mistakes. They were adapting their native language to English after being forced into an utterly strange new world. We know what we know about how this process worked in Africatown thanks to Zora Neale Hurston’s careful and detailed portrayal of speech in her biography of Kossula, Barracoon. In this talk, we will explore both the English and the Yoruba history of three of the linguistic features Zora Neale Hurston depicts in Kossula’s speech, and see that they follow the patterns of adaptation present in other Englishes of the African diaspora. We’ll also trace them through later generations of Mobile and Africatown speakers. Nothing about this process, or this language, is “broken” – it is simply Kossula’s own Africatown variety of Yoruba-based Southern English."
Leah Nodar is from Mobile, AL and has been interested in language from kindergarten at Westlawn Elementary up to her current doctoral studies at Purdue University. She is pursuing a PhD in linguistics, specializing in the interaction of language and society and the formation and development of dialects. Her award-winning study of Africatown English uses innovative methods to understand spoken-language features based on the written language Zora Neale Hurston presents in Barracoon.
The History Museum of Mobile and Africatown Heritage House invite the public to attend this FREE Heritage Lecture Series. Capacity is limited and guests are required to RSVP to attend by calling (251) 206-5268.
For more information on the Heritage Lecture Series, contact Jessica Fairley, Africatown Heritage House Manager, by email at [email protected].
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Where is it happening?
2465 Wimbush St, Mobile, AL 36610, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays: