melungeons.com

 


 

Looking at Language

 By Katherine Vande Brake

Katie Vande Brake & Brent Kennedy

Who Am I?

Transplanted to Appalachia, I live in Bristol, Tennessee, and have taught English at King College since 1980. I was born and raised in Michigan and earned my B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

The last two years have been spent working on my doctorate at Michigan Technological University. My degree will be in Rhetoric and Technical Communication (the study of communicating in the workplace).

My first trip to the Southern mountains was at age 6. My mother was principal of the high school in Grant, Michigan. Two of her teachers were from Appalachia: one from Owingsville, Kentucky, the other a graduate of King College from Weaverville, North Carolina. Neither of the young women had cars, so my mother and I drove them home to the mountains and in the process fell in love with the hills.

Ever after, I could not go too long without a trip to the Smokies or a leisurely ramble on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is no wonder that I finally came to live in the mountains myself or that I have embraced the culture of the region.

I began learning about Melungeons through articles in the Bristol Herald Courier and other regional publications. The longer I lived in Upper East Tennessee, the more I read, coming quickly to novels by writers like Lee Smith, Sharyn McCrumb, and Wilma Dykeman. So, my connection to Melungeon people is not by blood, but instead is first a reader's and later a writer's connection.

My reading led me to further research. When I was asked to write a scholarly paper as a part my application to graduate school, I decided to write about Melungeon characters in Appalachian fiction. The result of my efforts became a book, How They Shine, published by Mercer University Press in December 2001.

 

What is Linguistics?

Scholars are interested in several aspects of the unique human activity that is language. They study both the way language is structured (or its grammar) and how language use indicates speakers'/writers' relationships to one another. Study of how human connections are played out in conversation is called socio-linguistics.

One of the graduate courses I took in my Ph.D. program was called Linguistic Analysis. In that course we read books and articles by many experts in the field and were challenged to do a project that explored some facet of current work or theory.

Scholars in linguistics are interested in analyzing electronic conversation for a number of reasons. First it is a relatively new way to observe human communication. One of the most labor-intensive aspects of linguistic study is the transcription of human speech from audio or video tapes. Writing down one hour of conversation can take as long as six hours of tedious work. But, both e-mail dialog and synchronous conversation (like what occurs in a chat room) are already in written form. Therefore, the scholar can go straight to her/his analysis without the long hours of transcription.

The research for my book had led me to the Melungeon e-mail list at Rootsweb. As I read the postings over a period of several years, I was intrigued by the evidence of community I found there as well as the wealth of information and the poignancy of many of the stories list members share online. I decided that my linguistics course project would be an analysis of one thread of discussion on the list. There were several reasons for my choice:

 

How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia 

  • The research I did for my book gave me a good foundation of history and literature to build on.

  • Several years as a list member had given me a sense of what "usual" list conversation was like.

  • An analysis of list conversation might be a step toward my dissertation research (topic: how Melungeon people are using the Internet).

The final form my study took is a website that I presented to the small audience of my professor and classmates in an online venue called a MOO (Multi-User Domain, Object Oriented). A MOO is an interactive website where people can meet in real time and have dialog. It enables persons who could not be together in actual space to be together in a virtual space. Since I was analyzing electronic conversation that had occurred online, I chose to present my analysis online, too.

The MOO "window" where my website appeared was narrow. Therefore, I elected to have the text go all the way from one margin to the other. This worked well in the MOO, but makes the site a little hard to read when it is viewed on the web. The light blue background was chosen to contrast with the other two MOO windows that have a white background.

The Methods I Used in My Study

Before I began to work on anything specific I had done a lot of reading--books and articles in the fields of linguistics and Melungeon studies as well as hundreds (thousands) of list postings over the course of several years. My specific steps in gathering and presenting information are listed below:

 

  1. I chose a thread of messages titled "Melungeon herbal medicine."

  2. I wrote a letter asking all participants in the list discussion for permission to quote their postings in my final analysis. Every person quoted in my analysis gave permission for their postings to be used; many asked that their real names be used.

  3. I printed four copies of the list messages (one as a back-up, one in chronological order, one reconstructing the web of messages and responses, one divided by authors).

  4. I read the messages MANY times.

  5. I made notes on the pages of messages themselves and also generated tables to categorize the traits I noticed as I read and re-read the postings.

  6. I met with my professor to get her expert opinion on my work.

  7. I created the website reporting my findings.

What I Discovered

Scholars in socio-linguistics believe that the relationships of persons in an identified group can be determined from their conversation alone. Markers include such things as forms of address, interruptions, "hedges" (a sequence such as "in my opinion"), use of a person's name, use of first person and third person pronouns, and repetition of a word or phrase.

During the period of the "Melungeon herbal medicine" discussion (a week at the beginning of February 2002), there was also a spirited conversation on the list about what it means to call oneself "Melungeon." This topic came up because of the DNA testing and how people were identified to participate in that study. However, no mention of that topic was present in the thread I chose. Yet, I discovered that the markers of group membership were present in the herbal medicine discussion thread. This discovery and the details of how I reached my conclusions constitute my project.

As you read the report presented in the website, I ask you to remember that it was created for a graduate course. The text is academic in tone and style because of the context and audience.

My research question was "How is community enacted and maintained on the Melungeon List?" The answer is quite simple. There is a group of people on Melungeon-L who are descendants of the first Melungeons in Hancock County, Tennessee. These people occupy center stage on the list. Others who are also list members participate in the various discussions, but the core group has information and life experience to share that others learn from and appreciate.

Several people have asked me to share my project, called "A Wired Neighborhood," and to explain it. I hope these comments are helpful additions to the project itself   A Wired Neighborhood 

Katherine Vande Brake

     E-mail: kgvande@king.edu

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