Mountain Speech in the Great Smokies. Popular Study Series No. 5

Hall, Joseph

Popular Study Series No. 5. A short article with photos and diagrams by Joseph Hall about a linguistic survey of dialects found in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. The survey was both written and recorded and it collected dialects, folklore stories, and songs. Joseph S. Hall was a pioneer researcher of the speech and culture of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. His linguistic survey for Great Smoky Mountains National Park was undertaken during the summer of 1937 when, as a graduate student in linguistics, he was hired to document the speech and folklore of older mountain residents who had either been allowed to continue living within the boundaries of the park or lived adjacent to the park. The Popular Study Series began in 1938 as articles published in the National Park Service's Region One (Eastern) newsletter, The Regional Review. The newsletters contained a collection of historical and scientific research articles written by experts in their fields. The quality of these articles resulted in repeated requests for reprints. The National Park Service reprinted select articles in 1941 as the Popular Study Series.