Sociolinguist Walt Wolfram will be the guest speaker Monday night at 7 at the Friends of the Library annual meeting in the Ocracoke Community Center. He will be joined by fellow North Carolina State University professor Jeffrey Reaser.
Wolfram is the William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University where he also directs the North Carolina Language and Life Project. His area of expertise is the social and ethnic dialects of American English.
At Monday’s meeting, he will talk about “The Treasures of Ocracoke Speech.”
He was one of the early pioneers in the study of urban African-American English through his work in Detroit in 1969. Prior to his tenure at NC State, he taught at Georgetown University and the University of the District of Columbia. He was also the director of research at the Center for Applied Linguistics from 1980 to 1992.
Among his more than 20 books published are “Talking Tar Heel” and “Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue,” available for purchase at the OPS museum and other locales on the island.
