By Peter Vankevich
“Language and Life on Ocracoke: The Living History of the Brogue” (UNC Press 2025), a new book by Jeffrey Reaser, Walt Wolfram and islander Candy Gaskill, continues the exploration of the unique dialect and the culture of Ocracoke Island.
This book, deriving from 120 interviews, is a comprehensive sequel to “Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks,” published in 1997, which provided the first in-depth look at the Ocracoke brogue—a dialect that has captivated linguists, the island’s many visitors and writers from around the world. “Hoi Toide” is the written attempt as to how the words “high tide” are pronounced with the brogue.
The story begins in 1992 when Walt Wolfram, already well-known for his pioneering research on social and ethnic American dialects, joined the faculty at NC State University.
Unfamiliar with his new home of North Carolina, he made efforts to explore its many nooks and crannies which he was sure would shed insight into the accents and dialects of the state. You must visit Ocracoke Island, he was told, because “the people speak Elizabethan English.”
He did, and on visiting, a serendipitous combination of events led him to meet David and Jen Esham, which inspired him to conduct island field research. The next year, he had five of his graduate students use their week-long spring break to come to Ocracoke and interview the “O’Cockers,” a term that refers to residents who can trace their ancestral island lineage for centuries.
That led to “Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue” that Wolfram co-authored with Natalie Schilling, published by UNC Press.
Wolfram created a tradition of having five graduate students use their spring break to teach language and culture at the school, which continues today.
In 2003, Jeff Reaser joined the faculty of the N.C. State English department and the two professors have continued their extensive field research with the help of Gaskill. The two speak at public events, such as the summer Porch Talks sponsored by the Ocracoke Preservation Society, and interviews on WOVV, Ocracoke’s community radio station.
Both are deeply entrenched in the Language and Life Project that Wolfram founded at NC State. This is a non-profit educational and research initiative. Its primary mission is to document, study and celebrate the diversity of languages, dialects, and cultures in North Carolina and across the United States.
Gaskill, a fourth-generation islander, has been involved with researching the brogue from the beginning, having documented her interactions with visitors when she was the proprietor of the former Styron’s Store.
Well-researched, the writing is not the stuffy academic style one can sometimes see in books with language and culture as a theme. There are no footnotes and not even a bibliography. This is a book for readers of all levels, or as Reaser said at an OPS meeting, “We wanted it to be a beach read.”
To gain the perspective for the context for this book it is important to read the Acknowledgements and Preface at the beginning.
After that, what I like about this book is that each chapter is self-contained, and for a book of nearly 300 pages, one could start on page 44 with the chapter “Is the Brogue Pirate talk?” or page 177 with “What Did Old Timers Sound Like?”
Here is something in this book that wasn’t a glint in the eyes of Wolfram and Schilling back in 1997: This is a mixed media book as it is loaded with QR cards that will link your smart phone to recordings. Or, if you don’t like using QR cards, go to the book’s website ocracokebrogue.com and on the home page click “Access media files.”
You will see links to the audio and visual files for each chapter. For example, you can hear Essie O’Neal talk about the hurricane of 1944 described in chapter 17.
This book serves as primer for sociolinguistics, a field that explores dialects, language change, and communication patterns and how language reflects and shapes social identities and relationships.
But this book is more. It provides insights of life past and present on Ocracoke with its many illustrations and chapters such as “What Is the Worst Storm in Ocracoke’s History?” and “What Is the Ocracoke Latino Community Like?”
If this is a book that celebrates the Ocracoke brogue, it also shows how it is disappearing as demonstrated how the school’s students speak and the decreasing number of “O’Cockers.”
Books are available on the island at the Ocracoke Preservation Society, Books to be Read, the Village Craftsmen and the Variety Store. It is also online in eBook form on several book-selling websites.
