Language, Material Culture, and Materiality in Appalachia

This article focuses on excerpts from interviews conducted with Appalachian speakers between 1999 and 2008 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, examining the role played by objects in the construction of identity within interview interactions. Normally, as a sociolinguist, my research focuses on language use although more recently, I have considered material culture and its role in social meaning-making as well, combining considerations of linguistic and physical artifacts. This paper will extend such analysis, pulling in ideas of community and place— and family—into a discussion of the interaction of language and material culture in the (re-)creation of an “Appalachian” identity and history.