Overview

In ""Dread Talk"" Velma Pollard describes the language of Rastafari, tracing its development as an expansion of Jamaican Creole while showing how it is distinct both from Creole and Standard English. She demonstrates that dread talk must be understood in terms of Jamaican social history, emphasizing its religious origins, its evolution as a language of social protest, and its spread around the world through the reggae music of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff. ""Dread Talk"" examines the effects of Rastafarian language on Creole in other parts of the Carribean, its influence in Jamaican poetry, and its effects on standard Jamaican English. This revised edition includes a new introduction that outlines the changes that have occurred since the book first appeared and a new chapter, 'Dread Talk in the Diaspora', that discusses Rastafarian as used in the urban centres of North American and Europe. Pollard provides a wealth of examples of Rastafarian language-use and definitions, explaining how the evolution of these forms derives from the philosophical position of the Rasta speaker: ""The socio-political image which the Rastaman has had of himself in a society where lightness of skin, economic status, and social privileges have traditionally gone together must be included in any consideration of Rastafarian words - for the man making the words is a man looking up from under, a man pressed down economically and socially by the establishment"".

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"""Dread Talk is one of the most dramatic examples of the imbrication of language, culture and society to be found anywhere, and no one has explored this topic with as much sensitivity, detail, and insight as Velma Pollard. I regard this book as required reading for sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists, and I recommend it enthusiastically to scholars in social and cultural anthropology, sociology, comparative literature, lexicography, Caribbean Studies, and Africana/Black Studies."" John R. Rickford, Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of Linguistics and Director, African and Afro-American Studies, Stanford University."

Dread Talk is one of the most dramatic examples of the imbrication of language, culture and society to be found anywhere, and no one has explored this topic with as much sensitivity, detail, and insight as Velma Pollard. I regard this book as required reading for sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists, and I recommend it enthusiastically to scholars in social and cultural anthropology, sociology, comparative literature, lexicography, Caribbean Studies, and Africana/Black Studies. John R. Rickford, Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of Linguistics and Director, African and Afro-American Studies, Stanford University.

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