Seldom Ask, Never Tell: Labor and Discourse in Appalachia (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 25)

Puckett takes a new look at the relationship between language, society, and economics by examining how people talk about work in a rural Appalachian community. Through careful analysis of conversations in casual yet commercial contexts, she finds that the construction and maintenance of this discourse is essential to the community's socioeconomic relationships. The volume will appeal to linguists, anthropologists, and scholars in communications and Appalachian studies. A foreman of a local work crew very rarely used any speech form but task-focused imperatives with his crew, in keeping with cultural rules of imperative uses