Milford Jeremiah lecture, "Speech Acts in Slave Narratives," at the University of Iowa, June 19, 1974

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 19th, 1974 as part of the Sixth Annual Institute on Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa. Speaking on Speech Acts in Slave Narratives is Dr. Milford Jeremiah, Assistant Professor at Morgan State in Baltimore. Introducing Professor Jeremiah is Fred Woodard, a Professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Iowa. Fred Woodard: Our speaker for this afternoon is Dr. Milford A. Jeremiah, who is presently Assistant Professor of Reading and Linguistics at Morgan State in Baltimore. He was born in Antigua West Indies, later moved to St. Louis Missouri. He did his B.A at Hampton Institute in Modern Languages, his M.A and Ph.D degrees at Brown University in Linguistics. His dissertation topic was lLinguistics or Linguistic and Socio-Linguistic Parallels in Black English and Antiguan Creole. He has done articles, such titles as, A Look at Antiguan Creole, a Case for Re-Creolization, and Religion, and Language, and Society. It is my pleasure to present Dr. Jeremiah. Milford Jeremia...: Thank you Fred. After such an eloquent introduction then, I guess I can't afford to mess up in so many words. At this point in the Institute, you wonder, "Well what can I say that hasn't been said before?" But this looks like a good audience so I'll just do my best. Let me define a few terms before I actually begin. The reason for my having the board is psychological. See, if you have a blackboard, then it eliminates the concept of a lecture. It puts you in a classroom environment, which I can deal with. But just as you have a lecture, then it's too formal. It's too structured. This is a good crutch. Any time you're going to give a lecture, get you a little black board. Okay. Milford Jeremia...: Now two terms which I need to define are speech acts, Creole. Let me define a speech act as being a subset of a speech situation. So you have a speech situation. For instance a cocktail party is a speech situation. A joke at the party is a speech act. People sitting on a porch simply talking, cursing somebody becomes a speech act within then the dimension of what I call a speech situation. So the speech situation becomes a poem, and the speech act is some element, some verbal element built into the situation itself. See, if I went out here and said, "Right on." That's a speech act within the dimension of something called Black awareness. You see? So speech act is what I'm going to deal with. Milford Jeremia...: And Creole, this term is very cumbersome. By Creole, I mean the language spoken by the majority of the field slaves or that's the majority of the slave population up to about 1865. So let me say Creole is the language spoken by the majority of, I'll say slaves, up to the year 1865. And I'm using a linguistic definition. That is the language must have features so distinct from other models that you can identify the speaker of a given community based upon those kinds of features. What do I mean by features? For instance any representation of slave speech within the 18th and 19th century, would have things like a [B for V] in final position, you have things like B-E, you have things like no distinction between subject and object pronouns. Notice that the negation here does not have a do. "I don't know." Milford Jeremia...: I'm sorry, I have to make this comparison between Creole and "standard English" in quote, but this is simply a basis for my saying that these are some of the evidences you look for in trying to characterize what's meant by Creole language. It must have features which are different from other varieties. And this does not mean the slaves could not manipulate other kinds of varieties. Some slaves could use I. "I don't know" if you look hard enough. But we're saying that forms like me and know or B in final position as opposed to V, would be statistically important for you to say, "Well this seems to represent what the language of the slaves looked like at that particular time." Milford Jeremia...: I'll just fill you in with another 30 seconds. The reason for this talk really grew out of my dissertation. I want us to prove that the dialects in Black American speech at that time and certain dialects of the Caribbean were related simply more than isolated instances of lexical items. See, you just don't go and pick up a word in Louisiana, one in Carolina, one in the Gullah, something in Jamaica, something in Suriname and say, "Well these are related because these are shared vocabulary words." I'm trying to say that a much more enlightening or a much more deeper analysis would have to take other dimensions of language. [inaudible] morphology, word categories, aspects of sentence combination, and speech acts to really substantiate some degree of relatedness. So this what I'm going to be talking on is really chapter five of my research. Milford Jeremia...: Investigations of Afro-American culture, especially those aspects of culture which deal with slave narratives, are by no means a new phenomenon. According to Bayliss, slave narratives date back to about the year 1720. And a conservative estimate of slave narratives is put at 10,000. We must acknowledge such distinguished scholars in slave narratives as J. Mason Brewer, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, Richard Dawson, J. Chandler Harris, Melville J. Herskovits, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Elsie Clews Parsons to name just a few. And incidentally if you know of other persons who need recognition, I couldn't put all the names in the paper, so please excuse me. Milford Jeremia...: Studies of a quantitative nature have been undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project and the Georgia Writers' Project. The major concern of these studies were geared to depicting aspects of slave life. These tales were analyzed and evaluated from both subjective and objective viewpoints by social scientists and others interested in slave narratives. Sociologists and anthropologists use these studies to point out such constructs as social structure, acculturation, cultural retention of the African past, while psychologist focus their attention in personality and behavior, especially where such factors pertain to master slave relationship and patterns of interaction where these two groups were concerned. The linguist was rather late getting history of the narrative action. Milford Jeremia...: Because the topic of slave narratives is one of such magnitude, I have chosen to look at a few speech acts as a structural aspect of a narrative. By speech act is meant a minimal utterance that is directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech according to Himes, 72. At least two persons should be present, a speaker and the listener if a speech act is to be valid. Talking to one's self will not be considered a speech act in this discussion. The speech act which I will focus on are A, the addressed systems, B, evasive speech, and C, indirection. Some writers have called C, indirection, inversion, Grace Sims Holt. I have also decided to approach this topic from a comparative framework to see hat similarities and or differences there are in speech acts of slaves in the southern slave states and in Antigua. The territories on this study are the southern plantations of the United States and those of Antigua. These regions have had a comfortable socio-historical background where plantation slavery and the [inaudible] slave culture were concerned. Milford Jeremia...: Historical evidence such as [inaudible] and Herskovits journal show that there were socio-cultural parallels in the following areas, origins of slaves in these areas, patterns of occupation, kinship structure, structural patterns of language, modes of worship, food styles, folklore. These topics have so well been demonstrated that we do not need go into them further here. [inaudible] study were collected from reporters who wrote on the topic of slave narratives. For the discussion, I have chosen where possible, narratives that were told by the slaves themselves on narratives which were recorded as being slave specific. Milford Jeremia...: The latter was chiefly determined by the fact that the narratives were written in slave speech, that is plantation Creole. These sources are Andrew Jackson, Olmsted, Pollard, Puckett, Botkin, I'll use a little from Osofsky and [inaudible]. For Antigua, the sources are Edwards, Loffman, Lewis, and Flanagan. These were historians, missionaries in the islands during that particular time. Milford Jeremia...: Most of the informants were adult men however there are also women in the samples. There are hardly any which depicts the narratives of children. Samples were also chosen which reflected more of the slaves' true vernacular, that is the style in which the minimum attention is paid to speech. One possible shortcoming in the representation of slave speech is that investigators may have used I dialect. I'll probably discuss that a little later on. We see this in the writings of J. Chandler Harris among others who depict slave speech by using such orthography as, "Was, says." You have things like was, says, here, neva. All right. What I'm saying is that there's a thin line between what you think you hear and what's actually said. Most of the time, I dialect is simply a means of mimicking those persons who you think can't speak so well. Milford Jeremia...: For instance there's a sign I saw between Durham and Chapel Hill. It reads, "I just [inaudible]" I'm not debating whether or not you didn't hear poor to poor, but what I'm saying is that there's a very thin line between trying to represent the language of the people and simply playing linguistic games with what you think you hear. So that becomes a very touchy problem trying to capture the true patterns of a speech community. Milford Jeremia...: Just a full linguistic representation of slave vernacular would still be difficult to attain. These discrepancies should not detract from the main topics that were discussed, important as they may be. We may now turn our attention to the speech acts under consideration. Number one, their address systems. By address systems, we mean the common mode of verbal expression used between master and slave and between slave and slave as a means of recognizing each other's persons. Such modes of interaction have been shown elsewhere by Ervin Tripp to be subjected to societal, cultural, and sub-cultural norms when used by members of a speech community. On plantations in the South and in Antigua, address systems were also conditioned by rules established by the dominant White ruling class in instances where slaves greeted masters or had to verbally acknowledge the latter's presence. Milford Jeremia...: Among the slaves themselves, address systems rather than being an obligation, was carried out as a result of the African past where respect and deference were the factors which governed this type of speech act. Let us look at a few of these address forms between slaves and masters and between slaves and slaves, and see what socio-cultural factors shape their form and usage. The most common forms of addressed use by slaves to Whites and common to Southern and Antiguan slaves were, "Massa, mister, gemun, gentimun, misses, masta, mom, sa, ya sa." I'm starting to exaggerate and see if I can capture some the phonological rules used then. "Ya sa, mistis." Milford Jeremia...: Some of them found in Antigua, but occurring in the South are cap'n, colonel, general, docta, fessa." Notice what we have here is a kind of deletion rule with stressed syllable, for fessa and this is definitely a phonological process in Black speech words where for the most part, the stressed syllable become deleted and you have what they call a [farasis]. Milford Jeremia...: These differences in address forms could probably be explained at a ground that the Revolutionary War and the Civil War might have been social forces influencing the development and utility of these address forms and the speech of North American slaves where there was a marked degree of interaction between Whites and slaves especially during the Civil War when Union soldiers were in the South in large numbers. I think we saw a little of that in The Life of Miss Jane Pittman when the White child tried to answer, "Yes sir." And he said, "No call me Jack." What I think he was consciously trying to break down the rules for address systems then. You see, the slaves still had this yes sa, no sa, and sa whatever your name is. Milford Jeremia...: This position also seems tenable in light of acculturation processes of cultural transmission on both sides. That is, although the majority of the slave populous was not directly engaged in hostilities during these [inaudible] in American history, nevertheless, slaves may have picked up these terminologies, cap'n, colonel, docta, from soldiers and other professional personnel connected with the wars and reinterpreted these address forms with a specific semantic content, namely anyone in authority. So I'm saying it's a kind of a generalized transmission of a title so long as you represent white structure then call you anything, make you feel more than what you really are. Milford Jeremia...: Some say historical data on Antigua did not point to activities of this sort which would be in someway comparable to the South, thus the apparent lack of these address terms in Antigua. The address forms just given may also contain sub-forms. For example, a particular form of address found in Antigua and the South is the [Congo-sa], defined by Lewis, Congo-sa. Defined by Lewis as a highly stylized form of address used by slaves to whites primarily on the latter's arrival or departure from a slave plantation. The Congo-sa is a form of address and cooperated amorous endearing sexual tags when directed to male owners or masters. On leaving the island of Antigua, Lewis tells us, "Women called me by every endearing name they could think of, my son, my love, my husband, my father. You not my master, you my tata." T-A-T-A. I think it's still in Jamaican Creole. Milford Jeremia...: Writing on this topic of Congo-sa the French writer [Chastellux] who was traveling in the U.S back about 1776 tells of the slaves use of the word honey in addressing White male owners or travelers further adding that the term honey was equivalent to the French form of address "mon petit chou", my little heart. I think right here, I want to inject that presently forms of things like, "Baby, my baby" or, "My darling." And so on, have a kind of a slave transmission. "Hey babe. What's happening?" I think that babe context have its origin somewhere back there. With respect to socio-cultural factors would shape the address forms used in slave master encounters, these forms as has been mentioned above were conditioned by the rigid policy of quote "Keeping the slave in his proper social milieu. Milford Jeremia...: Olmsted, 1856 tells us of a slave in Louisiana, who on encountering a white person at all times had to take off his hat accompanied by a "Howdy massa." Or "Howdy misses." Harvey Wish mentions a similar situation in North Carolina when slaves and masters interacted. This is a slaves report. "Unless I took off my hat and made a bow to a White man when I met him, he would rip out an oath. Damn you. Ain't you got no politeness? Don't you know not to take of your hat to a White man?" I'm trying to tie in the gesture accompanying the address form. Milford Jeremia...: In the Antiguan situation Loffman tells us that proper deference was expected in the part of slaves to the new and quote, "social climbers." These social climbers in Loffman's description were poor Scotch lads and former indentured servants who rose to managerial positions on account of the high degree of absenteeism on the part of landowners and merchants. In making these demands of proper just form on the pat of slaves, whites not only maintained the status quo, but also used it as a means to acquire social status. On this topic, Smith notes, "Terms of address and reference were developed to maintain social stratification and rigid observation of the norms of their use was necessary by subordinate slaves. In her observations of slave master address systems in Antigua, Flanagan tells us, "They," meaning the slaves, "uniformly stopped as they came opposite to us to pay the usual civilities. This demanded by touching their hats and bowing, the women by making a little curtsy and adding sometimes howdy massa or morning massa. Milford Jeremia...: The above instances of master slave interaction where address forms were concerned will support the position that comparable systems existed in both Antigua and the South, and to a certain extent, these asterisks of master slave interaction were rule governed in the sense of what a speaker had to know to communicate these aspects of day to day life. What instances there were of masters addressing slaves in a kind of rule governed manner were limited chiefly by the variables of age and occupation. Slaves who were older chronologically and were in direct contact with their master or mistress as a result of the occupation status were addressed with some degree of deference. On a plantation in Mississippi, Peterkin makes this observation. "They," adolescent whites, "establish friendships as long the slaves live. They call the older Negroes mammy and daddy, uncle and auntie, mama and papa to show their respect. But their nurses were usually called da." As a matter of fact, my great grand mama, they call here dada. So it could be showing this retention. Milford Jeremia...: So far we have been investigating address forms in the southern plantations of North America and in Antigua within an interpersonal framework, that is in instances where the superordinate and subordinate groups interacted however minimally. I would now like to look at address forms within an intrapersonal framework, that is, forms of address used by slaves among themselves and see what socio-cultural factors shape them also. The main variables which affected the address forms in both geographic areas were age, network, strength, and sex. Of these, age was the most important variable to be noted. This variable has been given much attention and analysis by investigators, namely Herskovits, and others working in the area of African cultures and peoples and has been looked upon as a direct African retention by New World Afro-Americans and has survived over three centuries. Milford Jeremia...: On Antiguan slave life and the use of address forms among the slaves themselves Edwards, writing about 1777 notes, "Their happiness chiefly arises from the high veneration in which old age is held by Negroes in general. And I consider as one of the few pleasing traits in their character." And notice he cannot take himself from being non-objective. He has to say that people were not really pleasing in character. So this is one thing that stands out. In addressing such of their fellow servants as are anyways advancing these, the prefix to their names the [inaudible] of parent as Ta Kwaku and Ma Kwashiba, Ta and ma signifying father and mother by which designation they mean to convey not only the idea of filial reverence but also that of esteem and fondness. Milford Jeremia...: As a matter of fact, an African pointed this out to me. Ta and ma are definitely what's used in Yoruba and certain West African languages. And also this seems tenable if you look at the naming practices used then in which names like Kwambe, Kwaku, Cuffe and so on, these are definite African patterns of name. [inaudible] Isn't that why we have Kwame Nkrumah, Paul Cuffe and so on? And so these things would definitely point to a kind of direct African retention or restructuring. Milford Jeremia...: Carmichael writing about 1834 tells us of similar forms of address in Antiguan slave life where age was the main variable influencing them. She writes, "They have also particular words To designate persons of all ages among themselves. Their old women they call grandi, those of a middle age, auntie, while the young women are nominated si or sissy. In the same manner the old men go by the title of daddy, the middle age uncle, and the young men buddy. So today's, "Hey buddy." Well look back years ago. Milford Jeremia...: Not only in Antiguan plantation do we find these forms of address where age is a salient feature in intra-slave relationships, but we also find them on southern plantations as well. Wish makes this observation. "These mechanics were called uncles by all the younger slaves, not because they really sustained that relationship to any, but according to plantation etiquette as a mark of respect due from the younger to the older slaves. Strange and even ridiculous as it may seem among a people so uncultivated and with so many stern trials to look in the face, there is not to be found any among a people more rigid enforcement of the law of respect to elders than is maintained among them. So the point here seems to be regardless of who you are so long as you're an elderly person, then automatically you seem to know what prefix to attach on somebody who shows some differences in age. Milford Jeremia...: Thus the above will tend to illustrate the socio-cultural verb of age in the socio-psychological factor of deference were the dominant features of address forms in both regions. What follows are some of the more common address forms in southern plantations in Antigua, and the brief comment regarding the forms of these address terminologies. In addition to uncle [inaudible] auntie, aunt, auntie, these are variations of pronunciation. Mommy, brudder, bo, ber, brethren, sistren, of religious community, granny, the old man, son, sonny, pop, pops, poppa, old boy, heyo, folks, smartie, child, judge, old coon. Milford Jeremia...: Structurally what we have is an [apolade] plus a first name to give such names as Uncle Ben, where uncle is the apolade, Ben is the first name. Sister Charlotte, Brother John, Auntie Sue. Apparently these are reduction sister to si, brother to bro or bo, auntie to aunt if the first name is polysyllabic. If the first name is monosyllabic, then the full apolade forms are used without first names and any possible core occurrence with naming elements is with last names. Milford Jeremia...: In addition to what may be considered regular and quote address forms as those just cited, we may also note in passing the use of nicknames and the address system of intra-slave verbal encounters in both geographic areas. In this subject, there are 72 in this book Black English, argues for a West African influence on this naming practice which is found in widely scattered areas, the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, Santa Isabel, somewhere in the Pacific I think, Fernando Poo, West Cameroon. What may have begun as in quote "work names and gift names" according to Dillard has evolved as a positive element in the nomenclature and address systems in the plantation south and in Antigua. Milford Jeremia...: In instances where the speaker wish to be colorful and vividly descriptive in speech, he or she would resort to use of nicknames. Nicknames depicted some characteristic attributable to an individual be it physical trait, general conduct and demeanor, attitude to work or some accomplished deed. Olmsted tells of this naming phenomenon in his Sojourn for the Back Country. "The overseer said he generally could call most of the Negroes on the plantation by their names in two weeks after he came to it. But it was rather difficult to learn them on a count of there being so many of the same name distinguished from each other by a prefix. Is a big Jim here and a little Jim? Eliza's Jim? Is Jim Bobo? Jim Clarese? What is Jim Clarese? How does he get that name? He is Clarese's child and Bobby's Jim is Bob's father." Rather complicated naming system. Milford Jeremia...: I think this comes from the West African coast in which if you were captured around a given port, your name was the port plus your name. So you might be called Loango John in which the Loango would specify that particular place in which you were captured or still observing nicknames, "His name is Swamp on the plantation register. That's all I know of him. I believe his name is Abraham said the overseer. He told me so. He was bought of Judge, he says. And he told me his master calls him Swamp because he ran away so much." So here's a name depicting some trait. From Newbell Puckett we get this account. "It was hopeless trying to understand their titles. There were two hired brothers in school. One was called Dick, the other Richard. Their father was Jimmy of the Battery, or Jimmy Black. I was asked why his title is Black. "Oh, him look so. Him one very black man." They said." Isn't that what we call people who [inaudible] especially is they're light skin? Milford Jeremia...: As we said earlier, nicknames were shared aspects in southern plantations and in Antigua. For instance we find patterns of nicknames in Antigua as those just listed above in the plantation South, where the names point to kinship systems and particular characteristics of the individual. These examples would tend to illustrate these concepts. Langford's Billy, Martin's Jimmy, Lynch's Tom, Lynch in the sense of a person's name. I think it's Irish or Scottish retention. Milford Jeremia...: In 1736, we are told of a gang of runaway slaves in Antigua who had taken up residence in some of the more mountainous parts of the island and who are in the habit of issuing out at night and committing many and great depredations. The leaders of the gang of "vagrants" were three men by the name of Africa, Poppa Will, and Sharper. Hear the nickname concepts. And to ensure their capture, a reward of 20 pounds was offered to any person who should place them dead or alive in the hands of the Provost Marshall. Milford Jeremia...: For the most part nicknames we generally given to slaves by other slaves in cases where the network relationship was very strong. I am making this claim based on the context in which nicknames appear. That is, the person involved must know each other fairly well and have interacted quite frequently, thus creating strong network ties. So if I didn't know you, you couldn't call me a nickname because it would break certain rules of deference established earlier, respect to elderly persons or even persons of chronological age, and so I'm merely suggesting that you had to know somebody to call them a nickname so that they won't be insulted as the case may be. Milford Jeremia...: If such network patterns were not established then either there was no use of nicknames or such usage could not be made in face to face encounters. The latter points seem to have to been borne out of social situations where slaves used nicknames to describe their masters. You don't call your master a nickname in front of his face. "Slaves in Solomon Northup's Louisiana plantation," says Osofsky "referred to the master probably as Haggai and [Hagjah]." Hardly terms of endearment. "Hey Hagjah." You can't do that. Milford Jeremia...: Thus far, we have been looking at the speech act of address systems in Antigua in the U.S South. This speech act, singular, speaking of the address system, has been conditioned by such factors as a speaker in inter or intra group situations, forms, and uses of such acts. We have also seen the social deference expressed with the proper system of address by a plantation's slaves to their masters and towards in general was a basic and obligatory aspect in the maintenance of plantation social structure. What we're not so sure about is whether or not slaves were merely "putting on old massa" using of especially Osofsky, or simply playing wussy games as a kind of rule expectation where proper address forms to a superordinate group were concerned. Milford Jeremia...: This apparent dual cultural semantic concept has been looked upon by such analysts as Pollock and Dillard, I didn't know I was playing with words that well, as a kind of survival technique used by the plantation slaves. At the same time Paterson has shown that in the Caribbean, and for that matter, wherever Blacks encounter similar social structure, it seems to be both a conscious and sub-conscious rule of "play fool to catch wise." A partial discussion we had coming over from the cafeteria. We're not so sure if a waiter says, "Sir, another drink?" Or. "Is there anything else?" If he really means it or this is what he expects you to do. There's a very thin line between sincerity and your role so to speak. Milford Jeremia...: On a related topic where sincerity of such address forms is questionable, Pollard relates this account. "My blood boils when I recall how often I have seen poor and "cracker" dressed in striped cotton and going through the streets of some southern towns, gazing at the shop windows with scared curiosity. Maids poured out by the sleek dandified Negroes who lounge in their streets never unmindful however to touch their hats to the gemun who are "stiff in their heels." I think Pollard's position seems to be, "I cannot really tell whether or not these slaves are serious or they're just putting you on. They know this is the rule. Why don't I give it to you? It doesn't cost them anything." Milford Jeremia...: In Antigua, Flanagan tells of a comparable situation in which we are not sure whether slaves were mainly playing the fool as a kind of role expectation on their part. She writes, "As I was returning to the house with pencil steps in slow, I overtook the driver with one of the head slaves upon the property with the native politeness which many Negroes possess. She pulled off his hat with, "Howdy misses." Are they just jiving you or are they really serious? If they expect it, give it to you." To put briefly, what seems dubious is not the speech act itself but the dual semantic application which the act itself embodies. Milford Jeremia...: Speech act number two. Evasive speech. The second speech act which I would like to discuss is evasive speech. Although this may be posited to be universal linguistic phenomena, characteristic of all peoples and cultures, I do think that in plantation life in both regions, evasive speech had a specific form and purpose. I am making this claim on the grounds that speech acts are part of a social interaction in most all cultures under they are subjected to specific rules for their formulation and purpose in much the same as rules of grammar are. I shall intend to clarify the concepts of form and purpose of evasive speech in order to give it a unique place in plantation life. Early analysts and I have in mind Edwards notably, of slave speech acts have given us some information in this topic. However they have been misinterpreted as a kind of behavioral pathology on the part of the slaves and these reports have been infused with racial and ethnocentric overtones. Milford Jeremia...: For instance Edwards writing in his History, Civil and Commercial of the British West Indies, notes, "I think the vice of falsehood is one of the more prominent features in their character. If a Negro is asking a different question by his master he seldom gives an immediate reply. What effect in not to understand what is said compels repetition of the question that he may have time to consider not what is the true answer but what is the most politic one for him to give." So Edwards didn't really know the form and the purpose of the speech act. He simply misconstrued it as being behavioral pathology. Milford Jeremia...: From this observation it is probably that Edwards being a part of the dominant White movement, an outsider to slave culture and community, drew his own conclusion in this speech act without really understanding the full form and purpose of such an act. If a definition is possible, and this is a subjective definition, this is what I think is, we may say that evasive speech is a manner of speaking by slaves especially in dialect form to their masses in which slaves attempt to extricate himself or herself from real or imaginary charges of subordination, misconduct, or petty crimes. Evasive speech is generally executed in the best possible grammatical form and it is interspersed with interjections such as, "My Jesus, Lo and behold, I declare, or I 'clare." If you're from Virginia you generally drop the D and say, "I 'clare." "For misses sake." And we plead notions of the occult or possible occult influences and elements in every day life. Let me cite a few examples as were found in both areas. Milford Jeremia...: In Antigua for instance, I'll try to see if I can capture the slave speech. Impossible. This is a slave Lemon. "Lemon," this is a master talking. "What is that you have in your pocket?" He replied to this question by asking another. "Pocket massa? What pocket? You see that massa? You see that misses? You ever see how the devil follow me? Evil come quite in me pocket, come put fish there, so make you all take [inaudible]." So here is a kind of evasive speech. In this example from the plantation South, Baker narrates an incident in which John is accused of stealing a note from his employer, apparently a forged note to get his freedom. The master says, "You knew nothing of it?" "I did not do it," gasped the boy. "I do not know," said John in a loud and firmer tone. "But someone must have put it there without my knowing it." Notice the drawing on the occult. Somebody had put it there. Someone did it to me. Then the master says, "Pretty language for a young thief to use." Milford Jeremia...: On the subject of subordination and the use of evasive speech to extricate one's self from this charge, we are told of John the butler who was late for work due to his having attended a Christmas party the night before and had consumed his share of libations. This is the scene. At this moment, the door opens and John enters. His head tied up in a handkerchief and a quantity of plantain leaves." I don't know if you're very close to folk culture. People relied more on herbs and leaves and saw them as a means of curing illness. His countenance deprived of its natural deep black displays a sickly looking hue. His heavy bloodshot eyes turning from one member of the family to the other as if to inquire what they have been saying about him. Can you imagine John coming in sick, dressed up, and looking like that? And presenting altogether a most rueful appearance. "Why John?," cries his master elevating his eyebrows and wiping spectacle to be certain it is really the lost butler. Milford Jeremia...: "Why John? Where have you been and what have you been doing with yourself?" "Quite sick massa," returns poor John. And John is probably drunk. In a very doleful tone, "Had fever all last night. Never sleep tall at all. Had really hurt me. Believe me. Go get [haga]." I think haga is kind of fever. You know he's stuck so he has to use that language, the linguistic device to get out of trouble. Milford Jeremia...: Another example of evasive speech in Antigua which would tend to support the claim of its use to ward off punishment by the masters is given by Flanagan. In this account she tells of a groom called [Thalmus] who is accused of riding his master's horse [inaudible] master. Master speaks, "Why Thalmus? What's the matter with this horse? How jaded he look?" Says the gen addressing his groom. "I hope it's not ill." The slave replied, "Me don't know massa. Me quite sick me self. That the truth." "And this one," continues his master, "his legs are quite swollen. He's all over mud. I hope you haven't been riding them last night. I know you're full of tricks." The slave replies, "Ay-ay massa. Me no say. Me quite sick." Meaning, "Didn't I say I was quite sick?" How are you going to say I was riding your horse? Milford Jeremia...: This is really a causative why? "What for me go ride the poor dumb brute for? That's all." If you get the Creole translation, ay-ay is what I call a performative. It initiates a declarative sentences. Ay-ay will mean, "I say to you massa." "Me no say me quite sick?" Meaning "Didn't I say I was quite sick?" What for means why. "What for me go ride the poor dumb brute?" So if I said I was sick, how come you're going to say I was riding the horse? Milford Jeremia...: On the southern plantation, Pollard details a certain slave by the name of Sam. In the process of making his escape, Sam received a noticeable scratch on his elbow. The master became suspicious of this attempt to escape and asked Sam to explain the reason for the scratch on his elbow. Sam blames the devil for his predicament and attributed the scratch on his elbow to his frequent prayer routine. Sam said he got the scratch on his elbow because he pray so much. This is Sam. Apparently Sam wasn't arranging this in the social confines of after work. I'm saying that Sam was probably telling this to another slave, the way it's written. Milford Jeremia...: "The last time he, the devil, come," says Sam, "He knock at the door. I blow out the light, and tell him the nigger done dead two weeks ago. And then he says if you don't open the door you damn nigger, I will straighten you out. And then I just go right clean out of the window. And as I turn the corner, here come old massa riding agin me." Agin, A-G-I-N. "And when I tell him how I just see the devil with my own eyes he tell me I going to get [inaudible] by whipping." They try to indicate whipping by H-O-P. That is whopping. But people weren't phonetically sophisticated. So whopping, whooping. Milford Jeremia...: Sometimes evasive speech can become a topic for humor in certain instances of master slave interaction. On an Antiguan plantation, Cato is accused of telling his master that a fine rain... I hate reading it plain words. It was if presently bad in Black vernacular speech where bad can mean what it said or just the opposite. Fine rain meant either a good shower fell, they had a fine shower, or it means that the rain fell and it was so insignificant that you can call it fine too. In the islands you make distinction between fine salt and course salt. Fine salt is one you get on the table. Course salt is the hard thing that you got to pound and grind and make it fine salt. So here, depending upon your orientation, these can mean either exactly what it says on the surface or there's another deeper semantic implication to it. Milford Jeremia...: Cato is accused of telling his master that fine rain had fallen the previous night when in actuality little or no rain had fallen. With emphasis on the evasive semantic value of the word fine, Cato tell his story to his master who at this time had become enraged and threatened to punish Cato. Cato begins to talk. "Me no tell no tory master." Tory means it's shortened for story. When you have this causal consonant, one becomes deleted. Well you can't delete what wasn't there, I want to say that it's a form of Black speech where you... Well it's seemingly consonant clusters become deleted in certain environments constrained by whether or not you had [inaudible]. Milford Jeremia...: Cato, "Me no tell no tory massa," retorted the Negro determined to stand his master's ire undaunted and like many other guilty ones striving to have the last word. "Me no tell no tory. What for me go tell tory? Me no pick the truth?" "You speak the truth indeed. Here's the manager who tells me that there has been no rain at all. "But on the contrary," this is the master talking, "that my stock are all dying from want of water. And yet you dare to tell me you had fine rains last night?" "Yes massa. And so we had fine rain. Me tell the truth. And more than that, the rain fine so till," and then he drags out "till" prolonging the word "we hardly able to see him. He's so fine." So notice the plain words. Milford Jeremia...: Both owner and manager found it difficult to maintain their gravity at this definition of fine rains, while Cato with a grin of self congratulation and having a [inaudible] got himself out of a bad scrape. There must have been instances of evasive speech used by the slaves among themselves although I have not been able to find any specific ones. I'm saying there's something that says slave talking to slave about evasive speech. This seems to be an input for sociability. The way you look back and reminisce of the kinds of things that went on when you were trying to get over on your master. A good present day analogy can be found in Hannerz's Soulside in which there are a couple instances of guys in DC talking about getting drunk and the police lock them up, they go before the judge, and how they talk the judge out of them not being drunk consumer. Milford Jeremia...: This speech act might have served as a topic for social interaction as the example cited by the slave Sam would suggest. What we have seen is that evasive speech was used primarily to extricate slaves from physical abuse by their masters seeing that the former group seldom did resort to physical force and confrontation with their masters. Slaves performed the speech act in a style which was shifted slightly upwards in the direction of "standard American and standard British English" and accompanying gestures as a means of giving clarity and persuasion to the message. I got eight more pages. This is the third one. Milford Jeremia...: Third, indirection. The third speech act in this analysis of slave narratives has been labeled indirection. As I mentioned earlier Grace Sims Holt in Kochman's book [Rappin' and stylin'] uses the term inversion. This speech act pertains to a given message carried out by word or song in which the speaker, in this case slaves, attempts to retaliate at their masters and symbols of white power structure. On the surface the message could be taken for its immediate intent, that is one could give a literal interpretation to the words however, the real meaning of the speech act is in it's hidden or deeper meaning. That element of evasive speech could also be thrown in. So there's a thin line to certain things which can be considered evasive speech or indirection, especially with lexical items are concerned. Milford Jeremia...: It is because of this surface deep dichotomy why I have termed this speech act as indirection. Indirection takes place between slave and slave and between slave and master. The point to note however is that when used in intra-slave relationship, between slave and slave, the real meaning is more easily recognized than when used is situations of master and slave. These are structures governed in usage. Here the meaning tends to be more subtle but it is usually taken at surface value, thus what seems to be happening here is that the bringing together of both linguistic rules and other kinds of rules governing face to face encounter. There's a good book by Goffman, Social Interaction. 74, University of Philadelphia. In another way, the slaves used indirection as a kind of mask which permits them to "disguise peace" and verbally turn the tables on a knowledgeable opponent. Let us look at a few examples in the plantation South and in Antigua to support the claim for a parallel existence and use of indirection in slave narratives. Milford Jeremia...: This example is from Carmichael in her visit to Antigua. She writes, "Soon after coming to [inaudible] I heard some of the young Negroes singing an as I thought rather singular song." Isn't that what we get in the Carry Me Over to Jordan and Roll Jordan Roll, and so on? "I asked J to sing it for me. He hesitated and said, "Misses, it no good song." "Why do you sing it then?" "Cause misses, it a funny song and me no mean bad by it." "At last I prevail upon J not only to sing the song which turned out to be an insurrection, but to explain it. The words are these. Fire in the mountain, nobody for out him, take me daddy's bo tick and make a monkey out him. Poor John, nobody for out him." John is a play on words for John Bull which is a symbol of the British power structure. "Go to de king's jail. You'll find a doubloon dey. Go to the king's jail. You'll find a doubloon dey." Milford Jeremia...: The explanation of the song according to Carmichael is that when they in quote "bad slaves" wanted to vent their rage in the master's sugar crop, they would make a fir in the mountains to signal to other slaves to begin the incendiary act. There is no one about to put out the fire except the monkeys who run the cane fields. I have no doubt that monkeys could not put out a fire. The chorus means that John Bull has nobody to put out the fires set to his crops and that during this state of turmoil and upheaval, slaves were to go to the coffers and steal the money. So here you have the message really hidden in song. Unless you were a slave you couldn't really determine what's being said. Milford Jeremia...: Although this particular song took place in Trinidad, Carmichael tells us that, "Much of that which forms the subject of these volumes is strictly applicable to many and in great degree to all the "West Indian colonies." Seeing that "Negro character is the same, whether it be exhibited in Saint Vincent or in any other island." One could also explain the applicability of this song to the majority of West Indian islands in the count of sugar production at the height of slavery and subsequent years. In the plantation South, Margaret Jackson relates an incident which has an element of indirection. In this account, the slave Pompey gets back at his master who is preparing to fight a duel. Most of you might have seen that Osofsky took it from Margaret Jackson. Milford Jeremia...: "Pompey, how do I look?" "Oh, massa mighty." "What do you mean mighty Pompey?" "Why massa, you look noble." "What do you mean by noble?" Why sa, you look like one lion." "Why Pompey where have you seen a lion?" "I see one down yonder field the other day massa." "Pompey you foolish fellow, that was a jackass." "Was it massa? Well you look just like him." It should be noted that some message which could be construed as indirection were transmitted not only verbally but also with accompanying gestures. Milford Jeremia...: Osofsky tells us, "Two slaves were sent out to dig a grave for a old master. They dug it very deep. As I passed by I asked Jess and Bob what in the world they dug it so deep for. It was six or seven feet. I told them there would be a fuss about it and they had better fill it up soon. Jess said it suited him exactly. Bob said he would not fill it up. He wanted to get the old man as near "home" as possible. When we got a stone to put on this grave, we hauled the largest we could find so as to fasten him down as strong as possible. So here you have the covert message, the man is so bad you have to really put him away. But if you just pass by and see somebody digging a grave, you're not going to relate to the surface of meaning. Milford Jeremia...: Speech acts are not autonomous wholes. Sometimes two acts can be found in one message. For example, evasive speech can occur with indirection as a means of showing mastery of such acts. This usually takes place in slave to slave patterns of verbal interaction. This account from Botkin, '45, points to the nature of embedded speech acts with their specific purposes. Joe Raines a field hand admonishes Joe Murray, another field hand to cuss back at his master the next time his master curses him, that is the slave Joe. Milford Jeremia...: An incident soon presented itself in which Joe Murray cussed back at Master Ed who then whipped him. "You didn't cuss him right. You never cuss him like I because him, or you'd never got a whipping." Joe Murray allowed, "How you cuss him then Joe?" Say Joe Raines very slowly, "Well when I cuss Master Ed I goes way down in the bottoms where the corn grow high and got a black color. I looks east and west and north and south. I see no Master Ed. Then I pitches into him and gives him the worse cussing a man ever give another man. The next time, cuss him but be sure to go way off somewhere so he can't hear you nigger." Milford Jeremia...: So one slave was trying to show him that he has evasive speech And that same speech can be used to get back at his master as a kind of indirection. As have been previously mentioned, speech acts provide a slave with topics for social interaction and sociability and this example, a slave by the name of Junk a shoemaker by occupation constantly holds forth among the other plantation hands on the topic of intimacy and cruelty to the French. Another field hand, Collins jokingly disputes the assertions made by Junk regarding his intimacy and cruelty with barbarians that were "white folks." Junk on the plantation one day claims that his master took him to France and that he has beaten up a lot of white French people [inaudible] as a means of getting back again. I begin the dialogue. This is one of the slaves to Junk. Milford Jeremia...: "How was it Junk?" "Well you see I was walking with the guard with my britches tucked down in my boots when two of these mean Frenchmen come along and the one to toe to toe to me is the other, casting and insulting my boots. Because you see, he didn't know that I know that language and could hear him." This slave is claiming that he knows French. "Well I wouldn't stand no insult from from no Frenchman no how. So I just struck him with my nerves. And one lick was just enough. It killed the man and they sent for the secretary to sot on him." S-O-T. "But what did he say about the boots big huss?" Would inquire Collin. This is the other slave. "Well, you see the man talked French and take while to tell that to poor ignorant Black French like you." Notice you can only call people nigger within a given social milieu so as not to be offended. So here we have the same kind of explanation. You can call them a Black trash so long as this is a kind of Black-Black interaction. Milford Jeremia...: But Collin is pressing. He wanted to hear Junk's French. The housemaid too desired a specimen of the same if Mr. Junk would kindly consent to put his rival down. "That nigger Collin had too much sass a be how." I don't know what that means. "Mr. Junk won't you please say what the Frenchman said?" "Well," replied Junk, with a sudden jerk of condescension. "The man didn't say much. He say, [French] and the American for that you know, is the boots brought the fool." And while all joined in laughing at the Collin's discomfiture, Junk would make his retreat good wailing off with a careless and provoking whistle. Isn't this what goes on when you claim and debunk? "You got some money?" "Yeah. It's down in so so bank." "Oh man, you don't have no money in no bank." "Yes I got some money in the bank." "Where's the bank?" "Oh man you don't know where the bank is. You ain't got no money." This is the kind of structure from which I think present day forms of speech acts in Afro-America still persist. Milford Jeremia...: As a final segment in this discussion speech acts and slave narratives, I would like to postulate two basic guidelines for the analysis of this topic in addition to the social and social-psychological factors stated in this discussion so far, which is especially formulation, speakers, and functions of such acts. These guidelines are A, communicative competence and B, innovation. Milford Jeremia...: The first of these, communicative competence has been advanced by Himes, '71, and others in their study of the ethnography of speech and speech communities. Communicative competence focuses on what a speaker needs to know to communicate effectively in culturally significant settings. This knowledge transcends linguistic structures, phonology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics, and takes into account other factors such as the significant other network relationships, knowledge of the situation and group specific means of certain linguistic messages. These factors are also shaped by the speaker's experiences, background, and worldview. In short you got to know what to say. You have to be hip. You have to know what's going on. Milford Jeremia...: Plantation slaves must have had this competence as expressed through these speech acts. This becomes more evident when we consider that language in all its forms was a chief means of coping with a hostile system especially on the part of adult slaves. This variable of age insofar as communicative competence is concerned seems feasible if we consider the fact that children may have used these speech acts and that the gestation between these and adult slave population may be proficiency and usage. I'm saying that although we haven't really seen any example of speech acts by children, it doesn't mean that it did not exist or that they might have existed, but we might have to give them other names. Milford Jeremia...: Thus, unlike linguistic competence in the amount advocated by Chomsky, '64, on page three, which states that a child attains this level of competence about the age of six years, communicative competence in my opinion in plantation life may be looked upon as being in a continued state of development. Again, the fact that Antigua and the southern states in this study are about 2,500 miles apart, and with the Atlantic Ocean serving as a natural boundary, would lead us to expect the significant differences. This is the kind of argument postulated by dialect geographers. The reason why you have house in Carolina as opposed to house in maybe midland speech is because of the Allegheny or the mountain ridge forming a natural boundary. And I'm saying that here you have another natural boundary called Atlantic Ocean and you have similarities in speech acts. And then so what do we attribute this to? Some higher level of analysis which is not subject yet to the kinds of truly linguistic arguments. Its really shaped by the kinds of structures of the society and the things that you need to know to effectively communicate. Milford Jeremia...: I'm taking this position that is non-dialect versus non-dialect differences in speech. I'm talking this position based on the direct relationship with natural boundaries play in causing distinct differences in speech communities. In other words, in establishing isoglosses for speech communities, whether you say pancakes or hotcakes, or griddle cakes depends upon where you're from. I'm sure if I took a random sample, I'll get hotcakes here, griddle cakes and pancakes somewhere in the back. So I'm saying that these differences are probably due to the exact location that you find yourself in. Milford Jeremia...: On the contrary what we find in this study of speech acts across such distant areas of the U.S South and Antigua are minor variables not so much in content, by in content I mean meaning, but in form, the way it's put together. In other words, the meaning seems to remain constant. What varies in Antigua for instance may be more usage of the Creole features of language than in the U.S South. We may find that men engage in evasive speech more so than women, or that in Antigua there was more use of the occult to enhance evasive speech than in the Southern areas. I can only attribute this similarity of speech acts at least in terms of content to the broader parameters just mentioned which govern and shape communicative competence. A good test for this claim would be to investigate other societies of a comparable nature and see whether or not comparable speech acts do exist. Milford Jeremia...: The second point in this analysis is that of innovation. Innovation relates specifically to situations which slaves would have to carve out verbal mechanisms when mere linguistic or communicative competence is insufficient to cope with one's immediate problems especially in rigidly stratified societies. I think the same thing happens in the book by Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries 1969. When mere linguistic competence is insufficient to cope with one's immediate problems especially in rigidly stratified societies. On plantation, the use of this innovative aspect of verbal behavior would be determined by such factors of stress, loneliness and periods of sociability. Innovation in speech and speech acts reveal the demand for relief from boredom and influences to some extent the purpose of structural patterns of speech. Milford Jeremia...: Barnett, 1953, seems to share this position by stating, "Verbal expressions are notoriously subject to alternation on the demand to introduce color, variety, and to avoid repetition. This holds for voice inflection, for vocabulary, and for syntax." There's a good article you should try to look at called, Form and Analysis of Social Interaction by Jean Watson, Sociometry, I think 1965. Closely related to the innovative aspect insofar as speech acts are concerned is the phenomena of change or modification. After working at their varied chores, slaves relied in evasive speech, nicknames, where these were directed toward white authority, verbal banter, claiming and debunking as a means of coping with the drudgery of plantation life. This coping mechanism was a part of the innovative techniques which created the distinct subculture from that of the superordinate group. Milford Jeremia...: Park, this is a famous anthropologist, takes a similar position when he speaks of collective behavior. He says, "Dramatic forms of collective behavior develop because customs and the morays that a society impede continuous adjustment in social structure and the natural end product of collective behavior is a new or modified institution." Such an observation seems tenable in the plantation societies of Antigua and the southern states and the innovative factor governed the uses and uses of language together with the speaker's communicative competence, should tell us more about the similarities of speakers, speech acts, and the societies in which they occur. Milford Jeremia...: In summary, speech acts in slave narratives should provide us with a background framework by which we can better comprehend and appreciate similar forms in presently Afro-American societies. I'm using the term Afro-American in its broadest sense, where you find Black folks. Present day investigations of Afro-American speech acts by linguist, anthropologists, and sociologists should not fail to recognize that what we are experiencing is a direct continuity of certain verbal aspects of slave societies handed down and retained with certain modifications in New World Afro-American societies. For linguistic and socio-linguistic theories, speech acts should serve as a valuable information regarding such topics as style shifting, language change and retention, surface versus deep aspects of meaning, the nature of a linguistic continuum, and speech communities. In short speech acts may provide us with ancestor language problems long since evasive. Thank you for your time. Fred Woodard: I'm sure the speaker will entertain questions at this point. Milford Jeremia...: Can I get some water?