Anita Puckett, Seldom ask, never tell: Labor and discourse in Appalachia. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xv, 309. Hb $85.00.

Extract

Anita Puckett's Seldom ask, never tell is an important, long-needed work that enables us to conceptualize “Appalachian speech” not only in terms of dialect or traditional aesthetic resources, but also according to characteristic “ways of speaking” and the ideology of pragmatics that informs them. Building on Irvine's (1989) realization that “speech economy” is not merely a metaphor, Puckett has created a meticulous and insightful ethnography of the range of “requesting behaviors” that index and constitute the “socioeconomy” of a community in coalfield Appalachia.