[Ads-l] Enslavement of Native Americans -- Nat Turner's Language

[Joel Berson]

Manisha Sinha writes in The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (p. 62) of Pierre Toussaint that "Religion and language -- in his memoir, written by a close friend, he is represented as speaking only broken English ...".  If a close friend, one would think his representation is accurate.  However, Toussaint was a black emigrant at the time of the Haitian revolution, and I assume therefore a native speaker not of English but of French.

Joel


      From: Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:04 PM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Enslavement of Native Americans -- Nat Turner's Language
   
Partly as a consequence of issues raised in this thread, I (belatedly) 
acquired a copy of J.L.Dillard, _Black English_ (1973).

On page 85, Dillard writes:

            "... the most famous of the insurrections was led by the 
Standard English-speaking house servant Nat Turner."

I'd always assumed, since I first read it over twenty years ago, that the 
Confessions of Nat Turner, as reported by Thomas Gray in 1831, was the most 
blatant example of the suppression of nineteenth century black speech that 
I'd ever encountered.

Was I wrong?  Did Nat Turner actually speak the way Gray presents him as 
speaking?  Or is it the case that Nat Turner's language isn't so much 
mediated by Gray's white middle class voice, as totally obliterated by it?

I'd be especially grateful if anyone on the list could point me towards any 
evidence of how Turner actually spoke.  Dillard asserts, but doesn't cite 
anything to back up his statement.

Further, is Dillard's characterisation of Nat Turner as a house servant 
rather than a field servant correct?  Again, I'd always assumed the 
opposite.

Robin Hamilton 

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org