‘Backwards talk’ in Smith Island, Maryland

This article presents an exploration of the discourse-level phenomenon known as ‘backwards talk’ in Smith Island, a small, endangered dialect community in Maryland’s Chespaeake Bay, on the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast. The article examines how backwards talk, basically pervasive, highly creative irony, compares with irony more generally; how it patterns across generations and contexts; how important it is to island residents, who view backwards talk as the defining feature of their dialect; and why the feature has gained such importance in the face of dialect loss - and potential loss of community continuity as well. Because backwards talk is irony, it has important solidarity functions. As playful, nonliteral language, it serves as a symbol of the performed ‘islandness’ that islanders increasingly take up as they come into more and more contact with outsiders. Finally, as a means of offering critical evaluation of outsiders, backwards talk can be seen as a form of anti-language or counterlanguage, with a central function of resistance against outside forces.

“We Live in the Water”

Smith Island historical photographs, public and private, in their intimacy and immediacy, encourage us to think about the relationship between appearance and meaning. This article invites us to think through photographs as primary data in anthropological enquiry about the storying of climate in relation to inscribed, visual social biographies in Smith Island albums. I discuss Islanders' intimate visual, ecological, and sensory knowledge in relation to the changing ecology facing Smith Islanders. Old island photos hold memories that interface individuals and their contemporary social identities. When Smith Islanders view their family photographs, they enter the pictorial history of their island. Reading old family photographs with islanders, as they are archived in albums, boxes, or bags, opens a new space for connection of their sense of self with a sense of place.

Aging in Place: Changing Socio-ecology and the Power of Kinship on Smith Island, Maryland

This article examines how the people known as Smith Islanders interact with their environment over the life-course. The purpose of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of aging in a small, rural, coastal community which changes are environmentally driven. To address the aging process in changing environments in this essay, I explore the relationship between the place, sense of self, and knowledge. Because the majority of people on the island today are in late life, the main threads in the fabric of this ethnographic narrative weave themselves into stories about aging experiences. I focus on males’ experiences, their traditional knowledge, and the role of kinship over their life-courses. The life history narratives of a Smith Island waterman known as Eddie Boy, discusses two elements present in both his childhood narratives and his late adulthood: work and kinship. I show how changing socio-ecology has altered the potential for intergenerational relations, which older islanders cherish, and how such changes in late life pose a new aging dilemma for current Smith Islanders.