Documented history
Gullah Is a Language
Recognition begins by refusing the language of deficiency.
When Lorenzo Dow Turner listened closely to Gullah speakers in South Carolina, he heard systematic vocabulary, grammar, and African-language continuities where many academics had heard only ‘broken English.’ His encounters and recordings helped change scholarly understanding of Gullah as a distinctive creole language.
That scholarly turn did not create the language; speakers did. Rosina Cohen’s recorded narrative is therefore more than raw material for Turner’s argument. It is a person’s voiced knowledge, shaped by cadence, audience, and circumstance. Citation should return attention to the speaker as well as the collector.