"A fitting climax to many years of fruitful labor by a man who probably knows more about the Ozarkians than anybody else. . . . Randolph] has perceived and admirably expressed the close connection between a people and the language they speak." American Speech Until World War II the backwoodsmen living in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma were the most deliberately "unprogressive" people in the United States. The descendants of pioneers from the southern Appalachians, they changed their way of life very little during the whole span of the...