Bequia talk: St Vincent and the Grenadines shows what makes the language of the people of Bequia special by examining the way people on the island talk. It demonstrates the island people's distinctive ways of talking, examining their vocabulary, their ways of pronouncing words, and how they organize their sentences, in terms not only of what they share that sets them apart from other speakers of English, but also in terms of how they manifest regional and social differences on the island.

This book consists of seven chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to the research background and a general introduction to Bequia. Chapter 3 discusses the history of Bequia and focuses on its settlement by various groups of people who brought different racial, cultural, and linguistic characteristics to the island. Chapter 4 examines the vocabulary of the Bequia language, ways in which it differs from those of other Caribbean islands, and the different styles of speech used by the people of Bequia. Chapter 5 explores the sounds of the Bequia language and their organization. Chapter 6 deals with the grammar of the Bequia language, and the final chapter summarizes the main content of the previous chapters and highlights fields for future research.

Several thematic threads run through this book with a strong focus on the features of the Bequia language. First, Meyerhoff & Walker combine the quantitative methods of sociolinguistics with the more in-depth qualitative fieldwork of anthropology. Second, the analysis is based on a large quantity of high-quality speech records representing the different communities on Bequia. Third, the authors deal with speakers' vernacular, defined by William Labov (Sociolinguistic patterns, 1972) as a style of speech in which the speaker pays minimum attention to how they speak. They offer a kaleidoscope of interdisciplinary approaches to the Bequia language, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect that has developed alongside processes of cultural and social transformation on the island.

Meyerhoff & Walker not only show that the Bequia language shares features in common with other varieties of Caribbean English, but they also examine its uniqueness in terms of words, pronunciation, and ways of speaking. They discuss some aspects of pronunciation that might be unique to Bequia and that require further research. They also provide evidence that different villages on the island differ in the use and distribution of grammatical features, and these are an ongoing subject of investigation. They also show that the varieties of language spoken on Bequia are systematic and rule-governed with a historical and stylistic richness equal to any other language. This book is useful and interesting for both nonspecialists and specialists in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.