Language and Life on Ocracoke represents a culmination of over 30 years of collaboration between the NC State Linguistics Department and the Ocracoke community. Since 1991, Walt Wolfram and Jeffrey Reaser have conducted extensive research on the Brogue, developed a dialect awareness curriculum for Ocracoke School, and recorded countless oral histories with generations of O'Cockers to document the island's unique linguistic and cultural heritage.

This media companion site draws from this extensive collection as well as from a trove of newsreels, archival materials, and documentary footage from the Language & Life Project's documentaries on the dialect: Ocracoke Brogue (1997) and Core Sounders (2013). Through this media, we invite you to experience the rich sights and sounds of the Outer Banks as well as explore our ongoing research on the dialect diversity across North Carolina.