In Dread Talk Velma Pollard describes the language of Rastafari, tracing its development as an expansion of Jamaican Creole while showing how it is distinct both from Creole and Standard English. She demonstrates that dread talk must be understood in terms of Jamaican social history, emphasizing its religious origins, its evolution as a language of social protest, and its spread around the world through the Reggae music of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff.