Excerpt from CHAPTER 3 Introduction: Ideals and Figuration in the Bahamas Part I (original) (raw)
Related papers
Where Roots Grow Deep: A Linguistic Legacy of the Bahamian English Creole
Grounded in theoretical creole linguistics, this paper discusses the validity of Bahamian English Creole, a contact language that is spoken in the Bahamas, and in some areas known as, Bahamian Dialect. This excerpt was published in 2002 to facilitate critical skills in a first-year undergraduate composition class at The College of the Bahamas, Nassau, Bahamas.
Linguistics in the Caribbean: Between theory and practice
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 2011
In the following, I will attempt to trace the growth of the field of linguistics in the “West Indies”. The following overview will make it clear that significant development has taken place in Caribbean-based linguistics, particularly at UWI, in a relatively short period of time, and that this is largely due to the efforts of Caribbean-born scholars. However, these developments have also come at a cost: at times, linguistics at UWI has been rather insular and restricted. I argue that there has been a view among Caribbean linguistics that the realities of the Caribbean are, somehow, incompatible with theoretical linguistics, which, it is thought, is pursued as a goal in itself, divorced from reality, and will neither do justice to language in the Caribbean, nor find practical use there. I will argue that this view is unjustified.
Caribbean Linguistics and Caribbean Historiography
In the Caribbean, as elsewhere, the linguist has often performed the role of social historian, making vital contributions to both disciplines simultaneously. Likewise, the historian in the Caribbean has often uncovered and used sources that have proven invaluable to the linguist, offering important perspectives and methodologies for language study in the region. The Caribbean linguist has necessarily been the pioneer in describing both formal and informal cases of language contact, including creole genesis theories, language histories from below, the nature of borders and political history, diachronic social variation and language varieties, sociohistorical attitudes to language and historical ethnolinguistics, and the role of language in oral and written literature and in education. Specific language case studies useful to the historian include Jamaican, Lesser Antillean French Creole, Caribbean English(es), Jamaican, Trinidadian, Berbice Dutch, Bhojpuri, Portuguese and Yoruba in Trinidad and other obsolescing heritage languages. The social historian in the Caribbean, on the other hand, has given time to a careful study of demographic sources equally useful to the historical (socio)linguist, toponyms and historical names of languages, and to aspects of critical discourse analysis of novels and of newspapers. The postgraduate student of history is often required to have a working knowledge of another language, especially in contemporary or historically bi/multilingual societies. Sources of interest to both disciplines include immigration registers, marriage registers, newspapers, travelogues, diaries, novels, dictionaries, word lists and glossaries, Bible and other translations, grammars, songs, legal proceedings and much more. Members of both disciplines have worked closely together, such as Winer and Brereton, making it clear that each discipline offers indispensable research tools to the other. This paper examines the existing interface(s) between linguistics and historiography in the Caribbean. Whereas scholars in both areas may sometimes have worked independently of each other, this paper calls for an examination of the way forward through purposeful collaboration and theoretical and practical interdisciplinarity between the (socio)linguist and the (social) historian in the region and beyond.
Introduction: Englishes of the Caribbean
World Englishes, 2022
The English-official Caribbean provides an insightful context for investigations of norm developmental processes, world Englishes theorizing, and mapping Englishes in multivarietal communities. While there has been an upsurge of linguistic research on the region, especially on emerging standardized varieties, little systematic empirical research exists on smaller Caribbean islands, select domain-specific patterns of production and perception in larger territories, and regional issues of standardization. This special issue addresses current research gaps and provides a well-rounded picture of language production and perception research in the anglophone Caribbean. The issue consists of articles with a variety of different methodological approaches, including corpus-linguistic, sociolinguistic, acoustic phonetic, ethnographic, and language attitudinal investigations. It covers a wide range of smaller (Bequia, Dominica, Grenada, and St. Kitts) and larger territories (the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, and Trinidad). While the articles scrutinize the anglophone Caribbean, several of the issues raised have relevance for world Englishes research more generally.
Language in Society, 2016
The International Corpus of English (ICE) is radically changing our concept of English. We now know more about English in Asia, however, than we do about English in the Caribbean where the language has had a history of almost four hundred years. Dagmar Deuber helps to redress this imbalance. The book is the product of field and corpus work that Deuber had been conducting for almost a decade before publication and her longterm collaboration with other scholars working on Caribbean Englishes (CarE) and Creoles.
Linguists in the resolution of Caribbean language problems. Sargasso, 2011-12 (2), 35-52
Language policy decisions are made daily in the Caribbean. They may include selection of official or national languages, development and implementation of writing systems, organization of national literacy campaigns, recognition and regularization of creoles or dialects, establishment of teacher training standards, creation of scientific or technological nomenclature, dissemination of publishing norms, and preparation of dictionaries. Regrettably, many determinations involving language are made with little genuine input from those trained to analyze language and its social functions. In Puerto Rico, partisan politics and commercial concerns, rather than sociolinguistic insights, have traditionally prevailed in language-related matters. This paper probes the different types of language policies carried out routinely in Puerto Rico. It then outlines the specific contributions that linguists can make to the resolution of language issues, based upon the documented experiences of other C...
Creole in the Caribbean: How Oral Discourse creates Cultural Identities
Journal des africanistes, 2010
The fictional recreation of Creole in Caribbean English literature has been traditionally studied using Eurocentric criteria. When compared to British English, Creole was considered a debased deviation . Creole is associated with oral discourse, one reason for its growing use in literature. Caribbean writers have represented the Caribbean experience through the use of fictional Creole. The contemporary novel has thus been transformed by African-derived modes of narration which highlight the performative role of communicative interaction. With its attempt to reconstruct the processes involved in this transformation, this paper addresses issues relating to oral and written literary traditions that shed light on the linguistic forms of Creole as used in postcolonial Caribbean English literature. These forms may be seen as cultural determiners of Creole identity.
Linguistics in the Caribbean: Empowerment through creole language awareness
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 2011
For creolists, Jamaica is a place where an English-lexifier Creole is spoken. Officially though, Jamaica is English-speaking only. This means that Jamaican Creole, known as Patwa (or “Patois,” in an English-derived spelling) does not have official status, and has no legitimacy in any of the public institutions through which the state interacts with and intervenes in the lives of its citizens, including the judicial system, public health care institutions, and schools. In this column, I collaborate with 11 graduates of the linguistics programme at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, to trace their journey to language awareness and language activism.