In These Neoliberal Times: Blackness in the Multicultural Costa Rican Nation

The socio-­‐economic restructuring that occurred in Central America in the aftermath of the civil wars led to the rise of neoliberal discourses and multicultural discussions. This rhetoric resulted in a new “awareness” of cultural diversity and ethnic pluralism, and led to the emergence of multicultural initiatives at local and national levels. The spillover effect of such projects on contemporary literary production in noteworthy, particularly when it involves narratives that aim to rewrite History from a black perspective. This essay focuses on two Costa Rican novels and the strategies they use to take their intended readers to “black times” and “black places” on the Atlantic Coast, enveloping them in a wider neoliberal and multiculturalist project that aims to reassess both national and regional identities

Tropical Tongues: Language Ideologies, Endangerment, and Minority Languages in Belize

Tropical Tongues examines the precarious state of minority languages in coastal Belize, as Kriol has risen to the level of a national language in the period following the country’s independence (1981–present). Our fieldwork shows that while the prestige enjoyed by English and Spanish is indisputable, a range of historical and socioeconomic developments have conspired to give Kriol an elevated prestige in the coastal districts at the potential expense of more vulnerable minority languages also spoken there. Our claims are based on ethnographic observations and interviews as well as surveys of language attitudes and use that together show the attenuation of Mopan and Garifuna alongside the stigmatized yet robust Kriol language. Language endangerment studies generally focus on the loss of a minority language to a European language; the present story of language shift and loss examines how large-scale economic restructuring can unsettle existing relationships among minority languages themselves

Straight Outta Livingston: Black Indigeneity, Wordsmithing and Code-Switching in Wingston González’s Poetry

Straight Outta Livingston: Black Indigeneity, Wordsmithing and Code-Switching in Wingston González’s Poetr

Whose Kriol is Moa Beta? Prestige and Dialects of Kriol in Belize

No abstract available

Setting and Language Attitudes in a Creole Context

This article reports on a set of language attitude experiments undertaken in Belize in 2013--2014. The experiments tested attitudes toward Belizean Kriol in two different situational settings among 96 Belizean university students, exploring the extent to which experimental \u27setting\u27 had an effect on survey results. We administered verbal guise tests to 48 university students in classroom settings at the University of Belize campuses in Belize City and Punta Gorda. We then administered the same tests to 48 students in non-classroom settings in these same two cities. We found significant differences in both sets of results, with classroom participants registering stronger preferences for Belize City Kriol in status and solidarity traits. Our results add to a small but important body of literature in which setting is shown to influence language attitudes, and they provide support for an understanding of the quantitative survey as a meaning-making activity

Tropical Tongues

Tropical Tongues: Language Ideologies, Endangerment, and Minority Languages in Belize examines the precarious state of languages in coastal Belize. In the period following the country's independence in 1981, Kriol has risen to the level of a national language. While the prestige enjoyed by English and Spanish is indisputable, a range of historical and socio-economic developments has given Kriol an elevated status in the coastal districts at the potential expense of more vulnerable minority languages also spoken there. Using fieldwork, ethnographic observations, interviews, and surveys of language attitudes and use, Gómez Menjívar and Salmon show the attenuation of Mopan and Garifuna alongside the stigmatized yet robust Kriol language. Language endangerment studies generally focus on the loss of a minority language to a European language. Tropical Tongues presents a fresh perspective on language shift and loss by examining how large-scale economic restructuring can unsettle relationships among minority languages. An open access edition of Tropical Tongues is available through a partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library