Language and Jamaican Literature

Disrespected literatures are written in disrespected languages. Languagesare usually disrespected when the status of the people who speak them is low. In postplantationsocieties the respected language is the European language brought by thepeople who colonised the country. The disrespected language is usually a creole bornin the plantation environment where overseers speaking European languages andenslaved people speaking West African languages were forced to interact. In Jamaicathe respected official language is English and the disrespected popular language isJamaica Creole. The languages are lexically related and so give the impression of beingcloser than they are. In fact, Jamaican Creole is still regarded as “broken English” bypeople who have not paid attention to the linguistic analyses which indicate a strongstructural relationship to certain West African languages. These two languages, theofficial and the popular have accommodated each other in the Jamaican environmentwith speaker and situation determining use. A fascinating feature of thisaccommodation is the ability of the individual to switch from one language to the otherwithin the same speech event.This paper hopes to illustrate how I and other Jamaican writers have infused theformal/official language in which most of us write, with the popular language and sohave enriched the fabric that is the language in which Jamaican literature is written. Disrespected Literatures are written in Disrespected Languages. I am from Jamaicawhere the official language is Jamaican English, a respected language, and the popularlanguage is Jamaican Creole, commonly called Patwa, the disrespected language.Disrespected languages are hardly given the status of “language” except by linguists.They are called dialects or they are described as broken versions of respected languagesto which they are usually related lexically. So some people describe the Jamaicanpopular language as “broken English”. I have said elsewhere that if that is what it is, it isbroken into many very small pieces. The truth is that languages gain status from theirspeakers. An eminent linguist (Max Weinreich) quoting an unnamed friend, remarkedthat a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Jamaican Creole, Patwa, even if itused the salaries of all its speakers could hardly sustain an army and a navy

Caribbean-Scottish Relations: Colonial and Contemporary Inscriptions in History, Language and Literature

In this book, Joan Anim Addo, Giovanna Covi, Velma Pollard, and Carla Sassi present the results of collaborative research on colonial and postcolonial relationships between the Caribbean and Scotland, promoted by the University of Trento, Italy, and coordinated by Giovanna Covi. The four essays focus on the historical, cultural and literary representations of various aspects of this complicated interconnection: Joan Anim Addo’s on family history, Giovanna Covi’s on identities in African-Caribbean literature, Velma Pollard’s on Jamaican history and language, and Carla Sassi on Scottish literature. They discuss pivotal figures such as Mary Seacole, Charles and Hugh Mulzac, and texts by Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Robertson, by the anonymous Author of Marly, and by Una Marson, Claude McKay, Olive Senior, Jamaica Kincaid, and Nourbese Philip among others; they give voice to Juliana Mulzac through (auto)biography and to numerous other people through interviews and acts of re-memorying. This book inaugurates the project to remap colonial history by accounting for the often paradoxical complexity of relations determined by imperial power; not only does it consider that which separates Scotland from the Caribbean, that which sets “Blackness” apart from “Scottishness”, but it also accepts an investigation of that which brings these two geopolitical areas and ethnic groups together. The inquiry results in a multi-vocal discourse that deconstructs national narratives, unveils colonial inscriptions, and releases the creolised images and words that demand full citizenship in the representation of the Circum-Atlanti

Creole Languages and Urban Education: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century (Tape 6)

Creole Languages and Urban Education: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Creole Language Workshop, Florida International University Day 2 Linguistics Program Florida International University Thursday, November 17 and Friday, November 18 8am – 5:30pm Wolf University Center (UC) 320 FIU – North Campus Organized by Tometro Hopkins The first Creole language workshop of its kind in South Florida. Opening remarks Virginia Miller, Linguistics Program Florida International University, Speakers: Geneva Smitherman, African American English from the Hood to the Amen Corner Frank Martinus, Papamiento Its Emancipation its actual status its instrumentalization and its role in education Velma Pollard, Language Imagination and the World Word of the Creole Speaking Chil