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A synchronic sociolinguistic study of Jamaican Creole (JC) as spoken in urban Kingston, this work uses variationist methods to closely investigate two key concepts of Atlantic Creole studies: the mesolect, and the creole continuum. One major concern is to describe how linguistic variation patterns with social influences. Is there a linguistic continuum? How does it correlate with social factors? The complex organization of an urbanizing Caribbean society and the highly variable nature of mesolectal speech norms and behavior present a challenge to sociolinguistic variation theory. The second chief aim is to elucidate the nature of mesolectal grammar. Creole studies have emphasized the structural integrity of basilectal varieties, leaving the status of intermediate mesolectal speech in doubt. How systematic is urban JC grammar? What patterns occur when basilectal creole constructions alternate with acrolectal English elements? Contextual constraints on choice of forms support a picture of the mesolect as a single grammar, variable yet internally-ordered, which has evolved a fine capacity to serve social functions. Drawing on a year's fieldwork in a mixed-class neighborhood of the capital city, the author (a speaker of JC) describes the speech community's history, demographics, and social geography, locating speakers in terms of their social class, occupation, education, age, sex, residence, and urban orientation. The later chapters examine a recorded corpus for linguistic variables that are phono-lexical (palatal glides), phonological (consonant cluster simplification), morphological (past-tense inflection), and syntactic (pre-verbal tense and aspect marking), using quantitative methods of analysis (including Varbrul). The Jamaican urban mesolect is portrayed as a coherent system showing stratified yet regular linguistic behavior, embedded in a well-defined speech community; despite the incorporation of forms and constraints from English, it is quintessentially creole in character.
A synchronic sociolinguistic study of Jamaican Creole (JC) as spoken in urban Kingston, this work uses variationist methods to closely investigate two key concepts of Atlantic Creole studies: the mesolect, and the creole continuum. One major concern is to describe how linguistic variation patterns with social influences. Is there a linguistic continuum? How does it correlate with social factors? The complex organization of an urbanizing Caribbean society and the highly variable nature of mesolectal speech norms and behavior present a challenge to sociolinguistic variation theory. The second chief aim is to elucidate the nature of mesolectal grammar. Creole studies have emphasized the structural integrity of basilectal varieties, leaving the status of intermediate mesolectal speech in doubt. How systematic is urban JC grammar? What patterns occur when basilectal creole constructions alternate with acrolectal English elements? Contextual constraints on choice of forms support a picture of the mesolect as a single grammar, variable yet internally-ordered, which has evolved a fine capacity to serve social functions. Drawing on a year’s fieldwork in a mixed-class neighborhood of the capital city, the author (a speaker of JC) describes the speech community’s history, demographics, and social geography, locating speakers in terms of their social class, occupation, education, age, sex, residence, and urban orientation. The later chapters examine a recorded corpus for linguistic variables that are phono-lexical (palatal glides), phonological (consonant cluster simplification), morphological (past-tense inflection), and syntactic (pre-verbal tense and aspect marking), using quantitative methods of analysis (including Varbrul). The Jamaican urban mesolect is portrayed as a coherent system showing stratified yet regular linguistic behavior, embedded in a well-defined speech community; despite the incorporation of forms and constraints from English, it is quintessentially creole in character.
This volume, a detailed empirical study of the creole English spoken in the Bahamian capital, Nassau, contributes to our understanding of both urban creoles and tense-aspect marking in creoles. The first part traces the development of a creole in the Bahamas via socio-demographic data and outlines its current status and functions vis-à-vis the standard in politics, the media, and education. The linguistic chapters combine typological and variationist methods to describe exhaustively a comprehensive grammatical subsystem, past temporal reference, offering a discourse-based approach to such controversial categories as the preverbal past marker. The quantitative analysis of variable past inflection, finally, tests not only well-known constraints, such as stativity or social class, but also ethnographically determined ones, such as narrative type. Its results are relevant not only to the study of Caribbean English-lexifier creoles and related varieties, such as African American English, but also to variation and change in urban dialects generally.
Dread Talk examines the effects of Rastafarian language on Creole in other parts of the Carribean, its influence in Jamaican poetry, and its effects on standard Jamaican English. This revised edition includes a new introduction that outlines the changes that have occurred since the book first appeared and a new chapter, "Dread Talk in the Diaspora," that discusses Rastafarian as used in the urban centers of North America and Europe. Pollard provides a wealth of examples of Rastafarian language-use and definitions, explaining how the evolution of these forms derives from the philosophical position of the Rasta speakers: "The socio-political image which the Rastaman has had of himself in a society where lightness of skin, economic status, and social privileges have traditionally gone together must be included in any consideration of Rastafarian words " for the man making the words is a man looking up from under, a man pressed down economically and socially by the establishment."
Beryl Loftman Bailey's book was one of the first published on the Jamaican Creole language.
This volume gives a detailed overview of the varieties of English spoken in the Americas and the Caribbean, including regional, social and ethnic dialects (such as Southern US, Canadian or Chicano English) as well as Caribbean creoles from the Bahamas to Suriname. The chapters, written by widely acclaimed specialists, provide concise and comprehensive information on the phonological, morphological and syntactic characteristics of each variety discussed. The articles are followed by exercises and study questions. The exercises are geared towards students and can be used for classroom assignments as well as for self study in preparation for exams. Instructors can use the exercises, sound samples and interactive maps to enhance their classroom presentations and to highlight important language features.
The method and plan of this dictionary of Jamaican English are basically the same as those of the Oxford English Dictionary, but oral sources have been extensively tapped in addition to detailed coverage of literature published in or about Jamaica since 1655. It contains information about the Caribbean and its dialects, and about Creole languages and general linguistic processes. Entries give the pronounciation, part-of-speach and usage of labels, spelling variants, etymologies and dated citations, as well as definitions. Systematic indexing indicates the extent to which the lexis is shared with other Caribbean countries.