Barbadian Creole English: Insights into class and race identity

Renee Blake

Sun. 9-10:40 B

Through observing and analyzing several distinct creole features, several studies (Burrowes and Allsopp 1983, Morrow 1984, Rickford and Blake 1990, Rickford 1992, Rickford and Handler 1994) provide evidence that dispels myths about the language not being a "true" Creole, as opposed to a linguistic descendent of a Metropolitan English. Furthermore, Haynes (1973) notes that although the White population seems to be less conservative (i.e., use fewer Creole elements) than Blacks in their language behavior, Barbadians were more likely to attribute this variation to social class differences instead of racial characteristics, or ethnicity. This discrepancy between performance and language attitude, though excluding the poor White in any substantial way, is meaningful to the description of Bajan.

Departing from this point, the question I address is whether descriptions of Bajan, in terms of the working class, adequately account for the community. In other words, how is the language of the working class Black similar or different to that of the working class White, and how does this relate to descriptions of Bajan? The importance of answering this question looms larger when we consider Barbados' unique situation of having more Whites than any other Caribbean island, particularly in the lower class.

In this paper, I compare two sociolinguistic interviews that I conducted during 1992 in a small, rural fishing community in Barbados with a poor Black and poor White woman. I examine notions of race in this working class community and explore the extent to which racial tensions get manifested in language behavior. I provide a synchronic variable analysis of the copula in the present and past tense, as well as past tense verb marking. The results are discussed in terms of social histories, group dynamics and linguistic descriptions of speech communities.

References

Burrowes, Audrey (in collaboration with Richard Allsopp). 1983. Barbadian Creole: A note on its social history and structure. Studies in Caribbean Language, ed. by Lawrence Carrington, in collaboration with Dennis R. Craig and Ramon Todd-Dandare, 38-45. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Society for Caribbean Linguistics.

Haynes, Lilith. 1973. Language in Barbados and Guyana: Attitudes, Behaviours, and Comparisons. PhD dissertation, Stanford University.

Morrow, Todd E. 1984. Bajan. B.A. Linguistics honor thesis, Stanford University.

Rickford, John. 1992. The creole residue in Barbados. Old English and New: Essays in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, ed. by Nick Doane, Joan Hall, and Dick Ringler, 183-201. New York: Garland.

Rickford, John R. and Blake, Renee. 1990. Copula contraction and absence in Barbadian Creole English, Samana English, and Vernacular Black English. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS 16), ed. by Kira Hall, Jean-Pierre Koening, Michael Meacham, Sondra Reinman, and Laurel A. Sutton, 257-268.

Rickford, John R. and Handler, Jerome S. 1994. Textual evidence on the nature of early Barbadian speech, 1676-1835. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9:2, 221-225.