Talking about Creole : Language attitudes and public discourse in the Caribbean

Abstract

Abstract

en Language attitude studies form an important indicator for the acceptability of a variety in general or in particular domains like education or the media. Caribbean Creole languages have traditionally been stigmatised due to the fact that they arose in contact situations during plantation slavery. Especially when they are in continued contact with their lexifier, the Creole is often not seen as a legitimate variety of its own. Language attitudes studies in Trinidad by Winford (1976) and Mühleisen (2001) show, however, how the acceptance of Creole versus English has changed within two generations of Trinidadian schoolteachers. Ever since the publication of these quantitative survey-based studies, public opinion on language has been overwhelmingly expressed in traditional and digital media. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of language attitudes expressed in a corpus of just over 100 letters to the editor and in online forums as part of a public language debate in Jamaica will therefore update and complement the research findings in earlier studies.