Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:33:31.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Nobody canna cross it’: language-ideological dimensions of hypercorrect speech in Jamaica1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2015

AXEL BOHMANN
AXEL BOHMANN*
Affiliation:
Department of English, The University of Texas at Austin, Mailcode B5000, Austin, TX [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The concept of speaky-spoky, a pejorative label for hypercorrect speech in Jamaica, has thus far been described in the context of shared speech community norms (Patrick 1999). In this article, I analyze a stretch of speaky-spoky discourse and its recontextualization. The theoretical perspectives from which the data are examined are that of the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2010) and of entextualization (Bauman & Briggs 1990; Silverstein & Urban 1996). The method of analysis draws on Goffman's writing on frames (1974) and production formats (1981). I argue that the ideological dimensions and interactional versatility of the speaky-spoky concept have thus far not received enough empirical attention. To address this gap, I propose to interpret speaky-spoky as a dynamic and relational ‘construct resource’ (Fabricius & Mortensen 2013) that speakers draw upon to highlight social meaning in interaction.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 129 - 152
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

A preliminary version of this article was awarded the 2013 Richard M. Hogg Prize by the International Society for the Linguistics of English. I am grateful to my MA supervisors at the University of Texas at Austin, Ian Hancock and Lars Hinrichs, for their guidance and suggestions. Anne Fabricius and Janus Mortensen kindly shared an early draft of their work on construct resources and allowed me to discuss their ideas with them in personal communication. Michael Westphal and Byron Jones gave invaluable support in transcribing and interpreting the data. Finally, I would like to thank Bernd Kortmann, Christian Mair and the anonymous reviewers for both the Hogg Prize committee and English Language and Linguistics for insightful comments on earlier drafts of the present article. All remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

References

Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1), 38–59.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems in Dostoevsky's poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard & Briggs, Charles. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19, 59–88.Google Scholar
Beckford Wassink, Alicia. 1999. Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Language attitudes toward Jamaican Creole. Language in Society 28, 57–92.Google Scholar
Beckford Wassink, Alicia. 2001. Theme and variation in Jamaican vowels. Language Variation and Change 13, 135–59.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary. 1999. You da man: Narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3 (4), 443–60.Google Scholar
Cassidy, Frederic Gomes & LePage, Robert Brock. 1980. Dictionary of Jamaican English, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cotter, Colleen. 2010. News talk: Investigating the language of journalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cotter, Colleen. 2011. Diversity awareness and the role of language in cultural representations in news stories. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 1890–9.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30 (3), 345–75.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2009. The mediated performance of vernaculars. Journal of English Linguistics 37 (3), 284–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, Cecilia A. 1999. Yorkville Crossing: White teens, hip hop and African American English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3 (4), 428–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeCamp, David. 1971. Toward a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum. In Hymes, Dell (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, 349–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Devonish, Hubert & Harry, Otelemate G.. 2004. Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English: Phonology. In Schneider, Edgar W., Burridge, Kate, Kortmann, Bernd, Mesthrie, Rajend & Upton, Clive (eds.). A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 450–80.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (4), 453–76.Google Scholar
Fabricius, Anne & Mortensen, Janus. 2013. Language ideology and the notion of construct resources: A case study of modern RP. In Kristiansen, Tore & Grondelaers, Stefan (eds.), Language (de)standardisation in late modern Europe: Experimental studies, 375–402. Oslo: Novus Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 1992. Contextualization and understanding. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 229–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hinrichs, Lars. 2006. Code-switching on the web: English and Jamaican Creole in e-mail communication. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Irvine, Alison. 2008. Contrast and convergence in Standard Jamaican English: The phonological architecture of the standard in an ideologically bidialectal community. World Englishes 27 (1), 9–25.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. & Gal, Susan. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, Paul V. (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra. 2009. Entextualization, mediatization, authentication: Orthographic choice in media transcripts. Text & Talk 29 (5), 571–94.Google Scholar
Jamaican Language Unit. 2009. Writing Jamaican the Jamaican way / Ou fi rait Jamiekan. Kingston: Arawak.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 1999. Uses of Southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3 (4), 505–22.Google Scholar
kevy2c, user upload. 2011. ‘“Nobody canna cross it” twanging (refix video) – Dj Powa’. Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hknVoAoyy-k. Uploaded 15 June 2011; last accessed 10 March 2015.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.Google Scholar
mryardvybz, user upload. 2011. ‘Clifton Brown interview’. Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZHBRIeqiWY&feature=related. Uploaded 25 June 2011; last accessed 10 March 2015.Google Scholar
NUKdeluxe98, user upload. 2012. ‘Nobody can cross it – Nobody canna cross it FULL VERSION’. Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sRyP3-E6Ag. Uploaded 27 June 2012; last accessed 10 March 2015.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter L. 1997. Style and register in Jamaican Patwa. In Schneider, Edgar (ed.), Englishes around the world: Studies in honour of Manfred Görlach, vol. 2: Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Australasia, 41–56. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter L. 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the mesolect. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter L. 2004. Jamaican Creole: Morphology and syntax. In Schneider, Edgar W., Burridge, Kate, Kortmann, Bernd, Mesthrie, Rajend & Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 2: Morphology and syntax, 407–38. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter & McElhinny, Bonnie. 1993. Speakin’ and spokin’ in Jamaica: Conflict and consensus in sociolinguistics. In Guenter, Jushua, Kaiser, Barbara & Zoll, Cheryl (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12–15, 1993, 280–90. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 1995. Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. 1987. Dimensions of a Creole continuum: History, texts & linguistic analysis of Guyanese Creole. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sand, Andrea. 1999. Linguistic variation in Jamaica: A corpus-based study of radio and newspaper usage. Tübingen: G. Narr.Google Scholar
Shields, Kathryn. 1989. Standard English in Jamaica: A case of competing models. English World-Wide 10 (1), 41–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoba, Jo Arthur, Dako, Kari & Orfson-Offei, Elizabeth. 2013. ‘Locally acquired foreign accent’ (LAFA) in contemporary Ghana. World Englishes 32 (2), 230–42.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of social life. Language and Communication 23, 193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael & Urban, Greg (eds.). 1996. Natural histories of discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
tazdkz, user upload. 2011. ‘Jamaican man twangs for the TVJ news reporter’. Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgtprMGKnKg. Uploaded 6 August 2011; last accessed 10 March 2015.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 1999. Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8, 3–29.Google Scholar