Playing with Languages

Children and Change in a Caribbean Village

Amy L. Paugh

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857457615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Over several generations villagers of Dominica have been shifting from Patwa, an Afro-French creole, to English, the official language. Despite government efforts at Patwa revitalization and cultural heritage tourism, rural caregivers and teachers prohibit children from speaking Patwa in their presence. Drawing on detailed ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of video-recorded social interaction in naturalistic home, school, village and urban settings, the study explores this paradox and examines the role of children and their social worlds. It offers much-needed insights into the study of language socialization, language shift and Caribbean children's agency and social lives, contributing to the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of children's cultures. Further, it demonstrates the critical role played by children in the transmission and transformation of linguistic practices, which ultimately may determine the fate of a language.

CHAPTER 1

Discourses of Differentiation, Unity, and Identity

With a mixed triple heritage of Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians, its history as an eighteenth century Anglo-French pawn, protestant, British rule of a largely Catholic, French Creole-speaking population, and a name altogether too similar to a much larger Caribbean nation, it is little surprise that Dominica has long been an island with an uncertain identity. (Myers 1987: xxii–xxiii)

Those who have tried to govern Dominica have for centuries struggled with issues of differentiation and unity, exclusion and inclusion, at multiple levels. The island experienced a complex colonial history of French and British rule with an associated “spatial dismemberment” (Trouillot 1988) and linguistic divide isolating villages from each other and from the towns. Its history, geography, and particular configuration of cultural and linguistic contact mark its uniqueness from other Caribbean nations, expect perhaps for St. Lucia with its similar French–British colonial past. Since colonization, the multiple ideologies surrounding Dominica’s languages have been complex and often oppositional. They have taken shape differently across geographic, socioeconomic, and ethnic lines. Today Patwa is viewed among many urban intellectuals and nationalists as Dominica’s “authentic” language, a symbol of national identity, and a link to French creole-speaking regions worldwide. Contemporary nationalist discourses highlight an inclusive “shared’ linguistic heritage through Patwa and concerns about the “decline” of Dominican culture. These discourses, however, minimize the existence of deeply felt historical, social, and economic divisions between rural/urban groups and the exclusion experienced by rural Patwa speakers. Meanwhile, there is an emerging discourse about culture and language as commodities in the newly developing heritage and ecotourism industry; this often intersects with the other discourses. In this chapter I examine how social and linguistic boundaries have been historically shaped and discursively constructed by colonial officials, political leaders, and cultural activists who have struggled to define Dominican identity. As I sketch out this history I ask, how have various authorities played with and framed Dominica’s language varieties over time?

Language and Post-colonialism

Language is often a significant and highly contested issue in nationalist movements and nation building generally (Anderson 1991[1983]; Blommaert and Verschueren 1992; Grillo 1989; Heller 2010), particularly in multilingual post-colonial settings where language and identity issues are overtly linked. A large and growing literature focuses on language issues in nation building, the politics of development, sentiments of belonging, and the defining of borders, boundaries, and ethnic groups.¹ As Anderson states, “the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities” (1991[1983]: 133, emphasis in original). For Anderson, the development of print capitalism and shared literacy activities such as newspapers and novels in national languages is central in creating national communities. This, however, has been critiqued as a naturalization of the standardization process and replication of a nationalist ideological position itself (Kroskrity 2000b; Silverstein 2000).

Languages also divide. An approach that problematizes a focus on unity is exemplified by Bourdieu’s work (1977, 1984, 1991), which considers how the differential distribution of linguistic practices relates to the structure of social hierarchy. Certain linguistic practices and varieties, such as state-legitimated standards or “ethnic” or “indigenous” languages, are viewed as valuable resources that are ultimately convertible into social and economic capital, which may uphold dominant power structures and support symbolic domination (Duchêne and Heller 2007; Gal 1989; Heller 2010; Jaffe 1999, 2007b; Kroskrity 2000b). In many Caribbean nations, a major state project since independence has been developing cultural policies that promote distinct post-colonial national identities. Such policies raise questions about “authenticity” and “ownership” of (often racialized) cultural and linguistic practices.² For example, the creation of an Haitian Kreyòl orthography has generated profound questions about inequality, representations of the nation, and what it means to be Haitian (Schieffelin and Doucet 1994). The analysis of standardization processes, authoritative discourses like language purism, and the promotion of some practices over others reveals broader social meanings and power relations (Hill and Hill 1986; Woolard and Schieffelin 1994).

Until recently, attitudes toward creole languages such as Patwa have been mixed at best and typically derogatory. Historians, linguists, colonial officials, and speakers themselves have denigrated them as “broken” or “bastardized” versions of the European standards upon which they are lexically based.³ In the context of national identity movements in post-colonial settings since World War II, impacted by the women’s and civil rights movements in the United States, this began to change. Creole languages are being reevaluated and revalued as unique dimensions of island and pan-Caribbean identity. Creole languages have been introduced to varying degrees into politics, mass media, education, and other formal contexts, including English creole in Jamaica, French creoles in Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucia, and Papiamento in the formerly Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (see Migge et al. 2010). The elevation of creole languages at the national level has generated controversy, most often among native creole language speakers themselves (Appel and Verhoeven 1994; Craig 2008; Devonish 1986; Garrett 2000; Migge et al. 2010; Nwenmely 1996; Schnepel 2004). This is due partly to the fact that while revitalization movements often have the altruistic goal of helping communities and raising national consciousness, they also obscure differences in wealth, access, and resources. Revitalization efforts that elevate a language without elevating the status of its speakers often clash with the daily experiences of those they claim to help—paradoxically strengthening existing power structures in new ways. Further, they can even undermine local strategies that allow speakers to adopt a more powerful “global” language like English while continuing to maintain the creole language as an important identity marker and affectively salient linguistic resource in particular contexts.

A look into Dominica’s complex colonial past, history of sociolinguistic variation, and contemporary discourses about cultural and linguistic heritage and loss shed light on the paradoxes posed by Patwa revitalization efforts. Despite efforts to eliminate it, especially by British colonizers, Patwa has persisted for well over three and a half centuries, often serving as a form of opposition to ruling powers (cf. Burton 1997). As previously discussed, Dominica differs from other Caribbean societies in that its French-Afro creole language exists alongside varieties of English, not standard French, due to its specific history of cultural and linguistic contact. This chapter illuminates contemporary ideologies and their continual articulation with the colonial past, as Caribbean societies are “inescapably historical” (Trouillot 1992: 21). The chapter probes the ideological aspects of linguistic differentiation, “the ideas with which participants and observers frame their understanding of linguistic varieties and map those understandings onto people, events, and activities that are significant to them” (Irvine and Gal 2000: 35).

Cultural and Linguistic Contact in the Colonial Period

When Columbus sighted Dominica in 1493, Kalinago from the Orinoco delta occupied it and the islands to either side of it. There had been an Amerindian presence for potentially thousands of years (Honychurch 1995[1975]), but despite this, Columbus named the island Dominica for the day: dies Dominica, “the Lord’s Day” or “Sunday” in Latin. Spain had little interest in the mountainous terrain, however, preferring to settle the flatter Greater Antillean islands (Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico) and the Latin American mainland, and principally stopped there to replenish wood and water supplies. Dominica was left to the Kalinago until France and Britain began competing for its strategic position between the French-controlled islands in the seventeenth century. While the French made no formal claims, they had established the earliest European settlements by 1635. French settlers arrived from Martinique and Guadeloupe, bringing island-born slaves (descendants of earlier West African groups)⁴ and developing small prosperous coffee estates. By the eighteenth century Patwa had emerged in the context of the unequal contact between these groups and was spoken on French estates around the coast. Accompanying the early settlers were French Roman Catholic missionaries who spread the use of Patwa and established the predominance of Catholicism that persists today. Few slaves would have learned French; instead most would have acquired Patwa as their first language as it was passed on to new generations.

Threatened by French hegemony in the Lesser Antilles, the British vied for control. The Kalinago often sided with one European power, usually the French. In the mid-seventeenth century, Afro-Caribbean slaves from other islands began escaping to Dominica, many inter-mixing with the Kalinago. In 1660 a French treaty gave the Kalinago rights to Dominica and St. Vincent in exchange for them abandoning claims to other islands. However, the French refused to leave and the British fought for control. In 1686 France and Britain signed another treaty making Dominica a neutral island belonging to the Kalinago. Both nations violated it and the Kalinago, like other indigenous peoples of the Americas, were decimated as they were pushed to the rugged windward coast. They had numbered 5,000 in 1647, but by the turn of the century there remained only about 2,000. By 1730 there were only 400, which offered little threat to European colonizing efforts.⁵ French settlers and buccaneers, poor whites, and freed slaves from other islands continued to arrive. The rest of the population grew from 776 in 1730 to 7,890 in 1763 (Baker 1994: 47).

The island exchanged hands at least seven times before becoming British in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, with the French gaining one last brief period of control from 1778 to 1783. But the French had established the earliest and most significant European settlements, making an indelible cultural, linguistic, and economic impact. This influence continued as French residents were allowed to remain on their profitable coffee estates, albeit for rent and under British law, and other French settlers arrived from Guadeloupe and Martinique to further settle the countryside.⁶ A major difference between these colonizers was that the French were more interested in permanently settling than the British, who ruled from the capital town. Unlike British absentee owners, French owners typically lived on and managed their small-scale operations. They also permitted their slaves to cultivate marginal land for their own consumption and to inherit property upon the owner’s death. No such arrangements were made by British attorneys overseeing their absentee owner’s estates or by the few title-holders who actually lived there. Slavery was based on extreme exploitation and dehumanization of African populations; however, there reportedly emerged a more cooperative relationship between the French and their slaves, offering slaves more independence and giving rise to a proto-peasantry long before emancipation (Baker 1994; Trouillot 1988). Not insignificantly French slaves overwhelmingly adopted Catholicism, which remains the religion of 61.5 percent of the population with no other denomination exceeding 6 percent (Commonwealth of Dominica 2001).⁷ As in religion French influence is discernable in Dominica’s linguistic ecology.

The Persistence of French Creole Culture and Language

When the British seized control in 1763, they replaced French with English as the official language. This effectively separated the British-controlled towns of Roseau and Portsmouth from the rest of the French and Patwa-speaking population. The British further attempted to erase linguistic evidence of over a century of French influence by replacing French places names with British ones. Many took hold, like Portsmouth, but a number of French names persisted, like Roseau. In addition, the British were threatened by subversive political and military activity among French inhabitants, free mulattos, and maroons (escaped slaves), and were unprepared to work the mountainous land. Due to the paucity of the sugar industry, British officials focused on the free ports of Roseau and Portsmouth for trade. Little money was invested in developing roads, amenities, or large plantations like on the richer sugar islands of Jamaica and Barbados. Meanwhile, a steady flow of white and mulatto smallholders from the French islands bought up estates from disillusioned British settlers. French culture and the creole language became firmly entrenched in the rural population, with the spread of English outside the towns limited by the difficulties of traveling and “a language barrier created by Patois” (Christie 1990: 63).

Ruled by England but populated by French planters and slaves, colonial Dominica was torn by the conflicting desires and influences of two opposing powers:

[T]he island’s position between two of the most important and valuable colonies of the French Empire created a constant imbalance between British occupation and French influence. The majority of the European population on Dominica was French and by cultural transfusion, so were their slaves. … The culture of the French families on their scattered estates triumphed over that of the British officials huddled in Roseau, or of the attorneys on the dwindling number of British estates. (Honychurch 1995[1975]: 100)

The language barriers came to represent the opposition between the British and French, and increasingly between the ruling class and the rest of the population. In 1825 one visitor noted:

[T]he community is first divided by language [English versus Patwa and French], then by religion [Protestantism versus Catholicism], and the inconsiderable residue, which is supposed to represent the whole, is so torn to pieces by squabbles as bitter as contemptible, that the mere routine of government was at a dead stand while I was on the island. (Henry Nelson Coleridge, in Honychurch 1995[1975]: 120)

Official erasure of Dominica’s linguistic complexities only made Patwa more subversive, as French slaves transmitted Patwa to British slaves who could use it to communicate without their English-speaking masters understanding them (Baker 1994; Christie 1983). For French slaves, who often remained loyal to their estates, Patwa symbolized their “Frenchness” (Christie 1990: 63). For the British, Patwa increasingly represented the obstacles posed by the French and the failure of their own colonial project. English, as the only written medium and the language of British colonial administration, came to index the ruling white elite, their culture, and the two towns, especially Roseau.

Emancipation: The Rise of a Peasant-based Society and Mulatto Elite

When slavery was abolished in 1834, two new social classes emerged: a growing population of Patwa-speaking peasant farmers eager to work their own land, and a smaller English-speaking mulatto ascendancy with political power concentrated in Roseau. Central to understanding the contemporary national speech economy is an examination of how these two very separate groups fit into the patterns established during the conflict between the two colonial powers, and how this mapped onto language ideologies and usage. But rather than two foreign nations, this was a struggle between two groups that considered Dominica their home.

Prior to emancipation there were over 14,000 slaves, 4,077 free colored, and only 791 “whites” (Baker 1994). Once freed, most former slaves were far from eager to work for the estates and rapidly left to form new settlements.⁸ In the years that followed, older villages grew and new ones sprang up. Unlike other Caribbean islands where large plantations occupied most available land, there was abundant land in Dominica where freed slaves could establish smallholdings. Maroons from Guadeloupe and Martinique, where slavery was not abolished until 1848, joined the freed slaves. “Black” ex-slave villages emerged between the British estates and older French creole villages. These were the beginnings of a peasant-based agricultural society with most of the population dominant in Patwa, not French or English.⁹

The settlement patterns of the post-emancipation period had important economic and social consequences. Lacking road and communication networks, the new communities were largely self-sufficient. Residents grew their own food and only occasionally labored for cash on nei...