<i>The</i> English Language <i>in</i> British Guiana

Allsopp, Richard

doi:10.1093/elt/xii.2.59

Cited by 10 publications

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“…Even so, the relaxed speech of members of the educated middle class is different from the speech they use on the formal occasion, s o that the linguistic continuum is itself affected by COB text of situation. Allsopp (1958) illustrated this in relation to the sentence:…”

Section: But Because the Indian Immigration Ordinance Permitted Eastmentioning

confidence: 96%

Some Sociolinguistic Factors in the Production of Standard Language in Guyana and Implications for the Language Teacher

Cave

1970

Language Learning

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Problems in the production of Standard English in Guyana have their roots deep in the historical development of the people. The great admixture within the population—comprised largely of the descendants of former African slaves, former indentured Indian immigrants, citizens of the major European colonizing powers, and the indigenous Amerindians—has led to the incorporation into the Guyanese dialect of many non‐English loans and pronunciation variants, with social‐class and education contributing towards an extensive linguistic continuum. Additional problems derive from the fact that Guyanese Creole has a smaller range of possible consonant clusters than Standard English, uses as a verb any important word in the sentence, and has over two dozen forms of the personal pronoun; and all these factors militate against children of certain social‐class backgrounds in the educational system. Teachers of these children should resist the temptation to ridicule the children's language. They should make systematic analyses of the children's language, and compile accurate statistics of major variant speech forms, which should then be taken up one by one in the classroom to help the children gain mastery.

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Section: But Because the Indian Immigration Ordinance Permitted Eastmentioning

confidence: 96%

Some Sociolinguistic Factors in the Production of Standard Language in Guyana and Implications for the Language Teacher

Cave

1970

Language Learning

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“…Pronouns in Guyanese Creole (GC) -as Allsopp 1958, Bickerton 1973a, and Rickford 1979 have illustrated -show a kind of robust variation along a number of dimensions, and this makes them particularly well suited to variation analysis. However, the focus on pronouns in studies of variability in GC should not be taken to indicate that other areas of the grammar are more homogeneous; this is certainly not the case.…”

Section: Va R I a B L E S U S E D I N T H I S S T U D Ymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and pronominal variation in an Indo-Guyanese creole-speaking community

Sidnell¹

1999

Lang. Soc.

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Drawing on data gathered during fieldwork in an Indo-Guyanese village (1994–96), this article shows that the gender patterns for variable pronominal usage are strikingly stable over time. In both this study and one conducted by John Rickford more than twenty years ago, women, compared with men, use more basilectal variants in the category of 1sg. subject (mi vs. ai), but fewer in the category of 3sg. objects (am vs. shi/ii/it). Rather than explain this variation as a “leveling out” (Rickford 1979), it is here suggested that variants must be understood in terms of their contribution to an unfolding interactional engagement. The conclusion remarks on the continuing confusion among sociolinguists regarding the analytical relevance of gender as an external constraint on variation. A more developed understanding of these issues depends on recognizing the way in which language variation serves as an indirect and constitutive index of gender.

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“…The future history of the creole hence "depends on the social status of the creole vis-a-vis the standard, and the variability of the language and the culture" (De Camp 1968). Cave gives details of this interlingual continuum in a creole setting (Guyana), the spectrum of speech varieties he illustrates ranging from that used by the aged East-Indian grandmother on a sugar estate, to that used by the educated middle class urban dweller, to that of the speaker of RP at the university (Allsopp 1958 and post-creole phenomena pose typological questions and more general questions as to the circumstances under which languages reduce and expand in structure and lexical r esources. What factors account for the intelligibility of the immigrant interlanguage as opposed to the evolution of a new linguistic code in the case of a creole?…”

Section: Pidginization and Creolizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

SOCIAL FACTORS, INTERLANGUAGE, AND LANGUAGE LEARNING¹

Richards

1972

Language Learning

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The field of second language learning is shown to encompass the study of interlanguage phenomena, which reflect the conditions under which language is learned and used: These include the processes of language transfer, transfer of training, strategies of learning, strategies of communication, and overgeneralization. Five different contexts for language learning are considered and the results of language learning in each context related to the social context for learning through the notion of interlanguage. The issue is indeed a political one, Whether instruction is inEnglish or the native language makes little difference; rather what is important are the opportunities that are thought available to the ethnic group themselves. . . Educators have provided the most significant evidence to demonstrate this. Increasingly, they have studied the relationship between a pupil's motivation and performance in school to his perception of the society around him and the opportunities he believes await him there. . . The crucial fac-LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. 22, NO. 2

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The English Language in British Guiana

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Some Sociolinguistic Factors in the Production of Standard Language in Guyana and Implications for the Language Teacher

Some Sociolinguistic Factors in the Production of Standard Language in Guyana and Implications for the Language Teacher

Gender and pronominal variation in an Indo-Guyanese creole-speaking community

SOCIAL FACTORS, INTERLANGUAGE, AND LANGUAGE LEARNING¹

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The English Language in British Guiana

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Some Sociolinguistic Factors in the Production of Standard Language in Guyana and Implications for the Language Teacher

Some Sociolinguistic Factors in the Production of Standard Language in Guyana and Implications for the Language Teacher

Gender and pronominal variation in an Indo-Guyanese creole-speaking community

SOCIAL FACTORS, INTERLANGUAGE, AND LANGUAGE LEARNING1

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SOCIAL FACTORS, INTERLANGUAGE, AND LANGUAGE LEARNING¹