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2 black Wholes Phases in the Development of Jamaican literary Discourse Barbara Lalla Caribbean Creole has participated fundamentally in the evolution of literary discourse in the Anglophone Caribbean. Among the linguistic choices available , the choice of Creole for literary discourse was, traditionally, severely constrained ,yet this unprestigious,indeed stigmatized language evolved to the extent that it is increasingly represented as a mechanism for conveying Caribbean perspective in literature. At the same time, literary discourse in the Caribbean also evolved, shaped by competing forces: linguistic choices that involve appropriation of a prestige code and linguistic choices that resist pressure to conform to this privileged code. because this chapter focuses on the intersection of literary and linguistic analysis, the ensuing discussion requires an interdisciplinary framework, combining the methodologies of language history and literary history with those of what has come to be termed literary linguistics. literary linguistics is eclectic in similar ways to critical linguistics, except that critical linguistics offers a wider application to (often nonliterary) scribal material.Critical linguistics also provides an interdisciplinary approach to language study that brings together different methodologies and meshes various theoretical frameworks comparable to the mesh of frameworks employed in critical discourse analysis. such analysis—particularly of power relationships that are discursively constituted, entrenched, or resisted—explores mechanisms for encoding perspective, and perspective (particularly on the ideological plane) is a useful tool to apply in analyzing the significance of Creole in literary discourse.Perceptual perspective (encoded,for example,through deixis) is normally distinguished from psychological orientation (encoded,for example,through person) and ideological orientation .Ideological orientation is not only encoded through modality,transitivity , and so forth,1 but it is also conveyed through code-shifting. Through code-shifting from english to Jamaican Creole, writers have encoded Jamaican perspectives throughout the history of Jamaican scribal dis- black Wholes / 43 course. The crucial significance of perspective emerges when we reflect that rather than merely signifying the angle from which a story is told, perspective is now increasingly being applied to “the totality of the world- and beliefmodels of the story world.”2 Thus, although Gerald Prince distinguishes narrative voice from perspective in terms of who speaks,as distinct from who sees, and (along with Genette) explains voice in terms of a set of signs characterizing the narrator,3 voice in narrative discourse also mediates between the narrator and those speakers that the narrator represents. representations of narrative voice, of thoughts of the central consciousness, and of the voices and thoughts of characters are essential world-creating properties,such as herman discusses,4 because fictional worlds based on our real-world experience model not only characteristics of our actual physical world (such as persons, states, events,motivations,and so on),but also discourse characteristics such as varieties of communicative behavior,discourse situations,registers,and code choice. In exploring the significance of Creole language representation to the development of literary discourse,this chapter incorporates references to and examples from a range of representative literary texts spanning three centuries, and these texts are drawn both from Jamaican literature and from literature set in Jamaica though not authored by Jamaicans.5 Caribbean literature,of which Jamaican is one national variety,is widely defined in connection with the Caribbean voice and perspective represented in the discourse; yet Caribbean linguistics (even in discussing the status of Caribbean Creoles6 ) has up to recently focused little on Creole in the literary discourse even when commenting on the history of literary activity in the Caribbean .7 The circumstances and mechanisms through which Caribbean language maintains a pivotal role in encoding Caribbean perspective in the literary discourse and thus in defining the literature therefore remain a fertile area of enquiry . Work on Creole in Caribbean literary discourse has mainly comprised analyses of language in individual texts and of issues associated with representation .less has been said about the role of Creole in the growth of indigenous literature or about the significance of Creole in sociohistorical development of literary discourse, although mühleisen has taken a decidedly diachronic approach to her analysis of prestige in Caribbean Creole discourse, approaching Caribbean Creole as a regional discourse.8 my own approach is to focus on the literature of one territory. In selecting a few authors, such as Alfred h. mendes, V. s. naipaul, earl lovelace, and Patricia Powell,as mühleisen does,we may overlook contextual differences (national , ethnic, gendered, and so forth) that may account for contrasts, and we may then go on to confuse such differences with changes. It...

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