Ethnic Lexis in an English Creole Dictionary

Ethnic Lexis in an English Creole Dictionary Lise Winer Introduction The Dictionary ofthe English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago (DEC/ TT), in preparation, is the first scholarly historical dictionary of the vernacular English and English Creole of Trinidad and Tobago (EC/ TT). It follows in the path of the Dictionary ofJamaican English (Cassidy and Le Page 1967) and the Dictionary ofBahamian English (Holm with Shilling 1982). The DEC/TT will include at least 8,000 main entries , with citations and etymologies where possible. Entries will tend toward the "encyclopedic" because much of the information included is not easily accessible elsewhere. EC/TT has been influenced by languages of Amerindians (especially Carib, Arawak, and Garao), Europeans (especially English, French, and Spanish), Africans (especially Yoruba and kiKongo), West Indians (French Creole and other Caribbean English Creole dialects ), Chinese (especially Cantonese), and East Indians (especially Bhojpuri). While there are virtually no young local native speakers of such heritage languages in Trinidad and Tobago today (Carrington, Borely, and Knight 1974), words from these languages have become part of the vernacular. However, the degree to which EC/TT speakers know and use such words, both within and outside ethno-linguistic communities, varies tremendously. Similarly, while some words are correctly identified by speakers as to ethno-linguistic origin, others are not (see below). This paper discusses: 1) the importance ofthe inclusion ofethnolectal words in the dictionary; 2) criteria for their inclusion; 3) relevant aspects ofdata collection; 4) questions of usage labeling; and 5) some popular reactions to policies of inclusion. 66Lise Winer Trinidad and Tobago Vernacular in Context Historically, EC/TT has been downgraded and ridiculed due to the influence of English-educated and metropolitan-oriented people who often view EC/TT as only a "broken" or "degenerate" form of English. Although such people may sometimes also admit that this language has a "colorful" expressiveness, and although writers have represented EC/TT in print since the beginning of the 19th century, traditional general opinion—including that of many of its native speakers—has been that Creole should be replaced by "proper English ." However, a significant movement toward greater acceptance of the vernacular has come with the rising nationalism of the 1960s and 1970s and the rejection ofsome aspects of foreign culture. Along with this came "a revaluation of the créole as the vehicle of protest, the badge of Antillean identity" (Carrington 1979, 10). This nationalism was closely linked to the Black Power movement, to a deeper recognition of Afro-Creole rather than Eurocentric culture as the mainstream , and to a growing recognition of the contributions of Africans and people of African descent to the development ofTrinidadian and Tobagonian society in areas from economics to music and language (see Elder 1988). Nationalism could not, however, paper over the divisions in the society, not least between Afro-Trinidadians and Indo-Trinidadians. While Afro-Creole culture is in many ways the popular mainstream culture, overt and wider attention to East Indian culture, for example in national newspapers, has become more noticeable since the 1980s began. The overall racial-ethnic mix ofthe Trinidad and Tobago population is about 40% Afro-Creole, 40% Indian, and 20% "mixed" and "other" (including whites and Chinese). Every racial-ethnic group in the country—for historical, social, cultural, legal, political, and economic reasons—feels discriminated against and insufficiently credited for its cultural contributions. Thus, my lexicographical policy of deliberately seeking out and including words associated with particular ethnic-racial groups had not only linguistic but overtly political relevance. Criteria for Inclusion To be included in the DEC/TT, an ethnolectal word must be acceptable to native EC/TT speakers in an otherwise totally English Ethnie Lexis67 or EC/TT sentence. An "ethnolect" is defined in this context as a speaker's variety of EC/TT which contains linguistic features— including lexical ones—that result from the influence of a language other than English and that are shared with other members of a speech community (see Hancock 1980). Furthermore, this contributing language must be a heritage language of that person's speech community, but not spoken with any degree offacility by that person.' A speaker is "related" to an ethnolect by ethnic and family inheritance...