From Creole to Standard: Shakespeare, Language, and Literature in a Postcolonial Context (review)

This is an important book: its subject matter is the development of Mauritian creole (MC) as a literary language in postindependence Mauritius, principally in the hands of Dev Virahsawmy. From Mooneeram's detailed analysis, it is clear that an interesting new body of literature is being developed in MC, and one hopes that Mooneeram's book results in the translation and publication of at least some of the fascinating writings she discusses. Mooneeram brings together different aspects of linguistics and language studies to offer a valuable introduction to MC literature, and to a critical examination of the social, political, and artistic significance of MC in ethnically diverse present-day Mauritius.

In her introduction, Mooneeram points out that prominent writers and poets such as Aimé Césaire and Jean-Georges Prosper have felt that creole languages are not adequate as a literary language or as a language of protest. In fact, however, MC has evolved as a literary language, and her book offers a corrective to previous eurocentric views. As she puts it,

Precisely because the negative associations of slavery and its painful memory have inhibited any objective handling of the language situation in most postcolonial creolophone countries, bringing academic attention to the successful journey of Mauritian creole enables some of the sociolinguistic aspects of the legacy of slavery to be reclaimed as empowering.

(3-4)

She focuses on theater, since, she argues, this has been the most important literary form in which MC has displaced English and French to the maximum extent (8). Could this fact have something to do with levels of literacy? According to Virahsawmy, whose writings figure prominently in much of this book, the official estimate of 85 percent literacy only indicates minimal competence, and only 20 percent of the population is functionally literate (15-16). This is an important point and one wishes that Mooneeram had clarified it further: in her book Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance, Nandi Bhatia has argued that in societies with low literacy levels, such as colonial India, it was drama rather than the printed word that reached out most effectively to mass audiences, and one wonders if this observation holds true for Mauritius as well. In the remaining sections of the introduction, Mooneeram provides an excellent analysis of important empirical data for the purpose of clarifying the context in which literary developments in MC have taken place over the last thirty years or so.

Chapter 1, "The Sociolinguistic and Literary Contexts," provides an overview of MC vis-à-vis other languages spoken in Mauritius, the evolution of MC, and issues pertaining to the standardization of MC. Although British administration from 1810 to 1968 has resulted in English remaining an official language, French, spoken by a mere 3.5 percent of the population is increasingly being spoken by upper-class Mauritians. Bhojpuri and MC are spoken by 81.7 percent of the population, while Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi/Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, and others are spoken by different minorities. In addition to MC, French, English, and Hindi are also used as literary languages (49). In a country with such linguistic diversity, the elevation of one local language as the national language is not unproblematic, and MC, in particular, faces steep challenges: as Mooneeram admits, there are unresolved "ambiguities surrounding the variety of MC to be selected" as a national language (35). Furthermore, there are problems with codification as well: Virahsawmy, having made his first proposal for an orthography for MC in 1967, changed it in 1985, 1988, and 1999 (38-43). There is also the state-sanctioned "Grafi Larmoni." Given this complex background, one wishes that Mooneeram had clarified why the elevation of MC as "Morisiê," the national language of Mauritius, as Virahsawmy does in his writings, is justified (34).

Chapter 2, "The Theatre of Protest," traces the development of theater in MC, led by Virahsawmy, Azize Asgarally, and Henri Favory. The plays she discusses are Virahsawmy's...