The Value of Local Dictionaries in the Caribbean: The Example of Saba

While the Caribbean is home to at least seventy languages and hundreds of dialects, the region has had published only a handful of local dictionaries—that is, dictionaries for specific islands, island conglomerates, or coastal communities. Dictionaries are especially important for underrepresented communities such as those of the Caribbean, from both a linguistic perspective and an ethical one. Using the Saban English dictionary A Lee Chip (Johnson 2016) as an example, this article proposes two primary ethical functions of local dictionaries in the Caribbean. First, these dictionaries engage in rewriting the linguistic histories of communities whose language varieties have been labeled “broken” or “corrupt” for centuries. Such linguistic error correction (Labov 1982) can be achieved through the very publication of the dictionary, as well as through subsequent public presentations and media coverage. Second, local dictionaries can preserve knowledge under threat of extinction as a consequence of neocolonialism. Blurring the boundary between dictionary and encyclopedia (Silverstein 2006, Peeters 2000), this preservation can occur by the inclusion of local flora and fauna terms, as well as notes regarding the usage of certain plants and the connection of words to certain customs (Baksh-Comeau and Winer 2016). This article shows how local dictionaries in the Caribbean are not only valuable for the fields of linguistics, language contact, and lexicography, but also for the underrepresented and historically exploited speech communities they document.