A Different, not an Incorrect, Way of Speaking, Pt 3
One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is unlearn error that has long been held as truth. It is an error to think that Trinbagonian Creole is 'an unambiguous aberration of the English language', a view held by many, including people who are highly educated formally, but articulated in last Sunday's Newsday by one of my cherished readers, a certain Colin Lucas. However, try convincing people like Colin that the view is misinformed and erroneous and you will hear baseless, emotional talk that Creole is definitely a corrupt and improper way of talking (at least by comparison with English), that it can intrude into students' thinking in English and lead to 'disaster' and 'failure' in English exams, and that we can't force the world to learn Creole.
Colin does not deny that Creole is structured and rule-governed. Nor does he disallow that it has 'cultural and artistic legitimacy'. What he cannot accept, however, is both that it is not a corruption of English and that its (heavy, routine?) use should jeopardise students' chances of passing exams and Trinbagonians' ability to converse with the rest of the world. But he provides no argument for the propositions of corruption, failure, and inability to communicate with the rest of the world. What we have instead is an unsupported bias towards English and against Creole in terms of differentiated social function.
What would be far better is argument, based on linguistic fact and good reasoning. How might the corruption argument, for example, be properly constructed? Well, one of the important tasks one would have to undertake is to define what 'corruption' means. Is it any departure from English pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar? If so, which English? Standard British English? Standard American English? What about the other Standard Englishes? And what about the regional dialects of English in the UK, the US, and other internationally prestigious English-speaking places?
Which Standard English or non-Standard dialect must Creole be different from for it to be corrupt? Is it Standard British English? And if so, is Standard American English a corruption of Standard British English, which predates it by many, many years? And must Creole be compared to the non-Standard dialects at all? Why not, especially when the latter predate the Standard dialect?
And where did Standard English come from? Did it arise by some kind of fiat, pristine and pure? Or is it also a 'corruption' - of earlier Germanic languages, Latin, and French, among others? If it is, does that make it improper speech?
The attempt to define corruption would inescapably involve taking into account how language began; how it has changed over time; how it is that there are thousands of languages and many more thousands of dialects; how and when a language such as English came into being; how this English changed, and continues to change, over time; and how Creoles arose in different parts of the world, including Trinidad and Tobago. It is bound to involve taking into account the movement of peoples throughout history and, consequently, the constitution and reconstitution of villages, cities, city-states, tribes, nations, kingdoms, empires, and all of the multiple living-togethers of people.
In other words, language changes with time and with the regrouping of people. It is an organised mishmash of pieces of pronunciation, of words and pieces of words, of grammar and syntax, taken here and there as people settle (for a time) in different social groupings and networks. What we know today as Standard English is an instantiation of such a mishmash. It is as 'corrupt' as they come.
Since this is the case, then the notion of 'corruption' is manifestly unhelpful. All of today's languages, including the well-regarded, prestigious ones, would be 'corruptions' of some unrecoverable pure original language. It would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to relate English to the protolanguage, so great is the distance in sound, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax between the two.
Today's Standard English keeps changing in vocabulary, but it is changing extremely slowly in grammar and syntax and, in the latter respects, is not all that different from the standard English of, say, two centuries ago. (Sound change is practically immaterial, since Standard English is spoken in so many different accents!) Three crucial contributors to this stability are 1) the invention of the printing press and the latter's role in fixing Standard speech in written symbols across the globe; 2) the spread of British and American empire; and 3) scholarship and academia and their role in validating and elitising the Standard variety.
Standard English with all its international prestige and despite its 'corruption' co-exists with the socially lowlier Creole which shares its vocabulary and which arose after it in conditions of slavery and general repression of African languages. The coexistence (and the psychological brainwashing of Creole's creators and their descendants) gives the stark impression that Creole is an 'aberration of the English language' and, therefore, somehow not as 'proper' as English. But when you become scientific about the reality, you will see that it is far more helpful to speak in terms of restructuring than of 'corruption'.
I have shown in Parts 1 & 2 of this series of columns that significant parts of Creole are a restructuring of English into new language.
As often happens when counterargument is elusive, there is a recourse to matters that do not arise. So Colin responds to my argument by emphasising the need for Trinbagonians to able to speak English in communication with the rest of the world, and for students to have tireless practice in the use of English. It is as if to recognise Creole as a different (correctness does not arise either!) way of speaking is to rule out the need to master English. Clearly, that does not follow! Students can master English while keeping their Creole intact. Oh, yes, Creole interferes in the learning of English, but that cannot be avoided, as one of the main ways of learning is to model what is new on what is old or, in other words, to move from the known (Creole) to the unknown (Standard English). But, as is well-known, old and new models can co-exist and take value from one another!
Four more things. One, I can write this column in Creole, but do not as a rule because it is socially expected that I write in Standard English (see last week's column). Two, my children speak both Standard English and Creole, according to the demands of the social situation; they own two resources, therefore. Three, I know of no educator who insists more than I on student practice in Standard English (but not at the expense of Creole!). And four, Colin's use of the phrase 'begs the question' is not in accordance with the requirements of Standard English. He uses it to mean something like 'raises the question', which is a typical Trinidadian usage, when the English usage is…. Well, go to the dictionary! What is Colin's usage? A corruption? Or a restructuring?
In making the last point in particular, I speak purely in my role as educator, with only a desire to teach, nothing else.
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