A Different, not an Incorrect Way, of Speaking, Pt 4
In less than five years, children everywhere acquire the grammars of the language variety or varieties of the social networks in which they grow up, and they do so without being formally tutored in a classroom. The networks provide the conditions for quick acquisition of the grammar(s), but it is very apparent that the brain is so structured that it facilitates that acquisition.
The social networks provide the target variety/varieties as well as the context for easy acquisition, and the brain picks out the patterns and exceptions of the speech by virtue of having facilitative acquisition templates. The process is never perfect: children make systematic mistakes until they get it right. But what they get right is usually neither one variety exclusively nor a standard variety exclusively, but the variety that is used most frequently in their social context plus (parts of) other less frequently used varieties, including a standard one.
In Trinidad and Tobago, a number of languages are spoken, including an English Creole, a Standard English, Bhojpuri, a French Creole, a variety of Spanish, a variety of Portuguese, and varieties of Chinese. The language of general social interaction is the English Creole and the language of specialised formal interaction (including, most notably, education) is Standard English. Creole coexists with Standard English far more closely than the rest, and the two share a generally common vocabulary. The latter does not come from Standard English only, but from English generally (in its multiple varieties around the world). Indeed, most of the vocabulary Creole has adopted and adapted over its history from slavery to the present day has come from non-standard Englishes with which it has had a closer affinity.
The slaves/ex-slaves and their offspring have typically not had a social context in which Standard English has been the variety routinely spoken or the language of general interaction. They have not had, therefore, the social conditions which favour the acquisition of that variety. What they have had, by contrast, is a social context in which, from a background of several different (often mutually unintelligible) languages, they had to take English vocabulary and adapt or restructure it for the easiest possible means of communication amongst themselves. They could only do so in relation to what they came with to the adaptation and restructuring process - their African grammars and their language-acquiring brains. The result has been Creole, spoken intelligibly for more than three centuries now. For socio-political reasons, Creole has had to take its vocabulary or lexical material from English (not only or materially the Standard!) which has been the politically dominant language in the British (ex-)colonies. But its grammar is markedly different, bearing, as it does, the stamp of African grammar and cerebral creativity.
The psychological effects of slavery are still heavily with us in the Caribbean, most notably in our preference for, and greater valuation of, things from the imperialist countries (Britain and America). Economically speaking, the whole of the English Caribbean is an import-intensive economy in a strong balance of payments bind and with little accommodation or exploitation of its abundant creative or innovative capacities, which are the capacities, in addition to other resources like oil, touristic environment, and bauxite, that would make us rich. Linguistically speaking, we are also heavily import-intensive in terms of our psychology, for we treat imported Standard English as if it is better communicatively than the Creole we have created and that is spoken by far more people far more competently than Standard English is.
This, despite the daily evidence of the use of language in this place and of the knowledge industries (especially reggae and calypso) we have built out of Creole. Amazing!
The proposition that Creole is a corruption of Standard English is an index of the heavy psychological damage that slavery has wrought on the Caribbean. And not only is it wrong, but also useless theoretically. At the foundation of Caribbean societies, Standard English was socially generally inaccessible to the creators of Creole. Since it was, it could hardly have been in a position to be 'corrupted'. Non-standard Englishes were, however, so they could have been corrupted. But, to the extent that they were 'corruptions' of Standard English, Creole must therefore have been a 'corruption' of them and not of Standard English.
But if the notion 'corruption' suggests some pure state in the thing to be 'corrupted', then non-Standard Englishes are pure (in some way at least). And how could they be pure if they are corruptions of Standard English? To hold the notion of 'corruption' is to hold that Creole is a 'corruption' of a 'corruption', which could only mean that, on a vertical-downwards scale of purity to corruption, Creole is at the bottom. So, for more than three hundred years, Caribbean people have had the most corrupt (English) speech! We have been speaking improperly (albeit felicitously!) for that long! Which, if that is the case, must raise doubts about our intellectual and cognitive capacity and, therefore, point to racist thinking.
The only way in which 'corruption' as a theoretical construct could explain the fact that people have for centuries been communicating intelligibly in Creole for centuries is if 'corruption' is the normal mechanism of language building in a situation where different peoples speaking different languages make social contact and some of those peoples are forced to abandon their language and create a new one. But since the mechanism obviously involves restructuring of a politically dominant language, then the term, because it connotes notions such as impropriety, lack of intelligence, and mental laziness, is scientifically infelicitous compared to 'restructuring'. The latter term does not carry unfounded bias, but is more or less neutral.
Using the concept of 'restructuring', we can, without unserviceable emotional judgment, explain why, for example, the grammar of Creole 'does' is different from, but neither better or worse than, the grammar of 'does' in other Englishes. Until Part 5 then?
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