Negotiation of Trinidadian identity in ragga soca music

Leung, Glenda

doi:10.1111/j.1467-971x.2009.01609.x

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…As little of it fed back into the Caribbean, the British developments did not pose a threat to the survival of the rich variety of creoles in the region. Nevertheless, Jamaica dominates the anglophone Caribbean demographically and – to an extent – also culturally, and this has led to epicentral effects for Jamaican Patois, which have often been domain‐specific, for example affecting youth language and slang or the music industry more than other areas (Farquharson & Jones, 2014; Leung, 2009; Gerfer, 2018).…”

Section: Global Patoismentioning

confidence: 99%

Migration, media, and the emergence of pidgin‐ and creole‐based informal epicentres

Mair

2022

World Englishes

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The paper makes a case for regarding Nigerian Pidgin (Naijá) and Jamaican Creole (Patois) as informal linguistic epicentres in the global English Language Complex. This requires a few modifications to current definitions of linguistic epicentres but leads to a sociolinguistically realistic and more comprehensive account of the profound influence that Jamaica and Nigeria have had on the development of Englishes in their regions and in the world at large. In the absence of large corpora, qualitative methods from linguistic ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics were used for the study of possible epicentral effects of Naijá and Patois. They allow access to speakers’ language attitudes and language ideologies, a shaping factor of epicentral influences that generally deserves more attention in future research.

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Section: Global Patoismentioning

confidence: 99%

Migration, media, and the emergence of pidgin‐ and creole‐based informal epicentres

Mair

2022

World Englishes

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“…Not only love but also linguistic creativity is evident in studies of voice in the Caribbean. Glenda Leung (2009) analyzes phonological borrowing in her sociolinguistic study of an innovative musical genre, ragga soca , in which Trinidadian musicians blended the island's soca music with the immensely popular Jamaican dancehall. She argues that they used distinctive features of Jamaican Creole English as an “act of identity” to express a marginalized persona that would “give voice to a distinctive Afro‐Trinidadian identity” (527).…”

Section: Voicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voices in a Sea of History: Why Study Language in the Caribbean

Wirtz

2022

J Latin Amer Carib Anth

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In celebration of the 15th anniversary of this journal's name change, I situate recent linguistic anthropological scholarship in the Caribbean in a broader, interdisciplinary context. Caribbean ways of speaking—and especially contact languages such as creoles—have often been exceptionalised and subject to stereotypes. Taking Derek Walcott's “sea of history” as a key trope, I discuss the historical crosscurrents that have produced the diversity of Caribbean voices and their impact on the politics of language today. Attending to issues of voice and poetics demonstrates the creative mobilization of linguistic resources to impact politics, media, children's socialization, identity claims, and reclamations of deep ancestry. Such efforts contest the scholarly fragmentation of a region framed as having too much history and too shallow roots, to show productive connections with a broader anthropology of the Americas. The goal of this review is to make a compelling case for the ethnographic study of language in the Caribbean.

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“…British punk bands such as The Clash or The Police started incorporating reggae musical elements into their music which, eventually, led to the use of Jamaican Creole linguistic features in various music genres, such as ragga soca, a blend of Trinidadian soca and Jamaican dancehall music, and hip‐hop. In her study on the linguistic behaviour of two Trinidadian ragga soca artists, Leung () argues that the artists mix Trinidadian Creole English and Jamaican Creole phonology to index the identity of the underprivileged Afro‐Trinidadian underclass. Crossing into Jamaican Creole is a phenomenon that can also be detected in hip‐hop.…”

Section: The Global Spread Of Jamaican Creole and Reggae Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global reggae and the appropriation of Jamaican Creole

Gerfer

2018

World Englishes

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The present study investigates the sociolinguistics of globalisation and performance, focusing on the linguistic appropriation of Jamaican Creole (JC) by white reggae artists in reggae performances and interviews.1 By adopting a multi‐faceted approach including a phonetic, morpho‐syntactic, and lexical analysis of the singing and speaking style of seven reggae artists and bands from the USA, Bermuda, and Europe, this study explores the similarities and differences between on‐ and offstage uses of Jamaican Creole, and whether the singers’ access and exposure to this variety as well as the topic of the song has an effect on their language behaviour. The findings provide evidence for the claim that Jamaican Creole has developed into a prestigious linguistic resource in non‐Jamaican artists’ performances of a global reggae persona, both on‐ and offstage.

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Negotiation of Trinidadian identity in ragga soca music

Cited by 7 publications

References 24 publications

Migration, media, and the emergence of pidgin‐ and creole‐based informal epicentres

Migration, media, and the emergence of pidgin‐ and creole‐based informal epicentres

Voices in a Sea of History: Why Study Language in the Caribbean

Global reggae and the appropriation of Jamaican Creole

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