White Supremacy in the South
The speech event depicts two Caribbean natives Oliver Samuels and Marvin ‘Trini’ Ishmaels as two tourists who have just arrived at their destination in Canada. Oliver Samuels is a Jamaican native while Marvin ‘Trini’ Ishmaels is a native of Trinidad. Both characters are at the moment placing telephone calls to various places in hopes of finding a room for rent.
The speech event is used to demonstrate the language varieties of the interlocutors. It also depicts how an individual’s identity can be determined and defined by the way they speak.
There are two language domains used in the speech event; the country of Toronto where the event takes place and the telephone booth the exact location of the speech event.
Oliver speaks a Jamaican dialect called a Patwa (English-lexicon Creole) while Trini converses using the Trinidadian language which is also an English-lexicon Creole. In relation to the language variety used by the unheard interlocutors, it can be assumed that they speak Canadian, a variety of the Standard English as both Oliver and the Trini attempt to speak “proper” when conversing with them.
Although Caribbean islands are in close proximity with each other and share similar experiences and histories (as a result of colonialism) they are also different. It is because of the historical events that occurred in these islands during colonialism that defines each territory and makes it differ. One such difference is illustrated in the language varieties of the islands. Roberts contends,
Jamaican speech has a number of peculiarities, some pervasive and strong, others not. The strong and pervasive ones are in pronunciation. The omission and addition of [h] at the beginning of a word or syllable have occurred in the history of many languages.
In the speech event we can hear this peculiarity illustrated as Oliver speaks. He removes the h from the beginning of words that begins with it and places it at the beginning of words that do not. For
The speech event is used to demonstrate the language varieties of the interlocutors. It also depicts how an individual’s identity can be determined and defined by the way they speak.
There are two language domains used in the speech event; the country of Toronto where the event takes place and the telephone booth the exact location of the speech event.
Oliver speaks a Jamaican dialect called a Patwa (English-lexicon Creole) while Trini converses using the Trinidadian language which is also an English-lexicon Creole. In relation to the language variety used by the unheard interlocutors, it can be assumed that they speak Canadian, a variety of the Standard English as both Oliver and the Trini attempt to speak “proper” when conversing with them.
Although Caribbean islands are in close proximity with each other and share similar experiences and histories (as a result of colonialism) they are also different. It is because of the historical events that occurred in these islands during colonialism that defines each territory and makes it differ. One such difference is illustrated in the language varieties of the islands. Roberts contends,
Jamaican speech has a number of peculiarities, some pervasive and strong, others not. The strong and pervasive ones are in pronunciation. The omission and addition of [h] at the beginning of a word or syllable have occurred in the history of many languages.
In the speech event we can hear this peculiarity illustrated as Oliver speaks. He removes the h from the beginning of words that begins with it and places it at the beginning of words that do not. For