ABSTRACT
There are two apparently contradictory assertions which are frequently made with regard to black British adolescents of Caribbean origin and creole language. One is that creole suffers from low prestige both within ‘white British society’ and also amongst black people themselves. Rosen and Burgess (1980) write: ‘Dialect culture is almost entirely an oral culture and its status in the eyes of its users is rarely high’, This is also a major theme of Viv Edwards’ (1979) book, The West Indian Language Issue in British Schools. The other assertion is that amongst black adolescents creole is employed as an ‘instrument of identity’. Edwards notes that one ‘possible explanation’ of why creole forms persist in the language of West Indian children ‘is a semi-conscious decision to preserve their separate identity.’ The Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (1976) also reported in their ‘Enquiry on the West Indian Community’ that:
‘It is often pointed out to us that sometime during their early teens at secondary school many West Indian pupils who up till then have used the language of the neighbourhood, begin to use creole dialect… Its use is a deliberate social and psychological protest, an assertion of identity.’
The second of these observations is often suppressed when ideas concerning multicultural provision are discussed. Hence the argument for a dialect component in multicultural education runs smoothly from noting the low prestige of creole to arguing for the use of creole dialect materials in schools to enhance the self-respect of pupils. A wider social usefulness is also sometimes claimed for creole in primary and secondary education:‘…the using of linguistic diversity within the classroom… allows for the modifying of attitudes to language and to dialects in ways which could be central to combat racism and prejudice generally.’ (Rosen and Burgess, 1980:126).
Thus there are said to be two potential consequences for affording to creole a place in educational institutional contexts:improving the prestige of creole amongst children, especially black children.
combating racism.
Both of these motivations have been attacked from a radical perspective. Maureen Stone (1981), applying Bourdieu’s cultural analysis to the British situation, writes:‘In this analysis the personality characteristics and lifestyles which are associated with cultural disadvantage or deprivation would be defined as forms of “heretical culture” against which the legitimate culture (through the schools) must defend itself. One of the possible ways of defence may be to “legitimize” certain aspects of the heretical culture— thus, for example, the incorporation of creole dialect into the curriculum might serve this purpose.’
while in her suggestive unpublished paper, ‘Multicultural Fictions’, Hazel Carby claims that—‘to assume that increased familiarity with dialect forms, by white teachers, educationalists, and I include white authors of children’s fiction, will change racist attitudes and consequently racist social relationships is naive.’
She then makes the following quotation from a paper by Bruce Boone:‘…it has become historically evident that a new linguisticcultural problematic is shaped when oppressed groups find themselves under the necessity of speaking not only (or only partly) their own language but the language of another dominating group.’
I wish, for the time being, to step to one side of this debate and to examine the second assertion which I mentioned at the outset, that unintegrated observation to the effect that for many black adolescents creole is a resource of identity and its use an assertion of cultural difference.