ABSTRACT
The relationship between language and thought, language and experience and—necessarily—language and memory has long been recognized in philosophical and anthropological research. The language of the Anglophone Caribbean is, however, laced with loan words reflecting its hybrid cultural history, and shaped by grammatical structures that indicate African as well as European origins. In the Caribbean, the link between language and concept has been complicated by the complexities of its language history and the processes of language acquisition, the retention of symbolic meanings and the corrosive and creative effects of translation. And as she also points out, the "target" language would more likely have been Creole than standard English or French, and as such a hybridized form incorporating conceptual, syntactical and lexical "Africanisms". The description is couched, more often than not, in the language of the family, the relationships described in terms of the metaphors of family.
