ABSTRACT
A feeling that people speak the same language and have the same words for shared ideas is the integrating force amongst them that gives them the feeling of belongingness, trust that society must radiate. In R. D. Laing's words: ‘The choice of syntax and vocabulary are political acts that define and circumscribe the manner in which “facts” are to be experienced. Indeed, in a sense they go further and even create the facts that are studied.’ In a West Indian island like Tobago, the language tends to divide itself around standards, both forms of English. The Jamaican psychologist, Godfrey Palmer, remembers his own childhood education in the context of the violent shift from one language standard to another that the West Indian child is pressured to undergo, both as a young national in his own country, as an immigrant in England: Superimposed upon his home-school conflict the child has the additional anxiety of being told that he doesn't speak English.
