Cover not available
Article published In:
Approaches to Variation in Creole Studies
Edited by Isabelle Léglise, Bettina Migge and Nicolas Quint
[Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 36:1] 2021
► pp. 12–45

Creole prestige beyond modernism and methodological nationalism

Multiplex patterns, simultaneity and non-closure in the sociolinguistic economy of a Belizean village

| Europa-Universität Viadrina , Germany

In this article, I develop an ethnographic view on social discourses associated with language use in a Belizean village in order to access the setting’s complex and not always easy to grasp patterns of linguistic prestige. Analyzing interview and observational data on language ideologies, I show that relationships of prestige are not necessarily neatly ordered and binary but that different language ideologies, in some cases relating to the same linguistic resources, may exist side-by-side. Therefore, linguistic resources may have several indexical, social-semiotic meanings at the same time. In these, the national and educational elite is not always a central point of orientation. Other cultural values, linking to colonial histories, African imaginaries, resistance towards standardization, transnational ties or the ability to keep codes apart, may have an influence on local language ideologies and thus also the language uses in this cultural context. Binary linguistic models like the diglossia or the continuum model, which map language variation in binary or linear fashions, are characteristic of epistemological traditions of Western linguistics that impact on but may also conceal complex language ideological realities in a postcolonial setting like Belize.

Keywords: Belize, language ideologies, prestige, polycentricity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language prestige, Belizean complexities and the ethnographic study of social indexicalities
  • 3.The simultaneous and multiplex constructions of linguistic prestige in a Belizean village
    • 3.1Transnational colonial histories – The prestige of English as an exogamous language
    • 3.2The multiple constructions of Kriol prestige
    • 3.3Keeping codes apart – code-switching as prestige
  • 4.Beyond methodological nationalism – Creole settings as global avant-garde
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00068.sch
References
Abtahian, Maya Ravindranath
2017 Language shift, endangerment and prestige. Kriol and Garifuna in Hopkins, Belize. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 321. 339–364. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Abtahian, Maya Ravindranath & Conor McDonough Quinn
2017 Language shift and linguistic insecurity. Language Documentation & Conservation 131. 137–151.Google Scholar
Amandala
23.012016 Belize received 1.3 million tourists in 2015.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict
1985 Imagined communities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bailey, Carol A.
2007 A guide to qualitative field research. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balam, Osmer
2013 Overt language attitudes and linguistic identities among multilingual speakers in northern Belize. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 61. 247–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balam, Osmer, and Ana de Prada Pérez
2017 Attitudes toward Spanish and code-switching in Belize: stigmatization and innovation in the Spanish classroom. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 161. 17–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs
2003 Voices of modernity. Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beck, Ulrich, Wolfgang Bonss, and Christoph Lau
2003 The theory of reflexive modernization. Problematic hypotheses and research programme. Theory, Culture & Society 201. 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belize Tourism Board
2013 Travel & tourism statistics digest, [URL] (accessed 12 Sept 2016)
Blommaert, Jan
2006 Language ideology. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, 510–522. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018a Durkheim and the Internet. Sociolinguistics and the sociological imagination. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2018b Lingua Franca onset in a superdiverse neighbourhood: oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp. In Jacqueline Knörr & Wilson Trajano Filho (eds.), Creolization and pidginization in contexts of postcolonial diversity, 37–58. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, James Collins, and Stef Slembrouck
2005 Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication 251. 197–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Dong Jie
2010 Ethnographic fieldwork: a beginner’s guide. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Ben Rampton
2011 Language and superdiversity. Diversities 131. 1–21.Google Scholar
Bonner, Donna M.
2001 Garifuna children’s language shame: ethnic stereotypes, national affiliation and transnational immigration as factors in language choice in southern Belize. Language in Society 301. 81–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bulmer-Thomas, Victor
2012 The economic history of the Caribbean since the Napoleonic Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clifford, James & George E. Marcus
1986 Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
DeCamp, David
1971 Towards a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, 349–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Decker, Ken
2013 The song of Kriol. A grammar of the Kriol language of Belize. Belize City: Belize Kriol Projekt. [URL], archived at [URL] (accessed 12 Sept 2016).
Deuber, Dagmar & Glenda A. Leung
2013 Investigating attitudes towards an emerging standard of English: Evaluations of newscasters’ accents in Trinidad. Multilingua 321. 289–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2008 Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 121. 453–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Escure, Geneviève
1982 Contrastive patterns of intragroup and intergroup interaction in the creole continuum of Belize. Language in Society 111. 239–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Belizean Creole structure dataset. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), Atlas of Pidgin and Creole language structures online. (Available online at [URL], Accessed 10 October 2019). Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Ferguson, Charles
1959 Diglossia. Word 151. 325–340. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
French, R. & K. T. Kernan
1981 art and artifice in Belizean Creole. American Ethnologist 81. 238–258. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan
2016 Sociolinguistic differentiation. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics. Theoretical debates, 113–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan & Judith T. Irvine
2019 Signs of difference. Language and ideology in social life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan & Kathryn A. Woolard
2001 Constructing languages and publics: authority and representation. In Susan Gal & Kathryn A. Woolard (eds.) Languages and publics. The making of authority, 1–12. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Glaser, Barney G. & Anselm L. Strauss
2005 Grounded Theory. Strategien qualitativer Forschung. 2nd ed. Bern: Huber.Google Scholar
Glock, Naomi, Paul Crosbie & Cynthia Crosbie
2001 You can read and write Kriol. Belize City: The Belize Kriol Project. [URL], accessed May 26 2020.
Gobo, Giampietro
2008 Doing ethnography. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gómez Menjívar, Jennifer Carolina & William Noel Salmon
2018 Tropical tongues: language ideologies, endangerment, and minority languages in Belize. Chapel Hill: Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gomoll, Mati
2003 Caye to success. A biography of Antonio Lorenzo Vega, Sr.: Xlibris.Google Scholar
Hackert, Stephanie
2016 Standards of English in the Caribbean. History, attitudes, functions, features. In Elena Seoane & Cristina Suárez Gómez (eds.), World Englishes: new theoretical and methodological considerations, 85–111. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf
1987 The world in creolisation. Africa 571. 546–559. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heller, Monica
2007 The future of ‘bilingualism’. In Monica Heller (ed.), Bilingualism: a social approach, 340–345. Basingstoke: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hellinger, Marlis
1998 The creole continuum of linguistic variation. Sociolinguistica 121. 72–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herrera, Yvette & Paul Crosbie et al.
2009 Kriol-Inglish dikshineri. English-Kriol dictionary. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project.Google Scholar
Heyd, Theresa & Britta Schneider
2019 The sociolinguistics of late modern publics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 231. 435–449. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. & Susan Gal
2000 Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language. Ideologies, polities and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra
2016 Indexicality, stance and fields in sociolinguistics. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics. Theoretical Debates, 86–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kelle, Udo
2005 ‘Emergence’ vs. ‘forcing’ of empirical cata? A crucial problem of ‘Grounded Theory’ reconsidered. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Forum Qualitative Social Research 61: DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1986 Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In John Baugh & Joel Sherzer (eds.), Language in use. Readings in sociolinguistics, 28–53. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Lacoste, Véronique & Christian Mair
2012 Authenticity in creole-speaking contexts: An introduction. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 601. 211–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambert, Wallace E. et al.
1960 Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 11. 44–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Page, R. B. & Andrée Tabouret-Keller
1985 Acts of identity. Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mackey, William F.
1989 Determining the status and function of languages in multinational societies. In Ulrich Ammon (ed.), Status and function of languages and language varieties, 3–20. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian & Andrea Sand
1998 Caribbean English: structure and status of an emerging variety. In Raimund Borgmeier (ed.), Anglistentag 1997. Gießen – Proceedings, 187–198. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.Google Scholar
McCarty, Teresa, Mary Eunice Romero & Ofelia Zepeda
2006 Reclaiming the gift: Indigenous youth counter-narratives on native language loss and revitalization. American Indian Quarterly 301. 28–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam
2011 Introducing sociolinguistics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Guatemala
2010 Situación del diferendo territorial existente entre Guatemala y Belice y las perspectivas de solución al mismo, [URL] (accessed 12 Sept 2016). Guatemala.
Mufwene, Salikoko S.
2001 The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühleisen, Susanne
2001 Is ‘bad English’ dying out? A comparative diachronic study on attitudes towards Creole versus Standard English in Trinidad. Philologie im Netz 151. 43–78.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1993 Duelling languages: grammatical structure in codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Näslund-Hadley, Emma, Haydée Alonzo & Dougal Martin
2013 Challenges and opportunities in the Belize education sector. Inter-American Development Bank. Education Division (SCL/EDU). TECHNICAL NOTE IDB-TN-538: [URL]. (accessed 26 May 2020).
Poplack, Shana
1980 Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish Y TERMINO EN ENSPANOL: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 181. 581–618. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Preston, Dennis R.
2013 Language with an attitude. In J. K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change (2nd ed.), 157–182. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pries, Ludger
2008 Die Transnationalisierung der sozialen Welt. Sozialräume jenseits von Nationalgesellschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Ravindranath, Maya
2009 Language shift and the speech community: Sociolinguistic change in a Garifuna community in Belize. Publicly accessible Penn Dissertations 331. [URL]
Reisman, Karl
1970 Cultural and linguistic ambiguity in a West Indian village. In N. F. Whitten Jr. & J. F. Szwed (eds.), Afro-American anthropology, 129–144. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. & Elizabeth Traugott
1985 Symbol of powerlessness and degeneracy, or symbol of solidarity and truth? Paradoxical attitudes toward pidgin and creoles. In Sidney Greenbaum (ed.), The English language today, 252–261. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Salmon, William
2015 Language ideology, gender, and varieties of Belizean Kriol. Journal of Black Studies 461. 605–625. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salmon, William & Jennifer Caroline Gómez Menjívar
2014 Whose Kriol is moa beta? Prestige and dialects of Kriol in Belize. Berkeley Linguistics Society 401.Google Scholar
Salmon, William & Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar
2016 Language variation and dimensions of prestige in Belizean Kriol. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 311. 316–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Setting and language attitudes in a creole context. Applied Linguistics 401. 248–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saraceni, Mario
2015 World Englishes. A critical analysis. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Schneider, Britta
2014 ‘Oh boy, ¿hablas español?’ – Salsa and the multiple value of authenticity in late capitalism. In Véronique Lacoste, Thiemo Breyer & Jakob Leimgruber (eds.), Indexing authenticity. sociolinguistic perspectives, 113–135. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Haciendo y deshaciendo la lengua – Funciones simbólicas del español en Belice: entre el predominio demográfico, la política nacional, el estatus de clase baja y el prestigio global. Estudios de Lingüística del Español (Special Issue: Las variedades olvidadas del español) 371. 87–110. [URL].
2017a Kaleidoscopes of indexicality – multiplex symbolic functions of language and unfocused social categories. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 91. 8–24.Google Scholar
2017b Lobster, tourism and other kinds of business. Economic opportunity and language choice in a multilingual village in Belize. Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication 181. 390–407. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019 Methodological nationalism in linguistics. Language Sciences 761: DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2020. Liquid languages. Polymorphous acts of identity and the fluidity of language categories in linguistically complex Belize. (unpublished habilitation thesis at European University Viadrina).
Shoman, Assad
2011 A history of Belize in 13 chapters. Belize City: Angelus Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
2014 The race from place: Dialect eradication vs. the linguistic ‘authenticity’ of terroir. In Véronique Lacoste, Thiemo Breyer & Jakob Leimgruber (eds.), Indexing authenticity. sociolinguistic perspectives, 159–187. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Statistical Institute of Belize
2010 Belize. Population and housing census. Country report 2010. Statistical Institute of Belize: [URL]
UNICEF
2011 Tumul K’in Center of Learning. Intercultural bilinguals education (IBE) at Secondary Level. Belize City: Ideas Lab Studios. Belize Knowledge Lab Series.Google Scholar
Velupillai, Viveka
2015 Pidgins, creoles and mixed languages. An introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vertovec, Stephen
2007 Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 301. 1024–1054. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vorhees, Mara & Joshua Samuel Brown
2013 Lonely Planet. Belize. Ebook. London: Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd.Google Scholar
Wassink, Alicia Beckford
1999 Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Attitudes toward Jamaican Creole. Language in Society 281. 57–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weston, Daniel
2015 The lesser of two evils: Atypical trajectories in English dialect evolution. Journal of Sociolinguistics 191. 671–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilk, Richard
2006 Home cooking in the global village. Oxford: Berg. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Guyanne
2017 Conflicting language ideologies in choral singing in Trinidad. Language & Communication 521. 19–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas & Nina Glick Schiller
2002 Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 21. 301–334. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald
1985 The concept of ‘diglossia’ in Caribbean creole situations. Language in Society 141. 345–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991 The Caribbean. In Jenny Cheshire (ed.), English around the world. Sociolinguistic perspectives, 565–584. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wycliffe Bible Translators
2012 Di Nyoo Testiment eena Bileez Kriol. Orlando: Wycliffe Bible Translators. [URL]