Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles

Editors

Susanne Mühleisen | Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University

Bettina Migge | University College Dublin

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027248947 | EUR 125.00 | USD 188.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027294166 | EUR 125.00 | USD 188.00

Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles is the first collection to focus on socio-pragmatic issues in the Caribbean context, including the socio-cultural rules and principles underlying strategic language use. While the Caribbean has long been recognized as a rich and interesting site where cultural continuities meet with new "creolized" or innovative practices, questions of politeness practices, constructions of personhood, or the notion of face have so far been neglected in linguistic research on Caribbean Creoles. Drawing on linguistic politeness theory and Goffman's concept of face, eleven mostly fieldwork-based innovative contributions critically examine a range of topics, such as ritual insults, strategic use of "bad language", kiss-teeth, the performance of homophobic threats, greetings, address forms, advice-giving, socialization and discourse, parent-child discourse, register choice and communicative repertoire in the Caribbean context.

[Varieties of English Around the World, G34] 2005. viii, 293 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g34

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | p. vii

Politeness and face in Caribbean Creoles: An overview

Bettina Migge and Susanne Mühleisen | pp. 1–19

Part I: Performing rudeness and face maintenance

The use of “bad” language as a politeness strategy in a Panamanian Creole village

Peter Snow | pp. 23–43

Ritualized insults and the African diaspora: Sounding in African American Vernacular English and Wording in Nigerian Pidgin

Nicholas Faraclas, Lourdes Pérez González, Migdalia Medina and Wendell Villanueva Reyes | pp. 45–72

Rude sounds: Kiss Teeth and negotiation of the public sphere

Esther Figueroa | pp. 73–99

Faiya-bon: The socio-pragmatics of homophobia in Jamaican (Dancehall) culture

Joseph T. Farquharson | pp. 101–118

Part II: Face attention and the public and private self

Greeting and social change

Bettina Migge | pp. 121–144

Advice in an Indo-Guyanese village and the interactional organization of uncertainty

Jack Sidnell | pp. 145–168

Meaningful routines: Meaning-making and the face-value of Barbadian greetings

Janina Fenigsen | pp. 169–194

Forms of address in English-lexicon Creoles: The presentation of selves and others in the Caribbean context

Susanne Mühleisen | pp. 195–223

Part III: Socialization and face development

‘May I have the bilna?’: The development of face-saving in young Trinidadian children

Valerie Youssef | pp. 227–254

Learning respect in Guadeloupe: Greetings and politeness rituals

Alex-Louise Tessonneau | pp. 255–282

Notes on contributors | pp. 283–285

Index | pp. 287–293

“Grounded in politeness theory, this trailblazing volume extends the conversation on politeness and face, previously often focused on the individual, by exploring the sociohistorical context of Caribbean communicative practices - a welcome departure from the typical focus in creole studies on syntactic and lexical variation [...] The reader is offered a fresh look at discourse norms in a wide range of Caribbean creole communities. With this work, M & M have opened new and exciting possibilities for pragmatics research in the Caribbean.”

Shondel J. Nero, St. John's University New York, in World Englishes 26(3), 2007

“It is the pioneering nature of the collection and the wide variety of topics and theoretical frameworks which makes the collection so outstanding. I hope and believe it will inspire more creolists to work in this vein in the future.”

Angela Bartens, University of Helsinki, on Linguist List 17.2320, 2007

“The diverse contributions in this book do indeed fulfill expectations. The reader gains fascinating insight into politeness and face in several Caribbean languages, whether it be through the study of greeting practices, address, socialization, ritual, or other phenomena. Beyond that, the communicative practices described suggest that language use and non-verbal interaction are inseparable on a theoretical level; they must be studies together to be understood. They also remind us that a better understanding of the particular versus the universal remains a great challenge for politeness theory.”

Paul Listen, Bellingham WA, in Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 11(2): 245-272

“The editors have done a fine job in bringing together in this book original works by ten highly talented Caribbean scholars who address the nature of the construction of face and the socio-pragmatic insights of social order as determined by a variety of communicative performances which may be considered by many linguists to be outside the purview of mainstream linguistics. With clarity of expression the papers in this collection reveal how a society can express politeness and face in “irrational” ways by using linguistic structures specific to a particular social organization. Many of the authors must be commended for using linguistic data which are considered offensive to many to expose the basis on which society is peacefully organised. Overall, this important collection should be on the shelf of any serious linguist and scholar from related fields.”

Otelemate G. Harry, University of the West Indies, in English World Wide 28(3), 2007

“This theoretically important and down-to-earth survey of Caribbean speechways delivers a long-overdue correction to Creole studies. From address forms and greetings to insults and kiss-teeth, from Surinam to Jamaica and Panama to Guadeloupe, it offers an alternative view of the richness and exciting variety of Caribbean Creoles. The contributions from an emerging generation of scholars exhibit deep understanding, respect and mastery of data, cutting through old impasses with argumentation based in the complexity of these small but vital New World speech communities.”

Peter L. Patrick , University of Essex (author of Urban Jamaican Creole)

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Cited by 12 other publications

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Bayeck, Rebecca Y.

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2019. Variation in the expression of stance across varieties of English. World Englishes 38:4 ► pp. 593 ff.

Migge, Bettina

2007. Code‐switching and social identities in the Eastern Maroon community of Suriname and French Guiana1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11:1 ► pp. 53 ff.

Migge, Bettina

2020. Broadening creole studies. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 35:1 ► pp. 160 ff.

Muysken, Pieter & Geneviève Escure

2006. Creole linguistics. In Handbook of Pragmatics, ► pp. 1 ff.

Muysken, Pieter & Geneviève Escure

2022. Creole linguistics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 408 ff.

Nkwain, Joseph

2014. Address Strategies in Cameroon Pidgin English: A Socio-Pragmatic Perspective. In Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Indigenisation, ► pp. 189 ff.

Schneider, Edgar W. & Raymond Hickey

2020. Contact and Caribbean Creoles. In The Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 403 ff.

WILSON, GUYANNE, MICHAEL WESTPHAL, JOHANNA HARTMANN & DAGMAR DEUBER

2017. The use of question tags in different text types of Trinidadian English. World Englishes 36:4 ► pp. 726 ff.

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2018. Offers and Offer Refusals [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 298],

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2022. Genre in World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G67],

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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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