Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity (Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, 17) 9004363424, 9789004363427

Citation preview

Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity

Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture Series Editors Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) R.M.W. Dixon (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) N.J. Enfield (University of Sydney)

VOLUME 17

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bslc

Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity Language, Culture, Identity Edited by

Jacqueline Knörr Wilson Trajano Filho

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Knörr, Jacqueline, 1960– editor. | Trajano Filho, Wilson, editor. Title: Creolization and pidginization in contexts of postcolonial diversity :  language, culture, identity / edited by Jacqueline Knörr, Wilson Trajano  Filho. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018] | Series: Brill’s studies in  language, cognition and culture; 17 | Includes bibliographical references  and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017060384 (print) | LCCN 2018004518 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004363397 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004363427 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Creole dialects—Variation. | Pidgin languages—Variation. |  Postcolonialism—Social aspects. | Intercultural communication. Classification: LCC PM7831 (ebook) | LCC PM7831 .C75 2018 (print) | DDC  417/.22—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060384

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1879-5412 isbn 978-90-04-36342-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-36339-7 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents List of Figures and Tables ix List of Contributors x

Part 1 Introduction 1 Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity: Context, Content, Structure 3 Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho 2 Creolization and Pidginization as Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity 15 Jacqueline Knörr

Part 2 Situating Creole Languages in Society 3 Lingua Franca Onset in a Superdiverse Neighbourhood: Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp 39 Jan Blommaert 4 Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius 59 Thomas Hylland Eriksen 5 The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin 78 Christine Jourdan 6 Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, and Identity: Suriname and Guyane 96 Richard Price and Sally Price 7 Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in East Africa 116 Francis Nesbitt

vi

Contents

8

Chronicle of a Creole: The Ironic History of Afrikaans 132 Mariana Kriel

9

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau: SocioAnthropological Perspectives 158 Christoph Kohl

Part 3 Ideology and Meaning in Creole Language Usages 10

Multiple Choice: Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance between Convergence and Divergence 181 Friederike Lüpke

11

Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion Related to a Creole Language: ‘Krio’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Present-Day Sierra Leone 209 Anaïs Ménard

12

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies of Political Disloyalty in the Sierra Leonean Civil War 230 William P. Murphy

13

Indexing Alterity: The Performance of Language in Processes of Social Differentiation in Postwar Liberia 253 Maarten Bedert

14

Bambinos and kassu bodi: Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands 272 Andréa de Souza Lobo

Part 4 Creolization and Pidginization in Popular Culture 15

Language and Music in Cape Verde: Processes of Identification and Differentiation 291 Juliana Braz Dias

Contents

16

Between Purity and Creolization: Representations of Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa 309 Kees van der Waal

17

Influence and Borrowing: Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures and Societies 334 Wilson Trajano Filho

18

Cameroon Pidgin as Index of Speakers’ Social Statuses and Roles: Evidence from Literary Texts 360 Eric A. Anchimbe

19

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization 384 Kristian Van Haesendonck Index 411

vii

List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 Unfinished Portuguese-Dutch bilingualism, “Assemblage of God” church, Berchem 2012 47 3.2 Finished Portuguese-Dutch bilingualism, Assembleia de Deus church, Berchem 2012 48 3.3 Call shop poster, Berchem 2007 49 3.4 Financial services shop window, Berchem 2012 50 3.5 Communicative resources needs 53 3.6 The language market 54 5.1 The linguistic funnel 86 5.2 The linguistic funnel: social diversification of Solomon Islands Pijin 87 10.1 Cultural manifestation in Ziguinchor 199 10.2 Car of the Baïnounk delegation 199 14.1 Entrance to the central building of Campus do Palmarejo – UniCV 275 15.1 The composer Eugénio Tavares on the two thousand escudos bill 298 18.1 Juxtaposing level of education and knowledge of Pidgin 364 18.2 Occurrences of Pidgin in the nine plays according to the five decades 380 Tables 6.1 The African origins of Suriname slaves, 1675–1725 99 6.2 2014 Population Figures of Suriname and Guyanais Maroons 104 18.1 Plays consulted for use of Pidgin: 1960s–2000s 361

List of Contributors Eric A. Anchimbe is lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Among his recent publications are the monograph Language Policy and Identity Construction (Benjamins, 2013), the special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics entitled Postcolonial Pragmatics 43(6) (2011, edited with Dick Janney), Language Contact in a Postcolonial Setting (ed., De Gruyter 2012), and Postcolonial Linguistic Voices (edited with S.A. Mforteh, De Gruyter, 2011). His research interests include world Englishes, sociolinguistics, political discourse, and postcolonial pragmatics. Maarten Bedert obtained an MA in African Studies from Ghent University (Belgium) with a research project on the reintegration of ex-combatants in post-war Liberia and an MPhil in African Studies from Leiden University (the Netherlands). His current research focuses on the persistence of local social institutions despite the upheaval caused by the civil war in Liberia (1989–2003). By developing a phenomenological approach to “traditional” idioms like landlord-stranger reciprocity and secrecy, Maarten analyses their meaning as it emerges in a postwar environment. Jan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of the Babylon Centre at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, and Professor of African Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Ghent University, Belgium. Publications include Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity (Multilingual Matters, 2013), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner’s Guide (Multilingual Matters, 2010), Grassroots Literacy (Routledge, 2008), Discourse: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Language Ideological Debates (Mouton de Gruyter, 1999). Juliana Braz Diaz PhD (2004), is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Brasília. She has published many articles on popular culture in Cape Verde and in South Africa. She co-edited África em Movimento (ABA Publicações, 2012).

List Of Contributors

xi

Andréa de Souza Lobo received her PhD in anthropology at the University of Brasília. She has done extensive research on family organization in a context of female emigration in Cape Verde-an society. She has been a Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Brasília, since 2009. Her current research interests include the continuous flow of resources, values and goods that characterizes Cape Verdean society and its connections to local forms of sociality – family organization, household configurations, gender relations and parenthood. She is the author of the book Tão Perto Tão Longe. Famílias e ‘movimentos’ na Ilha da Boa Vista de Cabo Verde (Coleção Sociedade, Edições UniCV, Praia, 2012) and edited the volume Entre Fluxos (Brasília: Editora da UnB) and, with Juliana Braz Dias, she edited the book África em Movimento (Brasília: ABA Publicações, 2012). Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and PI of the ERC Advanced Grant project “Overheating: An anthropological history of the early 21st century”. His research ranges from multiculturalism in Norway to the fossil fuel economy in Australia, and he has studied creolization and identity politics in Mauritius for three decades. His monograph Common Denominators (1998) analyses the relationship between national and ethnic identities in Mauritius. Other books of note include Small Places, Large Issues (1995, 2nd edition 2014), Ethnicity and Nationalism (1993, 2nd edition 2010) and Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change (2016). Christine Jourdan is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. Trained in linguistics and anthropology, her main work focuses on theories of culture and social change, on pidgins and creoles, and on linguistic representation of cultural knowledge in Solomon Islands. She is currently researching changing food practices and ideologies in Québec. She has published books and articles on Solomon Islands Pijin, urbanization in the Pacific and socio-cultural creolization, and food. Jacqueline Knörr is Head of Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Extraordinary Professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle (Saale), Germany (PhD 1994, Habilitation 2006). She has conducted extensive field research in Indonesia, West Africa, and Central Europe. She has worked as

xii

List of Contributors

Lecturer, Senior Researcher, University Professor, Scientific Director, Consult­ ant and Political Advisor. Her research and publications focus on issues of identity (politics), integration, migration, diaspora, gender, creolization, postcolonial nationalism, and childhood. Recent publications include Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia (2014, Berghahn Books); The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective, edited with Christoph Kohl (2016, Berghahn Books); Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies: Change and Continuity, edited with Christian K. Højbjerg and William P. Murphy (2017, Palgrave Macmillan); [email protected]. Christoph Kohl PhD, 2012–2016 research fellow in the Research Group “The Cultural Dynamics of Political Globalisation” at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Germany. 2005–2010 PhD project as a member of the research group “Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany. Publications include Creole Identity and National Integration in Guinea-Bissau: Pa Kumpu nô Guiné, currently in press with Berghahn Books; The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective (2016), edited with Jacqueline Knörr; “Diverse Unity: Creole Contributions to Interethnic Integration in Guinea-Bissau”, in Nations and Nationalism (2012). Mariana Kriel holds a PhD in Government from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her primary research interest is past and present Afrikaner identity politics, particularly as it relates to language. She teaches linguistics and sociolinguistics at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Friederike Lüpke is Professor in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa at SOAS. Her interests in the Mande and Atlantic languages of West Africa extend to their sociohistorical environments, and in particular to the multilingual configurations in which most of them are spoken and written. She is the author of Repertoires and Choices in African Languages (2013, with Anne Storch), and the editor of The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa (2017).

List Of Contributors

xiii

Anaïs Ménard is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre d’études en sciences sociales du religieux, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Martin Luther University HalleWittenberg. She conducted her PhD as a member of the research group “Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle. Her research interests include migration, collective identities, interethnic relations and social conflict in postwar contexts. William P. Murphy teaches in the Department of Anthropology and the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. His early field research in Liberia and Sierra Leone focused on socio-political hierarchies legitimated by an ideology of privileged knowledge and secrecy. Current research focuses on the language and logic of organizing violence in the recent civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Methodological interest seeks to integrate Peircean semiotic theory of meaning-making with the social and political theory of violence. Francis Njubi Nesbitt is a Kenyan Associate Professor of African Studies at San Diego State University. He was a visiting professor at UCLA (2003–04) and at the United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya in 2013. He is the author of Race for Sanctions (2004) and numerous articles in academic journals in Europe, Africa and the United States. Richard Price Professor Emeritus at the College of William & Mary, has taught at Yale and Johns Hopkins, where he was founding chair of the Department of Anthropology. His many prize-winning books include First-Time (1983, 2002), Alabi’s World (1990), The Convict and the Colonel (1998, 2006), Travels with Tooy (2008), Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial (2011), and with Sidney Mintz, The Birth of African‑American Culture. His most recent book, with Sally Price, is Saamaka Dreaming. Sally Price Professor Emerita at the College of William & Mary, has taught at Princeton, Stanford, and the Federal University of Bahia. She is the author of Co-Wives and Calabashes, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (published in eight languages),

xiv

List of Contributors

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly, and co-author with Richard Price of Two Evenings in Saramaka, Equatoria, Enigma Variations: A Novel, Maroon Arts, The Root of Roots, and Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension. Wilson Trajano Filho is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Brasília. His main areas of interest are African Popular Culture, Creolization and Creole Societies along the Upper Guinea Coast and Lusophone colonialism. He was Visiting Professor at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS), University of Lisbon, and at the University of Cabo Verde. He is also an Associate to the Upper Guinea Coast Research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He edited Lugares, Pessoas e Grupos (Brasilia: ABA Publicações 2010) and Travessias Antropológicas (Brasília: ABA Publicações 2012). With Gustavo Ribeiro he edited O Campo da Antropologia (Rio de Janeiro: ContraCapa 2004) and with Jacqueline Knörr The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast (Leiden: Brill 2010). Kristian Van Haesendonck is a research fellow at the University of Antwerp, and works on Spanish American and Lusophone African literatures. He is the author of ¿Encanto o espanto? Identidad y nación en la novela puertorriqueña actual (FrankfurtMadrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana), editor of Going Caribbean! New Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Art (Lisbon: Humus), and co-editor of Caribbeing: Comparing Caribbean Literatures and Cultures (Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi). His book Postcolonial Archipelagos: Essays on Hispanic Caribbean and Lusophone African Literatures is forthcoming at Peter Lang. Kees van der Waal is emeritus professor in social anthropology and taught at the universities of Pretoria, Johannesburg and Stellenbosch. His research interests centre on three South African themes: culture and race in identity politics and creolization of black and white Afrikaans-speakers; ethnography of social transformations in rural areas of the Lowveld in Limpopo Province and the Cape Winelands; and the history of anthropology and volkekunde in South Africa.

Part 1 Introduction

∵

Chapter 1

Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity: Context, Content, Structure Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho This book is about creolization and pidginization of language, culture and identity in contexts of (postcolonial) diversity. It discusses and makes use of interdisciplinary approaches developed in the study of the latter. We conceptualize creolization and pidginization as specific social processes in the course of which new common languages and sociocultural practices are developed. We study creolization and pidginization in contexts of (postcolonial) diversity to learn more about how people deal with diversity and how they make diversity work under different social conditions of life and in different historical and local contexts. We deal with creolization and pidginization because they are important strategies by means of which people have dealt and continue to deal with diversity in a world in which diversity is closely linked with inequalities that relate to specific group memberships. The study of creolization and pidginization reveals how people deal with and respond to diversity and how they construct commonalities in terms of language and social and cultural practices that lend expression to their experiences and life worlds. We are well aware that social, cultural and language practices and representations as well as collective identities do not originate as bounded, homogeneous social facts and units, but will always be the result of (new) mixtures, combinations, adaptations and translations of the social, cultural and language repertoire ‘in store’ at a given point in time (Amselle 1990). Mixture and fixture constitute each other in identity-related processes, however, to figure out what came first will often resemble the chicken and egg dilemma as well as the latter’s societal irrelevance. As we have known since Barth (1969), it is not the ‘cultural stuff’ as such that determines ethnic boundaries, but rather the construction of ethnic boundaries in relation to that ‘stuff’ that determines inclusion and exclusion as well as ethnic attachment and belonging. We concentrate on such processes of creolization and pidginization that are relevant to the understanding of society, that assume particular societal meanings and functions at multiple social levels and play specific roles as intermediary or divisive forces. We look at creolization and pidginization in © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_002

4

Knörr and Trajano Filho

a Maussian way, namely as total social facts that become apparent at various phenomenological levels and develop different dynamics depending on social and historical context. As we are studying phenomena dealt with in different disciplines we also integrate theoretical approaches in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary manner to gain novel perspectives and new insights concerning the phenomena at stake. We concur with DeCamp (1971) who established that language contact must involve more than two languages for a pidgin to emerge and with Thomason (2001) who extended the multilingualism criterion to creole languages (see also Sankoff 1980). We conceptualize pidginization and creolization of language, culture and identity as taking place and – more importantly – obtaining paramount societal significance – in contexts characterized by high rather than low levels of diversity. We therefore focus on contexts of extensive diversity and did not include cases of creolization that are not (or no longer) situated in contexts featuring extensive diversity – not least as the result of decreolization. The process of decreolization – connected to processes of nation-building leading to a decrease of diversity – is illustrated most prominently in the chapters on Cape Verde. The study of pidgin and creole languages has emerged as an important branch in sociolinguistics and it is hardly possible to investigate creolization and pidginization of culture and society without engaging in a dialogue with linguists studying creole languages. Linguists have been distinguishing pidgin from creole variants of language by means of different criteria. Whereas some engage in typologically defining creole languages on structural grounds (e.g., McWhorter 2005), others define creole languages solely from sociohistorical points of view (Lefebvre 2000). More current sociolinguistic theory conceptualizes creolization and pidginization as social rather than structural processes without, however, ignoring their structural implications (cf., Mufwene 2001a, b; Adone 2012). We keep in mind that language, culture, and society are three different realms of reality, and that theories and analytical tools suitable to explain one domain may not be appropriate to explain the others. We do not intend to carry the analogy between language and culture too far, particularly where the question what kind of mixtures give birth to a creole language or a creole sociocultural representation and identity is concerned. All contributors to this volume are careful not to uncritically transfer findings concerning creole and pidgin languages to social and cultural phenomena. One major focus is language, because language is a particularly accessible and important representation and symbol of identity (Le Page and TabouretKeller 1985). Language is also an important topic in social discourses that deal

Creolization and Pidginization in Postcolonial Diversity

5

with ethnic identity and (postcolonial) nationhood; most social discourses place a high value on issues of language and language tends to be among the most politicized issues in this regard. We study the roles, functions and meanings of creolization and pidginization in an in-depth and comparative manner in order to obtain a more differentiated and valid picture of the various forms of social interaction within and across ethnic, religious and national boundaries in a world characterized by increasing global interaction under conditions of globalized ethno-cultural diversity and socioeconomic inequality. Insofar this book is also meant to contribute to finding an answer to the question of how society may be organized at local, national and global levels, both from ‘above’ and ‘below,’ to enable people to develop commonalities across differences in order to be socially equipped to engage in mutually beneficial ways to improve their own and each other’s life-worlds in the best case scenario (and to keep from getting at each other’s throats in the worst case scenario). If we improve our understanding of how structural differences on the political, societal, sociocultural level and individual and group agency aimed at the construction of commonalities and mutual belonging relate to one another, this may enhance our appreciation of diversity and difference and enforce our commitment to engage in social and political practices aimed at overcoming diversity-related inequality in terms of access to income, education, health services, and commodities as well as in terms of political participation and self-determination. We analyze processes of linguistic and cultural creolization and pidginization in a wide range of postcolonial settings characterized by diversity in terms of language, culture, and ethnic identifications. We study linguistic and cultural representations that emerged as the result of such processes and investigate the ways in which they are perceived, classified, and situated in various social contexts and interactions. Case studies are based on often long-term research conducted in several African countries (Senegal, GuineaBissau, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania), in the Indian and Pacific Oceans (Mauritius and Solomon Islands), in South America (Surinam and Guyana), and in a major European city (Antwerp). The individual contributions analyze the status of creole languages in terms of language legitimacy, the expansion of creole language use and its role in the formation of ethnic and national identities. Authors deal with ideologies and world-views associated with creolization, namely with the workings of cultural representations and categories of identification. The book also examines dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion and the various ways in which creole languages are employed to index the social status of their speakers (vis-à-vis

6

Knörr and Trajano Filho

others) and explores the connections between creolization and pidginization and popular culture. The different chapters of this book have been clustered according to three thematic foci: Situating creole languages in society; Ideology and meaning in creole language usages; and creolization and pidginization in popular culture. The first part consists of seven chapters that situate creole languages in the societal context in which they are spoken. Authors analyze creole languages’ adoption by various groups, their expansion to new communicative fields, as well as the processes of legitimation and delegitimation they pass through. Most contributors employ a historical approach and deal with national societies. The Prices’ and Nesbitt’s contributions examine the relationship of a creole language (Saamakatongo and Swahili, respectively) with two or more national societies (Surinam and French Guyane in the Prices’s case; Kenya, Tanzania and other East Africa countries in Nesbitt’s case). Blommaert’s text situates his case of a new lingua franca in the context of a particular neighborhood of a major European city (Antwerp). Blommaert examines a complex and unstable register of non-native Dutch, which he calls ‘oecumenical Dutch.’ It has emerged as a lingua franca in the sociocultural environment of a neighborhood in central Antwerp characterized by superdiversity, namely the intense interaction of various groups and identities as well as of languages, networks and institutions (cf., Vertovec 2010). More than a dialect, this lingua franca correlates with flexible and unstable communicative registers which should not be misunderstood as mere deviations from standard language use, but as creative adaptations, the observation and analysis of which enable us to gain new insights into the interaction of language and (new variations of) social life. The analysis of the use of ‘oecumenical Dutch’ shows that conviviality is a dimension of the social order that depends on the expansion of semiotic registers to the interactions between social groups. Despite the differentiated access to communicative resources required for the full exercise of citizenship, the semiotic register analyzed by Blommaert creates an important foundation for social cohesion among those living in the given context. Eriksen’s and Jourdan’s chapters examine the place of creole registers in insular geographical contexts, namely in Mauritius and the Solomon Islands, respectively. Eriksen analyzes linguistic diversity and hierarchies between languages and social groups in Mauritius, with a special focus on Kreol. He argues that Kreol has expanded over time, becoming the first language of the vast majority of people and the major language used in the new social media. He shows how the least prestigious language, spoken by those ascribed the lowest social status – i.e., people of African descent and creoles of mixed origins –

Creolization and Pidginization in Postcolonial Diversity

7

managed to expand to new communicative domains, reaching various dimensions of popular as well as some areas of mainstream culture by means of translation and adaptation of literary classics to Kreol. The ethnic and linguistic hierarchies Eriksen analyzes raise interesting questions also about the role of the nation-state in the relationship between social and linguistic changes in society at large. Christine Jourdan examines the changes that have affected the Pijin language of the Solomon Islands during the past 35 years. In the early 1980s, Solomon Pijin was accessible to all residents of the archipelago’s capital, Honiara. However, although it was spoken by everyone on a daily basis, no one claimed Pijin as mother tongue. Meanwhile, Solomon Pijin has become the – ‘acknowledged as such’ – first language of two generations of urbanites and functions as the communicative foundation of their social and cultural life. According to Jourdan, a new language ideology revolving around discourses on identity and difference has promoted Pijin legitimacy as the language rooted firmly in the cultural make-up of the islanders as urbanites. Jourdan demonstrates how colonial language ideologies have provided the basis for perceptions about the legitimacy and illegitimacy of the various languages spoken in the archipelago. Newer – postcolonial – ideologies, she argues, have not replaced older – colonial – ones; rather, new and old ideologies compete in the contemporary sociopolitical arena. Richard and Sally Price’s contribution focuses on the relationship between language and ethnic identity. Saamakatongo is a creole language spoken by the Saamaka Maroons living on both sides of the Suriname and French Guyane border. Hence, the social contexts examined are situated in an independent country in one case and in a French overseas department in the other. The remaining chapters in this section deal with creolization and the perceptions and uses of creole languages in African contexts. Nesbitt situates a complex creole register, Swahili, in various national contexts of East Africa. Swahili is the national or official language in three East African countries and is spoken as a lingua franca in six other countries in the region. It is the first language of millions of people living in urban centers and continues to be associated with trade, urban life, Islam and social prestige. The author argues that its continued expansion and transethnic appeal is owed to Swahili’s ability to absorb and create pidgin and creole variants as well as to the language being perceived of as being spoken by speakers of mixed origins. In her contribution on Afrikaans, Kriel highlights the ironies in the history of that language from colonial times to the apartheid system. Afrikaans emerged as a cosmopolitan creole language created in the interactions between Khoikhoi people and the slave population of the Cape Colony. In the

8

Knörr and Trajano Filho

course of time it then developed into a highly valued symbol of Afrikaner identity, the irony being that the Afrikaner’s racist nationalism was aimed at the oppression of those who had originally crafted what the former were now celebrating as their very own language.1 In addition to a careful examination of the history of this ‘creole that was kidnapped by nationalists,’ Kriel also critically analyzes current Afrikaner efforts to foster a racially inclusive Afrikaans language movement. Kohl deals with Guinea-Bissau Kriol, originally spoken as a native language by a few groups of mixed descent that lived in urban settlements near the coast. The colonial authorities held Kriol in low esteem, regarding it as corrupted Portuguese. However, with the advent of the liberation war and more so after independence had been achieved, Kriol spread across Guinea-Bissau to become the country’s lingua franca, thereby gaining in legitimacy and turning into a major symbol of national identity. The second section – entitled “Ideology and Meaning in Creole Language Usages,” comprises five texts. Lüpke deals with the language ideology observed in the multilingual context of Casamance in southern Senegal. Three papers – those of Ménard, Bedert and Murphy – investigate different aspects of creolization in Sierra Leone and Liberia. They disclose certain semiotic registers’ impact for the constitution of social identities and the management of social tensions in the interaction of groups. Lobo’s chapter examines how borrowings from European languages and code-switchings are perceived by speakers of Cape Verdean Creole living abroad. All chapters in this section deal with perceptions and attitudes towards language in contexts of diversity – with perceptions and attitudes related to associations made between language and culture, thereby highlighting the links between language usage and identity. Authors are less interested in language as a system of signs and more in the relations between the use of signs belonging to a repertoire or semiotic register and the formation of social identities, or in what Woolard (1998, 3) has described as the “mediating link between social forms and forms of talk.” They focus on language ideologies, studying the perceptions and attitudes related to language in its relation to culture and identity (Silverstein 1979; Gumperz 1982; Fasold 1984; Le Page and TabouretKeller 1985; Schiefflein, Woolard and Kroskrity 1998). They share an interest in linguistic anthropology more generally and in indexicality and the pragmatic 1  We are not primarily concerned with terminological debates, which are often central to creolist literature. However, we note that Afrikaans does not seem to be classified as a creole language by the majority of linguists. Some classify it as a semicreole (cf., Holm 1988).

Creolization and Pidginization in Postcolonial Diversity

9

dimension of communicative practices more specifically (Silverstein 1976, 1993; Agha 2007). Lüpke’s chapter does not address a creole form within a national context, but examines language usage as cultural practice, paying close attention to language ideologies that guide identity discourses in the Senegalese region of Casamance. She focuses on the differences between language ideology (and communicative practices associated with it) in the Casamance on the one hand and the Senegalese state’s language ideology on the other. The former she describes as promoting multilingualism and enabling the consolidation of flexible, multiple and context-bounded social identities, the latter as connecting fixed notions of nation and ethnicity with specific languages. Anaïs Ménard explores the use of Krio language by the Sherbros living on the Freetown Peninsula. Inspired by the work of Asif Agha (2007) and his notion of semiotic register, Ménard conceptualizes Krio language use as social practice – as the combination of a language with a set of behavioral signs – indicating, in this case, the Krio dimension of Sherbro identity. She argues that Krio is an ambivalent semiotic register. On the one hand, it is associated with the Krio group of people and with their proclaimed (creole) distinctiveness (cf., Cohen 1981). On the other hand, Krio (as a language and social identity) is associated more generally with modern and urban life that may be (transethnically) shared by people of different ethnic identities. Ménard’s chapter shows how the Sherbros of the Freetown Peninsula use the Krio semiotic register to deal with the dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion and to differentiate themselves from migrants of several origins who started settling in the Peninsula during and after the Sierra Leonean civil war (1998–2002). The use of this register may also indicate the integrative potential of Krio as a more transethnic notion in contemporary Sierra Leone. Murphy analyzes the language ideologies of the different military groups regarding the communicative practices of civilians whose language use, whether Krio or local indigenous languages, differed markedly from their own, and thus was interpreted as an index of disloyalty and potential resistance justifying punishment. His data derives from civilians’ discourses that depict scenes of the violence they suffered at the hands of the armed forces occupying their territory and reveal their fears of being punished as a result of being considered resistant and disloyal. Murphy’s analysis focuses on Sierra Leone ethnographically while being concerned with pragmatic aspects of language and with the meanings attached to linguistic repertoires more generally. Bedert’s chapter also focuses on language usage as a status and identity marker. He analyzes processes of social differentiation and identification

10

Knörr and Trajano Filho

enacted through the use of semiotic registers associated with Liberian English on the part of the Dan population in the postwar period. Like Murphy in the previous chapter, Bedert shows that language usages function as acts of identity in interactive contexts (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985), and that switching between languages or registers in the interactions with others is related to the various situational and contextual social identities and positions a person may adopt. In the concluding contribution of this section Andréa Lobo deals with the verbal interactions between immigrant and local populations in Cape Verde, paying close attention to the common practice of borrowing and of code and language switching. She analyzes identity plays – playful communicative events performed by Cape Verdean migrants and local islanders – that trigger processes of differentiation in which the use of specific linguistic repertoires function as indices of a specific social status that emerges during the interactions by means of praising or favoring what is the respective other. The last section of the book consists of five chapters, which focus on the links between creolization and popular culture. Authors deal with popular culture as a complex dimension of culture that not merely consists of cultural goods, artifacts and forms (music, fashion, sports, art etc.), but is interrelated with various social, political, ritual practices (amongst others) that carry a multitude of – even contradictory – meanings and messages. They demonstrate how popular culture often succeeds to resist its own institutionalization and to evade state control and being subjugated by market objectives. As such popular culture is a creative domain that provides a fertile soil for interaction and mixture and therefore for the creolization and pidginization of people and cultural representations. Braz Dias investigates the use of Crioulo (the Cape Verdean Creole language) in ‘morna’ songs – a genre of popular music regarded and employed as a major symbol of national identity by the archipelago’s intelligentsia. In her analysis of the nexus between language, music and nation, Braz Dias argues that the interplay between creolization and popular culture is marked by informality, orality and contestation (cf., Fabian 1978, 1998; Hannerz 1987, 1996; Barber 1997). Examining the different Creole registers (dialects and sociolects) used by ‘morna’ composers, Braz Dias reveals a seeming paradox that characterizes the role of Crioulo in Cape Verde, namely its role in the construction of national unity on the one hand and in the articulation of differences within the nation on the other. Van der Waal engages with Knörr’s (2010) CvP model when discussing the links between creolization and popular music in the debates on identity politics in post-apartheid South Africa. He focuses on ideological disputes

Creolization and Pidginization in Postcolonial Diversity

11

about the use and perception of the Afrikaans language among their two main groups of speakers, namely South African whites and coloreds. He shows that the process of creolization (linguistic and cultural) in South Africa has produced two antagonistic attitudes concerning the relationship between language and identity – one that is open to external influences (mostly adopted by coloreds) and one that values uniqueness and purity (mostly adopted by whites). Van der Waal demonstrates how the tensions with regard to how mixture is perceived are displayed in popular music. His contribution confirms the observation that (African) popular culture is a creative space of resistance that according to him carries the ‘germ of a common future’ (cf. Fabian 1978, 1998). The South African case is particularly interesting because it reveals the complexity of the notion of resistance as a context-bounded concept which surfaces both in claims of traditionally subordinated groups and in a deep nostalgia about a past in which things (supposedly) did not mix. Trajano Filho examines how in the postcolonial era creole societies in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde have developed opposing attitudes towards external influences in popular music. In Cape Verde, acclaimed musicians tend to adopt a critical stance towards outside influences that usually derive from the American youth culture, sometimes even denying it its cultural or artistic value. Concerning music production within the Bissau-Guinean institution of conviviality called ‘manjuandadi’ on the other hand, the adoption of exogenous elements (musical forms and instruments, dance moves, clothing), especially those of indigenous populations, is considered to attach authenticity. The authentic tradition is perceived as being located beyond the creole society’s borders, namely in the midst of the indigenous world. Trajano Filho relates these antithetical attitudes to the different stages of the creolization process in both countries, establishing a heuristic analogy between language and culture that verifies the analytical productivity of applying concepts originally designed to deal with sociolinguistic processes to cultural and social processes. Anchimbe’s chapter would fit in the other two sections of this volume as well. It could be part of the in the book’s first section because it shows how Cameroon Pidgin and its speakers are situated in hierarchies prevalent with regard to languages and social status. It could also be included in the section on ideology and meaning in creole language usages insofar as it deals with the negative attitudes regarding Cameroon Pidgin and investigates how this creole language register is used to indicate the low social status of those who speak it as their first language. We included this contribution in the section on creolization and popular culture because it examines in detail literary works, especially dramatic texts that are written in English, but include extensive passages in Pidgin.

12

Knörr and Trajano Filho

Van Haesendonck examines how to extend the concept of pidginization, as developed in the framework of Knörr’s (2010) CvP model, to literature. His contribution stands out insofar as it is dealing with literary phenomena, more specifically with European literature, which has been treated as an expression of the educated elites, often conceptualized in opposition to popular culture, which is commonly seen as being mass produced according to market rules. Van Haesendonck’s chapter’s originality is owed to how he relates terms to one another which are not commonly placed in the same basket, namely literature (writing phenomenon) and pidginization (oral phenomenon). As others before him (cf., Trajano Filho 2002), the author is not immobilized by the vagueness and fluidity of the boundaries that separate the written from the oral. Combining the CvP model developed by Knörr (2010, 2014) with Polysystem Theory developed in the field of comparative literature (Evon-Zohai 2005), Van Haesendock recuperates the theme of power relations (inequality, hierarchy) that characterize the interaction of literatures (as well as that of other cultural representations and languages) and the generation of new forms and meanings. References Adone, D. 2012. The Acquisition of Creole Languages: How Children Surpass Their Input. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Amselle, J-L. 1990. Logiques métises: anthropologie de l’identité en Afrique et ailleurs. Paris: Payot. Barber, K. 1997. Readings in African Popular Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Barth, F. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Cohen, A. 1981. The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DeCamp, D. 1971. “Pidgin and Creole Languages.” In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 13–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evon-Zohai, I. 2005. “Polysystem Theory (Revised).” Papers in Culture Research: 2010–2040. Fabian, J. 1978. “Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures.” Africa 48(4): 315–34.

Creolization and Pidginization in Postcolonial Diversity

13

Fabian, J. 1998. Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Fasold, R. 1984. Sociolinguistics of Society. New York: Basil Blackwell. Gumperz, J. 1982. Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolization.” Africa 57(4): 546–59. Hannerz, U. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Holm, J. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness, or The World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731–59. Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Le Page, R.B., and A. Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lefebvre, C. 2000. “What Do Creole Studies Have To Offer To Mainstream Linguistcs?” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 15(1): 127–54. McWhorter, J.H. 2005. Defining Creole. New York: Oxford University Press. Mufwene, S.S. 2001a. “Creolization is a Social, Not a Structural, Process.” In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, edited by I. Neumann-Holzschuh and E.W. Schneider, 65–84. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Mufwene, S.S. 2001b. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sankoff, G. 1980. “Variation, Pidgins and Creoles.” In Theoretical Orientations in Creole Studies, edited by A. Aldman and A Highfield, 139–64. New York: Academic Press. Schiefflein, B., K. Woolard, and P. Kroskrity, eds., 1998. Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Silverstein, M. 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description.” In Meaning in Anthropology, edited by K. Basso and A.H. Selby, 11–56. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Silverstein, M. 1979. “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology.” In The Elements: The Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, edited by P. Clyne, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer, 193–247. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society. Silverstein, M. 1993. “Metapragmatic Discourse and Metapragmatic Function.” In Reflexive Language, edited by J. Lucy, 33–58. New York: Cambridge University Press. Thomason, S. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Trajano Filho, W. 2002. “Narratives of National Identity in the Web.” Etnográfica 6(1): 141–58.

14

Knörr and Trajano Filho

Vertovec, S. 2010. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications.” In Anthropology of Migration and Multiculturalism, edited by S. Vertovec, 65–96. London: Routledge. Woolard, K. 1998. “Introduction: Language Ideology: The Field of Inquiry.” In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, edited by B. Schiefflein, K. Woolard, and P. Kroskrity, 3–47. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2

Creolization and Pidginization as Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity Jacqueline Knörr

Creole and Creolization: Terminology and Meaning

The study of creolization and pidginization in contexts of postcolonial diversity is important not because the latter are the only contexts in which creolization and pidginization may occur, but because these are the contexts in which they achieve particular social and political meanings and relevance. I will focus on the terminology and meaning of creole and creolization first and will deal with how pidgin and pidginization relates to and differs from it later on. Creolization is only one possible path the interaction between people of heterogeneous backgrounds can take and it consists of more than just the more or less random mixture of cultural features and social practices. An historical perspective shows that, irrespective of the manifold meanings the notions of ‘creole’ has adopted in different local contexts at different times, creolization has always been connected to processes of (various degrees of) indigenization1 and the creation of new common identity among peoples of different origins that relate to and are associated with commonalities with regard to (historical) experiences, language, localities, conditions of life, social and cultural practices (Olson 1983; Patterson 1975, 1982).2 Although diversity of origins is a constitutive dimension of creoleness – manifested in social and cultural practices and collective identification – creolization as an identityrelated process implies demarcation in that the emerging creole group/

1  Like de la Cadena and Starn (2007), we conceptualize indigenization in relational (rather than criterial) terms, namely as a process that “acquires its meaning not from essential properties of its own but in relation to what is not considered indigenous in particular social formations” (ibid., 4) (cf., Merlan 2009). 2  See also Eriksen (1999), who refers to the Creoles of Mauritius as an “ethnic category” and adds: “a [Creole] person … identifies him- or herself as someone … belonging to a new society founded on the premise of mixing” (ibid., 12–13).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_003

16

Knörr

category of people demonstrates varying degrees of closure and openness.3 It will not merely be associated with specific cultural characteristics, but also with a – more or less – specific mixture concerning its ancestry and heritage (Knörr 2010a, 2012, 2014; cf., Brathwaite 1971; Bolland 1998; Eriksen 2007; Palmié 2007a, b). Whereas ‘regular’ ethnic groups tend to emphasize (and be ascribed) common origin, sameness and homogeneity as their groups’ features, ethno-creole groups emphasize (and are ascribed) diversity of origin in terms of people and features as a major constituent and distinguishing feature of their identity. It is particularly its perception as being mixed and (therefore) different from other not-so-mixed identities and cultural forms that make creoleness – of groups, identities, sociocultural features and languages – achieve particular roles and functions in contexts of (ethnic) diversity. Creolization is likely to occur in contexts of forced or voluntary migration in which identities based on original heritages become insufficient as a frame of reference and where at the same time (full) integration into the majority society is impossible or difficult to achieve. Creolization – as a process involving indigenization and different degrees of (re-)ethnicizing – also seems to be more prevalent when and where large parts of a given population are newcomers and where ethnic identity is a socially structuring principle in people’s societies of origin and/or their host societies (Knörr 2007a, 2007b, 2010a, 2014). Given the rather undifferentiated use of the term ‘creolization’ to describe contemporary social and cultural processes some resistance has developed to use the term to refer to anything but the historical context of slave exile.4 We agree that it is a mistake to use ‘creolization’ interchangeably with ‘transnationalism,’ ‘syncretization,’ ‘hybridization’5 et cetera, but rather than restricting 3  Cf., Eriksen (2007, 174): “Creole essentialism is far from unknown in Mauritius. Occasionally, Creoles will claim that they are the only ‘vrais Mauriciens’, real Mauritians, since they are the only group who, as it were, emerged from the Mauritian soil.” Cf., Knörr (1995) on the Krios of Sierra Leone and the Betawi in Indonesia (2007b, 2010a, 2014). 4  Concerning such demands to limit the creole terminology to historically specific phenomena, see also Cohen and Toninato (2009); cf., Chaudenson (2001, chapter 1 and 2). 5  ‘Syncretization’ refers to the mixing of belief systems or religions that are otherwise unrelated (for example, Voodoo). ‘Hybridization’ is derived from botany and zoology and denotes a process whereby humans ‘implant’ certain characteristics of one plant into another with the goal of creating a plant with mixed characteristics. The plant itself has no active role in this process. We do not consider the use of the term ‘hybridization’ appropriate for characterizing the active process of cultural change. Furthermore, the model of ‘hybridization’ implies a ‘pre-hybridization purity,’ which is fiction as regards the social and cultural world (see Friedman 1994). ‘Transnationalism’ refers to the social dynamics that exist across national borders (for example transnational networks).

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

17

the usage of the term to a specific historical situation and region – as suggested by Sidney Mintz (1998) – we want to tap the concept’s heuristic potential for describing and analyzing in a more differentiated manner contemporary processes of social and cultural interaction and identity formation, processes that are becoming ever more complex in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world.6 To be able to do so, it is necessary to explicate what structurally distinguishes creolization and creoleness and to “probe the historical contextual significance of terms such as ‘creole’ before we prematurely elevate them to the status of comparative – or in more contemporary language, transculturally salient – analytical devices …” (Palmié 2007b, 67). As we want to make comparative use of the creole terminology, we must also realize that what is classified as creole from an etic point of view does not need to be classified as such from an emic perspective:7 “In order to pursue such research, one must be prepared to consider situations as involving creolization even when the people concerned do not use the terms ‘creole’ or ‘creolization’” (Stewart 2007, 13).8 To assess whether a group or category of people is creole, it is irrelevant whether it classifies itself as such or is known by an ethnonym that makes phonetic reference to creole identity or not (for example ‘Creole’ and ‘Krio’ versus ‘Betawi’ or ‘Martiniquais’). Vice versa, we need to be prepared to classify groups whose ethnonyms suggest creoleness as non-creole (Eriksen 2007; Knörr 2010a). For analytical reasons we differentiate between the creolization of social and cultural forms and practices and the creation of new identities, however, without losing sight of the fact that the generation of specific social and cultural forms depends on the minds and actions of specific people. Creolized/ creolizing forms and practices – whether they manifest themselves in/as literature, cuisine, language or marriage patterns – interrelate with the minds and actions of creolized/creolizing peoples – which, however, does not preclude that others than the latter may identify with and engage in emergent creole forms and practices. 6  Cf. Eriksen (2007, 167): “It is not sufficient to point out that mixing does take place; it is necessary to distinguish between different forms of mixing.” 7  “An emic model is one which explains the ideology or behaviour of members of a culture according to indigenous definitions. An etic model is one which is based on criteria from outside a particular culture. Etic models are held to be universal; emic models are culturespecific” (Barnard and Spencer 1996, 180). Cf., Headland et al. (1990). 8  Cf., Eriksen (2007, 173): “I propose a definition of cultural creolization, thus, which is faithful to its linguistic origins, but which does not restrict itself to societies where ‘creole’ is an emic term or where linguistic creolization has taken place.”

18

Knörr

Creolization’s Societal Relevance

During a process of cultural creolization features of different local cultures – which may be foreign and indigenous in origin – are incorporated into an emerging creole feature. This often made and makes it possible also for others who do not belong to the creole group/category of people, to identify with a creole cultural representation since traces of their own respective ethnic culture may be identified as being part of it (Trajano Filho 2010; Ménard 2015; Knörr 2010a, b, 2014). Creole representations of culture – for example in music, literature, life-styles, cuisine – may often assume a particular transethnic accessibility and potential for (partial) identification due to the fact that they reflect a multitude of origins. A cultural representation perceived as creole may represent a multitude of ethnic origins as well as common history insofar as some of its creators were at some stage in history also forefathers of those who did not become creolized, but maintained their identity of origin instead. As a result, ethnic and transethnic varieties of creoleness may exist side-by-side. Whether or not creoleness assumes transethnic relevance in society at large depends primarily on how it is socially situated and acknowledged within the latter. The accessibility of creole culture, language and identity also depends on the degrees of closure or openness the creole group is associated with. Creolization of language, culture and identity occurred on a wide scale in societies in which parts of the population were removed from their places of origin and forced to build alliances cutting across ethnic and regional origins and identities. Typical historical environments for such processes were slave exiles and, more generally, colonial (settler) societies, in which social class largely correlated with origin and race (cf., Bolland 1998, 2006; Brathwaite 1974). As a consequence, creolization often involved the ethnicization9 of social classes and, vice versa, the ‘class-ification’ of populations according to race and origin (Knörr 2000, 2007a, 2010a, 2014). Particularly in those colonial societies in which people of different backgrounds came to settle to make new homes – both voluntarily and as the result of forced migration – different types of in-between populations came to be classified as creole. Depending on the roles that ethnic background, skin color and an individual’s family background played as criteria of social classification in a given society, they were situated at different levels of the social ladder (cf., Stewart 2007). 9  By ethnicization we mean social processes in the course of which people develop common ethnic identifications. Such processes involve both self-ascription and ascription by others and may vary depending on who is ascribing identity to whom and in which context and situation (cf., Barth 1969; Eriksen 2002; Jenkins 1997).

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

19

Creolization was an important strategy of adjusting to colonial conditions of life among both colonizers and colonized. Creole groups and categories of people, creole languages and sociocultural practices are among the legacies of the colonial experience that continue to impact contemporary societies’ postcolonial contexts of social interaction and identity formation. We consider contexts as postcolonial when they are characterized by legacies of colonialism as manifested in groups/categories of people, cultural representations, social practices, languages, forms of interaction and differentiation. Such contexts prevail in those parts of the world that were colonized (the ‘South’) as well as in those parts of the world from which the former colonizers originated (the ‘North’). Hence, in today’s world, legacies of colonialism are important dimensions of social and political life and social and cultural practices (more or less) everywhere. Inasmuch as colonial regimes differed, so did processes of creolization. They were influenced by different colonial policies, structures, and objectives. Hence, different colonial histories also effected the emergence of different creole groups and categories of people. For example, the Krios of Sierra Leone turned out to be a rather elite and elitist group during colonial times due to the position they were granted by the British colonizers. In Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, both a creole elite emerged as well as various regional creole categories of people that were closely linked to local populations (Kohl 2010, 2012; Kohl et al. 2012; Trajano Filho 1998, 2004). Formerly colonizing and colonized societies continue to be connected through their respective colonial histories in particular ways, such as political and judicial systems, economic alliances, languages, cultural representations, and airline connections, amongst others. They are also connected through increased globalization more generally and through transnational networks spanning the world (cf., Knörr and Kohl 2016). Legacies of colonialism are integrated in various ways, depending on the status of those constituting the postcolonial context in a given society and situation, amongst others. Depending on the particularities of their social and political contextualization, creole identities that had emerged in colonial times have often had a profound impact on ethnic relations and the conceptualization and construction of transethnic and national identifications in the postcolonial present10 – as both facilitating and obstructive forces. Creolization (or ‘criollo’) adapted a primarily national meaning in much of Latin America by the early nineteenth century and was employed as an ideology through which a ‘mestizo nation’ 10  See Anderson (1999) on the role of ‘Creole Pioneers’ in the construction of nationhood.

20

Knörr

was propagated (cf., Palmié 2006; Stutzman 1981). In many postcolonial societies of the South in particular (but not exclusively), creole categories of people, creole representations of culture and creole languages have played important roles and have served various specific functions in relation to the creation of common identifications across boundaries constructed and maintained by means of differences in terms of ethnic attachments, religious faiths, cultural features, social practices et cetera. They have thereby facilitated and continue to facilitate interaction and understanding across ethnic boundaries and the construction of transethnic and national identifications in highly heterogeneous postcolonial settings. They often serve as an identity-related frame of reference particularly where there is need to accommodate for a society’s diversity and, at the same time, to foster and substantiate a sense of mutual belonging which cuts across ethnic and religious differences. In some late colonial and early postcolonial contexts, creole populations were experienced as rather exclusive ethnic groups and as divisive rather than unifying forces (e.g., the Krios in Sierra Leone, see e.g., Knörr 2010b). Hence, creole groups/categories of people have not only served as bridges across differences, they have also produced gaps between themselves and others, cultivating, for example, elitist attitudes differentiating between themselves and others whom they looked down upon as provincial, uncivilized et cetera in a rather condescending fashion.11 Creole identities and features tend to evoke ambivalent attitudes and feelings where they emerged in contexts of slavery and colonial domination and are therefore up to the present day often associated with racist ideologies, foreign domination and hierarchies of power which postcolonial societies strive to overcome. The acceptance of creole populations as transethnic and national forces also depends on the degree of indigeneity they are ascribed and ascribe to themselves. The same holds true for creole languages – the question as to their being a national language continues to be heavily influenced by the assumed (lack of) indigeneity of their respective ‘native’ speakers.

11  One example are the Krios of Sierra Leone, see Knörr (1995, 2010b, 2014), cf., Spitzer (1974), Cohen (1981).

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity



21

Creole and Pidgin Variants of Language in Relation to Ethnic, Transethnic and National Identity along the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa

When exploring the relationship between language and identity, one notices that in much academic discourse it is assumed that language and identity are per se closely interrelated and constitute each other where individual and collective identities are concerned. It is largely taken for granted that language has a major influence on how a person identifies in terms of his or her ethnic and/or national identity. On closer examination, however, it turns out that the relationship between language and identity is shaped by the way in which specific languages and the (group) identities associated with them are socially and historically situated and valuated within the societies in which they are located. Depending on their societal position and valuation specific languages and language usages and styles may serve social inclusion or exclusion, trigger identity formation, manifest boundaries between ethnic groups, or transcend them. In postcolonial societies the relationship between language and identity is up to the present day also influenced by the respective political power structures and language ideologies of the former colonial regimes. Especially where ethnic identities are concerned, ethnic languages are usually ascribed an important role. However, one needs to keep in mind that ethnic languages may serve as ethnic markers even when not being (widely) spoken by the members of the ethnic (or national) group or category of people it is associated with. The perceived authenticity of ethnic identity may or may not suffer as a result of decreasing ethnic language competence.12 Ethnic identity and ethnic language competence do not necessarily rely on each other. Many people in Brasil, for example, identify as ethnic Germans without speaking German. The vast majority of Irish people do not speak Irish (or Irish Gaelic), which they nevertheless consider ‘their’ language. Likewise, many Temne, Mende, and Limba in Sierra Leone speak no or only little Temne, Mende, or Limba, yet without considering themselves less Mende, Temne, or Limba in ethnic terms as a result. Not being able to speak one’s ethnic language does not correlate with not identifying with one’s ethnic group or category of people. Hence, the relationship between language and identity may be viewed in much the same way as the relationship between Barth’s “cultural stuff” (1969, 15) and (ethnic) identity. It is not language as such that determines (ethnic) identity, but people’s (ethnic) ascription and relationship to it. 12  See Knörr (1995, 2010a, b); see Schlee (2001) concerning the variation in the relationship between language and ethnicity.

22

Knörr

In the following, the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa shall be dealt with as an example to show how creole and pidgin variants of language are related to processes of identity formation and processes of inclusion and exclusion in contexts of ethnic diversity in postcolonial societies. The region is characterized by a high degree of cultural and linguistic diversity and may be regarded as a laboratory for questions of language and identity in postcolonial societies. For analytical purposes, one may distinguish three types of languages, namely a) official languages that are specified by the respective governments, b) ethnic languages that are employed by ethnic groups in specific regions, and c) linguae francae, that are used in situations where neighboring “… communities do not speak each other’s language but use instead a third language as a means of mutual communication” (Chirikba 2008, 31). The official languages up to date are neither identical with ethnic languages nor with linguae francae in the region. Instead of declaring (a selection of) indigenous ethnic languages official languages, the new African governments adopted the language of their former colonial power as the only official language upon independence. This was meant to trigger common identification across ethnic differences and to promote nation-building. Opting for a single ethnic language would likely have caused a feeling of neglect among speakers of other ethnic languages and thereby might have resulted in ethnic conflict rather than national unification. Thus, the postcolonial leaders declared the respective former colonizer’s language the (only) official language in order to develop national identity and gain international acceptance as modern nation-states on the one hand, while avoiding ethnic conflict on the other. Consequently, Guinea-Conakry and Senegal adopted French as their official language, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau retained Portuguese, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia13 opted for English. The former colonial powers on their part continued to promote ‘their’ languages in their former colonies through cultural institutes like the British Council, the Alliance Française and the Instituto Camões, as well as through international organizations like the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP) and the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP). Official languages serve as means of international communication today (e.g., in tourism, development cooperation and business) and are largely relegated to the formalized spheres of communication, such as government documents, law gazettes, newspapers, official speeches and formal education. Up to 13  Liberia was never formally colonized, but strongly influenced by the United States (Hancock 1974).

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

23

the present day only minorities have full command of their country’s official language.14 However, neither the question whether a person masters ‘his’ or ‘her’ respective official language or not, nor the fact that it was once introduced by foreign colonizers seems to interfere much with people’s identification with it. The official languages are nowadays foremost experienced as expressions of a) one’s respective nation’s and b) Africa as a whole being part of the modern world (of nation-states) – or, as one of my informants once explained to me in Freetown, “English makes me feel at home in the world and Krio makes me feel at home at home.” Some countries assign a selection of ethnic languages a status as national or regional ones.15 For example, in Sierra Leone, the ethnic languages dominant in the different regions are acknowledged as national languages, which have, for example, also been incorporated into the curricula for primary school education (in addition to English). Guinea-Conakry designated eight16 and Senegal four17 regional languages as national languages (O’Toole and Baker 2005; Clemons and Yerende 2009). However, the official acknowledgement of these languages as national or regional ones has not led to their acknowledgement as official languages equal to English, French and Portuguese, nor to a more widespread practice of mother tongue education – despite the fact that the UNESCO-led ‘Education for All’ initiative calls for just that. Rather, different approaches towards instruction in local languages can be identified. In Guinea-Conakry, for example, French was reintroduced as the only language of public instruction in 1984, displacing the national languages. In Senegal the instruction in national languages is limited to adult education. More recently, however, schools run by non-governmental organizations institutionalized teaching in the four national languages (Clemons and Yerende 2009). Several indigenous languages are spoken as linguae francae along the Upper Guinea Coast – like Wolof and Mandingo in Gambia and Wolof and Mandingo 14  For example, less than fifteen percent of the population are competent in Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau and only ten percent are proficient in English in Sierra Leone (Oyètádé and Luke 2008). 15  These languages are ethnic languages in that they are both spoken by an ethnic group with the same name and associated with them as ‘their’ language. They are referred to as ‘ethnic’ and ‘tribal’ languages in everyday speech. However, the latter terms were avoided in official speech and documents because they were considered to be “unsuitable terms inherited from the colonial past” (Dalby 1981, 3). As well, in Krio the term ‘nεshon’ may refer to both an ethnic group as well as to all Sierra Leoneans, depending upon context. 16  Malinké (Maninkakan), Fulani (Poular), Soussou, Kpelle (Guerzé), Loma (Toma), Kissi, Coniagui, and Bassari. 17  Wolof, Fula, Diola, Serer. 

24

Knörr

in Senegal (Haust 1995). In Guinea-Conakry, there are three regional linguae francae, namely Susu (costal region), Fula (Fouta Djallon) and Mandingo (Upper and Forest Guinea) that are competing with French (used in urban centers and along the traffic routes) (O’Toole and Baker 2005). Both creole and pidgin variants of languages have been particularly common as linguae francae in many parts of the Upper Guinea Coast and West Africa more generally for hundreds of years. They vary with regard to how they relate to ethnic, transethnic and national identifications. In the following, two examples will be highlighted, namely Kriol in Guinea-Bissau and Krio in Sierra Leone. Kriol, Crioulo According to linguists a Portuguese based creole language developed in the late fifteenth century, both in Cape Verde and littoral mainland Upper Guinea. Europeans who settled in the hitherto uninhabited Cape Verdean archipelago traded along the West African coast, abducting large numbers of Africans of various origins to the islands as slaves. This resulted in the emergence of a creole language in both Cape Verde (where it is now called Crioulo) and littoral West Africa, stretching from present-day Senegal to Liberia. Nowadays the major language in Guinea-Bissau and parts of the Casamance (where it is called Kriol), the language was then restricted to a handful of trading posts along the Upper Guinea Coast where it transformed rapidly from a commercial language into the mother tongue of small creole communities made up of socalled Kristons (including various ethnic subcategories) and Cape Verdeans.18 The Portuguese rejected the use of Kriol, dismissing it as a distorted and false Portuguese (Havik 2007). Nonetheless widely used in the colonial administration, Kriol made a breakthrough only after the liberation war broke out in 1961. The independence movement used Kriol as a means to communicate across ethnic boundaries and to propagate national integration. Since independence the position of Kriol as the national lingua franca has been consolidated through interethnic exchange and the media (do Couto 1990, 1994; Kohl 2010, 2012). Kriol was declared a national language following Guinea-Bissau’s independence, however, bilingual education in Kriol and Portuguese has not yet gone beyond pilot schemes (cf., Scantamburlo 2005). Attempts were made to develop a uniform orthography, but so far the proposals made have neither been officially accepted nor implemented. 18  See Carreira (1983), Chataigner (1963), do Couto (1994), Kihm (1979/80), Lopes da Silva (1984), Peck (1988), Rougé (1985).

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

25

The spread of Kriol in Guinea-Bissau – which is marked by a high degree of ethnic diversity – and its transformation into a powerful symbol of national unity was facilitated by the fact that Bissau-Guineans do not associate it with any specific ethnic group, as in the case of the different ethnic languages. Both Kriston and Cape Verdeans – the categories of people who spread Kriol in Guinea-Bissau – are considered the result of mixing (‘mistura’), as including Bissau-Guineans of different ethnic belongings. Particularly the Kriston continue to identify – and to be identified – with particular ethnic roots and groups beyond the Kriston category (Kohl 2010). Therefore, rather than being associated with particular ethnic groups, Kriol was associated with people of different origins, and hence, conceptualized as a language with national rather than ethnic reference. The same holds true for other expressions of creole identity in Guinea-Bissau, like carnival and the ‘manjuandadi’ (primarily female associations of mutual solidarity). Both were restricted to creole groups originally, but then spread across the whole country, becoming important symbols of national identity (Kohl 2012). Contrary to Guinea-Bissau, Kriol in the adjacent former Portuguese trading post of Ziguinchor – the main town in the Senegalese Casamance – has been rivaled by other languages for the past three decades, most prominently by Wolof, Mandinka and French (McLaughlin 2008; Cobbinah 2010). In Cape Verde two variants of Crioulo – mother tongue of all islanders – exist: the windward and leeward varieties (Lopes da Silva 1984), the latter being closer to Kriol in Guinea-Bissau. Krio A common theory suggests that Krio emerged in the late eighteenth century from a conglomerate of languages that reflect the origins of different groups of liberated slaves who settled in Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and their interaction with British colonists and local inhabitants (Oyètádé and Luke 2008).19 Other theories claim that a Pidgin English spoken along the West African coast from Gambia to Congo formed the basis for Krio.20 19  Krio as well as Liberian English were imported by different groups of freed slaves who were settled in Sierra Leone and Liberia in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century and came to be known as Krio and Americo-Liberians. They are small minorities today but have played an important role as educated elites. Concerning Liberian English see Hancock (1974), Singler (1989, 1997), concerning Krio see Fyle and Jones (1980), Knörr (1995, 2010b). 20  See Hancock (1974), Oyètádé and Luke (2008), Singler (1989, 1997).

26

Knörr

In the nineteenth century, Krio was used among the creole population that had emerged as the result of the interaction of different groups of settlers, in which also people of local descent were integrated. The latter, however, had to give up claiming their original ethnic identity and speaking their ethnic language when becoming integrated into the Krio group. The Krios came to be an elite in Sierra Leone and the Krio language functioned both as a means of interethnic communication as well as a marker of superiority when spoken by the Krios and by those adhering to them. Krios were working as teachers, missionaries and administrators in many countries along the West African Coast and thereby also their language spread, becoming a lingua franca in different parts of West Africa. The Krios generally emphasized the differences – may it be religion, culture or language – rather than the similarities between themselves and the indigenous population. They pointed out what, in their eyes, separated them from and made them superior to the latter. In return, they were not really considered ‘native proper’ by the majority of the local population. Thus, apart from being a means of interethnic communication, the Krio language also served as a means of distancing one’s Krio self socially and culturally from the non-Krio population. The fact that the Krios as a group have long been experienced as an elitistminded group of people, whose indigeneity was contested, has led people to have ambivalent attitudes about the Krio language as well, irrespective of the fact that it has been the major lingua franca of Sierra Leone for long and is spoken as such by the majority of Sierra Leoneans today. Krio is spoken as a language with ethnic reference (by the Krios) and as a language with transethnic reference (by all others). It is interesting to note, however, that despite the critical attitude many Sierra Leoneans still have towards the Krios, Sierra Leoneans tend to appreciate them for having supplied Sierra Leone with a lingua franca. It seems ironical that the Krio language is considered one of the major unifying factors among Sierra Leoneans whereas the Krios as a group have in many ways been experienced as separatists. However, since the end of the civil war – which rampaged Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002 –, both the Krios as a group and the Krio language seem to have gained in status. The Krios were rarely involved in the cruelties committed during the war and are therefore regarded as having “less blood on their hands” (one of my informants in 2007, cf., Knörr 2010b). The Krio language is considered to have a reconciling effect in that it “brings our people back together now that the war is over” (informant of Knörr in 2005). At the same time, the Krios – or rather, many young and educated Krios – are on their part discovering – or re-discovering – the integrative potentials of creole identity. Whereas until recently the Krios largely considered themselves

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

27

integrative in that they integrated others into their group – thereby ‘Krio-izing’ them – these Krios also want to integrate themselves into Sierra Leonean society (cf., Knörr 2010b). They emphasize their Sierra Leonean more than their Krio identity, and emphasize that their background is mixed and includes Sierra Leonean ancestors. Their readiness to conceptualize of themselves as natives of Sierra Leone highlights the transethnic quality of Krio identity and facilitates their acceptance as ‘real’ Sierra Leoneans. The less ethnically exclusive the Krios come across, the less ethnic the Krio language is perceived and the more it gains in acceptance as a transethnic language on the national level. One reason for the Krio ‘revival’ has to do with the fact that ethnic customs and traditions have lost in esteem as the result of the civil war. They are associated with (male) gerontocracy and nepotism, which are on their part regarded as having contributed to the severe social inequalities regarded as the root causes of the war. One result of the war seems to be that being experienced as somewhat less ethnic – or more mixed – than others has emerged as a positively connotated (ethnic) marker of Krio identity. Whereas ethnic identity continues to be an important dimension of Sierra Leoneans’ social identity, transethnic commonalities – like the Krio language – are now likely to be more appreciated and regarded as more important than before the war (Knörr 2010b; Bangura 2006). This change in attitudes is also revealed when Sierra Leoneans accuse the main political parties of tribalism because of their widespread use of ethnic languages in government offices.21

Creolization versus Pidginization

The ‘Creolization versus Pidginization-Model’ (CvP-model) was developed to distinguish between two major processes of identity formation related to culture, language and identity that take place in contexts of diversity in the contemporary (postcolonial) world. The model connects the historical semantics of the creole terminology with sociolinguistic approaches to distinguish between creole and pidgin languages (Knörr 1995, 2009, 2010a, 2014). As explained in the first chapter of the introductory part of this book, linguists have been distinguishing and differentiating creole and pidgin variants of languages on the basis of different criteria. In the thematic context of this book, sociolinguistic theory that studies creolization and pidginization as social processes is of particular relevance (cf., Mufwene 2001 a, b; Adone 2012). In connection 21  My own observation, shared by Nathaniel King, then Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/S., Germany.

28

Knörr

with the differentiation between creolization and pidginization that I will be dealing with in the following, Gilman’s (1979) argument that ethnic reference should be considered the most significant criterion to distinguish between creole and pidgin variants of language, triggered the development of the CvPmodel most prominently.22 What is clearly true in Cameroon is that Pidgin is the language of reference for no ethnic group…. In view of the confusion between the language of ethnic reference and the first-learned language, and of the fact that in multilingual environments there is often no real first language, it would be better to replace the traditional distinction between creolized and pidginized languages as in one case … the ‘native language’ of a group of people and in the other case … not.23 It would be better to recognize that Creoles, such as that of Sierra Leone, are languages of ethnic reference, while Pidgins, such as that of Cameroon, are not.24 Gilman 1979, 274

Following this line of argumentation with regard to the differentiation between creole and pidgin variants of language – which I regard as different, yet in many ways interrelated phenomena –, the creolization of language is conceptualized as a process in the course of which a new common language is developed which incorporates (to varying degrees) characteristics of the different ‘original’ languages of those engaged in ‘lingua-creolization.’ The evolving creole language gradually adopts ethnic reference for its speakers and replaces

22  We account for linguistic theory which may help to elucidate the social and cultural processes and phenomena under study here. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore the relationship between differences in social functions and differences in linguistic structures with regard to creole and pidgin variants of language. See Palmié (2006, 2007a, b) for some recent examples of critical disputes concerning interdisciplinary transferences and circular reasoning in theories of creolization and creoleness (referring, in particular, to history, linguistics and anthropology). 23  See also Mufwene (2001a, b), according to whom creoles and pidgins developed in different social contexts, namely creoles in settlement colonies and pidgins in trade colonies. Pidgins were used as contact languages among users who preserved their native languages to communicate among themselves. Creoles gradually came to be used as everyday vernaculars among slaves and servants and replaced their original mothertongues (cf., Alleyne 1971, 1980). 24  See Gilman (1979) for further explications.

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

29

their original ethnic languages and/or the latter’s respective ethnic references.25 In contrast, ‘lingua-pidginization’ also leads to a new common language, yet without replacing ethnic languages (as languages of ethnic reference). A pidgin may be a person’s or a group’s mother tongue, it may even be the first or only language spoken – however, it is not a creole as long as it is not considered an ethnic language. A creole language will often be spoken as a creole variant among those considered creoles in ethnic terms and as a pidgin variant among all others, who do not identify with it in ethnic terms. Accordingly, and in a reasonably simplified manner, sociocultural creolization can be conceptualized as a process in the course of which people of different origins produce both new common culture and new common identity. New cultural representations and social practices come into being, while the different identities of origin of those undergoing ‘socio-creolization’ are increasingly replaced by a new common identity linked to (narratives of) a common territory and new home, to a particular history and heritage, specific origins, and social and cultural particularities. Besides the incorporation of diverse sociocultural forms and features creolization involves the latter’s ethnicization by people of different origins undergoing – to varying degrees – a process of ethnogenesis, the result being new sociocultural representations plus a new (ethno-creole) identity associated with them. Cultural pidginization, on the other hand, can then be conceptualized as a process over the course of which common culture and identity are developed in specific contexts of ethnic and cultural diversity as well, without, however, involving ethnicization. No new ethnic group emerges, the original identities of those pidginizing remain in existence (Knörr 1995, 2010, 2014; cf. Stewart 2006). Referring to Knörr (2008), Stewart holds that “we might recast Hannerz’ (1987) world in creolization as a world in pidginization since Nigerians retain their indigenous culture and do not forget or lose it as they engage with global flows” (2006, 118). Unlike in colonial and slave societies, it seems to be pidginization rather than creolization that dominates in processes of identity formation in contemporary postcolonial societies. People – whether displaced as the result of war or as temporary or permanent migrants – are rarely as radically cut off their places of origin as they used to be. They rely on modern communication and

25  The languages that serve as the basis for a new creole language may continue to exist, but are usually no longer spoken by the group that is undergoing cultural and linguistic creolization and/or no longer serve as languages of ethnic reference.

30

Knörr

transportation technologies to stay in touch over long distances and periods of time. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that what may be observed as sociocultural pidginization today may (or may not) result in creolization in the long run. It generally takes longer for new ethnicized identities to emerge than to create new common social practices, cultural representations and transethnic identifications. However, the fact that staying in touch with one’s society of origin has become easier and more common will affect how new social, cultural and language forms and practices as well as identities are forged under conditions of diversity in migrant settings and diasporas. The CvP model distinguishes analytically between sociocultural forms and practices and languages and language usages on the one hand and identityformation on the other. It thereby contributes to a better understanding of how sociocultural and linguistic phenomena acquire specific identity-related meanings within the local context in which they relate to one another and enables us to study and analyze these processes comparatively across different societies. References Adone, D. 2012. The Acquisition of Creole Languages: How Children Surpass Their Input. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alleyne, M. 1971. “Acculturation and the Cultural Matrix of Creolization.” In Pidgini­ zation and Creolization of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 169–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alleyne, M. 1980. Comparative Afro-American: An Historical-Comparative Study of English-Based Afro-American Dialects of the New World. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma. Anderson, B. 1999[1994]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bangura, A.K. 2006. “The Krio Language: Diglossic and Political Realities.” In New Perspectives on the Sierra Leone Krio, edited by M. Dixon-Fyle and G.R. Cole, 151–66. New York: Peter Lang. Barnard, A., and J. Spencer, eds., 1996. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Routledge. Barth, F. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Bolland, O.N. 1998. “Creolisation and Creole Societies: A Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History.” Caribbean Quarterly 44(1/2): 1–32. Bolland, O.N. 2006. “Reconsidering Creolization and Creole Societies.” Shibboleths: Journal of Comparative Theory 1(1): 1–14.

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

31

Brathwaite, E.K. 1971. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820. Oxford: Clarendon. Brathwaite, E.K. 1974. Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean. Kingston: Savacou. Carreira, A. 1983. O Crioulo de Cabo Verde. Surto e Expansão (2nd edition). Lisboa: self-publication. Chataigner, A. 1963. “Le créole portugais du Sénégal: observations et textes.” Journal of African Languages 2: 44–71. Chaudenson, R. 2001. Creolization of Language and Culture. London: Routledge. Chirikba, V.A. 2008. “The Problem of the Caucasian Sprachbund.” In From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics, edited by P. Muysken, 25–94. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Clemons, A., and E. Yerende. 2009. “Interrelationships of Non-Formal Mother Tongue Education and Citizenship in Guinea and Senegal.” International Journal of Bilin­ gual Education and Bilingualism 12: 415–27. Cobbinah, A. 2010. “The Casamance as an Area of Intense Language Contact: The Case of Baïnounk Gubaher.” Journal of Language Contact. Thema 3: 175–202. Cohen, A. 1981. The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cohen, R., and P. Toninato. 2009. “Introduction: The Creolization Debate: Analysing Mixed Identities and Cultures.” In Creolization: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures, edited by R. Cohen and P. Toninato, 1–21. London: Routledge. de la Cadena, M., and O. Starn. 2007. Indigenous Experience Today. Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series. Oxford: Berg. do Couto, H.H. 1990. “Política e planeamento lingüística na Guiné-Bissau.” Papia – Revista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares 1: 47–58. do Couto, H.H. 1994. O crioulo português da Guiné-Bissau. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Dalby, D. 1981. “National Languages in Education.” Report for UNESCO. Paris. Eriksen, T.H. 1999. “Tu dimunn pu vini Kreol: The Mauritian Creole and the Concept of Creolization.” Transnational Communities Programme, Working Paper no. 99/13. Oslo: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. Eriksen, T.H. 2002[1993]. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto. Eriksen, T.H. 2007. “Creolization in Anthropological Theory and in Mauritius.” In Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 153–77. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast. Friedman, J. 1994. Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage. Fyle, C.N., and E.D. Jones. 1980. Krio-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

32

Knörr

Gilman, C. 1979. “Cameroonian Pidgin English: A Neo-African Language. In Readings in Creole Studies, edited by I. Hancock, 269–80. Ghent: E. Story-Scientia. Hancock, I.F. 1974. “English in Liberia.” American Speech 49: 224–29. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolization.” Africa 57(4): 546–59. Haust, D. 1995. Codeswitching in Gambia: Eine soziolinguistische Untersuchung von Mandinka, Wolof und Englisch in Kontakt. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. Havik, P.J. 2007. “Kriol without Creoles: Afro-Atlantic Connections in the Guinea Bissau Region (16th to 20th centuries).” In Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic, edited by N.P. Naro, R. Sansi-Roca, and D.H. Treece, 41–73. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Headland, T.N., K.L. Pike, and M. Harris. 1990. Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Jenkins, R. 1997. Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations. London: Sage. Kihm, A. 1979/80. “Aspects d’une syntaxe historique. Etudes sur le créole portugais de Guiné-Bissau.” PhD diss., Université de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle. Knörr, J. 1995. Kreolisierung versus Pidginisierung als Kategorien kultureller Differenzierung: Varianten neoafrikanischer Identität und Interethnik in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Münster: LIT. Knörr, J. 2000. “Kulturelle Transformationsprozesse in Jakarta im Spannungsfeld von Ethnisierung und Transethnisierung.” In Stadt in Stücke: Entstehungsprozesse neuer urbaner Traditionen, edited by U. Krasberg and B.E. Schmidt, 247–70. Marburg: Curupira. Knörr, J. 2007a. Kreolität und postkoloniale Gesellschaft: Integration und Differenzierung in Jakarta. Frankfurt: Campus. Knörr, J. 2007b. Creole Identity and Postcolonial Nation-Building. Examples from Indonesia and Sierra Leone. Série Antropologia, no. 416. Brasília: Departamento Antropologia, Universidade Brasília. Knörr, J. 2008. “Towards Conceptualizing Creolization and Creoleness.” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers, no. 100. http://www.eth.mpg.de/ cms/de/publications/working_papers/wp0100. Knörr, J. 2009. “Postkoloniale Kreolität versus koloniale Kreolisierung.” Paideuma 55: 93–115. Knörr, J. 2010a. “Contemporary Creoleness, or The World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731–59. Knörr, J. 2010b. “Out of Hiding? Strategies of Empowering the Past in the Reconstruction of Krio Identity.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past. Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 205–28. Leiden: Brill. Knörr, J. 2012. “Creolization.” In Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by G. Ritzer, 335–42. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

33

Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Knörr, J., and C. Kohl. 2016. “Introduction. The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective.” In The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective, edited by J. Knörr and C. Kohl, 1–18. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Kohl, C. 2010. “Creole Identity, Interethnic Relations and Post-Colonial NationBuilding in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa.” PhD diss., Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Kohl, C. 2012. “Diverse Unity: Creole Contributions to Interethnic Integration in Guinea-Bissau.” Nations and Nationalism 18: 643–62. Kohl, C., C. Højbjerg, J. Knörr, M. Rudolf, A. Schroven, and W. Trajano Filho. 2012. “National, Ethnic, and Creole Identities in Contemporary Upper Guinea Coast Societies.” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Paper, no. 135. http://www.eth.mpg.de/cms/de/publications/working_papers/wp0135. Lopes da Silva, B. 1984. O dialecto crioulo de Cabo Verde, vol. 7, dialectos portugueses do ultramar. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional. McLaughlin, F. 2008. “Senegal: The Emergence of a National Lingua Franca.” In Language and Identity in Africa, edited by A. Simpson, 79–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ménard, A. 2015. “Beyond Autochthony Discourses: Sherbro Identity and the (Re-)Construction of Social and National Cohesion in Sierra Leone.” PhD diss., Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Merlan, F. 2009. “Indigeneity, Global and Local.” Current Anthropology 50(3): 303–33. Mintz, S. 1998. “The Localization of Anthropological Practice: From Area Studies to Transnationalism.” Critique of Anthropology 18(2): 117–33. Mufwene, S.S. 2001a. “Creolization Is a Social, Not a Structural, Process.” In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, edited by I. Neumann-Holzschuh and E.W. Schneider, 65–84. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Mufwene, S.S. 2001b. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olson, J.S. 1983. Slave Life in America: A Historiography and Selected Bibliography. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. O’Toole, T.E., and J.E. Baker. 2005. Historical Dictionary of Guinea, 4th edition. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. Oyètádé, A., and V.F. Luke. 2008. “Sierra Leone: Krio and the Quest for National Integration.” In Language and National Integration in Africa, edited by A. Simpson, 122–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Palmié, S. 2006. “Creolization and Its Discontents.” Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 433–56.

34

Knörr

Palmié, S. 2007a. “Is There a Model in the Muddle? ‘Creolization’ in African Americanist History and Anthropology.” In Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 178–200. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast. Palmié, S. 2007b. “On the C-Word, Again.” In Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 66–83. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast. Patterson, O. 1975. “Context and Choice in Ethnic Allegiance: A Theoretical Framework and Caribbean Case Study.” In Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, edited by N. Glazer and D.P. Moynihan, 305–49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Patterson, O. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peck, S.M., Jr. 1988. “Tense, Aspect and Mood in Guinea-Casamance Portuguese Creole.” PhD diss., University of California. Rougé, J.L. 1985. “Formation et evolution du lexique du Créole de Guinée Bissau et de Casamance.” PhD diss., Université Lyon. Scantamburlo, L. 2005. “O ensino bilingue nas escolas primárias das Ilhas Bijagós: Crioulo guineense-português.” In Língua portuguesa e cooperação para o desenvolvi­ mento, edited by M.H. Mira Mateus and L. Teotónio Pereira, 63–78. Lisboa: Edições Colibri, CIDAC. Schlee, G. 2001. “Language and Ethnicity.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 12, edited by N. Smelder and P.B. Baltes, 8285–88. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Singler, J.V. 1989. “Plural Marking in Liberian Settler English, 1820–1980.” American Speech 64: 40–64. Singler, J.V. 1997. “The Configuration of Liberia’s Englishes.” World Englishes 16: 205–31. Spitzer, L. 1974. The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Stewart, C. 2006. “How Different? Re-Examining the Process of Creolization.” In The Making and Unmaking of Differences, edited by R. Rottenburg, B. Schnepel, and S. Shimada, 107–22. Bielefeld: Transcript. Stewart, C. 2007. “Introduction.” In Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 1–25. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast. Stutzman, R. 1981. “El Mestizaje: An All-Inclusive Ideology of Exclusion.” In Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, edited by N.E. Whitten, 45–94. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Trajano Filho, W. 1998. “Polymorphic Creoledom: The ‘Creole’ Society of GuineaBissau.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania.

Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity

35

Trajano Filho, W. 2004. “A constituição de um olhar fragilizado: notas sobre o colonialismo português em África.” In A persistência da história: passado e contemporanei­ dade em África, edited by C.Carvalho and J. Pina Cabral, 21–59. Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Trajano Filho, W. 2010. “The Creole Idea on Nation and Its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 157–84. Leiden: Brill.

Part 2 Situating Creole Languages in Society

∵

Chapter 3

Lingua Franca Onset in a Superdiverse Neighbourhood: Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp Jan Blommaert Introduction I arrive at my Moroccan barber.1 He is standing outside his shop, talking to an elderly man. While I install myself in his chair he tells me what’s up: Mo: JB: Mo: JB: Mo:

Die meneer [wijst naar de deur] – nu – vakantie In Turkiye Zijn vrouw – eerst twee dagen goed [twee vingers opgestoken] Dan dag drie dag vier niet goed – ziek worden Naar kliniek – dood! [wegwerpgebaar] Amai! Dat is erg! Misschien hart? [hand op de borst] Ja hart stopt Oy oy oy. Hoe oud was zij? Vrouw? Misschien vierenzestig Zij geen kinderen hé – alleen één zoon [één vinger omhoog] Maar weg – trouwen – andere kant [wegwerpgebaar] Niet komen naar mama hé [schudt hoofd]

Translation: Mo: That gentleman [points to door] – now – holiday In Turkiye His wife – first two days good [two fingers in the air] Then day three day four not good – being ill To hospital – dead! [dismissing gesture] 1  This chapter was first presented as a lecture at the Symposium on “Creole Languages and Postcolonial Diversity in Comparative Perspective,” October 2014, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Germany). I am grateful to the participants for generous feedback and input.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_004

40

Blommaert

JB: Wow! that is bad! Maybe heart? [places hand on chest] Mo: Yes, heart stops JB: Oy oy oy. How old was she? Mo: Wife? Maybe sixty four They no children, right – just one son [one finger up] But gone – marrying – other side [dismissive gesture] Not come to mama, right [shakes head] My barber, whom I shall call Mohamed (‘Mo’ in the transcript), is in his midforties and immigrated nine years ago from Tanger to Antwerp. His family remained in Tanger, and Mohamed uses short breaks in the working year to visit them. He works with two associates, also recent and direct immigrants from the Tanger area in Morocco. None of the three barbers in the shop can be said to be ‘fluent’ in Dutch, and they interact among each other in Arabic peppered with occasional Dutch or French loanwords.2 When the shop is empty, the TV is tuned to Arabic-medium entertainment or religious programs; whenever I enter the shop, the channel is changed to Dutch TV. Mohamed’s barber shop is in Statiestraat, the central axis of a ‘superdiverse’ neighborhood in the inner-city Antwerp district of Berchem (see Blommaert 2013). While his shop would frequently welcome Moroccan friends for a chat and coffee, Mohamed’s customers represent a cross-section of the highly volatile demography of the area: local ‘native’ (often elderly) Belgians mingle with Moroccan, Turkish, Indian, Eastern-European and African customers. The lingua franca in the shop is Dutch – at least, a range of very elementary forms of Dutch. Mohamed and his associates have no knowledge of English, and their proficiency in French is equally limited. Customers to his shop display a broad range of degrees of fluency in Dutch, from fully proficient native Antwerp dialect to almost nothing. For the latter, Mohammed has compiled a sort of scrap book with pictures from magazines showing different haircut styles; when verbal interaction about the desired services fails, the scrapbook is brought on and customers point to the pictures closest to their preference – after which Mohamed and his two associates get down to work. Verbal interaction in Dutch is in itself usually limited to brief questions about the preferred haircut: “kort?,” “hier beetje lang?,” “Met machine ook?” (“short?,” “a bit long here?” “With machine [hair trimmer] as well?”), and to occasional ‘small talk’ about

2  One of Mohamed’s associates, remarkably, uses English ‘thank you’ instead of the Dutch thanking routine ‘dank u.’ Observe also that Mohamed uses the Turkish word for ‘Turkey’ (‘Turkiye’), an effect of language contact.

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

41

the weather or other topics. Goffman famously qualified this as “safe supplies” (1963, 154). When non-Moroccan customers arrive, all three barbers greet them in chorus with a local-colloquial expression ‘alles goe?’ (‘everything all right?’); when such customers are chatty – something rather frequent with elderly native customers – Mohamed and his associates perform Dutch backchanneling routines (‘really?,’ ‘yes,’ ‘right,’ ‘oh my god,’ ‘no problem’) but abstain from extensive conversational engagement. This might occasion amusing sequences, such as the following, in which an elderly native customer (Cu) asks a rather direct question to Mohamed (Mo): Cu: Zeg wat is dat daar allemaal met die moslims vandaag de dag? Al die miserie? Mo: Ja – jaaaa Cu: Ja gij verstaat mij niet hé Mo: Hmmm Translation: Cu: Say, what’s all that with Muslims these days? All that misery? Mo: Yes, yeaaaah Cu: You don’t understand me, do you? Mo: Hmmmm The sociolinguistic regime in operation in Mohamed’s barber shop is not exceptional in Statiestraat: it is the rule. In the highly flexible and dynamic sociocultural environment characterizing this superdiverse neighborhood, a complex of non-native Dutch forms which I shall group under the term ‘oecumenical Dutch’ has become the lingua franca. It is good to know that in Flanders-Belgium, where a strong monoglot ideology surrounds discourses about Dutch and its role in society, migration is often presented as ‘a threat to Dutch.’ The “diversification of diversity” (Vertovec 2007) is presented as an erosion of the unchallengeable position of Dutch as the language of all business, public and private – a floodgate of multilingualism in which global lingua francae such as English, French, Spanish, Russian or Mandarin Chinese will ultimately prevail. In Statiestraat, no evidence for this claim is present; on the contrary – what we see is an unquestioned hegemony of oecumenical Dutch as the vernacular for almost any form of cross-ethnolinguistic interaction. Note, however, that this oecumenical Dutch is an ‘unstable’ and ‘dynamic’ given – it is an ‘elastic’ sociolinguistic phenomenon and not a ‘variety’ of Dutch

42

Blommaert

in the sense often attributed to that term in traditions such as those of ‘World Englishes’ (e.g., Brutt-Griffler 2002). We are not witnessing the birth of a new dialect or sociolect; we are observing a permanent sociolinguistic process of considerable complexity revolving around a volatile social structure articulating itself by means of an equally volatile communicative instrumentarium. Not the medium of communication is our central concern, but the patterns of communicative activity. The view that I shall elaborate in this chapter is that attention to such emergent and intrinsically unstable patterns of communication may tell us a thing or two about the foundations of contemporary sociolinguistics. In particular, it shows us how unstable social formations can still develop effective and structured sociolinguistic modes – something that may begin to inform us about the core of the “interaction of language and social life” (Hymes 1972). I shall address these patterns of communication as forms of “creative adaptation” and “systems in their own right” to adopt Hymes’s famous words (1971, 3), rather than as deviations from some rule or ideal of language usage. In what follows, I shall first sketch the characteristics of superdiversity, as articulated in Statiestraat; after which I shall briefly characterize several forms of Dutch operating there. This will then lead us to reflections on sociolinguistic systems as ‘complex’ and open ‘systems’ in which ephemeral structures of conviviality provide a degree of social cohesion not easily perceived when applying more traditional modes of social and sociolinguistic analysis. I expect that some people may find these reflections applicable to the study of early stages of languagecontact-induced change, pidginization and creolization, but shall not, by lack of demonstrable expertise, enter into elaborate argumentation in that direction.

Sociolinguistic Superdiversity

Two historically (and accidentally) concurrent forces have had a profound impact on sociolinguistic environments across the globe. The historical period in which both occurred is the early 1990s, and the forces are (1) the end of the Cold War and (2) the emergence and widespread use of the Internet. Together, these forces have had an impact on ‘patterns of mobility’ in the world, affecting, naturally, the demographic make-up of societies as well as the ways in which members of such societies organize communication and information exchange, and the social effects thereof, in their lives. Observe that while the impact of these processes is effectively global and surely not confined

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

43

to the great metropolitan urban centers, it is evident that the specific patterns of change are different in different parts of the world (cf., Wang et al. 2014). The end of the Cold War involved, specifically in Europe, the end of a model of ‘zoning’ in the world, which ensured – to use a simple example – that cars with Romanian or Ukrainian license plates would never be seen on highways in Western Europe, students from the People’s Republic of China at WesternEuropean and American universities would be fewer in number than students from Taiwan, and that multinational businesses based in ‘the West’ had only very limited activities in countries belonging to the ‘Communist Bloc,’ as it was then known. A flight from Brussels to Tokyo would stop in Anchorage then, whereas it would now routinely cross airspace formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. New routes of physical mobility became available in various parts of the world, and new forms of migration used these routes, now including, in Western Europe, a vast range of different modalities, motives and backgrounds for migration, from commuter-like temporary to residential migration, from fully legal relocation to clandestine immigration and asylum applications, and from unskilled to highly qualified elite migrants (Vertovec 2007). And as for the Internet: it has dramatically influenced the ways in which we organize our communicative and knowledge economies, our group affiliations and memberships, our identities and our patterns of social conduct, enabling us (including the new migrants) to arrive at that space-time compression characterizing Castells’s (1996) “network society” (for discussions see Burke 2000; Varis 2014). The Sri Lankan lady in whose Statiestraat grocery I buy my cigarettes has a tablet on her counter now, with skype open the day round, by means of which she continuously communicates in Tamil with her relatives in Sri Lanka while she serves me in her elementary form of Dutch. Sociolinguistically, this new dimension of globalization demands a new theoretical and analytical framework (Blommaert 2010, 2014a; Blommaert and Rampton 2011). With the fact of mobility now staring us in the face, the implicit assumption of stable and sedentary ‘speech communities’ present in older and mainstream sociolinguistic models – a strong bias in favor of the ‘local’ in description and explanation – could no longer be applied to adequately address phenomena in which issues of ‘scale’ (from strictly local to several degrees of ‘translocal’) are apparent. Elementary processes of meaning-making – communication – likewise have been caught in an imagery in which face-to-face verbal interaction between (physically copresent) members of a community in which linguistic, social and cultural codes were widely shared. Such images, naturally, fell short of addressing the complex forms of on-and offline communication we now witness. For one thing, visual-graphic literacy has acquired a

44

Blommaert

new and sometimes puzzling dynamics in online and mobile communication, pushing sociolinguists to abandon the ‘primacy’ of verbal language as the locus of authentic and creative expression (Lillis 2013; Varis and Blommaert 2014). And as for verbal interaction, the simple shopping routine described above – with me buying cigarettes in my local Sri Lankan grocery – involves a participant framework in which family members half a world away are copresent as overhearers, and entering my neighborhood shop now involves engaging in a multilingual environment – Dutch and Tamil simultaneously enacted in different but coordinated practices, with language contact phenomena due to their presence and deployment – not hitherto witnessed. Over half a century ago, Erving Goffman (1964, 134) famously warned his generation of scholars that “your social situation is not your country cousin”: scientists tended to seriously underestimate the sui generis complexity of social situations in which people interacted with each other in conditions of physical copresence. We can reiterate this warning here: the ‘Goffmanian situation’ has been considerably complicated by the communicative economies of superdiversity, where copresence as well as ‘online presence’ blend into events of social interaction (see Blommaert, Spotti and Van der Aa 2015 for a detailed discussion of this point). Similarly, well-known language-contact phenomena understood, conventionally, as code-switching have become vastly more complex in this new context of mobility (Rampton 1995; Sharma and Rampton 2011). A framework in which language contact phenomena are a priori defined in terms of ‘languages’ (known and countable objects such as English or Swahili) quickly proved to be inadequate for addressing the intense and often ludic forms of ‘languaging’ performed by people in superdiverse contexts, in which people use ‘specific resources, functionally allocated’ in view of ‘communicative’ effect, in patterns of ‘enregisterment’ not clearly connected to conventionally understood languages (Jörgensen et al. 2011; Creese and Blackledge 2010; Agha 2007). A substantive qualification of the notion of language itself is inevitable, along with a thorough critique of almost every assumption about ‘knowledge of language’ in relation to ‘use of language’ (Rampton 1995, 2006; Blommaert 2012). People are more comfortably described in terms of the actual ‘repertoires’ they control – the concrete, specific and functionally specialized complexes of communitive resources they can deploy in specific social arenas (Blommaert and Backus 2013; Rymes 2014). This, in turn, undercuts the assumption of ‘sharedness’ in communication – a cornerstone of much discourse analysis – and so questions established understandings of (degrees of) ‘belonging’ to a ‘community’ of speakers (Silverstein 1996, 2014; Rampton 1998). Accepting mobility as a key aspect of sociolinguistic phenomena, we can see, dislodges a broad range

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

45

of central and deeply entrenched linguistic and sociolinguistic concepts, suggesting ‘complexity’ as a perspective for addressing language in society: a focus on uncertainty and indeterminacy, on nonlinearity and multifiliarity in sociolinguistic outcomes (Arnaut 2013; Blommaert 2014a, b; Blommaert, Spotti and Van der Aa 2015). Methodologically, the upshot of this emerging complexity perspective is that we now look ethnographically – that is, without much taken for granted – at actually deployed communicative resources of which the function (and, thus, their possible effects) remains to be determined in ‘actual practice.’ Determining such functions is evidently not a linguistic job alone: it involves an examination of the actual, deeply historical and political sociocultural (contextual) embeddedness of communicative patterns (Rampton, Maybin and Roberts 2014; Silverstein 2014). This concern with the sociocultural and historical sensitivity of actual functions of language aligns scholars of sociolinguistic superdiversity with the tradition of pidgin and creole studies – a set of objects of which the analysis could also not circumvent the specific sociohistorical and political circumstances of emergence, distribution and use (Hymes 1971). ‘Classic’ pidgin and creole studies, very much like the present sociolinguistics of superdiversity, had to examine the specifics of migration, labor conditions and economies in order to explain their objects (e.g., Mufwene 2005). Linguistically, the story of superdiverse sociolinguistic phenomena, like that of pidgins and creoles, is rather quickly told; their sociolinguistic story, however, is quite something else. Let us now have a look at such phenomena as they occur in Statiestraat.

Oecumenical Dutch in Statiestraat

I documented Statiestraat and its adjacent area in Blommaert (2013) and must refer the reader to that book for broader sociological, historical and demographic information. In short, Statiestraat is the central axis of a formerly working-class inner-city district in Southeast Antwerp, currently densely populated by a mix of (a) a ‘native’ Belgian, elderly working class population; (b) a very recently immigrated ‘native’ Belgian layer of young, relatively affluent middle-class families; (c) a large resident Turkish immigrant community, present since the 1970s, active in commerce and catering as well as (d) more recently, higher-ranked service provision (medical, financial, insurance, legal, real estate services) offered by the younger generation of Turkish immigrants, (e) a number of smaller resident groups, present since the 1990s, consisting of Moroccan, Eastern European and African immigrants; (f) a very volatile layer

46

Blommaert

of ‘transit’ immigrants, from Latin America, various parts of East, Southeast and Central Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. The area is known, in policy circles, as a ‘problem district’ due to higher-than-average unemployment and lowerthan-average income, low-value property and a significant amount of vacant commercial space. Sociolinguistically, culturally and socially, the neighborhood is outspokenly ‘polycentric,’ with several different and dynamic groups orienting towards different centers of normative conduct and ‘normalcy’ – the lives of ‘native’ double income families are governed by entirely different rules and constraints than those of clandestine immigrants from Georgia or Iraq, for instance. That, too, is often perceived as a comfort and security challenge. Given the extreme diversity of the social and demographic makeup of the area, and the rapid changes of its composition especially in segments (e) and (f) above, the area is characterized by a flexible and highly dynamic ‘infrastructure.’ ‘Ethnic’ shops are started and discontinued at a rapid pace, shops may relocate repeatedly (qualifying the impression of ‘vacant’ commercial space: shops often relocate conjecturally, depending on the amount of business they attract), and change ownership without advance notification to its customers. Shops and catering services range from extremely cheap – targeting the ‘transit’ immigrants mentioned above – to fashionable and boutique – targeting the new middle class described in (b) above. The infrastructure of the neighborhood, including its propensity towards rapid and unpredictable change, closely follows the sociodemographic dynamics of the area. A conspicuous, and characteristic, part of this infrastructure is a concentration of new religious facilities: never less than 10 and a maximum of 16 (figures fluctuate according to the dynamics just described) new ‘churches’ operate in Statiestraat, all of them evangelical-charismatic and run by immigrants of the (e) and (f) categories above: Nigerians, Congolese, Brazilian, Peruvian pastors run weekly services often attracting hundreds of followers. These followers, in a first stage, are mostly ‘ethnic’: Brazilians attend the Brazilian church, Congolese the Congolese church, and so forth. The language by means of which churches communicate in that stage would be the ‘ethnic’ language (e.g., Brazilian Portuguese), including customary regional lingua franca (e.g., English in the Nigerian church). When churches are well established, however, we notice that they address a broader constituency; and interestingly, they do so through the medium of Dutch (consider Figure 3.1). This double A4 poster could be found in 2007 on the window of a former shop now turned into a Brazilian place of worship. It is an example of ‘symmetrical bilingualism’ in which everything that is written in the source language (Brazilian Portuguese on the right) is ‘mirrored’ in the target language (Dutch on the left). The Dutch, however, is quite curious. ‘Assembleia,’ for instance,

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

47

Figure 3.1 Unfinished Portuguese-Dutch bilingualism, “Assemblage of God” church, Berchem 2012 © Jan Blommaert

is translated as ‘assemblage’ – a term applicable to what happens in a Volvo factory, for instance – rather than as the Dutch equivalent of ‘assembly’ (‘gemeenschap’). Other examples confirm the suspicion that an automatic translator application has been used by someone whose personal command of Dutch is very limited. Thus we read ‘hoorzittingen van stemen’ where one would expect ‘het horen van stemmen.’ Portuguese ‘audicao’ is, like its English equivalent ‘hearing,’ ambivalent and can mean both ‘the act of hearing’ as registering acoustic signals, and ‘a hearing’ as in a court procedure or an administrative process. ‘Hoorzittingen’ in the Brazilian Church’s poster is equivalent to the formal, administrative ‘hearing.’ Notwithstanding the ‘truncated’ nature of the Dutch used here, its function is clear: it serves the purpose of signaling – indexically – that non-Portuguese members are welcome. And in spite of the lexical, syntactic and orthographic shortcomings of the Dutch messages, ‘they do the job’ (consider now Figure 3.2). In 2012, the same Brazilian church relocated to a renovated spacious building elsewhere in Statiestraat. The simple home-printed A4 posters have been replaced by professionally manufactured ones, and the Dutch now deployed on the poster is fully normatively ‘correct.’ In the years separating both

48

Blommaert

Figure 3.2 Finished Portuguese-Dutch bilingualism, Assembleia de Deus church, Berchem 2012 © Jan Blommaert

moments, the church successfully attracted numbers of ‘native’ Dutch-speaking faithful; this increase in available in-house linguistic resources explains the difference in ‘language quality’ between both illustrations. Through examples such as those in Figures 3.1 and 3.2, we already see a number of things with respect to Dutch in this super diverse neighborhood. One: we see that Dutch linguistic and literacy resources are very unevenly distributed. The posters in Figure 3.1 were, as suggested, manufactured by someone with very limited access to standard Dutch resources; the poster in Figure 3.2 reflects ‘native’ maximal competence. Two: the function of Dutch is ‘to recruit and invite’ people across local (and in the case of churches, even wider) boundaries of ethnolinguistic groups. This is why I qualify it as ‘oecumenical’: it signals an openness to people not belonging to a specific group in the area. Whereas the second remark, about function, suggests stability, the first remark suggests instability, the presence of very different realizations of oecumenical Dutch. In fact, we best speak of a ‘gradient of realizations,’ ranging from ‘minimal’ to ‘maximum’ fluency in both spoken and written forms, and all of them inevitably ‘accented’ by features of background and ‘indexical biography’ (the trajectories by means of which repertoires are built). ‘Accent’ must be taken literally here. In discussing my barber Mohamed, above, I mentioned

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

49

that Mohamed and his two associates greet customers with a colloquialized routine expression ‘Alles goe?,’ which carries obvious Antwerp dialect traces. Similar features could be observed in routine exchanges elsewhere: the transactional phrases that regulate simple shopping practices – greetings, repeating the customer’s demand, stating the price of goods, saying goodbye – often carry local dialect inflections. Such local accent features disappear when simple routines are broken and people must answer more impromptu questions such as “How’s your daughter doing at school?” Thus, while the restricted routine forms of professional interaction suggest a degree of local fluency, discourse in other, less routinized domains quickly hits the limits of proficiency. Accent also occurs in writing. Figure 3.3 shows posters on the window of a call shop run by people from the Indian subcontinent and announces cheap rates for calls to specific countries. It is hard to determine the language in which the country names are written, as ‘Sut Afrika,’ ‘Tunesea’ or ‘Turky’ are neither Dutch, French nor English forms. This is ‘languaging.’ There is one exception though: ‘Peiro’ is an accurate reflection of local accented pronunciation of ‘Peru’ as [pæru:] (where [æ] is written as ‘ei’). ‘Peru’ is written in the Antwerp dialect – a resource cheaply available in the area. And ‘it works’: again we see how communicability appears less conditioned by the degree of grammatical or orthographic – ‘monoglot’ – ‘correctness’ than by the pragmatic-

Figure 3.3 Call shop poster, Berchem 2007 © Jan Blommaert

50

Blommaert

and-metapragmatic contextual (i.e., indexical) frames the signs invoke (cf., Silverstein 1996; Agha 2007). On the other end of the specter, nonnative accents shine through even in spite of longitudinal residence and advanced educational achievements. In Figure 3.4, we see part of the lettering on the window of a Turkish-owned financial services business in Statiestraat. The shop is owned by a member of that upwardly mobile and highly qualified younger generation of the Turkish community, and specializes in rather sophisticated financial and insurance products. Yet, the phrase ‘hipothecaire lening’ (‘mortgage’) contains an orthographic error: normative Dutch would impose ‘hypothecaire lening’ (with ‘y’ reflecting its ancient Greek origins). Note that the owner was educated and trained in an entirely Dutch-medium school trajectory; in spite of this, the ‘immigrant accent’ is there. It bears repeating that the presence of Dutch, here as elsewhere, has the same indexical function: it invites customers other than those belonging to a specific ethnolinguistic group (Turkish in this case). And again, ‘it works.’ Oecumenical Dutch, then, is a gradient of differentially distributed resources rather than one particular variety; its stability can be found in the function it serves – it is the ‘demotic’ medium of interaction in the neighborhood, one

Figure 3.4 Financial services shop window, Berchem 2012 © Jan Blommaert

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

51

that includes everyone and excludes no one. Its actual realizations may differ enormously ‘linguistically,’ but remain ‘indexically’ and therefore ‘functionally’ recognizable as a medium signaling openness towards everyone. Not much Dutch is required for this indexical transparency – the signal is not given through degrees of ‘correctness’ or fluency, it is given through the deployment of ‘any’ form of Dutch. And it works: I repeatedly emphasized that. In order to further underscore this, let me return to the vignette with which I opened this essay. My barber Mohamed, I reported, had been talking to an elderly gentleman as I approached his shop. The gentleman was a Turkish immigrant residing in the neighborhood for several years, the husband of the lady who tragically deceased during their joint holiday in Turkey. The Turkish gentleman is fluent in Turkish and has some proficiency in (colloquial and accented) Dutch; the repertoire of his interlocutor Mohamed has been described earlier. Their conversation, consequently, was in their respective varieties of Dutch. The restricted character of those varieties did not prevent this conversation from being ‘successful,’ though: Mohamed was able to report the story he had learned from the man to me, and to punctuate his factually accurate report with equally appropriate nonverbal expressions of conversational involvement and empathy, in such a way that it triggered conversational collaboration from me – a ‘native’ proficient speaker of Dutch. Mohamed’s limited proficiency in Dutch was sufficient to sustain intentional and goal-directed interactional involvement with a Turkish-language resident as well as with a Dutch-language resident of his neighborhood. Mohamed’s neighbor is a grocery run by a couple from Gujarat, India. Husband and wife have, like many others, a thematically specialized proficiency in Dutch (speaking a variety that betrays a Netherlands accent) enabling the fluent handling of the commercial routines in their shop. Mohamed, like most barbers, has local newspapers and magazines in his shop, and the Indian grocer has made a habit of picking up one of the newspapers and returning it shortly afterwards – an occasion on which he customarily engages in a brief discussion with Mohamed on the main topics in today’s news. I witnessed several such events but was never able to record them; but such events, whenever observed, never failed to astonish me: two people controlling very different, but equally restricted, levels of proficiency in Dutch engage in a pretty accurate and relatively detailed discussion of social events (sufficiently ‘Dutch’ to enable me to chip in a remark or two, occasionally), and achieve a level of understanding through such interactional engagements. It shows the elasticity of their ‘language’ and the fact that paucity of linguistic resources can still be accompanied by what Hymes (1996) called ‘functional plenitude.’

52

Blommaert

Observe, in conclusion, that these forms of oecumenical Dutch are not new in the neighborhood. My data collection includes data with a time depth of over a decade now, and the range of features has remained unaltered throughout that period. Since I started recording examples, I continuously observed extreme differences in proficiency reflecting a very uneven pattern of distribution of Dutch language resources in the area; I also continuously observed intensive deployment of very different levels of Dutch fluency, their connection to specific speech occasions and thematic domains such as commercial transactions and ‘small talk,’ as well as their efficacy in such actual instances of interaction. No sign of normative focusing or tightening has ever been recorded – every new group of inhabitants of the area appears to rapidly pick up whatever is available in the way of oecumenical Dutch, and to integrate rather quickly into the ‘speech community’ in which it is used. Note that this latter notion deserves its scare quotes, of course – see earlier remarks on this topic. But we shall see, nonetheless, that a certain level of ‘communityness’ is effectively at play here. Oecumenical Dutch, Conviviality and Its Limits The ‘functional plenitude’ mentioned above, I would argue, transcends the strictly communicative-interactional production of meaning: it also creates and recreates a level of social structure we call ‘conviviality’ (Blommaert 2013). Conviviality refers to a low-intensity but nevertheless very real (and important) level of social cohesion characterized by the avoidance of conflict and a ‘live and let live’ attitude. While it is very often dismissed as a relatively superficial level of social structuring, it should not be underestimated as to scope and impact (remember Goffman’s “Behaviour in Public Places”). Conviviality, in a super diverse neighborhood such as Statiestraat, is the general ‘key’ within which people interact with each other, and it is this key that prevents or aborts conflicts in an environment where almost any feature of people might lead to disapproval, misunderstanding or disqualification. Note that this level of conviviality does not cancel or even mitigate very non-convivial realities: as mentioned, the superdiversity of the area is accompanied by severe and outspoken forms of socio-economic inequality, with fully enfranchised citizens – people such as myself – living next to people whose clandestine presence excludes them from any form of social or economic benefit and forces them into often shameful forms of labor and housing exploitation. Conviviality is a ‘level’ of social structure, not ‘the’ social structure; it is a system with affordances and constraints.

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

53

Let us make this latter point somewhat more precise. The kind of oecumenical Dutch widespread in the neighborhood enables ‘particular’ forms of interaction but not others, since specific resources are required to perform specific communicative tasks. Figure 3.5 presents a graphic representation of this. Five rough sets of communicative tasks have been defined there: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

‘Shop routines’: minimal and highly focused patterns of communication required to perform shopping transactions. ‘Safe supplies’: a term borrowed from Goffman, and referring to ‘convivial’ small talk on topics such as the weather, superficial observations of the neighborhood and so on; ‘Getting along’: a broader and more varied set of communicative patterns in which ‘safe supplies’ are mixed with more personal topics exchanged among people who are ‘acquainted’ (in the sense of Goffman, again); ‘Problem solving’: relatively well-developed resources, including forms of argumentation and negotiation, that can be deployed for solving a range of interpersonal and institutional problems; ‘Specialized’: highly specific resources used in contexts that demand a level of specialization of the partners; think of discussing one’s children’s mathematics results with a mathematics teacher at a teacher-parent conference at school.

Evidently, all five types of communication require access to and control of very different sets of resources – ‘more and more specialized’ resources as we move up the scale of one to five. The line in Figure 3.5 rises sharply from the ‘problem

Figure 3.5 Communicative resources needs J. Blommaert

54

Blommaert

Figure 3.6 The language market J. Blommaert

solving’ domain onwards. The resources that are sufficient to ‘get along’ are not sufficient to talk to a mathematics teacher. Let us now take this insight into the issue of resources distribution. Two ‘markets’ can be distinguished: a ‘formal’ market of resources offered in Dutch language courses available in the neighborhood; and an ‘informal’ market of resources that can be picked up in everyday communicative contexts. Figure 3.6 shows the result. We can see that the formal market is effective in offering people the resources needed for shopping routines, ‘getting along’ and (to some degree) ‘problem solving,’ but do not offer the resources required for advanced specialized communication patterns. The same holds, by and large, for the informal market. There is a relative abundance of resources for shopping routines, ‘safe supplies’ and ‘getting along,’ but not for the communicative tasks that demand more and specialized resources. Both markets show a common distinction: resources required for neighborhood conviviality are relatively widely and easily accessible; the more advanced resources, however, are critical in advancing from conviviality to a level of ‘full citizenship’ – a level of social competence that enables one to defend one’s interests in several important domains of interpersonal and institutional interaction. So, while oecumenical Dutch could be argued to cover the ‘convivial’ domains of

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

55

interaction, it does not enable competence in forms of communication that condition full citizenship.3 As said earlier, conviviality is ‘part’ of the social structures operating in the neighborhood; it should not be taken to be ‘the’ social structure.

Conclusion: The Value of Conviviality

The point is, however, that conviviality is an effective level of social order in this neighborhood, and that it is heavily reliant on the widespread use of oecumenical Dutch as a lingua franca for cross-group interaction. Oecumenical Dutch, in that sense, is the infrastructure that supports the level of social cohesion that turns the superdiverse neighborhood into a relatively pleasant and comfortable environment, in spite of existing inequalities and differential levels of access to more advanced resources. And it does so not because of ‘linguistic stability’ – that old assumption in which people were supposed to produce understandable meanings to the extent that they stuck to a stable and fully shared code – but because of ‘sociolinguistic stability.’ It is the recognizability of oecumenical Dutch ‘as an indexical’ that shapes the convivial key in which people can comfortably engage with each other. The shared order of indexicality projected, emblematically, onto a ‘language,’ Dutch, regulates communicative traffic. We see an ‘elastic’ sociolinguistic system in which a broad range of linguistic and sociolinguistic non-standard features can be deployed, and in which pragmatic and metapragmatic adequacy (communicability) appears to dominate deployment. Deployment of actual communicative resources is, thus, dominated by functional rather than by ‘linguistic’ concerns, and it appears as ‘poly’-normative – reflecting the availability of several normative-functional ‘standards’ in a complex superdiverse environment – rather than ‘mono’-normative in the sense of oriented towards one stable and 3  It is worth reflecting on the opposite as well: that resources required for full citizenship could be insufficient and inadequate for conviviality. One can imagine people with highly specialized repertoires, consisting of e.g., professional registers in a language such as English, lacking ‘vernacularized’ and ‘demotic’ resources for everyday conviviality in social encounters. This, in effect, could define my own ‘truncated’ English competence, in which professional registers are highly developed while those appropriate for e.g., shopping routines or ‘safe supplies’ are considerably less developed, shifting my social persona from a highly articulate one in professional contexts towards a highly inarticulate one requiring support and directions from more ‘integrated’ people when shopping in a US supermarket.

56

Blommaert

controlled image of institutionalized ‘standard language.’ Tendencies over time also do not show processes of normative tightening of focusing: the system is not becoming less poly-normative. The lingua franca is, thus, a continuum of alternatively ordered features rather than a ‘language’ in the classical sense of the term. And these alternatively ordered features are kept together, in view of communicability, by a shared order of indexicality. It is this insight – that a lingua franca such as oecumenical Dutch operates as an order of indexicality, not as a language – that offers relevance for sociolinguistic research beyond its own confines. We are in a position to make statements about fundamental processes of social structuration, and the insights to be gathered from this afford generalizations at the level of social and cultural theory. What then about linguistics? The profound and systemic instability of oecumenical Dutch as a linguistic system would undoubtedly raise problems for anyone tempted to describe its manifestations as the formation of a new ‘dialect’ or ‘sociolect.’ Such attempts would be doomed to fail, because they are attempts to describe what is effectively an open and complex, polycentric ‘sociolinguistic’ system as a closed, ‘language’-like and rule-governed system. Such attempts would not just fail to do justice descriptively to the levels of variation apparent in the realizations of the ‘language’; they would fail to capture the fundamentals of what is there: that we are addressing actual, situated communicative practices, deeply contextualized in an unstable and fractured ‘context-within-contexts,’ the effects of which are ‘social and cultural’ and bear just distant traces of the linguistic encoding by means of which they were performed. This, evidently, reminds us of the big debates in pidgin and creole studies over the past decades, and the study of ephemeral and highly unstable patterns of communication such as the ones described in this essay may carry some relevance for these debates – which should therefore never be closed. References Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arnaut, K. 2013. “Super-Diversity: Elements of an Emerging Perspective.” Diversities 15(2): 1–16. Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. 2012. “Lookalike Language.” English Today 58(2): 60–62. Blommaert, J. 2013. Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp

57

Blommaert, J. 2014a. “From Mobility to Complexity in Sociolinguistic Theory and Method.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 103. https://www.tilburguniversity .edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/tpcs/. Blommaert, J. 2014b. “Meaning as a Nonlinear Effect: The Birth of Cool.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 106. https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/ institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/tpcs/. Blommaert, J., and A. Backus. 2013. “Superdiverse Repertoires and the Individual.” In Multilingualism and Multimodality: Current Challenges for Educational Studies, edited by I. de Saint-Georges and J.-J. Weber, 11–32. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Blommaert, J., M. Spotti, and J. Van der Aa. 2015. “Complexity, Mobility, Migration.” Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies, paper 137. https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/ research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/tpcs/. Blommaert, J., and B. Rampton. 2011. “Language and Superdiversity.” Diversities 13(2): 1–22. Brutt-Griffler, J. 2002. World English: A Study of Its Development. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Burke, P. 2000. A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge: Polity. Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. London: Blackwell. Creese, A., and A. Blackledge. 2010. “Towards a Sociolinguistics of Superdiversity.” Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaften 13: 549–72. Goffman, E. 1963. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press. Goffman, E. 1964. “The Neglected Situation.” American Anthropologist 66(6): 133–36. Hymes, D. 1971. “Preface.” In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 3–11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hymes, D. 1972[1986]. “Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, edited by J. Gumperz and D. Hymes, 35–71. London: Basil Blackwell. Hymes, D. 1996. Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice. London: Francis&Taylor. Jörgensen, J.-N., M. Karrebaek, L. Madsen, and J. Möller. 2011. Poly-Languaging in Superdiversity.” Diversities 13(2): 23–37. Lillis, T. 2013. The Sociolinguistics of Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mufwene, S. 2005. Creoles, ecologie sociale, evolution linguistique. Paris: L’Harmattan. Rampton, B. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London: Longman. Rampton, B. 1998. “Speech Community.” In Handbook of Pragmatics 1998, edited by J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, J. Blommaert, and C. Bulcaen, 1–30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

58

Blommaert

Rampton, B. 2006. Language in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rampton, B., J. Maybin, and C. Roberts. 2014. “Methodological Foundations in Linguistic Ethnography.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 102. https://www.tilburg university.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/tpcs/. Rymes, B. 2014. Communicating Beyond Language. New York: Routledge. Sharma, D., and B. Rampton. 2011. “Lectal Focusing in Interaction: A New Methodology for the Study of Superdiverse Speech.” Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, paper 79. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/education/research/ Research-Centres/ldc/publications/workingpapers/abstracts/WP079-Lectal -focusing-in-interaction-A-new-methodology-for-the-study-of-superdiverse -speech-.aspx. Silverstein, M. 1996. “Monoglot ‘Standard’ in America: Standardization and Metaphors of Linguistic Hegemony.” In The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology, edited by D. Brenneis and R. Macaulay, 284–306. Boulder: Westview Press. Silverstein, M. 2014. “How Language Communities Intersect: Is ‘Super-Diversity’ an Incremental or Transformative Condition?” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies paper 107. https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/ babylon/tpcs/. Varis, P. 2014. “Digital Ethnography.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 104. https:// www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/ tpcs/. Varis, P., and J. Blommaert. 2014. “Conviviality and Collectives on Social Media: Virality, Memes and Social Structure.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 105. https://www .tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/tpcs/. Vertovec, S. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–54. Wang, X., M. Spotti, K. Juffermans, L. Cornips, S. Kroon, and J. Blommaert. 2014. “Globalization in the Margins: Toward a Re-Evaluation of Language and Mobility.” Applied Linguistics Review 5(1): 23–44.

Chapter 4

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Language, History and Power in Mauritius

At a seminar organized at the University of Mauritius in 1981, Father Henri Souchon debunked a myth dear to many Mauritians and perhaps even more foreigners, namely “The Myth of Fifteen Languages for a Population of a Million” (Souchon 1982). While not denying that as many as fifteen languages were sometimes used in this fairly small island – less than 2000 square kilometers – in the southwestern Indian Ocean, Souchon distinguished between ritual, colloquial, literary and official languages, and demonstrated that although the linguistic complexity in Mauritius is pretty impressive, it is less bewildering than in the Tower of Babel. Some of the languages of Mauritius, such as Sanskrit, Arabic and Latin, are used only in religious contexts. Others are mainly ancestral languages, rarely if ever spoken – Tamil, Telugu, Marathi. French is the most widely used language in the media, and is spoken at home by two to five percent of the population. English, the official language since 1814, is the language of formal politics and public administration, but has largely failed to establish itself outside the realms of officialdom (Eriksen 1990). Mandarin remains alive, barely, as a script in which many Sino-Mauritians (Mauritians of Chinese origins, 3%) continue to be literate, but their original vernaculars, Hakka and Cantonese, are rarely spoken today. Standard Hindi and Urdu are taught in school, but not spoken. This leaves Bhojpuri (a regional variety of Hindi) and Mauritian Creole or Kreol as the de facto national languages in Mauritius, with Kreol being by far the most commonly spoken. Rural Indo-Mauritians who speak Bhojpuri are always bilingual in Kreol; the opposite does not apply. The demographic composition of Mauritius can be broken down according to several criteria – linguistic, ethnic, religious. The most commonly recognized taxonomy is based on a mixture of racial, ethnic and religious criteria, although many Mauritians reject divisive identities altogether, preferring to define themselves as Mauritians. Be this as it may, the commonly recognized groups of the island are Franco-Mauritians (2%), Creoles (of African or mixed ancestry, 28%), Sino-Mauritians (3%), Muslims (17%), Hindus of North Indian origin (39%), Tamils (7%), Telugus (2.5%) and Marathis (1.5%).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_005

60

Hylland Eriksen

Like the New World Creole languages, Kreol developed as a result of the enforced displacement of African slaves and their interaction with each other as well as with their French slavemasters. Slavery began with French colonialization in 1715, and by the late eighteenth century, Kreol had been established as the main lingua franca and mother-tongue for Mauritian-born slaves (cf., Baker and Syea 1991). In Bernardin de St Pierre’s “Voyage à L’Isle de France” from 1773, there are already indications that a ‘degenerated’ form of French was being used in communication with and among slaves. Slavery ended in 1839, and in the following decades, a large number of Indian indentured laborers were brought into the island to work on the plantations. Other Indians also arrived as traders, along with Chinese merchants, who largely arrived in the first decades of the twentieth century. These immigrant groups rapidly learnt Kreol, often at the expense of relinquishing their original languages. In contemporary Mauritius, Kreol is ubiquitous, and it is considered nu langaz (our language), by most of the population, notwithstanding its historical origins as the lingua franca of slaves and their masters. At the same time, Kreol is, by common consent, not considered sufficiently sophisticated and ‘developed’ for abstract and formal communication, but even if it is a language many speak malgré eux, it is a strong marker of Mauritian identity, not least among emigrated Mauritians and their children (Goodchild 2013). The question I now proceed to raising, and will subsequently answer, concerns why Kreol continues, well into the twenty-first century, to be marked as an inferior, simple, unsophisticated language. This is slightly puzzling. Mauritius has come a long way since achieving independence from Britain in 1968. Its monocultural economy of sugar dependence was left behind during the fastpaced industrialization of the 1980s in tandem with large-scale development of resort tourism along the coast; the educational level has risen along with the standard of living, the standard of housing has improved considerably, as has the material infrastructure, from roads to tourist hotels and shopping complexes. At the same time, Kreol, although it is still spoken in most informal and some formal contexts, continues to be seen as unsuited as an official language, and its structural position is, if anything, somewhat inferior to the situation in the mid-1980s, when I began to do research in the island.

The Cultural Revolution that Fizzled Out

Soon after independence, Mauritian politics began to swing towards the left. A new party campaigning against alleged corruption and camaraderie,

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

61

communalism and class divisions saw the light of day already in 1969. Named Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), it was led by the Franco-Mauritian Paul Bérenger (born 1945), who had witnessed the student revolt in Paris in 1968, and his coleaders included Dev Virahsawmy (born 1942), a young literary scholar with a degree from Scotland, who would almost immediately make his mark as a promoter of Kreol as a national language. Virahsawmy, active as an MMM leader and politician until 1987, wrote poetry and plays in Kreol, winning the first prize of the Radio France International competition in 1981 for his 1972 play Li (a Kreol pronoun which can be translated as he, she or it). Virahsawmy would later “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “Othello” in Kreol (Zeneral Makbef, Toufann and Prezidan Otelo), making Shakespeare’s plays speak to current affairs in Mauritius, as well as translating several of Shakespeare’s plays and adapting “Le petit prince” (Zistoir ti-prins). “Le petit prince” is a philosophical tale written in simple language, and perhaps this is why it lends itself so easily to various adaptations; as pointed out by Wilson Trajano Filho (personal communication), it was recently translated into Cape Verdean Creole as well. As noted by Beesoondial (2013), Virahsawmy consciously enriches Kreol with a smattering of Bhojpuri words in a bid to bridge the gap between the spoken languages of Mauritius. Virahsawmy has pointed out that the “Mauritian intelligentsia of the sixties and seventies were dead against any form of promotion of MC [Mauritian Creole] which for them was a dialect, a pidgin, a patois, some form of broken French, but not a language” (Walling et al. 2013, 87), adding that he was determined to prove them wrong with what he speaks of as his “translation– adaptation–Mauritianisation” (ibid., 88), aiming to show that Kreol is as rich, versatile and complex as the colonial languages still preferred in written communication in Mauritius. However, Virahsawmy admits, with hindsight, that the political project of turning Kreol into the national language of Mauritius, replacing French and English, would recede into the background as the years went by, and that he would increasingly use the templates from Shakespeare to address contemporary social and cultural issues. For example, his adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” (Ramdeo ek Ziliet) concerns a love affair between a Hindu boy and a Christian girl; Othello is transformed into a gay president; and Kalibann (Caliban) of Toufann is mutated from a demon into a sympathetic métis (Beesoondial 2013; November 2009). Although arguably a cultural one-man movement in his own right, Virahsawmy was not alone in promoting Kreol. Notably, the left-wing Ledikasyon pu travayer (education for work), the NGO wing of the party Lalit de klas (class struggle), which broke away from the increasingly pragmatic MMM

62

Hylland Eriksen

in 1981, has consistently worked to revalorize and upgrade the status of Kreol, within the framework of its broader socialist program. LPT published the first Kreol–English dictionary in 1985. Since the 1970s, several cultural groups have consciously used and promoted Kreol, the arguably most famous and enduring one being the band Grup Latanier, which very consciously mixes musical influences from diverse sources in order to depict Mauritius as a cultural melting-pot with a shared identity – the MMM’s slogan was for years enn sel lepep, enn sel nasyon (one single people; one single nation) – and which, naturally, has never performed in any other language than Kreol. When the MMM won the general elections in 1982, winning all 60 contested seats (Mauritius has a Westminster electoral system rather than proportional representation), language was high on its agenda, but not among its most popular policies. Resistance to an officialization of Kreol was strong and massive in different segments of the population, possibly for different reasons. When news were read in Kreol on national TV, for example, even Creole fishermen whose command of French was weak reacted negatively, saying that they felt the announcer spoke to them as if they were children. But the largest scandal, as analyzed by Eisenlohr (2007), was caused by the performance of the national anthem in Kreol on Independence Day in 1983. Announced as “the national anthem sung in the national language” on MBC (Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation), the performance led to vice-prime minister Harish Boodhoo, a Hindu, sacking the director of the MBC, and subsequently led to a split of the government and the emergence of a new, Hindu dominated party, the MSM (Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien). In a word, language in Mauritius, and especially Kreol, is deeply politicized, and the split of the MMM government in 1983 was a major setback for Kreol, which also signified its connections to ethnicity and other forms of identity politics. What needs explanation is that the linguistic situation in Mauritius in 2015 is very similar to that in 1982, or for that matter in 1970. The ‘cultural revolution’ heralded by the radicals of the 1970s and ‘80s, and the momentous efforts by Dev Virahsawmy and other intellectuals trying to build a Mauritian nation from below, may seem to have come to nought. We shall have to address this question very soon.

Compartmentalization of Language Use

The classic sociolinguistic term diglossia, referring to a hierarchical relationship between two languages where code-switching marks transitions between

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

63

types of social situations, fits the Mauritian situation quite well. It is fair to add, though, that most Mauritians in fact operate within a triglossic or even quadriglossic situation, with English and sometimes Bhojpuri added to the Kreol– French relationship. Unlike in some Caribbean societies (such as Trinidad), there is no ‘post-creole continuum’ (De Camp 1971; Carrington et al. 1983) to be observed in Mauritius. Kreol is sufficiently distant from French not to be mutually intelligible with it, and although new French words are continuously introduced into academic, technical and literary Kreol, they are immediately ‘kreolized’ in terms of syntax and pronounciation (see Syea 2012). The clear boundaries between languages in Mauritius entail, in practice, an equally clear division of labor between them in society. Again, one cannot but be struck by the persistence of linguistic boundaries in the face of broad social change in other domains, reflecting the rarely examined commonplace that different parts of a cultural world change at different speeds. While Mauritians are on the whole wealthier, more mobile and better educated now, and there have been massive developments in industry, infrastructure and tourism, there have not been similarly rapid changes transforming kinship structures and ethnic relationships, political practices, social hierarchies and language use. The main newspapers are still in French; English is still the language used in the Legislative Assembly; and by and large, schoolbooks are in English (a language most young children simply do not understand). However, as the government has had to concede (Government of Mauritius 2013), Kreol is often used informally, in practice, as a medium of instruction, especially in primary school. In 2012, Kreol was belatedly introduced in school, but only as a study language (alongside Asian, or ‘Oriental’ languages), not as an official medium of instruction. Obviously, unlike with Arabic, or Hindi, or Mandarin, Mauritian children do not have to learn Kreol, but they are taught to read and write the language, which remains by and large an oral medium of communication. (Some private schools run by the Catholic Church have used Kreol as a medium of instruction for years.) The prevalence of English in school has, incidentally, created a lively market for private tuition, contributing in turn to the reproduction not only of linguistic hierarchies, but also of class inequality (cf., November 2009, 188). It should finally be noted that the creation of a school subject called Kreol Morisien, alongside Oriental languages, gives the impression that Kreol is an ethnic language on a par with other languages used, to varying degrees, in Mauritius. It is thus a political statement from a Hindu-dominated government, since Kreol has a dual identity as the mother tongue of nearly all Mauritians and, at the symbolic level, as the language of the Creoles.

64

Hylland Eriksen

In the sphere of politics, political speeches are typically (almost universally) given in Kreol, while parliamentary debates take place in English, and interviews in the press are done in French. On TV, any of these three languages may be used in interviews with politicians, although French is by far the most common. The most obvious change in the Mauritian language situation since I began working there nearly thirty years ago, is that more Mauritians speak better English than a generation earlier. The country has prospered economically in the intervening years, due to fast growth in the manufacturing and tourism sectors, and Mauritians travel and study abroad, and communicate far more with foreigners than they did at the time when it was still mainly a sugarexporting island or, in Naipaul’s infamous words, “an overcrowded barracoon” (Naipaul 1973).

The Evolving Boundary between the Written and the Oral

For two hundred years, Kreol has been the main oral language of Mauritius, French the language of journalism and high culture, and English that of administration. Although the boundaries between these three languages have been surprisingly resilient, recent years have seen some change in language use and destabilization of boundaries. This is not a result of militant political activity or a new cultural movement, but of technology. The official media sphere of Mauritius – print, TV, radio – is generally orderly, centralized and generally takes on the dual responsibilities of creating a shared identity while simultaneously allowing dissent and disagreement to surface. But, as in virtually every country in the world, it is much harder to generalize about the electronic jungle, or cybernetic ecosystem if one prefers, than about the tidy landscape of the printed press. If the world of the Internet is a jungle, that of the printed media is a park. Sprawling and diverse, ranging from blogs to tweets and Facebook discussions, Mauritian internet use shares many features with that in European countries. However, the proportion of the population with regular Internet access seems to remain quite modest, nearly two decades years after Mauritius Telecom, in a joint venture with France Telecom, introduced internet services to businesses and citizens. At the latest count (autumn 2014), 39 percent of the population, or 519,000 persons, had regular access to the Internet1 (see also Eriksen 2013). This figure, while high in the African context, is not especially impressive compared to other 1  See http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm. Accessed January 21, 2017.

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

65

middle-income countries. For example, more than half the population of Trinidad and Tobago have access to the Internet, in Malaysia the figure is above 60 percent, while 70 percent of Taiwanese and 80 percent of the South Koreans are online. The data do not seem to be entirely reliable and may not include everyone who has internet access through their mobile phones. Conversations with young Mauritians and surveys such as that carried out by Dr. Mahendranath Motah (2011) indicate that Facebook is ubiquitous in the younger generation, even among the poor. In the last decade, the Internet has changed in character. From being primarily a medium of information, it has been transformed – increasingly – into a medium of communication, through the introduction of the blog, Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums on newssites and so on. In some of my recent research on the Internet and nationalism, I have come across a plethora of websites which represent diasporic and scattered communities, some of them with nation-building ambitions, such as diasporic Kurdish and Tamil Sri Lankan websites (Eriksen 2007). There are websites for diasporic Hindus (not least those based in the Americas), for Chileans in exile and for Muslims in Europe. Unlike the older, but still modern information technologies, Internet communication is not confined to place. One may thus create de facto virtual communities on the Web. For diasporic and scattered groups, this possibility has been used widely in recent years in order to enhance their community. On this background, and with the complex history of Mauritian identities as a backdrop, I have recently been interested in exploring how Mauritians use the new Internet, sometimes spoken of as Web 2.0, to build networks and community. Everything seems to indicate that Facebook by far exceeds any other usage of the Web, and that this has been a recent development (since around 2010). There are a fair number of blogs, mostly in English (interestingly), some in French and a few in Kreol, but most of them are updated far too rarely to function as discussion sites, and only a handful deal with current issues such as language policy and politics. At the same time, it seems clear that the Mauritian blogosphere, as Mauritian Facebook use, strengthens rather than weakens Mauritian identity. This apparent paradox was described by Miller and Slater (2000) in an early study of Internet usage in Trinidad. They found that the Internet – far from creating new, fragmented, transnational, virtual identities – in fact contributed to strengthening family values, existing social networks and national identity. In the Mauritian case, blogs and discussions online suggest a similar pattern. Some talk about their holidays and family life, clearly with friends and acquaintances in mind as a readership; those who

66

Hylland Eriksen

discuss politics do so in a distinctively Mauritian way, with language policy, communalism, economic issues and corruption being main topics. There is little evidence to indicate that e.g., Mauritian Hindus orient themselves towards transnational websites geared towards diasporic Hindus, or that Mauritian Creoles take part in a broader virtual world of transnational Creoledom. The Mauritian passion for blogging has declined sharply since around 2008. Many of the blogs which are still online have scarcely been updated, if at all, for years. One ill-fated blog in Kreol, Kont Kuran (Current stories), consists of just three entries from 2010. This does by no means entail that Mauritians have given up on the Internet, or on Web 2.0, but rather that they have discovered Facebook and are preferring to use it, being a faster, more enjoyable and more versatile alternative to blog discussions. Some of the debate in Mauritius about Facebook has concerned its potential to mobilize people for social action. In August 2011, there was some public debate, in the newspapers and on radio, about Facebook following an unsuccessful attempt to stage a demonstration by a trade union, the Confédération des Travailleurs du Secteur Privé (CTSP). Daniella Bastien, the main organizer, expressed disappointment in the poor turnout for the demonstration. On Facebook, debate is vibrant and engaged, she noticed, but it appeared to be impossible to mobilize people for a physical manifestation of discontent. Facebook is in fact used worldwide to mobilize people physically – for concerts, demonstrations, parties and so on – but many are left with the same experience as Daniella Bastien: Many click on the ‘going’ button on the site, but few actually go. What is interesting in this context is the fact that a great deal of debate about Mauritian society now takes place on Facebook, and it is largely in Kreol. Far from being fragmenting, Facebook may contribute to strengthening existing identities, including that of Mauritianness, and along with other strands of the Web, it has led to an unanticipated growth in the use of written Kreol. Communication between Mauritians on Facebook tends to be either in Kreol or in an extemporized mix of two or three languages, with Kreol as the predominant one. It is the language in which most Mauritians do not only carry on their everyday affairs, but also the language in which they mostly think and dream. Even fairly formal Facebook pages, such as those of the political parties, are largely in Kreol, miming not the formal parliamentary speech, but the raunchy electoral rally. Moreover, in international or transnational contexts, as when Mauritians discuss various matters which theoretically may involve people from different national backgrounds, the odd idiomatic expression in Kreol may be used, quite consciously, to add color and a sense of intimacy to the situation. Finally, the Kreol of the web, including Facebook, increasingly tends to follow the standardized grafi larmoni (see below), \

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

67

while spelling practice in the past tended to follow French orthographic conventions. It is too early to tell whether the extensive use of written Kreol online will eventually contribute to a loosening of the entrenched boundaries between languages in Mauritius. So far, there is a certain playfulness and informality surrounding the online debates, including those which deal with serious topics such as communalism or the economy.

Controversies and Explanations

As I have shown, the use of Kreol in formal and written contexts is fraught with conflict and controversy. In debates around the island, various arguments are invoked to justify the continued low prestige of Kreol, in spite of the almost unanimous agreement that it is nu langaz (our language). One view is that Kreol lacks the necessary complexity. Although it lacks support from the scientific community, it remains widespread and reflects historically founded, still predominant power hierarchies and cultural stereotypes. Other arguments refer to its lack of an authoritative orthography and its uselessness outside the island. The local resistance to making Kreol an official language, in spite of its ubiquitous use and emblematic nature as a symbol of Mauritian identity is still somewhat puzzling, and requires a closer examination. Orthography Like other Creole languages, Kreol has traditionally lacked a commonly accepted orthography. The two main orthographic practices in use since independence have relied either mainly on French spelling (this practice was established authoritatively in Charles Baissac’s acclaimed and influential work from 1880, and it is known today as the etymological orthography) or on one interpretation or other of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). The etymological orthography remains common in newspaper cartoons and popular literature, while intellectuals and cultural radicals have opted for a version of the IPA orthography since the 1960s. Following a request from the Government in 2004, a group of scholars at the University of Mauritius, under the leadership of the sociolinguist Vinesh Hookoomsing, developed a standard orthography, grafi larmoni, largely based on the IPA and on the work of pioneers such as Virahsawmy, the linguist Philip Baker (1972), Hookomsing’s earlier work with Baker (Baker and Hookoomsing 1987), Catholic missionaries and Ledikasyon pu travayer. This initiative and its results, as well as the subsequent “Diksioner Morisien” (Carpooran 2011), was meant to silence objections to written Kreol

68

Hylland Eriksen

due to its not having a proper orthography. Along with other pro-Kreol activists, Virahsawmy wrote an open letter to the state in 2007, subsequent to the publication of Hookoomsing’s report, demanding the use of Kreol with a standardized spelling in courts of justice, public and private organizations, schools, political parties and media. Prior to the publication of, and official endorsement of, the grafi larmoni (which would have been spelled graphie l’harmonie in the etymological orthography), there were minor differences between the different versions of the IPA based spellings (the main problem being how to depict nasalization). Many educated Mauritians still claim that they are unable to read Kreol in its phonetic spelling, but this issue is, arguably, much less pronounced today than before the establishment of a common orthography. Ethnicity In spite of being universally understood and the mother tongue of the vast majority of Mauritians of all backgrounds except the Franco-Mauritians, Kreol remains associated, at the symbolic level, with the ethnic group commonly known as Creoles (of African and mixed descent). The majority of Mauritians, whose ancestors were Asian, have accordingly been lukewarm or downright hostile to attempts to make Kreol an official language. This contrasts with the situation in The Seychelles, where most of the population of 80,000 are of African origin. Although The Seychelles is trilingual, with English, French and Seychellois Creole (which is, for historical reasons, very closely related to Mauritian Creole), Creole is used far more widely there and has been an official language in the archipelago since independence in 1976. The Franco-Seychellois minority is far smaller and less influential than the FrancoMauritians, and language is not a matter of ethnic identity politics there; the official status of Seychellois Creole was, instead, associated with socialism and a postcolonial identity at the time of independence. Virahsawmy’s early suggestion to call the language Morisyen rather than Kreol, in order to highlight its universality and potential in the creation of a national identity, never caught on. Even if Virahsawmy himself is of Telugu origin, many non-Creoles felt that such a move would give the Creole ethnic group a privileged position in Mauritian national identity. The Creoles are numerically a minority, and their political role has diminished since independence. While Creoles, being Catholic, were in a relatively privileged position during colonialism, Mauritian politics has inevitably been dominated by Indo-Mauritians, mostly Hindus, since full parliamentary democracy was introduced. In addition, the relative rank of the Creoles in the ethnic hierarchy of Mauritius has deteriorated in the decades since independence. While

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

69

Mauritius, seen as a single entity, has enjoyed rapid economic development and high growth rates, especially since the mid-1980s, the Creoles have, in general, benefitted less than the other ethnic groups from these changes. There are both cultural and structural causes for this (Eriksen 1986, 1998), and in the 1990s, the press and politicians openly discussed le malaise creole (the Creole ailment) in order to describe the marginalization and stagnation witnessed in the Creole ethnic group amidst rapid change in the island as such. A certain stigma has always been associated with bann ti-kreol, that is ‘the small Creoles’ of the fishing villages and suburban council estates. Typically, they have been cultural stereotyped as irresponsible, individualistic, fun-loving and incapable of making long-term plans. An early modern division of labor, whereby Hindus and Muslims worked in the fields while Creoles tended to work at the sugar factory, has become less pronounced with increasing mechanization of the sugar industry and diversification of the economy. There is also less domestic work available than before (a typical job for a Creole woman), and in the mid-1980s, thousands of dockers lost their work with the building of the vrac, a large storage facility for sugar, in Port-Louis. Several factors, thus, have worked together to create a contemporary image of the Creole as stagnant or even declining in a world of fast change and progress. Violent ethnic conflict is very rare in Mauritius, which is nevertheless a society obsessed by identity politics. In spite of the emergence of a post-ethnic category of people who refuse being classified according to their family origins, and who may live in mixed relationships, Mauritian politics, economics and many aspects of everyday life tend to be interpreted through the lens of ethnicity. Creoles have for decades complained that they reach a ‘glass ceiling’ in their attempts to move up the system, especially in the public sector. The highest positions in the civil service, including the police, are rarely if ever occupied by Creoles. At the same time, many Creoles have made their mark in popular culture, not least in music. The single most popular musical genre in Mauritius is the séga. In tourist hotels, regular performances of sega tipik, traditional séga, are staged. Only three instruments are used in sega tipik, the ravanne (a wide, shallow hand drum), the maravanne (a hollow piece of wood filled with dried peas) and the triang (triangle); the female dancers clad in flowery dresses. Modern séga exists in many varieties, some influenced by contemporary Caribbean popular music such as reggae, calypso and soca. The most popular singer in the island was for several years Joseph Réginald Topize, a Creole artist performing under the sobriquet Kaya. When, at a pro-legalization rally in February 1999, he was detained by the police and died in custody under mysterious circumstances, riots broke out. Looting, arson, widespread material destruction and violence between demonstrators and police, as well as

70

Hylland Eriksen

violence between Hindus and Creoles, continued for several days, highlighting the fragility of the interethnic compromise and the discontent among Creoles who felt that they were victims of systematic harassment and discrimination from the ‘Hindu police.’ The stigma associated with the Creoles is, by extension, connected to the Kreol language as well, through what Hookomsing (2004) describes as a “complex and conflicting language–culture–identity link.” As convincingly demonstrated by Rose Boswell in her book about “Le malaise creole” (Boswell 2006), the low status of the Creole ethnic group in Mauritius is, paradoxically, partly a result of it being the only ethnic group which is purely Mauritian, with no strong ties to an ‘ancestral culture.’ Only bounded, historically anchored identities convey prestige in Mauritius. This contrasts with the situation e.g., in Brazil, where mixing or miscigenação is seen in a more positive light, not least thanks to the influence of Gilberto Freyre’s writings. In spite of repeated attempts, by Creole intellectuals (e.g., Benoît 1984), to redefine the Creoles as ‘Afro-Mauritians,’ there is little enthusiasm for an African heritage among the Creoles. (A few Creole activists explored, in the 1990s, the possibility of getting recognition as an indigenous group, but the idea was soon abandoned.) All the other ethnic groups of the island have ties of language, religion and kinship origins to prestigious, scriptural civilizations (France, China, various parts of India, Islam), while the Creoles lack such a connection. By metonymic extension, the language Kreol is widely seen as homologous to the Creole ethnic group – lacking in deep history, complexity and sophistication. Utility Kreol, unlike English and French (and Oriental languages such as Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic) does not travel – at least not further than to the Seychelles. Usage of Kreol in all sectors of society would arguably strengthen national cohesion. Indeed, regardless of their ethnic background, Mauritians often point out in casual conversation that Kreol is the glue that holds Mauritians of different religions and bann kominote (ethnic communities) together. At the same time, it is also widely felt that official recognition of Kreol and its subsequent usage across a wide range of formal contexts would contribute further to a sense of isolation already acutely felt, and historically significant, in this relatively remote oceanic island. Partly as a result of the Hindu dominance in Mauritian politics since independence, English has become more widespread, while the French remains resilient after two hundred years with English as the language of administration. Actually, already Charles Darwin, visiting PortLouis with “The Beagle” in 1837, expressed surprise and dismay at the continued

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

71

prevalence of French in Mauritian public life, after almost three decades of British colonization: Although the island has been so many years under the English government, the general character of the place is quite French: Englishmen speak to their servants in French, and the shops are all French; indeed I should think that Calais or Boulogne was much more Anglified. Darwin 1989 [1845], 298

Hegemony Notwithstanding these partial explanations for the continued low status of Kreol, which are all partly or fully expressed by Mauritians in debates about language, at the end of the day, it is the unequal power associated with different languages that explains the prevailing hierarchy. As noticed, Mauritians shift situationally between languages they speak with varying degrees of proficiency. As a European ethnographer working in Mauritius in the 1980s and 1990s, I often found people, not least in rural and underprivileged neighborhoods, switching to French when I addressed them in Kreol, in order to show that they were not ignorant peasants. Everybody knows that French and English have world literatures and are spoken in many countries around the world, but many Mauritians are surprised when they learn that smaller European countries, such as Moldova, Slovakia and Norway, have fully assorted national languages which are not understood abroad, and that foreign languages such as English are rarely used in the public sphere.

The Ethnic and the Linguistic

As the foregoing has made clear, Kreol is symbolically associated with a particular ethnic group, unlike Cape Verdean Creole and several of the French and English-lexicon creoles of the Caribbean; it is clearly delineated from French and has not, unlike the aforementioned Creoles, entered into a decreolization process. Moreover, somewhat unlike the case of Krio in the Upper Guinea Coast as described in other chapters in this book, it carries negative stigma, being seen as low-class and simplistic. Furthermore, there is scarcely a competitive relationship between Kreol and other languages, the situation being complementary, and apart from certain Bhojpuri-speaking rural locations (especially in the first half of the twentieth century), there is nothing to suggest that Kreol is expanding at the expense of other languages. Nor is the language

72

Hylland Eriksen

used as a pidgin or a lingua franca. Mauritian everyday interaction is Kreolbased all the way down, if not all the way up. The position of the Creole ethnic group in the broader ecology of Mauritian ethnic relations needs further examination for a full appreciation of the place of Kreol to be possible. To a certain extent, Creoles form a residual category. In the 1968 Constitution of Mauritius, only four ethnic groups were formally recognized, namely the Hindus, the Muslims, the Chinese and the ‘General Population.’ Before its amendment in 2011, the Constitution stated that ‘every person who does not appear, from his way of life, to belong to one or other of those three communities [the Hindus, Muslims and Chinese] shall be regarded as belonging to the General Population’ (Constitution of Mauritius, Chapter XI, §3(4), cf., Government of Mauritius 1968). In reality, the ‘General population’ was, or is, not an ethnic community (nor are, arguably, the Hindus), as it consists of a small minority of Franco-Mauritians as well as a few hundred thousand persons of African or mixed descent, the Creoles (with several subsets, sometimes socially significant, such as ‘gens de couleur’ (light-skinned, often middle class), ‘Rodrige’ (from the smaller island of Rodrigues). Endogamy is not practiced, genealogies tend to be relatively shallow, and the organizations aiming to unite the Creoles tend to be short-lived and fissiparious (cf., Eriksen 1986). In other words, it is debatable whether the Creoles can be considered an ethnic group at all on the criteria most often used in the literature, which emphasizes a common myth of origin, endogamy and a minimum of corporate organization. Nearly all Creoles are Catholic, however, which makes them structurally equal and comparable to Hindus and Muslims. Unlike the largely endogamous ethnic groups in Mauritius, the Creole category is open for recruitment through mixed alliances. Intermarriage is relatively widespread, especially among the poor and the highly educated, and it tends to involve one Creole. (Creoles practice love marriages rather than arranged marriages.) The children of such alliances, moreover, tend to be regarded as Creoles, since there is no cultural taboo on ‘racial mixing’ among Creoles, unlike in the other ethnic groups of Mauritius. The Creole category is, thus, capable of absorbing ethnic ‘anomalies’ who would otherwise not fit in by virtue of their mixed origins. There is already a sliding color scale from the very light-skinned to the very dark-skinned at work, and ‘hybrid’ categories such as kreol sinwa (Chinese Creole) can easily be fitted into the existing scale. The openness and flexibility of categorization as Creoles is possibly related to the lack of strong patrilineal organization and of landed property, which entails that there is no strong incentive to keep strangers out of the family. In addition to the children of mixed marriages involving Creoles, there is also some recruitment to the Creole category through personal decisions. People

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

73

who either resent the ethnic classifications that simultaneously militate against the emergence of a shared Mauritian identity and individual choice, may – if pressed – describe themselves as Creoles. Dev Virahsawmy and the Grup Latanier have been mentioned above. But there are even children of mixed Indian-Indian marriages (such as one involving a Tamil and a North Indian) who consider themselves Creoles, feeling distant from and indifferent towards the ancestral traditions of their parents and opting for a hybrid, urban identity instead. The openness of the Creole identity, far from providing it with additional cultural capital, is instead a source of its stigma. Being Creole means being mixed, uprooted, messy, impure. It may be noted again that it is paradoxical that the only language that has actually evolved in Mauritius is generally devalued and despised, but it is not inexplicable. It resembles the situation for Solomon Island Pijin, as described by Christine Jourdan in this book. At the same time, Creole identity denotes cultural modernity – individualism, choice, an orientation towards the future rather than the past – and may for that reason be re-evaluated in the future, or perhaps form the basis of a new, individualist Mauritian identity. Ethnicity is relational, and like other collective identifications, Creole identity shifts depending on the kind of relationship engaged in. The relationship between Creoles and Franco-Mauritians is the oldest, it can be traced back to the beginning of slavery in the island, and was described in the literature by Bernardin St Pierre and other eighteenth century writers. It can be seen as a ‘hierarchical, holistic’ relationship. On the plantation, the slave–slavemaster relationship was defined through the division of labor (and, of course, coercion) and religion: The Franco-Mauritians depended on the labor of the slaves, who in turn depended on the Franco-Mauritians for salvation and sustenance. Although nearly all Creoles left the plantations after abolition, ties of cultural commonality, including not only religion but also food habits and the French language to which the liberated slaves aspired, have continued to tie the groups together, as evident in more recent political alliances and through charity work. Most Franco-Mauritians prefer Creoles as domestic servants till this day. The relationship between Creoles and Hindus, by contrast, can be described as one of ‘symmetrical competition.’ In politics, the educational system and the labor market, these two categories compete for the same scarce resources. There has historically been a great deal of mutual stereotyping, and although this is changing somewhat owing to urbanization, industrialization and increased social mobility, the Creole–Hindu contrasts remains constitutive of much of public discourse in Mauritius. It can be undercommunicated,

74

Hylland Eriksen

ignored or taken for granted, but in a manner comparable to race in the USA and class in the UK, the contrast is foundational and fundamental to the constitution of Mauritian society. While Creoles may claim Mauritian authenticity or Mauricianité, Hindus may emphasize – and some of their leaders have increasingly done so – their ties to the great civilization of India. Although the Chinese, or Sino-Mauritian, population is modest in size, the Chinese are almost ubiquitous in the island. The largest concentration of SinoMauritians is in Port-Louis’ Chinatown, but most Mauritian towns and larger villages have one or several cafes or shops, notably a grocery, run by a Chinese family. Many Creoles owe money to their local Chinese shopkeeper, on whom they in turn depend for commodities. The relationship may be described as one of ‘asymmetrical complementarity.’ The power exerted by the shopkeeper over his often penniless customers is not matched by comparable consumer power. Finally, the relationship entered into when Creoles encounter Muslims is complex and cannot easily be reduced, even with the broad brush applied here, to a single kind of relationship. During the riots immediately following independence (in 1969), much of the animosity unfolded in eastern PortLouis between a Creole and a Muslim neighborhood. At the same time, the friction between Creoles and Muslims is less tense than that between Creoles and Hindus, since Muslims are a minority (about 17%) and strategic alliances are possible. In addition, Creoles have been known to marry Muslims on the condition that they convert to Islam; I am personally aware of about a dozen cases, and the respective families generally seem to get on well. When I have asked how the couples view the place of their children in the identity grammar of multiethnic Mauritius, some reply that the children, perhaps, become kreol mizilman (Muslim Creoles) – theoretically an impossibility, since Creole identity is associated with the Catholic church, but perhaps possible in practice as proof of the flexibility of the Creole identity. On this basis, it may be argued that the Creole–Muslim relationship shows indications, however modest, of an ‘overlap.’ In none of the relationships entered into, and which are marked by ethnicity, do the Creoles dominate in terms of political, economic or symbolic power. In addition, as I have argued earlier (e.g., Eriksen 1998; cf., Boswell 2006), middleclass Creoles, urban and often light-skinned, often align themselves with French and European cultural identities, and the connection with workingclass and rural Creoles is weak. The key institution in the attempt to revalorize not only the Kreol language, but also Creole identity and status in Mauritian society, is the Catholic Church and its associated organizations such as the

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

75

charity Caritas. Nevertheless, the Creole ethnic category is not currently, collectively, in a position to challenge existing power discrepancies. The underprivileged and to some extent stigmatized position of the Creoles is paradoxical not only because the Creole ethnic category and the language Kreol are genuinely and uniquely Mauritian, but also because much of what passes for national popular culture, from séga music to food and dance, is associated with the Creole groups. In spite of the best of efforts by scholars, activists and intellectuals, and occasional support (not least at election rallies) from politicians, thus, the triglossic situation in Mauritius remains relatively stable. As I have shown, structural inequalities and the association of Kreol with the Creoles explain the perseverance of this hierarchy. Although the increased use of written Kreol (using the grafi larmoni) online may signal an incipient change, it is unlikely to reolutionize Mauritian language use as long as the existing ethnic hierarchy remains intact. Acknowledgements I thank the participants at the conference for their contributions to the discussion, and in particular Wilson Trajano Filho and Jacqueline Knörr, for their very useful comments on the written draft. References Baissac, C. 1880. Étude sur le patois créole mauricien. Nancy: Berger-Levrault. Baker, P. 1972. Kreol: A Description of Mauritian Creole. London: C. Hurst. Baker, P., and A. Syea. 1991. “On the Copula in Mauritian Creole, Past and Present.” In Development and Structures of Creole Languages: Essays in Honor of Derek Bickerton, edited by F. Byrne and T. Huebner, 159–78. London: John Benjamins. Baker, P., and V. Hookoomsing. 1987. Diksyoner Kreol morisyen; Dictionary of Mauritian Creole; Dictionnaire du créole mauricien. Paris: L’Harmattan. Beesondial, A. 2013. “‘Sa bezsominn Shakespeare la’ – The Brave New World of Dev Virahsawmy.” In African Theatre: Shakespeare In and Out of Africa, edited by J. Plastow, 98–123. London: James Currey. Benoît, G. 1984. The Afro-Mauritians. Moka: MGI. Boswell, R. 2006. Le malaise créole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Carpooran, A., ed. 2011. Diksyoner Morisyen Vacoas: Editions le Printemps.

76

Hylland Eriksen

Carrington, L., D. Craig, and R.T. Dandare. 1983. Studies in Caribbean Language. St Augustine: UWI. Darwin, C. 1989[1845]. Voyage of the Beagle, 2nd edition. London: Penguin Classics. DeCamp, D. 1971. “Towards a Generative Analysis of a Post-Creole Speech Continuum.” In Pidginisation and Creolisation of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 349–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eisenlohr, P. 2007. “Creole Publics: Language, Cultural Citizenship, and the Spread of the Nation in Mauritius.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49(4): 968–96. Eriksen, T.H. 1986. “Creole Culture and Social Change.” Journal of Mauritian Studies 1(2): 59–72. Eriksen, T.H. 1990. “Linguistic Diversity and the Quest for National Identity: The Case of Mauritius.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 13(1): 1–24. Eriksen, T.H. 1998. Common Denominators: Ethnicity, Nation-Building and Compromise in Mauritius. Oxford: Berg. Eriksen, T.H. 1998. Common Denominators: Ethnicity. 2007. “Nationalism and the Internet.” Nations and Nationalism 13(1): 1–17. Eriksen, T.H. 2013 “Notes on Mauritian Identities and the Internet.” Journal of Mauritian Studies 7(1): 39–48. Goodchild, S. 2013. “Being Mauritian: A Sociolinguistic Case Study on the Transmission and Use of Mauritian Creole in the UK.” Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 19(1): 109–27. Government of Mauritius. 1968. Constitution of Mauritius. http://aceproject.org/ ero-en/regions/africa/MU/Constitution%20of%20Mauritius%201968.pdf/view. Accessed December 03, 2016. Government of Mauritius, Ministry of Education and Human Resources. 2013. Minutes from Parliamentary Debates on Primary Curriculum. http://ministry-education.gov .mu/English/Pages/PQs/Primary-Curriculum-.aspx. Accessed November 05, 2014. Hookoomsing, V. 2004. “Grafi-larmoni. A Harmonized Writing System for the Mauritian Creole Language.” http://ministry-education.govmu.org/English/Documents/Public ations/arch%20reports/hookoomsing.pdf. Accessed November 04, 2014. Miller, D., and D. Slater. 2000. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg. Motah, M. 2011. “Untitled paper presented at the conference ‘Contemporary Mauritius,’” University of Mauritius September 2011. Naipaul, V.S. 1973. The Overcrowded Barracoon. London: Penguin. November, K. 2009. “Translation and National Identity: The Use and Reception of Mauritian Creole Translations of Shakespeare and Molière.” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh. Souchon, H. 1982. “Le mythe de quinze langues pour un million.” In Proceedings, National Seminar on the Language Issue in Mauritius, edited by H. Unmole, 78–83. Réduit: University of Mauritius Press.

Language and Ethnic Hierarchy in Mauritius

77

St. Pierre, B. de. 1983[1773]. Voyage à l’Ile de France. Paris: Maspéro. Syea, A. 2012. The Syntax of Mauritian Creole. London: Bloomsbury. Walling, M., J. Ogungbe, A. Pohlmeier, K. Stafford, and D. Virahsawmy. 2013. “African Shakespeares – A Discussion.” In African Theatre: Shakespeare In and Out of Africa, edited by J. Plastow, 83–97. London: James Currey.

Chapter 5

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin Christine Jourdan1 Introduction2 I recall vividly the strange thought that crossed my mind early in my research on the Pijin of the Solomon Islands back in the early 1980s. This language, spoken by almost everyone on an everyday basis in Honiara, the capital city of this small Pacific Islands archipelago, was in reality no one’s language. By no one’s language I meant that no one seemed to identify with it, nobody was claiming it as his or hers, no one seemed to have any vested interest in it, linguistic or social. Yet, all urbanites had to speak Pijin if they wanted to have a life in town. Pijin was available to all, unavoidable, yet claimed by no one. Many, having embraced the colonial linguistic ideologies transmitted by the local school system, considered it a ‘debased jargon that had no grammar.’ It was clearly illegitimate in their eyes. And yet, Pijin was so much part of the life they lived in town that a clear symbiosis existed between the two. This contradiction was puzzling. Today, the situation and status of Pijin are changing. Not only is Pijin the cement of urban social life and culture, it is also the sole mother tongue of two generations of young urban people. It is ‘their’ language. Angeli and I have shown (2014) that when combined, these two linguistic realities provoked the development of new linguistic ideologies that promoted the development of Pijin’s legitimacy. In this chapter, my purpose is to analyze the processes that contribute to the legitimation of Pijin. They involve discourses and actions about identity and difference and revolved around three important loci of the cultural rooting of Pijin: 1) the affirmation of the urban self as a legitimate Solomon Islands identity; 2) the vernacularization of Pijin among two generations of urban residents; 3) the development of normativity in Pijin. In order to understand 1  Research in Solomon Islands was made possible by grants from the Canada Research Council for Social Sciences. I thank the Solomon Islands participants in my research for their forbearance, and the editors of this volume for their comments on the initial version of this text. 2  Parts of this article borrow ideas and arguments from Jourdan (1996), and Jourdan and Angeli (2014).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_006

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

79

the social significance of this turn of event, it is important to understand the forces at play in the delegitimation of languages. I will show that delegitimation of Pijin is associated with the unequal linguistic conditions typical of the European colonial era, and that its legitimation is associated with the mobility of speakers on the cultural scale.

The Larger Problem: Illegitimacy, Delegitimation, Legitimacy

Like all languages of the world, pidgin and creole languages are the product of cultural contacts and movements of populations. Solomon Islands Pijin (used as a pidgin for some speakers and as a creole for others) is no exception. Its history is marked by the physical movement of it makers and speakers. From its stabilization on the plantations of Queensland in the second part of the nineteenth century, to its arrival in Solomon Islands with its speakers in the early twentieth century, to its expansion as the lingua franca of the local plantation economy in the twentieth century and of the towns in the twenty-first century, Pijin is the product of the flows of peoples, ideas and languages in the Pacific in the context of European colonization. The existence of Pijin is the result of the mobility of linguistic resources (Blommaert 2010) that speakers make use of, or capitalize on (in a more Bourdieusian approach), in order to get ahead in the world, but also to affirm their existence. Colonial linguistic regimes, as has been shown, were/are hierarchical ones: they cast upon local languages values and qualities, or the lack thereof, that are also insidious ways of ascribing values and qualities, or the lack thereof, to the speakers of these languages. Often times – as Calvet explained back in 1974, and has since been demonstrated by a number of scholars (Fabian 1986; Irvine 1993; Mufwene 1994; Mühlhäusler 1996, among the early ones) – these ascriptions were rooted in colonial race relations that further reinforced the social and cultural distance which the colonials sought to establish between themselves and the local populations. This analysis holds true also for the Pacific: Not only were local languages considered as intellectually inadequate, but their speakers as well (Crowley 2000). Languages are legitimized and delegitimized because of what they are or perceived to be. This perception produces two complementary attitudes – language chauvinism and language purism – that cannot be excluded from how the languages of the others are being labeled,3 and from the de/legitimation 3  For instance Fabian (1986, 42–43) described how in Mobutu’s Zaire, Lingala is considered by the Katanga/Shaba to be an undignified jargon.

80

Jourdan

process. From a purist perspective, the hybrid and flexible nature of pidgins and creoles plays against them. From a chauvinist perspective, pidgins and creoles are compared negatively to their lexifiers that are often identified as the valuable language. But languages are also legitimized and delegitimized in context (Errington 2001; Koreinik 2011). A language exists in fields of knowledge and practices that the language encodes and sustains. The absence of standardization, of written literature and of formal language teaching is taken as proof that local languages encountered by colonials were not adequate to sustain fields of knowledge they thought were important. The result is that in situations of colonization, local languages are often seen as unworthy of being learned, and inadequate as mediums of instruction. But delegitimation, as explained by Lyotard in the Postmodern Condition (1979), is also fuelled by the necessity of legitimation. Though his analysis is applied to another field, that of knowledge, it can easily be extended to the situation at hand. The delegitimation of a language or a language variety is essential to the legitimation of the norm one wants to promote. In other words, languages are stripped of their legitimacy so that others can take their place as the ‘right’ language for the new social world. For instance, the legitimation of languages that are promoted as national languages during the constitution of nation-states is accompanied by the delegitimation of other local languages. It is almost a zero sum game. The legitimation of the chosen languages is reinforced by official recognition in the law (French in France in the Villers-Cotterets ordinance; French in Quebec through Bill 101; English in California); or in the constitution (Bislama in the constitution of Vanuatu), et cetera. This is a ‘de jure’ legitimation that acts to delegitimize other languages. Delegitimation thus is instrumental as much as it is ideological. From a purist point of view, pidgin languages are spurious language varieties: they are kinds of neither-nor languages that occupy interstitial sociocultural spaces in realms of activities not central to the local social organization (plantation work, markets, colonial dealings with local populations, police work) of their speakers. Creoles may fare better in that they are the main language of a community of speakers: they have cultural rooting; they also may have native speakers. This gives them de facto legitimacy. Yet, scholars of creole languages showed time and again that this de facto legitimacy is undermined by the presence of lexifiers when creoles and lexifiers coexist in the same sociolinguistic niche (Cape Verde Creole with Portuguese; Haitian Creole with French; Jamaican Creole with English, etc.). In these circumstances, the lexifier is always the prestigious language. The delegitimation of Pijin and Solomon vernaculars by the British colonials was necessary to the establishment and reinforcement of the legitimacy of English. It was also necessary to

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

81

the establishment of a local social elite who was educated in English by British teachers in colonial schools and was to inherit the running of the country after independence. But let us not forget that languages have different social lives, and delegitimation in one circle does not equate delegitimation in other ones (Jourdan 2007; Pennycook 2007). While Pijin was denounced by the colonial administration as a ‘mongrel jargon’ that needed to be eradicated (Keesing 1990), and was barred from schools, it became essential to the new social and economic world that the same administration had set up in the Solomon archipelago. Far from disappearing, Pijin flourished in the multilingual social worlds, such as the local plantation system and the budding towns, to overcome language diversity. Despite the British colonials’ effort to stamp out pijin, it acquired ‘de facto’ legitimacy.

The Shaping of the Illegitimacy of Pijin

The history of the delegitimation and subsequent illegitimacy of Pijin as a ‘true’ language is found in the history of its coexistence with English, its lexifier, during the colonial era of the British Protectorate of the Solomon Islands. From the beginning of its history in twentieth century Solomon Islands, Pijin was a good candidate to be considered an illegitimate language by the local colonial agents and residents. It is not the hybrid nature of Pijin that was problematic to the British. Most of them did not know the local vernaculars and could not recognize the Oceanic4 syntax below the English etymons: they were simply not aware of this hybridity. Rather, they considered Pijin as a form of broken English; a language that though it used words from English, did not seem to respect its syntax or to be pronounced in the ‘proper’ way. What they found particularly unacceptable was the supposed ‘undefined’ syntax and ‘limited’ vocabulary of Pijin. All this went against the purist expectations that British colonials about a ‘true’ language was and corresponded to their expectations about a ‘primitive’ language. In colonial times, the delegitimation and subsequent illegitimacy of Pijin was signaled and reinforced in three distinct ways, discourse and actions, that are interrelated. First the British referred to Pijin with labels that were disparaging: ‘broken English,’ bastard language,’ ‘mongrel jargon,’ et cetera (Keesing 1990). Though it 4  Except for seven languages, all vernaculars of the Solomon Islands belong to the Oceanic branch of Austronesian language family.

82

Jourdan

can be argued that these labels reflected the British colonials’ misunderstanding of the real linguistic nature of Pijin and their purist ideologies, they proved efficient tools of discrimination against the language itself. For the first time in the history of Solomon Islands, a language was spoken of in this way. Local language chauvinism notwithstanding, this attitude took the Solomon Islanders by surprise (Jourdan 2007). But the pejorative labels also worked in additional ways: they indexed the distinction between English, the language of the colonials, and Pijin, and by association and extension, they reinforced the social distance between the British and the Solomon Islanders. Second, historical records show that except for very few individuals, most colonials living in the protectorate, be they administrators, (except for the odd plantations overseers or plantation managers), did not try learning Pijin ‘properly.’5 This state of affairs is partly linked to a poor understanding on their part of the linguistic differences between English and Pijin, but also to their lack of interest in learning an ‘uninteresting’ language that one could only use to speak with ‘uninteresting’ people (servants, laborers, etc.). The result is that most colonials spoke a baby-talk variety of Pijin that subsequently became known as ‘Tok Masta.’ The same attitude existed in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu towards ‘Tok Pisin’ and ‘Bislama’ (Mühlhäusler 1996). This prejudice had a third consequence, the banning of Pijin from Solomon Islands schools, in the classroom and in the courtyard.6 Not only was the language forbidden in the classroom, but it was also banned in the schoolyard. At times, children were punished if they were caught speaking Pijin with one another. Administrators and teachers, all of European origin during the colonial period, insisted that Pijin was inadequate to teach academic subjects. As suggested by Migge, Léglise and Bartens (2010) the delegitimization of a pidgin or creole starts with denying that they can perform the basic functions typically performed by languages, and are thus seen, and then portrayed, as being linguistically deficient and therefore an inadequate teaching tool. Eriksen makes a similar case a propos Kreol in Mauritius. The criticisms that were used in other parts of the world to keep local languages from schools included pragmatic and economic arguments which were also addressed to Pijin: lack of 5  Interestingly, those who did were often hafkas (English half cast) individuals born to European fathers and Melanesian mothers and who were able, through their European connections, to get managerial positions in the colonial system. 6  Vernaculars were not banned from the courtyard. In some village schools, away from the mission stations and provincial schools, vernaculars were also used in the first two years of primary education.

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

83

standardization, lack of teaching tools in Pijin, lack of dictionaries and grammar, and lack of written literature. The result was that generations of children were schooled in English, a language they did not know, and for which there existed no natural English speaking community they could be part of. The more insidious effect of this ideology was its deleterious impact on the linguistic confidence on the speakers of Pijin. Many among them believed, as many today still believe, that Pijin – their own language – is not a ‘serious language,’ that it has ‘no grammar and no rules,’ that ‘people speak it in any way they want’ and that it is a ‘broken language.’ The following excerpt of an interview I carried with a well-educated and travelled senior public servant is revealing: CJ: Iu tkinse Pijin hem garem grama blong hem, o nomoa? JA: Eh! Barava nomoa ia. Bikos hem keep changing, I mean. Hem no garem eni grama. Bae hem very interesting, iu nao iu save bikos iu duim risach lo Pijin, may be hem garem grama. Nomoa!, mi no save tu! CJ: Hem garem grama. JA: Turu? (JA 2008) Translation: CJ: Do you think that Pijin has a grammar, or not? JA: Eh, Certainly not. The proof is that it changes all the time, I say. It has no grammar. It is very interesting, you know this, because you are doing research on Pijin. May be it has grammar. I do not know. CJ: It has grammar. JA: Really? The systematic denigration of Pijin by the local administrative elite and some speakers themselves, and the no less systematic imposition of English as the high language, continued as a fait accompli after independence (1978), while the country tried to find itself as a nation and as an autonomous state. Not all creoles in the world, such as Cape Verde, or Jamaica for instance, were the brunt of similar criticisms at the time on independence (as far as we know). But similar denigration of the local pidgin/creole still existed in the other Pacific Islands countries where a creole is the lingua franca, such as Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.7 In these two countries, as in the Solomon Islands, English 7  See Eriksen this volume for a similar phenomenon in Mauritius.

84

Jourdan

(the lexifier) and the creole exist in a high/low relationship (see Paliwala 2012; Vandeputte-Tavo 2014). Yet, as Stroud (2002) argues with regard to the lack of hegemonic position of Portuguese in Mozambique, local factors are now at play that are unsettling and challenging the position of English in Solomon Islands. For a better understanding of the processes at work, let’s shift our gaze away towards the legitimation of Pijin.

The Shaping of the Legitimacy of Pijin: How Does It Take Place?

Inscribed in the notion of legitimacy one finds that of relationships, consensual à la Weber, or based on power à la Foucault. In either case, the legitimacy imparted to languages by observers, or by speakers, is steeped in symbolic considerations. One of them is speakers’ self-affirmation. In this section, I am interested in identifying the nexus of legitimacy bearing actions and consciousness imparted to Pijin by the speakers themselves in the course of social life. Some will lead to the legitimacy bearing actions and decisions taken by the governments and implemented through schools, for instance. The Solomon Islands are a multilingual country: between 64 and 72 languages have been identified, depending on who is counting and what the criteria for counting them are. These are referred to in Pijin as langgus, which is glossed as ‘ancestral language.’ All these languages are alive and well, and found their way in town with their speakers. Languages are mobile devices. The history of Pijin is marked by a contradiction: delegitimized by the British, it was none the less the essential linguistic resource for communication between colonials (albeit badly) and Solomon Islanders, and among Solomon Islanders themselves when vernaculars could not be used. It was therefore officially illegitimate and unofficially legitimate. Solomon Islanders were keen in learning Pijin: it opened the door to the world of the White men (many thought, and some still do, that the Pijin they spoke was in fact English). It also opened the door to paid employment (in the colonial constabulary or in the local plantations, for instance) and later on gave access to more diversified sources of money in towns. It also allowed Solomon Islanders from different language groups to speak with each other. However, all ‘important’ matters within the ethnic group one belonged to, read here cultural matters, were dealt with in the ancestral language. Today, many rural islanders now speak Pijin at home on a regular basis. And all consider Pijin as the de facto national language of the country and ‘natural’ language of towns. Gone are the days when all urban parents taught their

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

85

children their ancestral language. My data show that although parents may wish this to happen, hardly any of them make the effort to do so, except in linguistically endogamous marriages. But as most marriages in town are language exogamous marriages, the household’s domestic language is usually Pijin. The result is that there are now two generations of urbanites for whom Pijin is the sole mother tongue. Most urban children born to exogamous marriages do not know any langgus, except for a few words here and there that they use for affect and to signify membership in an ethnic group. This is very reminiscent of the situation found in the towns of Papua New Guinea, where young people grow up with Tok Pisin (Smith 2002; Paliwala 2012), and of the urban scene in Vanuatu where more and more young urban people speak Bislama as their sole mother tongue (Crowley 2000; Vandeputte-Tavo 2014). From a comparative perspective I find this quite interesting: though the countries are different, they exhibit and experience social developments that seem to lead to similar processes of language shift. English, the language of the former colonial power is no longer the target of that shift. At least, for the moment. Whether, English resumes its place as the language of choice a few generations down the line is a possibility, but it remains to be seen. For the moment, the main factor of this shift are urbanization, and the economic and social importance of towns in the new economy, which have become more obvious in the last 15 years. The efflorescence of Pijin leads also to the efflorescence of cultural contexts of use of the language, and vice versa: radio shows; television programs; kastom stories; popular music, et cetera have now a rich tradition. Pijin is the language of the urban life outside of the ethnic based networks called wantok networks. With this new situation, two new phenomena appear. First, Pijin is changing fast and diversifying. There always existed regional varieties of Pijin and people could identify the geographic origin of a Pijin speaker because of the particular phonetic or lexical features derived from their vernaculars. Some of these features are easily identifiable and are well known to urbanites. In Honiara, where alterity is experienced on an everyday basis, trying to guess the ethnic origin of a speaker through his ways of speaking Pijin is almost akin to a cultural obsession. Once I became comfortable in Pijin, I quickly joined in the local game of trying to guess speakers’ origin. But lately, people have started to recognize that, in addition to the regional varieties, there exist new ways of speaking Pijin in town. Though speakers are not prepared to talk about them in terms of distinct varieties (and neither do I, for theoretical and practical reasons), they readily attribute these various ways to various social groups: Pijin blo oketa iut (young people’s Pijin); Pjin blo otta olo (old people’s Pijin); Genevieve Escure’s remark about social diversity in Belizean creole:

86

Jourdan

Thus new urban vernaculars are more easily defined in terms of their speakers than in terms of their linguistic properties. Escure 2008, 571

This observation alerts us to the crux of the story I am telling here, a story well known in all parts of the world: in a contact situation, however minimal it can be, the stabilization of features in language change is inherently linked to social identity. In short, while rural speakers contrast their way of speaking mainly with the urban way (Pijin long taon), urbanites identify five main ways of speaking Pijin to the interest groups or social groups more readily identifiable: 1) that of the urban youth, mixing freely with English, where mixing is the ‘code’; 2) that of the urban educated adults, where sentence structure in both languages seems to be more regular; 3) that of the old people, heavily bent syntactically and phonologically toward ancestral languages; 4) that of the SIBC, the local national radio, where constant neologism takes place and 5) that of the Solomon Islands Christian Association, as found in the Solomon Islands Pijin Baebol, a formal version of Pijin relying on ‘old’ formulations and neologisms to express a sacred and codified text. This is the only written variety. To sum up, regional diversity has always existed in Pijin. In town, Pijin diversity has become social. One can portrait this transformation through the following diagram which I labelled the Linguistic funnel. The history of urbanization in Solomon Islands is that of continual migration but has different incarnations. First in the form of circular migration between rural areas and urban areas, as people move between towns and villages for work, education, curiosity, et cetera. Villagers go to town and go home;

Figure 5.1 The linguistic funnel Jourdan 1997

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

87

urbanites go to the villages for vacations and go back home to towns. Second, in the form of urban drift: villagers go to town in search of better life conditions, more excitement, better education opportunities or health care. More importantly, some are also migrating to town to escape the social life of the village seen as too constraining. Whatever the reasons that drive people to migrate to town, the contact between villages and towns is never really severed: people, ideas, music, languages, circulate both ways and effect the local scenes. Thus more appropriately, and in order to account for the mutual influence of towns and villages on the transformations of Pijin into the national language of the country, the linguistic funnel must be complexified as follows:

Figure 5.2 The linguistic funnel: social diversification of Solomon Islands Pijin Jourdan 1997

The dotted arrow on Figure 5.2 represents the influence that social urban varieties have on the way villagers speak Pijin. The radio programs produced in Honiara, and through them popular culture, kastom stories in Pijin, newscasts, current affair programs are, along with people themselves, the main vectors of this influence. In other words, the rural varieties spoken by rural migrants are neutralized a generation later in the Pijin spoken by their children who in turn, adopt/produce urban ways of speaking Pijin. These ways feed the changes in the rural areas and add to the diversity of rural Pijin. It is also important to note, though not directly relevant to the arguments I am making here, that Pijin has much impact on local vernaculars. In Solomon Islands, language and ethnicity are conflated: there are as many different languages as there are ethno linguistic groups, and aside from Pijin, no language is non-ethnic. This situation contrasts with that described by Eriksen in this volume. Solomon islanders are used to languages indexing ethnicity,

88

Jourdan

including English, which is the language of the ‘white men.’ They are less used to language indexing a non-ethnic identity. Pijin is one of those non-ethnic languages and this fact in part explains Pijin’s success as a lingua franca in the country. It exists above ethnic boundaries without being a foreign language. In the last ten years or so, one notices that Honiara resident have started to express their opinion and value judgments on the ways people speak Pijin. This is new: until recently, no one I spoke with seemed to care enough about Pijin to criticize the way people spoke the language. As I explained earlier, Solomon Islanders are used to linguistic differences in Pijin and take in stride any variation from their own performance of the language. They are extremely tolerant of these differences. Today, not only do people notice the differences, but they express metalinguistic commentaries. Here are the most common commentaries heard about the different ways of speaking Pijin in town. The Pijin used during the newscast of the national radio SIBC is criticized by all for breaking all the rules, those of Pijin and those of English, thus rendering news in Pijin incomprehensible to rural speakers and urban speakers alike. The Pijin spoken by the urban youth is a source of pride for them. It is their own language they say. Yet, they find it a source of embarrassment as well: it is neither English nor Pijin, they say (Angeli 2008). The Pijin spoken by the old people, especially the old people in rural areas, is referred to as ‘true’ Pijin. Yet, none of the young urban crowd would ever want to be caught speaking it. Neither do they want to be caught speaking Standard English either, for fear of ‘speaking white’ (Angeli 2008). Instead, when speaking publicly in class, where peer pressure is strong, they substitute a localized version of English to the standard variety they learned. Of the two dangerous linguistic margins that exist in Solomon Islands (Standard English and Old Pijin) and which young people avoid, speaking Old Pijin is the worst: it is passé, old fashioned, they say. It sounds too ‘rural’ and ‘unsophisticated.’ Finally, the variety proposed by the Christian translators is never publically criticized, or praised for that matter: the sacred word, it seems, silences people in this very Christian country. Off the record, they are quick to complain that “no one speaks like this”; or that “this word belongs to Tok Pisin” (the pidgin of Papua New Guinea), and not to Pijin. I find all these comments, or lack of comments, very enlightening for what they reveal: the development of a normative attitude towards Pijin through the recognition of how it should be spoken or not; what should be said and what should not; what belongs to Pijin and what does not; what is grammatical and what is not, et cetera. This normative attitude did not exist when Pijin was ‘no one’s language,’ i.e., when it coexisted with ancestral languages in the repertoires of individuals, and was used only outside of traditional social

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

89

encounters. It reveals speakers’ appropriation of Pijin as their language, that of the urban crowd whose prime medium of communication is not any longer an ancestral language, but Pijin. How can one explain this? All this is linked, I claim, to the transformation of the culture of the town into a world increasingly distinct from that of the village, though in continuity and relationship with it. Over the years, urbanites have created a new social world that looks at once familiar and strange to their rural kin. I called the new culture that was developing a creolized culture (Jourdan 1996) because it drew on principles of sociality that were central to Solomon Islands identity (importance of lineage based obligations; importance of reciprocal exchanges; respect due to the elders; importance of kinship) and on cultural understandings and structures inherited from the colonial order. But this creolized urban culture is not simply the result of hybridity. It is the result of transformations. It is a world where urbanites are regularly accused by their rural kin of being selfish (read here: not willing to share their money with their rural counterparts), of not keeping kastom (read here: selecting which rules they will uphold and which they will not), and for having lost langgus (read here: having lost their identity). Indeed, if the term of creolization is to be heuristic, we cannot be satisfied to use it only as a metaphor. It has to allow us to understand the process of transformation of creole societies. For that reason, I applaud Knörr’s (2010; 2014) efforts to try to work out how the concept of creolization could be used to study social transformations: her data in Indonesia allow her to associate processes of cultural creolization with the development of ethnic identity. My Honiara data show that identity formation takes place in Honiara, but that it is not ethnic based. Indeed most Honiarans – though they may not know the ancestral language of their forebears, and have a partial knowledge of the cultural ideologies and practices that sustain this identity – will claim that they have an ethnic identity anchored somewhere in the village of their forebears. They see no contradiction in this. What I observe in town, is the development of a new identity that is socially based, that of the urbanite who assumes his/her cultural difference. Yet, cultural creolization takes place, as I explained above, as it gives way to a new social world that exists in continuity and in contrast with earlier forms. I suggest that the urbanites’ appropriation of Pijin must be understood as a partial response to the criticisms of their rural kin. In a country where ethnic identities reign supreme, and are often mobilized through the language one speaks and the village one is from, the appropriation of Pijin by the urbanites is an act of identity creation. It is rooted in their symbolic and practical experience of Pijin as the language that distinguishes them from transients or rural Solomon Islanders. It is an affirmation

90

Jourdan

of who they are and want to be: urbanites who not only have different lifestyles and worldviews, but now have their own language as well. Pijin is their ‘langgus,’ the one language they raise their children in. Early in the history of urban Pijin, urbanites verbalized the important role it played in the life of the town: Pijin hem barava langgus blong mifala long taon. Sapos no eni Pijin, bae mifala waswe? Translation: Pijin is really the language of us townfolk. If we did not have Pijin, what would we do? Jourdan 1996, 49

Today, some parents are concerned to see that the only language spoken by their children be respected, and some argue that Pijin should be taught at school for that reason. More so than their own children, they become advocates of Pijin. Not for what it is linguistically, but for what it represents, indexically (the identity language of their children and their linguistic heritage) and pragmatically (the only language that their children know). When they take this position, parents seize the opportunity to assuage the guilt they feel for not having transmitted their own ancestral language to their children. The conversations I had with quite a few parents in Honiara show that some of them feel responsible that their children do not speak the ancestral language. Hem lilebit sorefala samting ia, bikos pikinin oketa no save langgus ia. Oketa no save langgus and ating, mi have to blame mifala nao, otta parents ia fo otta no save tichim olketa. S. 2008

Translation: It is a sad situation that the children do not know the ancestral language. They do not know the ancestral language and I think that I have to blame us, the parents, for not teaching the language to them. Some parents insisted that Pijin needs to be recognized as it is the sole language spoken by an increasing number of urban children.

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

91

Kos samting ia nao mi tingim, spos iu no putum Pijin olsem wanfala langguch, olsem iu tekem rights blong olketa pikinini wea fest langguch blon olketa nao Pijin. Olketa no garem eni langguch moa. Den.. bat olketa still Solomon Islanders, ia, so iumi mas […] olsem make way fo olketa ia […] mixed marriage pikinini. L.

Translation: I am thinking that if we do not recognize Pijin as a language, it is as if we are taking away the rights of children for whom Pijin is the mother tongue. They do not have any other language. Still, they are Solomon Islanders and we must make room for these children born to mixed marriages. Jourdan and Angeli 2014, 276

Some of them do not hesitate to make reference to basic human rights. A few of our informants did argue that Pijin is part of Solomons’ cultural heritage and national identity.

The Making of the Nation

Until recently, members of the elite were adamant that they would never allow Pijin to enter the education system and serve as a medium of instruction in the schools, while they themselves used Pijin on an everyday basis to run their ministries, administrations and businesses. Lately, the tide has been changing somewhat. A new political elite is emerging. Unlike their predecessors, they have been trained in an independent Solomon Islands. If some of them have retained the linguistic ideologies inherited from the colonial period, and display class positions when using English in atypical ways (at home, for instance), most have come to realize that Pijin represents an important asset in the shaping of nationhood in their country. It is the linguistic binding agent of this very geographically dispersed and ethnically diverse country. As they witness the cultural and demographic expansion of Pijin in the archipelago, the elite are now looking at language in a more positive way: government posters in Pijin, commissioning of research on Pijin standardization, adult literacy in Pijin, radio commercials in Pijin et cetera. All this interest in Pijin from the top takes place, I argue, because some degree of cultural depth has developed at

92

Jourdan

the grass root level. The elite are building on the de facto cultural legitimacy that Pijin has now acquired to set the basis for a de jure legitimacy that would officially attribute some status to the language. Truth be told, they are encouraged to do so by the participation of the country in the PRIDE Agreement (Pacific Regional Initiative for Development in Education), a pan-Pacific initiative emanating from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and which calls for the development of a vernacular based education, understood here as mother tongue based education, among signatory countries. A country as multilingual as the Solomon Islands is will find it difficult to select a vernacular that would meet the demands of the PRIDE agreement. But Pijin, being the mother tongue of two generations of urbanites, now looks like a potential candidate for implementation in the schools. At this juncture, it is useful to recall that the Solomon Islands never had to struggle to become a nation: they were granted independence smoothly in 1978 by a British Government only too happy to rid itself of what was considered the ‘back-water’ of the empire. The postcolonial elite is now taking stock of the fact that with smooth transfer to independence, the country inherited British institutions and expectations of what a country should be. But it never had to an opportunity to address this issue in depth. I argue that the political coup that shook the country fifteen years ago, and which created much ethnic tensions, brought economic instability and provoked the intervention of foreign powers in the country, served as the catalyst that jostled the political elite into engaging with this issue. Their interest in Pijin as a potential language of unity for the country is part of this engagement. This raises a nagging question: which way of speaking Pijin will be used and recognized by the Solomon elite for use in schools? Such a choice is not innocuous: how the decision is reached, and on what basis, is fraught with ideological and pragmatic considerations. It also raises questions on the explicit and implicit goals of education: access to the workforce; building the nation, et cetera. More importantly, the chosen way will serve as the basis for the definition and enforcement of a way of speaking and writing Pijin that will become the standard. It will be the Pijin norm, with all the attendant usual sociolinguistic impacts that norms have. It will define what counts as language. Conclusion In this chapter I showed that the delegitimation of Pijin during the colonial regime was a necessary step towards the recognition of English as the legitimate

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

93

language of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate during colonial times, and of the early period of postindependence context. I also showed that the legitimation of Pijin is associated with changing local sociohistorical conditions that fostered the development of new linguistic ideologies. While the history of Pijin was a history of the movement of its speakers across geographical, physical and social boundaries, the history of the legitimation of Pijin is that of speakers’ movements across cultural boundaries. From no one’s language to someone’s language, Pijin has finally made it, so to speak. But legitimacy does not come in bulk; it comes in degrees, in shades. And while Pijin’s usefulness as a lingua franca was legitimacy bearing, and was one of its degrees, its cultural anchorage in the life of the town added more dimensions. Throughout its history in the country, and through the history of its speakers, Pijin acquired more cultural depth and more degrees of legitimacy: a second and secondary language became the primary and main language of urban life, in an instrumental way; it became the language of popular culture through music, poetry, kastom stories, newscast; it became the mother tongue of children born in that urban community, et cetera. Each of these instantiations of cultural anchoring added another shade of legitimacy. But this legitimacy is not complete: while most Solomon Islanders embrace Pijin as the language of the towns and accord it cultural legitimacy, they are not yet prepared to recognize any form of linguistic legitimacy to it. Linguistic legitimacy lags behind cultural legitimacy. In Jourdan and Angeli (2014), we explained that new language ideologies did not dislodge those that preceded them: they simply added to them and are mobilized differently by different speakers at different times. The old colonial ideology that stripped Pijin from linguistic legitimacy lives on in the mind of many. And though English remains the language that one wants to acquire (the other side of the colonial linguistic ideology), it is so for reasons that differ from what they use to be. The indexical force of English is no longer prestige or status (many people now know English) and not simply access to better jobs, it is the ‘global’ world one wants to be part of. This global requires different levels in people’s knowledge of English. For most Solomon Islanders, a passive knowledge is what they need to enjoy the movies and popular music coming from overseas. Others use their written knowledge to engage with others on the social media via the internet. Yet others need a more active knowledge of spoken English to seek further education and employment overseas. The indexical force of Pijin is dual: the town, as the new ‘local’ one wants to be part of; and the town which, for many Solomon Islanders, is akin to the global, or as close to the ‘global’ as they will ever get.

94

Jourdan

References Angeli, J. 2008. “‘Mi no waetman, I mean’: Language Ideologies and Attitudes toward English and Pijin among Solomon Students, between Social Mobility and National Consciousness.” MA thesis, Concordia University. Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calvet, L.-J. 1974. Linguistique et colonialisme: petit traité de glottophagie. Paris: Bibliothèque Payot. Crowley, T. 2000. “The Consequences of Vernacular (Il)literacy in the Pacific.” Current Issues in Language Planning 1(3): 368–88. Errington, J. 2001. “Colonial linguistics.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 19–39. Escure, G. 2008. “Pidgins/Creoles and Discourse.” In The Handbook of Creole Studies, edited by S. Kouwenberg and J. Singler, 567–92. Oxford: Blackwell. Fabian, J. 1986. Language and Colonial Power. Berkeley: University of California Press. Irvine, J. 1993. “Mastering African Languages: The Politics of Linguistics in Nineteen Century Senegal.” Social Analysis 33: 27–46. Jourdan, C. 1996. “Where Have All the Cultures Gone? Socio-Cultural Creolization in Solomon Islands.” In Melanesian Modernities, edited by J. Friedman and J. Carrier, 34–52. Lund: Lund University Press. Jourdan, C. 2007. “Linguistic Paths to Urban Self in Solomon Islands.” In Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies, edited by Miki Makihara and Bambi Schieffelin, 30–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jourdan, C., and J. Angeli. 2014. “Pijin and Shifting Language Ideologies in Urban Solomon Islands.” Language in Society 43(3): 265–85. Keesing, R. 1990. “Solomons Pijin: Colonial Ideologies.” In Language Planning in Education, in Australasia and the South Pacific, edited by R. Baldauf and A. Luke, 149–65. Clavedon: Multilingual Matters. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness: Or the World in Pidginization.” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731–59. Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Koreinik, K. 2011. “Public Discourse of (De)Legitimation: The Case of South Estonian Language.” Journal of Baltic Studies 42(2): 239–61. Lyotard, J.-F. 1979. La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Migge, B., I. Léglise and A. Bartens. 2010. “Creoles in Education: A Discussion of Pertinent Issues.” In Creoles in Education: An Appraisal of Current Programs and Projects, edited by B. Migge, I. Léglise and A. Bartens, 1–30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

The Shades of Legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin

95

Mufwene, S. 1994. “New Englishes and Criteria for Naming Them.” World Englishes 1(1): 21–31. Mühlhäusler, P. 1996. Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region. London and New York: Routledge. Paliwala, A.B. 2012. “Creole/Superstrate Code Switching. Analyzing the Dynamic Relationship between Tok Pisin and English in Papua New Guinea.” PhD diss., University of Sydney. Pennycook, A. 2007. Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge. Smith, G. 2002. Growing Up with Tok Pisin. Contact, Creolization and Change in Papua New Guinea’s National Language. London: Battlebridge Publications. Stroud, C. 2002. “Framing Bourdieu Socioculturally: Alternative Forms of Linguistic Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mozambique.” Multilingua 21: 247–73. Vandeputte-Tavo, L. 2014. “D’une fonction véhiculaire à une fonction identitaire: trajectoire du bislama au Vanuatu (Mélanésie).” PhD diss., Paris: EHESS.

Chapter 6

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, and Identity: Suriname and Guyane Richard Price and Sally Price This essay focuses on languages and ethnic identities in two neighboring territories on the northeastern shoulder of South America – the Republic of Suriname and the French overseas département of Guyane. Both are multilingual, multiethnic spaces. And the people whom we have studied for more than fifty years, the Saamaka Maroons (some 90,000 people), now live in both, interacting more and more with other ethnic groups as they move with increasing frequency beyond their traditional home territory in the interior of Suriname. First, some general background. Suriname, which was a Dutch colony until it gained independence in 1975, often boasts of being the most multiethnic country in South America. The 2012 census reported a total population of 542,000 composed of 27 percent Hindustanis (descendants of indentured laborers brought in from India during the second half of the nineteenth century, after slavery ended), 23 percent Maroons (six different peoples whose ancestors escaped slavery in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to form semi-independent societies in the forested interior), 16 percent Creoles (non-Maroon, largely urban Afro-Surinamers), and 14 percent Javanese (descendants of indentured laborers brought from Indonesia in the early twentieth century), with the remaining 20 percent divided among Brazilians (recent immigrants lured by the ongoing gold rush in the interior), Chinese (part of a continuing immigration), Amerindians (the original inhabitants of the country), and miscellaneous others (including Dutch). In addition, there are something like 400,000 people of Surinamese descent living abroad, mostly in the Netherlands. The national language is Dutch, which is used in schools, by the government, and on TV and radio. But the first language of most Creoles and the language used by everyone for communication across ethnic lines is an English-based creole called Sranantongo (‘Suriname language’). In terms of the first language of other groups, most Hindustanis speak Sarnami, a Suriname version of Hindi, and Javanese speak a Suriname version of Javanese. Two of the six Maroon peoples (the Saamaka and Matawai, who live in the central part of the interior) speak a variant of Saamakatongo (a Portuguese-, English- and African based creole) while the other four (the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_007

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

97

Ndyuka, Pamaka, and Aluku, who live in the eastern part of the country and over the border in French Guiana, and the Kwinti, who live to the west of the Matawai) speak varieties of Ndyuka (an English-based creole related to Sranantongo). Chinese, Brazilians, and Amerindians speak their own languages as a first language. Altogether, there are more than twenty languages spoken today in Suriname, with more people speaking Dutch (with greater or lesser competence) than any other. For further information on the complex linguistic situation in Suriname, see Carlin and Arends (1992) and Carlin, Léglise et al. (2014). In neighboring Guyane (French Guiana), which is politically a distant outpost of Europe, the ethnic mix is equally diverse. Although French law does not permit ethnic enumeration in the census, estimates concur that the population of about 250,000 people includes 37 percent Creoles (non-Maroon AfroGuyanais), 26 percent Maroons, 21 percent Brazilians (recent immigrants), and 19 percent Haitians (who also immigrated recently), plus smaller numbers of Chinese, Hmong, and diverse others. The official language is of course French, with a French-based creole as the lingua franca. For further information on the linguistic situation in French Guiana, see Renault-Lescure and Goury (2011) and Migge and Léglise (2013). Let’s turn now to Saamaka Maroons and their language, Saamakatongo, beginning with some historical background.1 In the middle of the seventeenth century, Suriname formed part of a vast forested area that stretched from the Atlantic to the Andes, the home of countless indigenous peoples who lived by hunting, fishing, and gardening. The first European colonists in Suriname, Englishmen from Barbados who arrived with their African slaves in 1651, ceded the area to the Dutch (in the famous 1667 swap in which the Dutch traded Manhattan to the English in return for Suriname) and the colony became one of the most profitable slave plantation societies in the Americas. By the end of the century, some 8000 African slaves were laboring for 800 Europeans – most of the indigenous population had simply retreated into the hinterlands. Before the end of the seventeenth century, as more and more enslaved Africans were landed in the colony, significant numbers began to escape into the surrounding rainforest. The colonists fought back, sending countless militias in pursuit of the runaways and handing out gruesome punishments for recaptured slaves – hamstringing, amputation of limbs, and a variety of deaths by torture. But the planters’ expeditions rarely met with success because the Saamakas had established and protected their settlements with 1  In what follows, we draw upon various of our previous publications; see www.richandsally .net.

98

Price and Price

great ingenuity and had become expert at all aspects of guerrilla warfare. By the late 1740s, the colonists were finding the expense overwhelming and it had become clear that the expeditions themselves (which included slave guides) were contributing to further marroonage, by making known to the slaves both the escape routes from the plantations and the locations of Saamaka villages. By this time, Suriname had developed into a flourishing plantation colony and had earned a solid reputation, even among such rivals as Jamaica and Saint Domingue, for its heights of planter opulence and depths of slave misery. Planters were routinely served at table by nearly nude female house slaves, who also fanned them during their naps (and sometimes all night long), put on and took off their clothes each morning and evening, bathed their children in imported wine, and performed other similar tasks. Under these circumstances, the colonists saw that the increasingly costly warfare was not achieving its goal and they decided, during the late 1740s, to sue their former slaves for permanent peace. After several great battles between Saamakas and colonial armies during the 1750s, a peace was at last negotiated. On September 19, 1762, in the presence of several hundred Saamaka men including their headmen and representatives of the Dutch colonial government, the formal peace treaty was finally sealed. Saamakas remember how their ancestors cut their wrists, and had the whitefolks do the same, mixing their blood in a calabash with rum and sacred white clay, and how each drank a draft, while swearing that the treaty would hold forevermore. (The Ndyuka Maroons had signed a similar treaty with the Dutch in 1760, and the Matawai concluded their own in 1767.) The ancestors of today’s Saamaka Maroons hailed from a large number of West and Central African societies, situated primarily in the Bight of Benin (also known as the Slave Coast), in West-Central Africa, and, to a lesser extent, in the Gold Coast. Here are the figures for the formative period of Saamaka society, whose outer limits we can place roughly between 1675 and 1725, and whose heart we can place between 1690 and 1715. For present purposes, ‘Windward Coast’ corresponds to the coastal regions between modern Senegal and Ivory Coast, Gold Coast is roughly coterminous with modern Ghana, Bight of Benin corresponds to the coastal regions of presentday Togo and Benin and the western coast of Nigeria, Bight of Biafra covers the region from the Niger Delta to the mouth of the Duala River, and Loango/ Angola stretches from Cape Lopez south to the Orange River. These people spoke a large number of languages and came from scores of different states and polities that in many cases were at war with one another. Once landed in Suriname, each shipload of captives was further dispersed by the planters, who chose their purchases with the intent to separate people who

99

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane Table 6.1

The African origins of Suriname slaves, 1675–1725

Windward Coast (‘Mandingos’) Gold Coast (‘Koromantees’) Bight of Benin (‘Papas’) Bight of Biafra (‘Calabaris’) Loango/Angola (‘Loangos’ or ‘Kongos’)

1675–1700

1701–1725

Total

4% 12% 41% 3% 40%

– 13% 50% 1% 36%

2% 13% 45% 2% 38%

might have known each other or spoken the same language. Combined with a firm policy not to separate slave families when plantations were sold, the slaves’ primary identity rapidly shifted from their African origins to their plantation community, where they now had family and comrades, and where they had already begun to bury their dead. Within the earliest decades of the African presence in Suriname, the slaves had developed the core of a new social identity, a new religion, and much else. The new creole language for many of them was Sranantongo, but on the largely Jewish Suriname River plantations, whence the ancestors of the Saamakas fled, it was the closely-related Dyutongo, lexically influenced by Portuguese. These became the vehicles of everyday communication. The striking ‘non-Europeanness’ of this early cultural synthesis, when compared to developments in other parts of the Americas, can be explained in part by the unusually high ratio of Africans to Europeans in the colony – more than 25:1 for much of the eighteenth century, with figures ranging up to 65:1 in the plantation districts. On Suriname plantations, it was in large part the recently arrived Africans (rather than Europeans) who effected the process of creolization, of building a new culture and society. In Suriname, creolization was built on a diversity of African heritages, with far smaller inputs from European and Amerindian sources.2 By the time the ancestors of the Saamakas escaped into the forest during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they carried with them the seeds of a new cultural system. The early bands of runaways confronted complex challenges. Seeking refuge in a harsh and hostile environment, they were faced with the task of creating a society and culture even as they were being pursued by colonial troops bent 2  For a book that charts the course of creolization in Suriname, with special reference to Saamaka realities, see R. Price (2008).

100

Price and Price

on the destruction of their communities. Originally organized as groups which had their origins on a single plantation, they expanded, picking up new runaways through time. These groups passed on membership through the female line, becoming the matrilineal clans (los) that remain today the main identitarian and land-holding groups. In the beginning, local indigenous people taught the ancestors of the Saamakas a good deal about gardening, hunting, and fishing, both while they served as slaves together on plantations and after the Africans escaped. Yet few religious, artistic, or ideological traces of Suriname’s Amerindian cultures can be found among Saamakas. The great bulk of the people who became known as Saamakas escaped from Suriname’s plantations between 1690 and 1712. With very rare exceptions, they had been born in Africa. Most were men and most were still in their teens or twenties. Most had spent little time in slavery, more often months than years. By the time of their escapes, however, most spoke Dyutongo which they then quickly developed into their own distinctive language, Saamakatongo. As they faced the challenge of building political, social, and religious institutions while waging war and trying to survive in an unfamiliar and hostile environment, they drew on the immense riches of their African pasts, though their relative youth meant that much of the esoteric and specialized knowledge of their homelands was not available to them. Leadership drew authority not only from personal charisma and knowledge but also from divination, which encouraged the communal negotiation of developing institutions. The runaways, fighting for their individual and collective survival, had strong incentives for rapid nation-building. One day in 2005, our friend Tooy, an elderly Saamaka man (deceased April 2015) who lived for some fifty years in Cayenne, reflected on what his ancestors had brought over on the slave ships from Africa. “When the Old Ones came out from Africa, they couldn’t bring their obia [magical] pots and stools – but they knew how to summon their gods and have them make new ones on this side. They no longer had the original pots or stools but they carried the knowledge in their hearts.” What Tooy’s ancestors were in most cases not able to bring with them on the ships was not only ‘obia pots and stools’ (and other material objects). Most of the traditional African institutions themselves were also not possible to import intact. Members of kingdoms and villages of differing status came but different status systems could not. Priests and priestesses arrived but priesthoods and temples had to be left behind. Princes and princesses crossed the ocean but courts and monarchies could not. Commanders and foot soldiers came but armies could not.

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

101

Yet immense quantities of knowledge, information, and belief were transported in the hearts and minds of the captive Africans. Moreover, even though they came from different ethnic and linguistic groups and were rarely in a position to carry on specific cultural traditions from their home societies, these people shared a number of cultural orientations that, from a broad comparative perspective, characterized most West and Central African societies. Despite the variety of sociocultural forms from one African society to the next, certain underlying principles and assumptions were widespread: ideas about the way the world functions phenomenologically (ideas about causality, how particular causes are revealed, the active role of the dead in the lives of the living, and the intimate relationship between social conflict and illness or misfortune); ideas about social relations (what values motivate individuals, how one deals with others in social situations, the complementarity and relative independence of males and females, matters of interpersonal style); ideas about reciprocity and exchange (compensation for social offenses, the use of cloth as currency); and broad aesthetic ideas (an appreciation of call-andresponse rhythms and sharp color contrasts, attitudes toward symmetry and syncopation). And these shared cultural orientations further encouraged the building of new Saamaka institutions. Common orientations to reality would have focused the attention of individuals from diverse West and Central African societies upon similar kinds of events, even though the culturally prescribed ways of handling them were quite diverse from one society to another in terms of their specific form. For example, while the Yoruba ‘deified’ their twins at birth, enveloping their lives and deaths in complex rituals, and the neighboring Igbo summarily killed twins at birth, both peoples could be said to be responding to a common set of underlying principles that accorded supernatural significance to unusual births, an idea widespread in West and Central Africa. Once in the forest, Saamakas created rituals of an enormous variety, based largely and loosely on African models, to assist them in coping with their new environment. As they moved farther from the plantations, they discovered kinds of gods previously unknown to them who inhabited the trees and boulders and streams of their new surroundings. And each new kind of god, as well as each individual deity, taught these pioneers how to worship them, how to lay out their gardens safely and successfully, how to hunt in their territory, and much else. From the perspective of Saamaka Maroons, their ancestors literally discovered America, revealing all sorts of usually-invisible powers that continue to make their world what it is today. The early Saamakas learned about local gods through a process of trial and error, drawing on a tightly interwoven complex of pan sub‑Saharan African

102

Price and Price

ideas and practices regarding illness, divination, and causality. A misfortune (whether an illness or other affliction) automatically signaled the need for divination, which in turn revealed a cause. Often this cause turned out to be a local deity previously unknown to them (since they had never before lived in this particular environment). The idea that local deities could cause illness when they were offended (for example, when a field was cut too close to their abode in a large tree or boulder) was widespread in rural West and Central Africa. But the classification of local deities as well as the identities of individual deities varied significantly from one African society to another. These early Saamakas frequently engaged in communal divination, with people from a diversity of African origins asking questions together (through a spirit medium or other divinatory agent) of a god or ancestor in order to grasp the nature of the kinds of gods that now surrounded them. The detailed pictures that emerged of the personality, family connections, abode, whims, and foibles of each local deity permitted the codification by the nascent community of new religious institutions – classes of gods such as Papagadu (also called Vodu, boa constrictor deities) and their close cousins Watawenu (anaconda deities) or Apuku (forest spirits), each with a complex and distinctive cult, including shrines, drum/dance/song ‘plays,’ languages, and priests and priestesses. Indeed, such public divination, an arena for the communal creation of new cultural forms, worked as effectively as it did in part because of the widespread African preference for additivity rather than exclusivity in most religious contexts. Such processes and events, multiplied a thousandfold, created a society and culture that was at once new and dynamic. African in overall tone and feeling, it was nonetheless unlike any particular African society. The governing process had been a rapid and pervasive inter-African syncretism, carried out in the new environment of the South American rainforest. Our first outsiders’ view of Saamaka life (including language) dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, thanks to the detailed diaries of the German Moravian (Herrnhuter) missionaries who were sent out to live in Saamaka villages right after the 1762 peace treaty and to the excellent Saamakatongo-German dictionary (Schumann 1778). What we learn is that Saamaka culture, including language and religion, was already in its main lines very similar to its present form, with frequent spirit possession and other forms of divination, a strong ancestor cult, institutionalized cults for the Apuku and Vodu gods encountered in the forest, and a variety of gods of war. But even the great Saamaka war obias (magical powers), including those with names that point to a particular African people or place such as Komanti, were in fact radical blends of several African traditions, largely developed in Suriname

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

103

via processes of communal divination. By the time Saamakas had signed their peace treaty with the Dutch crown after nearly a century of guerrilla warfare, there were few African‑born Saamakas still alive and Saamaka culture already represented an integrated, highly developed African‑American synthesis whose main processual motor had been inter‑African syncretism, viewed from a Saamaka perspective as an ongoing process of discovery. Today, the lexicon of standard (everyday) Saamakatongo is roughly 35 percent English-derived, 25 percent Portuguese-derived, 5 percent derived from Amerindian, Dutch, or French, and 35 percent derived from one or another African language. If, however, we include esoteric languages, the African contribution would be more like 50 percent. In addition to Saamakatongo, Saamakas have a number of esoteric languages, known only to those men who learn and practice the particular spiritual cults associated with them. They include Apuku (forest-spirit language), Dungulali (an obia language), Komanti (the major obia language, associated with warrior-gods), Luango (associated with the Langu clan), Papa (used only during funeral rites), Pumbu (associated with the Langu clan), Papagadu (boa constrictor-spirit language, sometimes called Vodu), Tone (river-god language), Watawenu (anaconda-spirit language), Wenti (sea-god language), as well as others. Saamakas, like other Maroons, also have a well-developed drum language, known as Apintii, which is used in various rituals and for political events.3 Much of the lexicons of these esoteric languages draw on a variety of African languages but they also use words from other Maroon languages as part of their practices of disguise and play. For example, the speech of Saamaka Komanti mediums is heavily infused with borrowings from Ndyuka, and Ndyuka Komanti mediums incorporate words from Saamakatongo in their speech. Esoteric languages and their associated cults, closely associated in Saamaka with particular gods and rituals, are in many ways the functional equivalent of West African secret societies. Those associated with obia (magic) are exclusively male – for example, Komanti, Dungulali, Luangu, Papa, and Pumbu, as well as Apintii drum language. Other cults (and their associated languages), such as those connected to snakes, seagods, river gods, or forest spirits, are open also to women, who are frequently possessed by such gods. But in Saamaka, there is no formal initiation into any of these cults. Either a god picks its human medium (as with Vodu, Watawenu, Tone, Wenti, and Apuku) or a man simply chooses to learn the rites and as time goes on increasingly participates 3  Hundreds of examples from the lexicons of these languages as well as hundreds of songs, proverbs, and drum rhythms performed in them are available in R. Price (2008).

104

Price and Price

in its practices (as with Komanti, Dungulali, Papa, and certain other cults). A single man, such as our friend Tooy, may become expert in a number of such rites and languages, and a woman can be the medium for several types of gods as well. None of these rituals (with their languages, drum rhythms, and songs) are hidden from the general population but only adepts in each cult perform (and fully understand) their special rites and language. Until the Suriname Civil War between Maroons and the government (1986– 1992), Maroons in Suriname lived largely in their traditional territories in the interior, almost as states-with-a-state. Since the mid-nineteenth century, men had traveled to the coast (and to Guyane) for periods of a couple of years at a time to earn money to buy manufactured goods to bring home, where they stayed for several years until their supplies ran out. But after the Civil War, when the government began an active program of integrating Maroons into the larger society (in part with the aim of emptying out the interior of the country to free it up for mineral and timber extraction by foreign multinationals), many Maroons moved to the coast, becoming part of the urban underclass. Today, many traditional villages are barely inhabited and something over half of all Maroons live outside of traditional territories. The following table shows the current residence of Suriname and Guyanais Maroons.4 Table 6.2 2014 Population Figures of Suriname and Guyanais Maroons

Ndyuka Saamaka Aluku Pamaka Matawai Kwinti TOTAL

Suriname Paramaribo ‘interior’ and environs

Guyane interior

Guyane coast

Netherlands

TOTAL

26,000 28,500 – 4,300 1,300 300 60,400

 5,500 –  5,700  1,000 – – 12,200

21,000 25,000 5,100 3,900 – – 55,000

7,500 7,500 200 700 200 50 16,150

90,000 90,000 11,000 11,000 7,000 1,000 210,000

30,000 29,000 – 1,100 5,500 650 66,250

4  For further details, see R. Price (2013b).

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

105

For the Ndyuka, ‘Suriname “interior”’ includes both the Tapanahoni/Lawa and Cottica/Moengo regions, as well as the (former) Sara Creek villages. For the Saamaka, ‘Suriname “interior”’ includes villages both above and below the lake. In addition to sites listed in the table, an ever growing number of Maroons – many hundreds – now reside in the United States, principally in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Boston, as well as elsewhere in the world, and a small number, mainly Alukus, reside in metropolitan France. Under these circumstances, Maroon languages and language use, as well as the meaning of Maroon identity, are rapidly changing. One of these changes involves the transformation of words into text. Although Saamakatongo, like the other Maroon languages, is primarily a spoken language, the development of an orthography for it began soon after the 1762 peace treaty with the Dutch Crown, when German Moravian missionaries first arrived in Saamaka territory. From 1765 until 1813, thirty-seven Moravian men and women attempted to bring their brand of Christianity to the Saamaka.5 Writing biblical texts in the Saamaka language was part of this effort, which culminated in a remarkable Saamakatongo-German dictionary (Schumann 1778). Since that time, there have been other attempts to develop an orthography for Saamakatongo – by the Dutch linguist Jan Voorhoeve and the R.C. priest Antoon Donicie in the 1960s, by the SIL field linguists Catherine Rountree and Naomi Glock in the 1970s and 80s, and by amateur linguists in French Guiana during the past decade.6 During the past several years, working with Saamaka linguist Vinije Haabo, we have developed a new orthography and recently published a book that uses it (R. Price 2013a). Written at the formal request of the Saamaka People, and using the new orthography with their approval, we hope that this book will serve as the new standard for turning the spoken language into written text.7 The orthography, which does not use diacritical marks, mimics the one that young Saamakas now use on their Blackberries, iphones, and Androids. For speakers of Saamakatongo it turns out that diacritics are unnecessary for both reading and writing the language.

5  See R. Price (1990), which explores the relationship between Saamakas and missionaries during the second half of the eighteenth century. 6  See, for example, Donicie and Voorhoeve (1963), Rountree, Asodanoe and Glock (2000), and Lienga (2013). 7  The Saamaka People have purchased 3,000 copies for distribution in their schools.

106

Price and Price

Today, there are some 80,000 to 90,000 people whose first language is Saamakatongo.8 That language (like all languages) is in constant flux, and it now includes lexical items and ways of speaking adopted during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from external sources such as Sranan, Ndyuka, French, Dutch, and more recently Brazilian, Chinese and Russian – the latter because of the new Soyuz base in French Guiana, where many Saamakas are employed. But even beyond that, and their array of ritual languages already mentioned, Saamakas master, to variable extents, generation-specific play languages that add to the intellectual and aesthetic pleasure of language use. Saamakas’ appreciation and cultivation of multilingualism has always been an important part of Saamaka life. Indeed, as Kamau Brathwaite has argued (1971, 237), “It was in language that the slave was perhaps most successfully imprisoned by his master, and it was in his (mis-) use of it that he perhaps most successfully rebelled.” Saamakas, like other Maroons and their slave ancestors, have always used languages for purposes of secrecy.9 Maroon men are inveterate transnationals and the ability to get along in a foreign language has always been a central male value. Since the 1860s, Saamakas have traveled in large numbers to French Guiana to work as canoemen. Men who had spent time working there have always enjoyed showing off and amusing themselves in their home villages in Suriname by conducting boisterous conversations in French Creole. But in addition, since the late nineteenth century, these groups of migrant men, once they returned to Saamaka, have created akoopinas – play languages that only members of the in-group can understand – through selective manipulation of the various languages to which they were exposed. During much of the twentieth century, a number of akoopinas were in use at any one time in different villages along the Suriname River, and the practice has been reported among other Maroon peoples as well.10 A Saamaka friend once told us about an akoopina from Santigoon (Santigron), a village located 8  For Saamaka children born in the Netherlands or the United States, Saamaka is often a second or third language. Saamaka parents in Rotterdam, for example, have sponsored Saturday morning classes in Saamakatongo so that their children will not abandon the language. 9  Or even discretion. In order to explain the identity of a Haitian sitting near us at a wake, a Saamaka told us, when we inquired, that he was a ‘Baka seibi’ (an ‘After-seven’ person). This spontaneous label was easily understood by anyone who spoke Saamakatongo (but not by the Haitian), since eight (aiti) comes after seven (seibi) and is pronounced identically by Saamakas to ‘Haiti.’ 10  For further discussion of akoopinas, see R. and S. Price (1976).

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

107

near Paramaribo that includes a mixed population of Saamakas and Ndyukas, by saying, “It rearranges in Ndyuka; it rearranges in Sranan; it rearranges in Saamakatongo. So it is mixed…. and it also has things of its own.” And he pointed to the way they perceived ‘sweetness’ of particular words influenced the choice of which language to draw on: When you say mbaku, that’s from kumba, which is how Ndyukas say ‘navel.’ If you reversed it in Saamakatongo, it would be gonbi (from bingo), but when you are really talking the language, you must say mbaku, because it’s the language with the sweetest name for a thing is what you must take. If Saamaka is sweeter, you use that; if Ndyuka, you use that; if Sranan, you use that. Although most akoopinas have been used for relatively brief exchanges, there was one, which originated in the mid-nineteenth century in the village of Kampu and was passed on exclusively to residents of Kampu for at least one hundred years, that people used for extended conversations. In the 1960s all men and boys in the village as well as a few of the older women were said to speak it fluently. It was based on syllable rearrangement of French Guiana Creole, though many of its speakers had no knowledge of French Creole itself. Examples we were given included ‘Téku vé-utu’ meaning ‘Where did you find it?’ from Creole ‘Koté u tuvé?’ Or again, the word for ‘family,’ which in normal Saamakatongo is the same as the word for belly/womb, became, in this akoopina, ‘tivan’ – a distortion of ‘vanti’ (Saamakas’ pronunciation of French Creole vant, which derives from French ventre). Saamakas’ fascination with foreign languages also enlivens popular songs. In the 1960s, these seketi songs often combined normal Saamakatongo with linguistic bits that men picked up from other languages during their time as laborers on the coast.11 In more recent decades, one of the primary contexts for sharing language and creating cross-ethnic group solidarity is the flourishing urban pop music scene, which encompasses not only greater Paramaribo St. Laurent, and Cayenne but extends to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and other sites in the Netherlands. In a series of fascinating articles, Kenneth Bilby has documented the influx and influence, since the late 1970s, of young Maroon musicians on the urban scene (see, for example, Bilby 1999, 2001). He writes:

11  For examples, see S. Price (1984, 172–87).

108

Price and Price

Almost every major trend in grassroots kaseko [traditionally, the Creole – and national – dance music par excellence] since the mid-1980s has been pioneered by Maroon players; most recent kaseko hits in Suriname have been by bands made up primarily or entirely of Saamaka and Ndyuka Maroons. Bilby 2001, 304

Or, again stressing the international and multilingual influences on Suriname’s pop music varieties, as played by bands composed of Maroons and Creoles, he writes: In any random selection of kaseko, kawina and aleke recordings made during the last five years, one is liable to detect strains of Jamaican reggae and dancehall, French Antillean zouk, Central African soukous, Haitian konpa, Dominican merengue, South African mbube, Trinidadian soca, North American funk, hip hop, and house, Brazilian samba, or any number of other foreign styles. Bilby 1999, 272

And discussing what he calls “the cosmopolitan openness displayed by kaseko and kawina bands,” he offers that A good example is “Mani Mani” by Bigi Ting. Prefaced by a bit of Brazilian samba-style drumming, the piece then kicks off in typical aleke style with a section in the Ndjuka language; eventually the melody changes, and the lyrics (quoting a number of hit songs by other Surinamese bands) begin to shift back and forth between Sarnami Hindi, English, Ndjuka, and Sranan; this part of the song alternates with yet another section consisting of an aleke version of James Brown’s “Sex Machine”, rendered in an approximation of African-American Vernacular English (over typical Ndjuka aleke drumming). Bilby 1999, 290

What better example could we wish for of multilingualism from below, the peoples’ insistence on their right to use, play with, and develop new linguistic (and musical) resources, across every imaginable border? In today’s urban environments of Paramaribo and the coastal towns of Guyane, Maroons confront identitarian issues of a new kind. In places like St. Laurent-du-Maroni, where the population of 45,000 includes at least 30,000 Ndyukas, Saamakas, Alukus, and Pamakas, Maroons interact with one another

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

109

as well as with Guyanese Creoles, Chinese, Haitians, Hmong, French, and others – in schools, hospitals, administrative offices, and so forth. Ethnic stereotypes are strong, multilingualism is the order of the day, and questions of nationality matter a great deal. So, Saamakas without residence papers who live in St. Laurent (or Kourou or Cayenne) are in a very different position from Alukus, who are only one-third as numerous in Guyane but benefit from the perks of French citizenship because of being born in Guyane. We are told that among primary school children today, the worst insult is ‘Saamaka’ (while ten years ago it was ‘Haïtien’). The power differences that revolve around issues of citizenship and immigration, as well as older rivalries, mitigate against any quick creation of a single ‘Maroon’ (or in Guyanais parlance ‘Businengué’) identity. We would note also that in both Suriname and Guyane, the elite speak a creole as their first language (Sranantongo and Guyanais créole, respectively), and discrimination and the social placement of different ethnic groups in local hierarchies has less to do with language than with non-linguistic variables. Thus, local elites often group Amerindians (who speak an indigenous language at home) with Maroons (who speak a creole) as ‘non-civilized’ or ‘primitive,’ not on the basis of language type but on the basis of their ‘culture’ (or perceived lack of it) more generally. We turn now away from oral language to consider ideas about graphic communication in order to explore the relationship between a new (twenty-firstcentury) development in Maroon ethnicity and an idea that has permeated the popular literature on Maroons, which is that Maroon art serves as a secret language. This idea is far from new; indeed, it has been promoted by Western visitors to the Maroons since at least the nineteenth century. But today, it has been called into service and elaborated in new directions by young Maroons in Guyane, who are simultaneously (1) abandoning many of the things that lay at the heart of traditional Maroon ethnic identity (from dress and housing to diet and transportation) and (2) staking their claim to an ethnic identity that distinguishes them from other Guyanais populations via a secret language of graphic signs born, they say, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the crucible of oppressive plantation slavery. As such, this represents a particularly intriguing case of the malleability of a discourse of ethnicity in response to assimilationist forces – the simultaneous departure from the ethnic identity into which they were born and embrace of a discourse that insists upon an essentialized (and exoticizing) version of that very ethnic identity. The situation of Maroons in twenty-first-century Guyane provides an interesting window onto the malleability of Maroon identitarian discourses and ideas about language in the context of rapid assimilation. As Guyane has moved

110

Price and Price

from a sleepy little neo-colony with a population in the tens of thousands at mid-twentieth century to the booming home of the European space center and a population fast approaching the 300,000 mark, France has implemented a program of francisation which is designed to bring Guyane more into line in terms of French language, education, values, and lifestyle. This assimilationist politics has had a profound impact on (among other things) the Maroon art of woodcarving, known in the various Maroon languages as tembe – or at least that considerable portion of tembe objects that pass into the international art market through the new channels of distribution, from souvenir shops, cultural festivals, and art exhibits to public commissions and governmentsupported cooperatives. One organizational instrument that has been moving Maroons into a more central position on the stage of Guyane’s culture are the cooperatives (associations) that have been popping up with increasing frequency. Many of these associations deal with Maroon culture though they are often directed by non-Maroon participants. Associations concerned with Maroon art are in a privileged position to define, develop, and promote not only the art itself, but also interpretations of its meaning. And as Maroons move into an ever-moreintegrated role within the larger society, that means re-fitting both forms and interpretive discourses for a market economy … something that the European members of the associations are particularly well equipped to handle. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, to see widespread/longstanding popular stereotypes about Maroons being called into service and combined for promotional purposes – most notably the myth that tembe is a language of graphic signs born in the crucible of plantation slavery. Partly because most Maroon woodcarvings are made by men for women, outsiders have long cherished the idea that Maroon art functions as a symbolic language between male woodcarvers and the women for whom their carvings are intended as gifts of affection. Each named motif, the idea goes, carries a specific meaning, with the various motifs on a given carving working together to transmit a discursive message. As a forestry worker who compiled a dictionary of Maroon symbols put it, The motifs can be considered like words…. By assigning the right meanings to these motifs and reading them correctly, just like letters and words, it is possible to bring out the maker’s intent. Exactly the way a comma can change the sense of a sentence, the presence of a particular motif next to another one alters its meaning. Muntslag 1979, 31

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

111

In the context of twenty-first-century Guyane, the idea of coded symbolic messages has become omnipresent in books, magazines, exhibit brochures, websites, and media outlets such as radio and television. One of the many coffee-table books published by the Libi Na Wan cooperative, for example, asserts that The symbolic figures … constitute a kind of lexicon that is transmitted from generation to generation…. Each sign is there both for the way its form contributes to the overall composition and for its meaning…. What we’re dealing with here are actual messages, with the carved object generally serving as a ‘gift’ designed to illustrate the feelings of a man for a woman. Doat, Schneegens and Schneegens 1999, 122, 49

Or again, a book on Maroon stools written by a local politician asserts that the carved designs constitute a language for use in relations between the sexes, a symbolic language that is intended to amuse and seduce the woman, … it’s a rebus that the man gives her to decipher. Bruné 1995, ix, 42–43, 32–33, 27

Claims of this sort have appeared periodically throughout Maroon history, but as we moved into the twenty-first century, there were some new twists in the discourse. Ten years ago, browsing through a bookstore in Cayenne, we came upon a coloring book for children called “Colorie tes tableaux tembé!” The author was Franky Amete, a talented Aluku artist whose work we knew from having attended the opening of an exhibition of his work in a trendy upscale Cayenne bar, where we admired the way he had innovated creatively by executing some of his work, not with the colorful paints normally used by Alukus, but with the sands and soils of Guyane; his wife, a metropolitan French woman, had told him about Navajo sand paintings and he had taken it from there (S. Price 2007). Franky’s coloring book made no mention of sands and soils; rather, it offered a discourse that foregrounded the role of color. A section entitled “A Secret Code” explained that ‘art tembé’ can be studied like a language, with colors playing a significant part in the themes to be expressed. Red, it asserted, represents man and blood, white is woman and beauty, black is earth (soil), blue is the earth (planet), and so on.

112

Price and Price

The coloring book also introduced a claim concerning the early history of Maroon art that we had never before encountered. It declared: The art of tembé was used as a means of communication among plantation slaves, comparable to secret messages in code. After the slaves escaped their servitude and established themselves on the banks of the river, … it became the written language of a community that had until then been based on an oral tradition. Amete 2004

Franky was a member of the Libi Na Wan cooperative when he wrote this scenario, but the Mama Bobi cooperative was also promoting this version of the origin of tembe. A floridly written document composed for the 2004 “Biennale du Marroonage” took readers back to the era of slavery to recount the birth of Maroon tembe: Knowledge of escape, charged with vigilance, calling each day on a new creativity. And at the beginning, communication…. The marks of secrecy, the marks of combat…. a few lines furtively scratched in the soil. The mark of the Maroon in full power preparing his flight in complicity…. Coded messages, discrete, secret, and ritualized…. From the gestures of a guerrilla, the Tembe softened into gestures of tenderness…. Once peace came and freedom was won, there was leisure time, and the Tembe was transformed into an artform.12 Part of the problem with the claim that tembe is a communicative language capable of sending messages from men to women can be traced to gender relations in the encounters between outsiders and Maroons. For if the motifs carry meanings by which the man who makes the carving sends a message to the woman who receives the carving, one would hope that the woman could make out the message from her lover. That is, a system of communication works only if those who speak or write and those who listen or read – or, in this case, those who carve motifs and those to whom the motifs are addressed – agree on what the forms signify. Because almost all the descriptions of tembe in the 12  This depiction of slave-era origins for tembe was a serious eyebrow-raiser, given the results of our decades-long multi-sited research that had allowed us to place the beginnings of woodcarving in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. And the claim that color symbolism was part of the system is interesting in that Maroon artists’ use of the colors in question began only in the second half of the twentieth century.

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

113

literature come from male outsiders talking with male Maroons, the question of how much women can interpret the symbols has rarely come up. But when we do ask women about how they read tembe designs, the response is universally negative. Our own efforts over the past half century to get women to ‘read’ trays, combs, stools, and so forth have resulted in the identification of lots of names for motifs, but no symbolic meanings for them and no messages in the way they were combined. None whatsoever. Secondly, a systematic survey conducted over four-to-five months in 2008 by the cooperative ‘CRABASI,’ in Suriname, gave a 72-item questionnaire to 54 Maroons – Saamakas, Pamakas, and Alukus (CRABASI 2008); each person was shown ten tembe designs and asked to talk about what they meant. Although the abstract idea of symbolic meaning was understood, no one (neither men nor women) could provide a reading of any of the designs. And finally, Brazilian anthropologist Olivia da Cunha, who was conducting research with Ndyuka Maroon women in 2013, kindly agreed to our request to show them sample tembe designs, to see what they had to say about their symbolism. The twelve women, aged 35 to 65, whom she interviewed on the subject, suggested that there might be other people who knew how to read the designs (always men), but said that they didn’t. These three independent efforts to plumb women’s knowledge of tembe symbols lead us to conclude (1) that the abstract idea of motifs carrying meaning seems perfectly possible to them, but (2) if such meanings do indeed exist, they do not have the key to them and cannot read the messages the men might be trying to send them. As for the men, Eastern Maroons tend to be slightly more open than Saamakas to the abstract idea of tembe symbolism, pointing most frequently to a motif called geebi lobi (‘graveyard love’) and explaining that it means ‘eternal love.’ But except for some of the younger artists like Franky Amete, who are producing art for the market, even Eastern Maroon men recognize that there’s a big difference between on the one hand such a one-to-one relationship between a motif and its meaning, and on the other a claim that full messages are being spelled out through a graphic language – that is, through grammatically structured combinations of motifs. And although young carvers like Franky Amete claim that their understandings about tembe were taught to them by their fathers and grandfathers, our conversations with men of those generations produce across-the-board denials that they ever composed or transmitted messages through combinations of motifs. Much along the lines of the women who plead illiteracy when it comes to the messages of woodcarving, these older carvers are emphatic that they have never learned or produced a language composed of woodcarving motifs. One older Ndyuka carver, Wani

114

Price and Price

Amoedong, has even developed a comical parody of a Maroon artist claiming to ‘read’ a woodcarving in order to please a tourist. In short, we would seem to be floating in the realm of the famous Zen image that evokes the sound of one hand clapping – a language designed for communication between two people in which only one of them understands the words. Whether their position will stand the test of time is a bit unclear; the associations in Guyane are sponsoring classroom events for schoolchildren to teach them the alleged language of signs, including the meanings of specific colors. So future generations may well internalize the claim and assure its role as a matter of (newly) authorized truth about Maroon culture. This sort of ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) is, of course, taking place throughout the world where native artists are being coached by outsiders in order to increase their success in a market economy; for a wealth of examples from Africa, see Kasfir (1999, 2007). References Amete, F. 2004. Colorie tes tableaux tembé! Cayenne: Editions Plume Verte. Bilby, K.M. 1999. “‘Roots Explosion’: Indigenization and Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary Surinamese Popular Music.” Ethnomusicology 43: 256–96. Bilby, K.M. 2001. “New Sounds from a New Nation: Processes of Globalisation and Indigenisation in Surinamese Popular Music.” In Twentieth-Century Suriname: Continuities and Discontinuities in a New World Society, edited by R. Hoefte and P. Meel, 296–328. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Press. Brathwaite, E.K. 1971. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770–1820. London: Oxford University Press. Bruné, P. 1995. Sièges et sculptures chez les Noirs-Marrons des Guyanes. Cayenne: Éditions Equinoxe Communication. Carlin, E.B., and J. Arends, eds. 1992. Atlas of the Languages of Suriname. Leiden: KITLV. Carlin, E.B., I. Léglise, B. Migge, and P.B. Tjon Sie Fat, eds. 2014. In and Out of Suriname: Language, Mobility and Identity. Leiden: Brill. CRABASI. 2008. Surinam Maroon Tembe: A Means of Living. Paramaribo: CRABASI Foundation. Doat, P., D. Schneegans, and G. Schneegans. 1999. Guyane: L’art Businengé. Grenoble: CRATerre Editions. Donicie, A., and J. Voorhoeve. 1963. De Saramakaanse Woordenschat. Paramaribo: Bureau voor Taalonderzoek in Suriname van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Saamaka Language, Ethnicity, Identity: Suriname and Guyane

115

Kasfir, S.L. 1999. Contemporary African Art. London: Thames and Hudson. Kasfir, S.L. 2007. African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lienga, R. 2013. “Le saamakatöngö et ‘gdi saamakatöngö alifabëti’ dans le contexte multilinguistique de la Guyane.” Paper presented at the Colloque pluridisciplinaire “Les marronnages et leurs productions sociales, culturelles dans les Guyanes et le bassin caribéen du XVII ème au XX ème siècle: bilans et perspectives de recherche,” SaintLaurent du Maroni, Guyane, November 20. Migge, B., and I. Léglise. 2013. Exploring Language in a Multilingual Context: Variation, Interaction and Ideology in Language Documentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muntslag, F.H.J. 1979. Paw a paw dindoe: Surinaamse houtsnijkunst. Amsterdam: Prins Bernard Fonds. Price, R. 1990. Alabi’s World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Price, R. 2008. Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Price, R. 2013a. Fesiten. La Roque d’Anthéron: Vents d’ailleurs. Price, R. 2013b. “The Maroon Population Explosion: Suriname and Guyane.” New West Indian Guide 87: 323–27. Price, R., and S. Price. 1976. “Secret Play Languages in Saramaka: Linguistic Disguise in a Caribbean Creole.” In Speech Play: Research and Resources for the Study of Linguistic Creativity, edited by B. Kirshenblatt‑Gimblett, 37–50. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Price, S. 1984. Co-Wives and Calabashes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Price, S. 2007. “Into the Mainstream: Shifting Authenticities in Art.” American Ethnologist 34(4): 603–20. Renault-Lescure, O., and L. Goury, eds. 2011. Langues de Guyane. La Roque d’Anthéron: Vents d’ailleurs. Rountree, S. Catherine, J. Asodanoe, and N. Glock. 2000. “Saramaccan-English Word List.” Paramaribo: Summer Institute of Linguistics. https://www.sil.org/system/files/ reapdata/48/47/95/48479518748939467378307276910889515245/Saramaccan WdLst_40441.pdf. Schumann, C.L. 1778. “Saramaccanisch Deutsches Wörter-Buch.” In Die Sprache der Saramakkaneger in Surinam, edited by H. Schuchardt, 46–116. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam 14(6), 1914. Amsterdam: Johannes Müller.

Chapter 7

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in East Africa Francis Nesbitt What are the origins of the Swahili phenomenon? A perennial debate in Swahili studies pits the creole hypothesis against the Sabaki hypothesis. The creole hypothesis suggests that Swahili emerged as a language of contact when Arab traders arrived and began to interact with the people of the east African coast. Linguistic studies show that situations of contact where two linguistic communities lead to the emergence of pidgins (simplified registers) that allow the two or more distinct linguistic groups to communicate. European explorers of the nineteenth century who traveled to the region observed that Swahili was a hybrid language with elements of both Arabic and Bantu languages. They speculated that Swahili emerged as an Arabicbased pidgin that became a creole through a process of indigenization. This process of indigenization occurred because the Arab traders were forced to spend months in east Africa as they waited for seasonal monsoon winds. The absence of Arab women in the vicinity led them to take local women as concubines eventually creating a mixed-race population that spoke Swahili as a first language. In response to the colonial hypothesis, the nationalists of the 1950s and 1960s countered with the claim that Swahili is a Bantu language, not Arabicbased creole. Nurse and Spear (1985), for instance, argue that Swahili is part of a subgroup of Bantu languages known as the Sabaki complex after the Sabaki River. Sabaki languages are spoken in Kenya and Southern Somalia. In addition to Swahili they include languages such as Mijikenda, Giriama, Pokomo, Malakote and even Comorian on the Comoro islands. Hinnebusch (1996) argues that Swahili is “inextricably” tied to its Sabaki “relatives in complex and intricate ways” (ibid., 85). The Sabaki hypothesis is that Swahili, Pokomo, Giriama and other Sabaki languages split off from a proto-language as the population grew and migrated around the east African coastal region. Some of these groups remained inland while others moved to the islands where they developed a maritime culture. These island dwellers eventually became known as the Swahili.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_008

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

117

Scholars such as Mazrui, Shariff and Bryceson have recently revived the creolist hypothesis albeit minus its racial overtones. Mazrui (1992) argues that Swahili emerged as an Arabic-based pidgin that evolved into a creole before going through a process of decreolization (ibid., 95–98). As we saw above, a pidgin becomes a creole when it becomes the first or native language of a speech community. This process is referred to as indigenization. Mazrui speculates that Swahili pidgin emerged with an Arabic lexis and Bantu grammatical structure (ibid., 98). The pidgin then creolized and decreolized towards Bantu languages in structural terms while continuing to absorb lexically from other languages. Following Mazrui, Bryceson (2009) also places Swahili “prominently within the category of creole languages” (ibid., 364–65). Bryceson defines creole as a socio-historical rather than a linguistic term. Thus the emergence of Swahili from the experience of slavery, displacement and migration defines it as a creole language. Bryceson, however, refutes Mazrui’s argument that Swahili genesis was pidgin Arabic. She argues that Arabic men were a small minority in Swahili society and that Arabic loan words are restricted to ritual and institutional purposes. Most of the vocabulary comes from Bantu languages. Bryceson also claims, however, that “east African coastal culture is neither Arab nor African” (Bryceson 2009, 364). She argues that Swahili coastal culture is a “fusion culture” that has all the elements that together define a “creole society.” This comes awfully close to the colonial perspective that suggested a duality between Arab and African. Mazrui (1992), for instance, argues that Arabic can be considered and African language because the overwhelming majority of Arabic speakers reside on the African continent. Stating that Swahili is neither Arab nor African suggests an exceptionalism that is anathema to African scholars. Like other creole languages, Swahili is defined by its traumatic history of slavery, displacement and migration that led to cultural change and innovation. Mufwene (2000) traces the myth of creole exceptionalism to the nineteenth century racist ideology of language purism. For Mufwene, creole language genesis is not exceptional but instead reflects the natural evolution of human languages. Mufwene suggests a theory of language ecology that takes into account the history of contact, the value attached to available dialects and the “specific ethnographic circumstance.” This chapter will first examine the history of Swahili creolization before exploring its contemporary postcolonial ethnographic context including the massive refugee and diaspora flows that impact its expansion. The essay concludes with an analysis of the Sheng phenomenon, a youth subculture that epitomizes the meaning of identity in postcolonial east Africa.

118

Nesbitt

Swahili Creolization

In the first century AD, an unnamed Greek author who traveled to the east African coast wrote in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea that Arabs traders who visited the region “knew the language of the people” they found there. Mazrui (1992) takes this to mean that the people referred to in the text were not Arab and that they spoke one language. He makes the case that this language came to be called Swahili. Indeed, the term Swahili comes from the Arabic term sawahil literally ‘coast-dwellers’ or ‘people of the coast.’ Based on the Periplus, Mazrui goes on to infer that the language was probably pidgin Arabic that then became a creole. The text seems to contradict this position as it states that the Arabs knew the language of the people, not that the people knew the language of the Arabs. Thus the meaning could easily be the opposite of Mazrui’s contention – the Arabs learned a simplified version of the language of the coastal people so they could trade with them. Kenyan archaeologist Chapurukha M. Kusimba (1999) shows that the Indian Ocean trade was already well established in the first century AD, when trade between the East Coast, Egypt and Ethiopia was mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. Archaeological evidence from eighth century sites, which includes cowry shells and pottery, testifies that the coastal region was in trade contact with the interior. By the ninth century, gold, ivory and slaves were being exchanged for cloth, ceramics and guns. By 1300, Islam was a major dimension of the East African coastal culture connecting the Swahili peoples to the wider Islamic world. The years between 1300 and 1500 are considered the peak of East African civilization with city-states like Mogadishu, Pate, Lamu, Mombasa and Kilwa serving as cosmopolitan centers on the Indian Ocean rim. The Swahili served as intermediaries between the Arab traders and ethnic groups in the interior. Their so-called ‘caravan trade’ routes penetrated far into interior of east Africa, establishing outposts as far inland as Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Non-Swahili traders from groups like the Kamba, Mijikenda and Nyamwezi adopted Kiswahili as a language of trade and spread the language deeper into the hinterland. By mid-nineteenth century, when the German, British and other European colonial powers were moving into the region, Kiswahili was already the lingua franca from Mogadishu to Sofala on the north-south axis, and from the Indian Ocean to the Shaba Province in presentday DRC on the east-west axis. Colonial policies greatly expanded the reach of the Swahili language. The missionaries initiated this process by learning Kiswahili and employing Kiswahili-speaking catechists in their proselytization efforts. German missionaries in Tanganyika territory transliterated the Kiswahili language

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

119

from Arabic to Roman script and produced the first Kiswahili dictionary and grammar (Wright 1965). Colonial language policies in East Africa tended to change dramatically depending on time and space. In the British-controlled regions, the Europeans had very different ideas about the use of Kiswahili depending on whether they were administrators, settlers or missionaries. The settlers in Kenya strongly opposed the teaching of English to the Africans because they wanted to use language as a means of maintaining social distance. They insisted on using a crude pidgin referred to in the literature as KiSettla to bark orders at Africans even in cases where the Africans were more proficient in English. In contrast to the settlers, the colonial administration felt the need to teach Africans rudimentary English because they needed literate workers to maintain records in the schools, courts, police stations and other government offices. The Germans in Tanganyika were more consistent in their conviction that Africans must not be allowed to acquire European languages. As a result, the Germans promoted Kiswahili use more aggressively as the language of administration than the British. Thus European colonization de-coupled the language from its erstwhile association with Islam and Arabism. At the same time, the indirect rule system of colonialism established by the British elevated the Arabic-speaking Swahili minority a notch above the African Kiswahili speakers: the colonial ideology of racism re-inscribed the Arab identities of the elite Swahili families. This policy led to a reduction in the number of core Kiswahili speakers in the region because Swahili identity was associated with ex-slave status. Ironically, the use of Kiswahili as a lingua franca was expanding just as the core-Swahili identity was shrinking. In addition to the emphasis on Kiswahili in colonial schools, churches and administrations, the language was adopted as a lingua franca in urban areas that became new multiethnic spaces during the colonial period. Rural-urban migrations were driven by the seizure of Africans’ land by colonial settlers, the imposition of taxes and the emergence of a money-economy that forced former subsistence farmers to seek cash incomes. This new form of remuneration was available in the growing urban areas where the colonialists needed cheap labor in their homes, service industries and mines. One major challenge that faced the colonialists and the migrants, however, was the hundreds of languages that East Africans spoke. Kiswahili, a local language closely related to the Bantu languages spoken in the region, became the language of choice in the urban areas. The case of Shaba Swahili, sometimes called Kingwana or Congolese Copperbelt Swahili, epitomizes the creolization process during the colonial era. Kiswahili reached the Congo with Arab trade caravans of the eighteenth

120

Nesbitt

and nineteenth centuries. During the colonial period, thousands of workers from present-day Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda migrated to the region to work in the copper mines. New multiethnic spaces emerged in mining communities (now cities) like Lubumbashi, Likasi and Kolwezi. Swahili became the solution to the linguistic diversity of the workers in the region, giving rise to Copperbelt Kiswahili, which was heavily influenced by local languages including Kiluba-Shankadi, Ciluba-Kasai, Kisanga, Kibemba and Kihemba. By 1910, Kiswahili had established itself as the lingua franca in the Katanga region. The Belgian colonizers gave it official recognition partly in an attempt to differentiate the region from the British territories in the south. Attempts to create language manuals to teach incoming Europeans resulted in varieties of Kiswahili ranging from the crude pidgins of the early years to complicated and improved forms of the 1930s. After independence, Tanzania aggressively promoted Swahili as the language of national unity and the vehicle for its Ujamaa (self-determination) policies. Kenya also adopted Kiswahili as a conational language along with English, but the government was much more ambivalent. In contrast with Tanzania, Kenya’s elite is firmly Anglophone. Leaders tend to deride indigenous traditions and institutions and openly flaunt western lifestyles. Since the colonial period, Kiswahili in Kenya has remained a second-class language, used in the informal economy and to give orders to subordinates. Uganda is yet a different case: while this country has never implemented a formal language policy that includes Kiswahili, the military regime of the 1970s used it as the language of command and the current government led by Yoweri Museveni also promotes the use of Kiswahili at every level. Beyond these policy differences, however, Kiswahili continues to spread in the region. Even in Uganda, where the language is associated with the military, Kiswahili’s role as the lingua franca of the masses remains unchallenged. Indeed, the language has expanded its geographic reach into Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC. Tanzania’s language for self-reliance program was much more successful in forging national unity and horizontal integration across ethnic groups compared to Kenya, Uganda and the DRC. The country managed to avoid the ethnic frictions that have marred the independence era in the other three major Kiswahili speaking countries, even though it continues to face religion-based challenges in its federation with the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba.

Swahili and Postcolonial Identity

The Swahili speaking peoples occupy a peculiar position in postcolonial Africa. Numerous groups on the Indian Ocean coast from southern Somalia

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

121

to northern Mozambique have traditionally been referred to as ‘Swahili.’ In Kenya, Tanzania and the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a growing number of urban dwellers use Kiswahili as a first language. Linguistically we can define anyone who speaks Kiswahili as a first language as a native speaker. This continues to be a minority in eastern Africa. Most east Africans speak Swahili as a second or third language. The setting of Swahili speaking communities extends approximately from Lamu in northern Kenya to Kilwa in Mozambique for a maximalist perspective. Most of the direct descendants of the Swahili tend to choose identification terms other than Swahili: Nowadays, the term ‘Swahili’ is rarely used by those who are the true members of the coastal mercantile society…. Instead identification terms derive from their towns and islands (e.g. waAmu, the people of Lamu, waTumbatu, the people of Tumbatu), more limited ethnic terms such as Bajuni or Hadimu, or ones based upon a shared origin myth, such as Shirazi. Horton and Middleton 2000, 17

This is partly because the term Swahili has residual racial and class connotations among the core group of native speakers. For many within this ‘in’ group, a Swahili is a native speaker of the language who is not known to have any (especially paternal) Arab ancestry and who is a member of the historically underprivileged group of Africans – who were formerly slaves of those with Arab ancestry. The social construction of a negative perception derives from the need to label those of slave origins living on the coast and increasingly becoming Muslims. These groups of Muslim Africans came … to be known as ‘Swahili’, especially during the British colonial period when the Christian missionaries and colonial administrators drew ‘ethnic’ maps of Africa, marked boundaries around groups that appeared to have a single language and some kind of named identity, and then incorrectly assumed that these groups were primordial, stable and unchanging. No African societies have been so and the Swahili are no exception. Ibid., 16–17

Islam remains an important accompanying characteristic of Swahili identity. Yet, Islam is not a defining characteristic. In East Africa today, there is a substantial population of first language speakers of Kiswahili that is not Muslim in religious faith. Young people in multiethnic cities such as Nairobi, Dar es

122

Nesbitt

Salaam, Mombasa, Kisumu, et cetera grow up speaking Swahili. Most of these youth are not Muslims. Kiswahili scholars in Dar es Salaam argue that secondlanguage Kiswahili speakers number “about 80–100 million” (Mulokozi 2002, 6). For many ‘out’ group individuals in Kenya, i.e., second or third language speakers, a Swahili is any African who is, at the same time, a Muslim – even those recently converted to Islam. Islam seems to feature less in the ‘out’ group definition of Swahili identity in Tanzania. Overall, there is a genuine identification with the legacy of Kiswahili in Tanzania’s nationhood without the Islamic qualification. Scholars like Fikeni E.M.K. Senkoro (1988) or Saidu D. Kiango (1974), for instance, have repeatedly argued that the term Swahili refers to all Tanzanians, not to an ethnic group. Kiswahili, they insist, is not the language of an ethnic group but the language of Tanzania and of all Tanzanians.

Becoming Swahili

Who are the Swahili, then? Since the 1970s, there has been a major East African debate over the meaning of ‘Kiswahili’ and ‘Mswahili.’ The debate split Swahili scholars into two camps: the ‘purists’ who insisted that the Waswahili are a distinct ethnic group, and those who claimed that the term ‘Swahili’ refers to a language community, not a distinct ethnic group. Scholars who trace their origins to the core group of Kiswahili speakers on the Indian Ocean coast tend to identify with the first category of ‘purists.’ Shihabuddin Chiraghdin maintains that the Waswahili are a specific ethnic group. His position is that geography, language, Islam and maritime culture define the Swahili. The Swahili language, however, became an instrument of power during the colonial and postcolonial eras. In two major articles titled “Kiswahili ina Wenyewe” (“Kiswahili has owners”) and “Kiswahii Ubantu na Ki-Standard Swahili,” (“Bantu Kiswahili and Standard Kiswahili”), Chiraghdin (1974) insists that although many groups in the region use the language, it is nevertheless the language of a particular group. Like other ‘purists,’ Chiraghdin claims that ‘standard’ Kiswahili was a creation of European colonialists and based on an ‘underdeveloped’ dialect, Unguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar. Another purist is Tigiti S.Y. Sengo who deplores the domination of Swahili scholarship by ‘foreigners’ and what he calls the ‘corruption’ of the language through de-Islamization and de-coastalization (Sengo 1987). Among the second group of scholars who consider the Waswahili a linguistic community is Ibrahim Noor Shariff of the University of Dar es Salaam who argued in the early seventies that Swahili identity is based on culture and

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

123

language use, not ethnic origin. The various Swahili groups, in his pluralistic understanding, include Swahili people of Indian and Arab descent (Shariff 1973). Shariff’s definition of Swahili can be compared to the definition of the term ‘Arab’ which refers to a linguistic community that includes many ‘races’ and ethnic groups. This linguistic definition of community can also be seen in Latin America where people of many nationalities and ‘races’ refer to themselves as Hispanics based on the use of Spanish. Thus, Shariff defines the Swahili as a diverse community brought together by the use of the language and a shared cultural and political space. His perspective is typical of the nationalists who appropriated the Kiswahili language as a tool of mobilization and resistance during the independence struggle. A nuanced perspective comes from Mazrui and Mazrui (1998) who argue that Kiswahili is an ecumenical language as opposed to a communalist one. Ecumenical languages, such as English, maintain racial exclusivity despite being the vernacular of people of many nationalities or ‘races.’ Millions of black Britons speak English as a first language although they are not ethnically or racially ‘English.’ Communalist languages like Arabic are more inclusive. There are Arabs of many nationalities and colors because Arabism is based on language use and the Islamic religion rather than racial or ethnic origin. Yet, it seems that Kiswahili has evolved from an ecumenical to communalist language. Thus although the core group of Kiswahili speakers tends to be insular and exclusionary, the growing numbers of first-language speakers of Kiswahili in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the DRC are not.

Race, Religion and Patriarchy

Postcolonial dynamics have undermined both the racial and class dimensions of Swahili identity but there continues to be a residual racial caste system within the ‘in’ group, that privileges families who trace their ancestry to ‘Persian’ settlers, the Al-Shirazi. This group of families ruled the region for centuries and maintains their identity through intermarriage. The Al-Shirazi clan consider themselves ‘Persian’ even though they are thoroughly integrated with black Africans. The imagined ‘Persian’ identity stands in contrast to the ‘ethnic’ identities of the former slaves (Giriama, Pokomo) and the hybrid identities of most Swahili people. For centuries, the Swahili elite identified strongly with Arabs and Persians. This imagined identity waned during the immediate postcolonial period but there has been a powerful resurgence associated with the aggressive Islamic proselytization of the last two decades. This resurgence is

124

Nesbitt

associated with the massive financial investment (mosques, madrassas, businesses) made by the Saudi-based Wahaabi sect that imposes a radical interpretation of Islam on its adherents. Despite this complexity, however, Swahili cultural studies tend to assign geography a determining role in the emergence of Swahili language and identity. A closer investigation into this geographic determinism shows that the dominant school of Swahili studies, predominantly located in the West, focuses on the proximity of the Swahili coast to the Arabian Peninsula while marginalizing the actual cultural and geographic affinity of the majority of Kiswahili speakers to the continental mainland. The case of gender is particularly revealing. During the slavery era, females were brought from the interior to the coast and islands to become the wives and concubines of the slave-trading elite (Eastman 1988). In the early period, the elite group was generally of Arab or Omani origin. The male offspring of these unions followed the ethnicity of their fathers, were thus free, and adopted an Afro-Arab identity. The females generally remained in slavery although they continued to play the roles of wives, concubines and mothers to the free males. Over time, the paucity of ‘pure’ Arabs and the demographic predominance of African women led to the complete Africanization of the Swahili elite in complexion, behavior and culture. As early as 915 AD, the Arab geographer Al Masud who visited the region noted that the Muslims of East Africa were ‘very black’ (Nurse and Spear 1985, 29). Even the version of Islam practiced on the Swahili coast was Africanized under the influence of the African women in the upper caste of Swahili society. These women were responsible for introducing various traditions of spirit worship and possession associated with the interior. They also maintained traditional naming practices, cuisine and dress particularly because only the elite, free Arabized Swahilis could afford the BuiBui (burqa) worn by Muslim women. In addition to this, the Maulidi Festival of Lamu, an annual celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday has no counterpart in the Middle East and is not accepted as an Islamic tradition by Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia. Unlike other Muslim cultures around the world, Swahili Islam is not based on the adoption of Arabic as the language of worship and instruction. Instead, Kiswahili became the language of proselytization throughout the region.

Swahili Vitality

The future of the Swahili language lies in its ability to produce pidgins and creole languages. Knörr (2014) argues that the “pidgin potential of creoleness

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

125

is grounded in the fact that creoleness is associated with both ethnic and transethnic aspects of culture and identity” (ibid., 34). It is the diversity of origins that leads non-creoles to identify with aspects of creole culture. Thus the Mijikenda and Giriama of mainland coastal east Africa not only adopted Swahili as a first or second language, they also converted to Islam. This cultural creolization process is evident throughout the coastal strip stretching from Mogadishu to Sofala in Mozambique where indigenous Africans adopted both Swahili and Islam. These groups may speak Swahili as a first or second language but they do not necessarily become ethnic Swahili. Creolization does not mean the complete erasure of ethnic identity. It means the adoption of some aspects of creole culture by non-creoles. It is this process that represents the potential that creole cultures have for integration in multi-ethnic societies. The Swahili language, for instance, played an indispensible role in the independence movements in east Africa. The heterogeneity of languages in east Africa and the fortuitous existence of Swahili as a regional lingua franca forced independence leaders to adopt the language as a tool of nationalism. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, for instance, were masters of Swahili oratory. After independence both countries designated Swahili as the official and national language. As we saw above, Tanzania, which aggressively promoted Swahili as the language of national integration, has managed to avoid the ethnic tensions that plague other east African nations. In the east-African interior Swahili was and is still seen as the language of the literate, urban, educated class. Migrants from rural areas not only learned the language for utilitarian purposes but also for the prestige associated with Arabism, Islam and colonialism. Today, Swahili is still associated with prestige, especially along the coastal strip where there has been a revival of Islam. As we saw above, Swahili is the language of Islam and Islamic literacy in east Africa. It is in this context that I will examine the pidgin potential of Swahili and its future as a global African language. This potential is evident in the continued production of pidgins and creoles. We have already examined the emergence of Shaba Swahili through the creolization process associated with the multiethnic spaces produced by urbanization in Katanga. Below, we will examine the genesis and status of Sheng, a Swahili pidgin widely used in urban centers and Kenya and Tanzania. Sheng Sheng is the voice of the urban underclass in east Africa. The term Sheng refers to an urban vernacular, a pidgin, mixed code or peer language that combines Swahili, English and other indigenous languages (Samper 2002; Rudd 2008).

126

Nesbitt

The grammar, syntax and much of the lexicon, however, are from Swahili. It emerged in Eastlands, a suburb/slum of Nairobi that the colonialists reserved for indigenous Africans. It is thus a language of the urban underclass. Since then, Nairobi has become a metropolis with millions of youth growing up in multiethnic spaces to which they adapt in creative and innovative ways. Sheng serves as an oppositional identity for this underclass. They have created a subculture, a community that is held together by this urban phenomenon called Sheng. It serves as a marker of solidarity and identity in dire circumstances. Parents, teachers, politicians, priests and other keepers of cultural order despise this subculture. Despite this opposition, the poverty stricken youth have adopted it as their shield and the basis of their identity. Ironically, Sheng has overcome all odds and has become the language of popular culture, social media, Hip Hop and advertising. Millions of urban youth are growing up with Sheng as their first language. Sheng is an excellent example of a vernacular embraced by a growing youth subculture in east Africa (Githiora 2002; Githingi 2006). Youth sub­ cultures develop among alienated young people trying to adapt to marginalization in bleak urban environments. Members of these subcultures adopt lifestyles that defy convention. They may generate new registers of communication that stretch the rules of and conventions governing behavior in polite society. Some youth subcultures may stand in opposition to mainstream mores while others succumb to consumerism. Stuart Hall (1993) argued that youth subcultures adopt behaviors that seem threatening to cultural institutions such as schools, police, churches and parental authority. These behaviors include ways of speaking, dressing, walking and attitudes toward sexuality and drugs such as marijuana. Music, art and technology play a prominent role in the development of youth subcultures. They are forms of symbolic resistance to power of culture leaders such as priests, police, teachers and parents. Hebdige (1979) argued that youth subcultures constituted symbolic rebellion against the hegemony of mainstream cultures reflected in media, religion, schools, prisons and other institutions. By defying convention, youth subcultures elicit hostility from the mainstream. They are considered deviant and even dangerous. Leaders tend to blame these subcultures for declining work ethics, educational standards, sexual mores and a host of other social ills. Sheng has often been depicted as a vehicle for deviance. It is seen as the language of the delinquent, the mugger, murderer and rapist. This image probably stems from its origins in Eastlands during a period when the slum was a hotbed of the so-called Mau Mau insurgents – freedom fighters belonging to the Land and Freedom Army. The fighters used code to communicate with each other. The code reversed sounds so that, for instance, the Kikuyu warning Uma Uma

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

127

(leave, leave) becomes Mau Mau an incomprehensible code even to those who understand Kikuyu. This creative codification is still a fundamental tenet of Sheng. The flexibility and openness to innovation and borrowing is attractive to youth growing up in the age of Hip Hop, Twitter and Facebook. This creativity is particularly evident in the ubiquitous cries of Manambas or touts in the major urban centers of Kenya. Manambas tout for Matatus, 14-seater minivans that ply the streets of every major and minor urban center in Kenya and, increasingly, in Tanzania and Uganda. They are the main means of transportation for the majority of urban dwellers in the region. Matatu touts vie to attract customers with creative chants and exhortations that border on poetry but are incomprehensible to those who do not speak Sheng. Matatus emerged during the 1950s as an industry mainly controlled by Kikuyu entrepreneurs who the colonialists suspected of being Mau Mau sympathizers. The matatu operators and touts developed a code that was designed to let them communicate privately in the presence of passengers and potential police informants. Sheng has still not shed its image as a language of a violent and disruptive subculture. Teachers blame the register for declining standards of English acquisition. Politicians blame Sheng speakers for violent and disruptive behavior. Parents blame Sheng for delinquency. Peter Muaura, a prominent columnist and former editor of Kenya’s biggest newspaper the Daily Nation, argued that Sheng is a “secret code for deviance” and “linguistic garbage – a non-language that has no stable syntax, no form, no structure, and no rules of grammar.” Yet, the register continues to spread relentlessly through east Africa. Part of this vitality could be attributed to the popularity of Hip Hop in its east African version, which means Hip Hop in Sheng. Groups such as Ogopa!, a popular Kenyan rap group based in massive slum called Githurai, reified Sheng as the language of underclass resistance against the forces of globalizations represented by the English-speaking elite. Wasike (2011) describes a Sheng rendered musical genre called genge. He argues that genge gives voice to marginalized urban youth who reimagine urban spaces as sites of domination, contestation and cosmopolitanism. Meanwhile, Sheng has also emerged as a literary medium in the form of the magazine Kwani? Writers for the magazine used Sheng to reflect the alienation of the youth. The growing influence and mainstreaming of Sheng is reflected in the increasing use of non-standard Swahili in advertising. Mutonya (2008) observes that this is evidence of language shift as advertisers are responding to the transformation of language roles in Nairobi’s speech community. This transformation is driven by the intense penetration and influence of information technology among the youth in urban centers. Advertisers prefer Sheng because of its brevity and flexibility. Social media has universalized the register. What

128

Nesbitt

started as a code for the urban poor has metamorphosed into a subculture that spans across social classes and even geographically into Tanzania and Uganda. Indeed, Sheng’s positioning at the cutting edge of globalization and innovation in East Africa means that its future is guaranteed. Yet, Mutonya (2008) is less than optimistic about the integrative effects of Sheng. In her readings of creative writings during and after the political violence that engulfed Kenya after the 2007 elections, Mutonya finds that writers recoiled from politicized variants of Sheng that reflected retrogressive ideals. Conclusion In its formative stages, Swahili was the language of the coastal people and East African Islam. This close identification with Islam soon waned, however, as Kiswahili became the language of trade and cross-cultural communication. The postcolonial governments of Kenya and Tanzania made Kiswahili an official language because it was widely spoken and understood in the region. In both Kenya and Tanzania, there were national elites who resisted the adoption of Kiswahili for a variety of class and nativist reasons. However, the language was useful on a day-to-day basis and its usefulness transcended its historical baggage as the language of the slave raider and the colonial administrator. Since independence, the governments of Kenya and Tanzania have continued to use Kiswahili as the language of administration and political discourse. In some respects, therefore, the language continues to be implicated in the circuits of power. At the same time, however, it continues to be used by rebels in the Great Lakes region as a language of multiethnic mobilization. We argued in this chapter that the language is not value specific. Its standardization and use in the educational system has forged a national identity and contributed to political stability in Tanzania, a country that boasts 140 languages. In Kenya, Kiswahili is the language of government, commerce and popular culture. The role of Kiswahili as the language of inter-ethnic trade and employment has been the most spontaneous of its historical functions because it depends on little formal education and government policy (Mazrui and Mazrui 1998, 172). This economic role is closely related to the role of Kiswahili as the language of migrant workers and urban dwellers in the region. In the mineralrich Shaba Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for instance, Kiswahili was adopted as the practical solution to the multiethnic spaces created by the establishment of mining towns.

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

129

Swahili has helped the horizontal integration of disparate ethnic groups at the grassroots level. This is a trend that is likely to continue in the years to come. This facilitated by transnational trade and forced or voluntary migrations. Rural-urban migrations and the massive refugee migrations of the 1970s and 1980s have made Kiswahili speakers of millions of urban dwellers and former refugees in Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia who spent decades in Kenya and Tanzania before returning home in the 1990s. The rapid diffusion of Kiswahili from below is most evident in the multiethnic spaces created by the urbanization of the last few decades. The first generations of urbanized East Africans learned Kiswahili as a second language, as the language of work and multiethnic communication. Many of their children, however, were born in the cities and grew up speaking Kiswahili as their first language. The uniquely African phenomenon of Swahili diffusion challenges common assumptions about the sources of social change. It interrupts the neat linear progression from precolonial to colonial to postcolonial posited by Western temporal theory. The diffusion of Kiswahili in East Africa, the Great Lakes region and the African Diaspora demonstrates the limitations of state-centered theories of identity and Africanity. The fact that ordinary East Africans have continued to adopt the language despite the emphasis on English in schools, businesses and government exposes the alienation of the westernized, Englishspeaking elites in contrast to the dynamic cultural evolution of the majority of the population. The Swahili language continues to produce pidgins and creoles across the region. This bodes well for the future of the language in a region where language death is a critical concern. This pidgin potential is evident in the flexibility with which the language has survived and thrived in difficult circumstances such as slavery, colonialism and the current social upheavals that have led to massive population displacement in the region. These migration patterns created large diasporas that resided in countries such as Kenya and Uganda for decades before returning to their homelands. Many of these diasporic populations returned as Swahili speakers. Some, such as the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who sojourned in Kenya, will continue to speak Swahili because they are merchants who travel throughout east Africa. The language has also spread westward into Rwanda and Burundi with returning exiles and favorable political conditions such as the adoption of Swahili as one of the official languages of the East African Community. These favorable conditions mean that Swahili will continue to spread as will the potential for communication and integration in the growing multiethnic spaces in urban areas.

130

Nesbitt

References Bryceson, D. 2009. “Swahili Creolization: The Case of Dar-es-Salaam.” In The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures, edited by R. Cohen and P. Toninato, 364–75. London: Routledge. Chiraghdin, S. 1974. “Kiswahili ina Wenyewe.” Kiswahili 44(1): 48. Eastman, C.M. 1988. “Women, Slaves, and Foreigners: African Cultural Influences and Group Processes in the Formation of Northern Swahili Coastal Society.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 21(1): 1–20. Githiora, C. 2002. “Sheng: Peer Language, Swahili Dialect or Emerging Creole?” Journal of African Cultural Studies 15(2): 159–81. Githingi, P. 2006. “Sheng and Variation: The Construction and Negotiation of Multiple Identities.” PhD diss., Michigan State University, Department of Linguistics. Hall, S. 1993. “What is this Black in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice 20(1–2): 104–15. Hebdige, D. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Hinnebusch, T. 1996. “What Kind of Language Is Swahili?” AAP 47: 73–95. Horton, M., and J. Middleton. 2000. The Swahili. The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society. Malden: Blackwell. Kiango, S.D. 1974. Jeraha la moyo. Nairobi: Foundation Books. Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Kusimba, C.M. 1999. The Rise and Fall of Swahili States. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Mazrui, A.A. 1992. “Roots of Kiswahili: Colonialsim, Nationalism and Dual Heritage.” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 20(3): 88–100. Mazrui, A.A., and A.M. Mazrui. 1998. The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mazrui, A.A., and I.N. Shariff. 1994. The Swahili: Idiom and Identity of an African People. Trenton: Red Sea Press. Mulokozi, M.M. 2002. “Kiswahili as a National and International Language.” University of Dar es Salaam: Institute of Kiswahili Research. www.chakita.org/documents/ Kiswahili%20Mulokozi.pdf Mufwene, S. 2000. “Creolization Is a Social Not a Structural Process.” In Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, edited by I. Neumann-Holzschuh and E. Schneider, 65–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mutonya, M. 2008. “Swahili Advertising in Nairobi: Innovation and Language Shift.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 20(1): 3–14. Nurse, D., and T. Spear. 1985. The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rudd, P. 2008. “Sheng: The Mixed Language of Nairobi.” PhD diss., Ball State University.

Swahili Creolization and Postcolonial Identity in E. Africa

131

Samper, D. 2002. “The Role of a Hybrid Language in the Construction of Identity and Youth Culture in Nairobi, Kenya.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. Sengo, Tigiti S.Y. 1987. “Towards Maturity in Kiswahili Scholarship.” Kiswahili 54: 215–24. Senkoro, Fikeni E.M.K. 1988. Ushairi: nadharia na tahakiki. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press. Shariff, I.N. 1973. “Waswahili and Their Language: Some Misconceptions.” Kiswahili 43(2): 67–75. Wasike, C. 2001. “Jua Cali, Genge Rap Music and the Anxieties of Living in the Glocalized City of Nairobi.” Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa 8(1): 18–33. Wright, M. 1965. “Swahili Language Policy, 1840–1940.” Swahili (35)1: 40–49.

Chapter 8

Chronicle of a Creole: The Ironic History of Afrikaans1 Mariana Kriel Introduction Languages are said to be dialects with armies and navies. The example of Afrikaans calls for a slightly different definition: a language is a creole that was hijacked by nationalists. This chapter revisits the colonial and apartheid history of Afrikaans, focusing on the irony that a “wonderfully expressive and cosmopolitan new language,” which the Khoikhoi and slave population of the Cape Colony “invented out of their necessity for communication … should have become the talisman of a narrow racist nationalism dedicated to the oppression of its real creators” (Sparks 1990, 77). I also reflect briefly upon the recent history of Afrikaans, and then particularly upon ongoing Afrikaner attempts to reverse the effects of the nationalist highjack through the promotion of a new, racially inclusive Afrikaans language movement. This ostensibly well-intentioned white campaign to welcome black mother-tongue speakers of Afrikaans into the fold of the former (or not so former) nationalist language movement are criticized in my chapter. It is one of the sites, I would argue, where “the transformation of South African society is incomplete” (Coetzee 2013, 68), where we have not yet arrived at a “post” position (postcolonial, postapartheid, postnationalist – to borrow a phrase from Carli Coetzee (2013, 75)).

1  Part of this chapter is based on a PhD that I completed at the London School of Economics and Political Science under the supervision of John Breuilly (http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/863/). I would like to thank him once again for his guidance, inspiration and wisdom. I would also like to acknowledge three sources of financial assistance that supported this research and its presentation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, during October 2014: the aforementioned Institute, the South African National Research Foundation and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. A special word of thanks is due to Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho, who invited me to the conference on creole languages. It was one of those memorable conferences that everybody enjoyed, and I appreciate the effort that went into this book and, especially, their patience with me. Kees van der Waal introduced me to Jacqueline, and for that I will always be grateful to him.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_009

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

133

For the purposes of this chapter, the history of Afrikaans is divided into three phases. Section 3 below covers the first phase, namely Afrikaans’s life as a creole, which gradually came to an end as the Afrikaner nationalist movement gained momentum. The second phase began with the nationalist intervention in the life of the language in the wake of the Anglo-Boer War/South African War of 1899–1902. This intervention, and the social consequences thereof, are (rather sketchily) reconstructed and analyzed in Section 4. Put differently: Section 4 attempts to explain in broad terms why, by 1975, only a fool or a philologist “would think it possible to discuss Afrikaans and not to discuss Afrikaner Nationalism [sic]” (to quote Alan Paton’s famous phrase – The Daily News, August 08, 1975; reprinted in Paton 1987, 65). However, no sooner had the link between Afrikaans and Afrikaner nationalism been entrenched than organized Afrikanerdom – or at least its mainstream – tried to sever it. These efforts to ‘de-nationalize’ Afrikaans were triggered by the Soweto student uprising of 1976 and heralded the start of the third phase in the life of Afrikaans. This phase, which has still not run its course, constitutes the focus of Section 5 of this chapter. Before I turn to the historical narrative, however, it is necessary to sketch a brief present-day sociolinguistic profile of Afrikaans.

Demographics and Qualifications

Afrikaans is the language that gave the word ‘apartheid’ to human history. It was, in the words of Johannesburg journalist Jovial Rantao, “the official language of a racist regime which tried, unsuccessfully, to ram it down the throats of all South Africans” (quoted in Carstens 2013, 32). And yet more than half of Afrikaans’s speakers were victims of apartheid or are children of victims of apartheid. They are the so-called colored speakers of Afrikaans, many of whom can trace their roots to the first inhabitants of southern Africa, the Khoisan, or to the 63,000 slaves who were brought to the Cape Colony between 1658 and 1808 (Johnson and Jacobs 2012, 263). Two qualifications are called for before I proceed: The Notion of ‘Colored’ In terms of apartheid legislation, every individual was classified at birth or upon entry into the country as white, black, colored or Asian. Today, needless to say, any analysis of South African society – past or present – in terms of these categories smacks of racism. Particularly controversial, so that some scholars completely ignore it, is the distinction between Africans/blacks and colored persons/coloreds. Jonathan Jansen, for example, states early on in his

134

Kriel

book on race and the apartheid past (Jansen 2009, vi) that “[t]he author uses the word ‘black’ to mean every person who is not ‘white’, since he does not acknowledge apartheid-era classifications of people by colour.” While I agree with Jansen, his practice is difficult to follow. Jansen and his politically likeminded colleagues may disapprove of it, but many people continue to identify themselves as colored and not as black, even if they signal their discomfort with the term and the apartheid category – as I have done in the previous paragraph – by using the word ‘so-called.’ What is more, recent years have seen colored Afrikaans language activists asserting what they call a ‘brown’ identity. In April 2007, prominent language activist Danny Titus went so far as to tell his audience at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees:2 “Get it into your head. We are brown people.” (Die Burger, April 16, 2007). In the remainder of this chapter, I shall try to negotiate this minefield of race/racist terms and ethnonyms with the sensitivity it requires. The Notion of ‘Tracing Roots’ To say, as I have done above (following Johnson and Jacobs 2012, 263), that many colored people can trace their roots to the Khoisan and the Cape slaves, is to distort reality. Many black Africans can do that too, as can many white people. One only has to consider the following tale as told by Shell: “The slave Armosyn Claasz [c. 1661–c. 1733] gave birth to the children of four different fathers …, some described as halfslag [half-caste], which means that the father was white. Many of these children and their descendants were absorbed into what became prominent Afrikaner families” (2012, 68). In 1911, the year after the state of South Africa was created within its present boundaries, the Cape Supreme Court found that there was no clear way in which colored people could be distinguished from whites (Saunders and Southey 1998, 45). Apartheid’s legislators tragically believed there was. In a more rigid way than earlier race classification laws, the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formed the basis of all apartheid legislation, required that every individual should be identified and registered as belonging to one of the four ‘racial groups’ mentioned above. It was an incredible venture in what Johnson describes as “an already Creolised society.” He adds: “This bizarre and often cruel process had to proceed without researching family trees for many Afrikaners might themselves have fallen foul of [the test for whiteness]” (2004, 141). But family trees are irrelevant here. It goes without saying that this chapter ascribes to the view that race is a social construct and not a biological reality. 2  Trans.: Klein Karoo National Arts Festival.

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

135

Statistics South Africa still uses the category ‘colored people’ and, according to its latest 2011 census figures, some 75.8 percent of these South Africans identify Afrikaans as their home language, compared to 60.8 percent of white South Africans. By 2011, Afrikaans had 731,703 more colored speakers than white ones (Statistics South Africa 2012, 26–27). Generally speaking, Afrikaans has always – or at least since the birth of Afrikaner nationalism – carried far greater emotional significance for its white speakers than its colored speakers. By the end of apartheid, the love affair between Afrikaners and Afrikaans – as linguist Piet Swanepoel aptly described the relationship in the title he chose for his professorial inauguration lecture in 1991 – was all but over. The kind of threats that were made by Afrikaner cultural leaders in 1993, when the official status of Afrikaans was at stake at the multiparty negotiations for a new South African constitution, testifies to this fact: should anyone tamper with Afrikaans, it was warned, they can expect a Bosnian situation on the terrain of language (spokesperson for Die Stigting vir Afrikaans3 quoted in Die Volksblad, November 03, 1993); the reaction of Afrikaners will make the struggle of the IRA, the Basques and the ANC look like crèche cowboy games (Ton Vosloo, managing director of Nasionale Pers,4 quoted in Beeld, May 04, 1991), and the feud between the Flemings and the Walloons like a Sunday school picnic (Henno Cronjé, chief executive officer of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge,5 in a letter to Beeld, August 21, 1993). This campaign for the continued official status of Afrikaans in a democratic South Africa was followed after 1994 by a language preservation campaign which has, since then, continued to increase in intensity. What distinguishes the latest Afrikaans language movement from its pre-1994 antecedents is the fact that it is not an exclusively white endeavor. But it remains a white-­ driven and white-dominated movement. For the majority of its colored speakers, Afrikaans is still, as Jakes Gerwel6 once put it, “a completely sober thing” 3  The Foundation for Afrikaans, est. 1992. 4  National Press, a publishing house established by Cape Nationalists in 1914. 5  Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations, est. 1929. 6  Gert Johannes Gerwel (1946–2012) was a colored anti-apartheid activist who, during the 1980s, turned the University of the Western Cape into the intellectual home of the Left (first as professor and head of the Afrikaans department, then as dean of the arts faculty and finally as vice-chancellor). In 1994, Nelson Mandela appointed him as director-general in the office of the presidency. Gerwel held a doctorate in literature from the University of Brussels which was published in 1983 as Literatuur en apartheid: konsepsies van “gekleurdes” in die Afrikaanse roman tot 1948 [Literature and apartheid: conceptions of “coloreds” in the Afrikaans novel until 1948].

136

Kriel

(1988, 16) – “simply a medium in which they live naturally” (Gerwel 1987, 26). They would die in the language, but not for the language (Gerwel 1985, 193). The explanation for this state of affairs, as has already been suggested, can be traced back to the nationalist hijack of Afrikaans. It was, however, only during the last quarter of the nineteenth century that Afrikaans became entangled with Afrikaner nationalist politics. By then, the language had had a long existence as a vernacular – the sociolinguistic term for a linguistic variety without a written standard (Ponelis 1998, 47). Afrikaans’s life before the nationalist hijack – its life as a creole – forms the narrative around which the next section of this chapter revolves. It is a saga that dates back to the mid-seventeenth century.

Afrikaans’s Life as a Creole before the Nationalist Hijack

The Birth of Afrikaans Afrikaans is a product of the colonial era. The language essentially stems from seventeenth century Dutch that servants of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie7 brought with them when they traveled southwards in 1652 to establish a small, armed refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope, “halfway on the arduous sea journey to the East Indies” (Wilson 2009, 43). The first Cape Commander, Jan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck, bid the settlement farewell a decade after his arrival. The rest of the Dutch settlers, however, had come to stay. They were joined, initially on a small scale, by more immigrants, also from elsewhere in Europe. Of those who arrived before 1680 the majority were sailors and soldiers from The Netherlands. In 1657, the first of these VOC employees were released from Company service and given land to farm as so-called free burghers.8 Despite the VOC’s original intentions, the Cape was turning into a European colony after all. In the course of the next four decades, wine and wheat farmers would gradually fill up the 80 kilometer radius around the Cape settlement, and by the end of the century so-called

7  Dutch East India Company. Henceforth, VOC or the Company. 8  According to Saunders and Southey (1998, 75), the term ‘free burghers’ was originally used to refer to ex-officials of the VOC, but later came to be used for all whites who were not Company officials. Free burghers, as Giliomee explains, “were released from their contract with the Company, but continued to be subject to the Company’s regulations for the Cape settlement and the decisions of the Cape authorities” (2003, 6).

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

137

trekboere9 would begin to cross the first coastal mountain range, leaving behind the markets of the Cape and turning to subsistence stock farming. The party of two hundred Huguenots who arrived, as families, between 1688 and 1692 (following the revoking of the Edict of Nantes in 1685) did much to stabilize the burgher community and – with their experience in grape growing – to establish the Cape Colony’s wine industry. This group of people, historians agree, might have remained a distinct community, but in a calculated way Commander Simon van der Stel settled them among Dutchspeaking farmers. When they tried to form a congregation of their own, the initiative was rejected as brazen: soon, Van der Stel warned, the French would be demanding “their own ‘magistrate, Commander and Prince’ ” (Giliomee 2003, 11–12, 41). Like all other immigrants, the Huguenots had to join the Dutch Reformed Church. At stake was not only religious uniformity but also linguistic uniformity. Instructions from the Lord XVII (the board of directors of the VOC, which met in Amsterdam) were unambiguous: the Cape Commander was to “ensure that the French language [would] gradually become extinct and disappear” (Giliomee 2003, 11). And indeed it did. Within two or three generations, the Huguenots were assimilated into the Dutch-speaking population. In the case of German-speaking settlers, who during the eighteenth century outnumbered immigrants arriving from Holland, the dynamics of demography was on the side of the VOC: they were mostly single men who went on to marry Dutch-speaking women, including daughters and granddaughters of Huguenots and, occasionally, non-European women. The resultant intergenerational language shift was away from German. As Van der Stel summarized VOC policy, all newcomers to the Cape had to “learn our language and morals, and be integrated with the Dutch nation” (Giliomee 2003, 11). The implementation of this policy was only partially successful. French- and German-speaking settlers did learn Dutch, but it was not the Dutch of the educated classes of the Low Countries. It was a new variety of Dutch, and contrary to the impression that might have been created in the discussion thus far, it was not only a product of interaction between speakers of different European languages. On their arrival at the Cape, the Dutch settlers came into contact with the Khoikhoi (whom they condescendingly referred to as ‘Hottentots,’ mimicking their ‘click’ language) and the San (whom they called ‘Bushmen’).10 In recent decades, the Khoikhoi and the San have generally been studied as one group, 9  White nomadic or frontier farmers. 10  Regarded today as a less derogatory term than ‘Bushmen,’ San (also: Sana, Sonqua, Obiqau), which literally translates as thieves of murderers, is the name that the Khoikhoi gave to the ‘Bushmen.’ 

138

Kriel

the Khoisan, not least because both sub-groups spoke varieties of the Khoisan language. The Khoisan are believed to be the first inhabitants of southern Africa with an archaeological history dating back to 25,000 BC. On the eve of their encounter with European colonists, however, the Khoikhoi and the San were readily distinguishable communities even if the border between them was permeable. The Khoikhoi were livestock farmers who lived in villages, while the San were primarily migratory hunter-gatherers. What started out as cattle trading between the Khoikhoi and the settlers ended in two wars over grazing land and water (fought during 1659–1660 and 1673–1677 respectively). Yet, despite a hedge of wild almond trees planted by Van Riebeeck after the first Dutch-Khoikhoi war in an attempt to demarcate the boundary of the settlement and to prevent cattle theft, sexual liaisons between Europeans and Khoikhoi women prevailed. Of relevance for the present discussion is the fact that speakers of different native tongues – be they traders or lovers – had to communicate with one another.11 From 1658 onwards, VOC officials and slave owners12 also needed to communicate with the slaves who were brought to the Cape from various parts of Africa and the East,13 and slaves required a lingua franca among themselves and to communicate with the Khoikhoi – many of whom came to work and live alongside them, sometimes having children by them (Johnson 2004, 38; Sparks 1990, 77).14 There was no question what this lingua franca was going to be. What Frenchmen and Germans were coaxed into, locals and slaves were forced to do: When the first slaves were imported, [the VOC] issued firm instructions that only Dutch was to be spoken to them. Slaves could not be 11  Initially, four Khoikhoi speakers who had learned Dutch acted as interpreters. They were Autshumao (alias Herrie/Harry de Strandloper [the beachcomber]), his niece Krotoa (alias Eva); Doman (alias Anthonie) and Claas Das (De Villiers 2012, 42). 12  Shell (2012, 64) distinguishes between four groups of slave-owners: the VOC, VOC officials, burghers and so-called free blacks. (The number of slaves in the service of the latter was negligible.) 13  Between 1658 and 1808, when the slave trade was abolished, approximately 63,000 slaves were brought to the Cape: an estimated 26.4 percent from Africa, 25.1 percent from Madagascar, 25.9 percent from India and 22.7 percent from Indonesia (Shell 2012, 63). In addition to other languages, they spoke the lingua franca of the trade routes, creoloidized Portuguese. By 1710, there were almost as many slaves as burghers in the Cape Colony. In the end, the number of indigenous slaves (people born into slavery) nearly equaled the number of slaves who were originally imported (Shell 2012, 69). 14  The Khoikhoi were “legally free, but in practice their position was not much different from that of the Cape slaves” (Saunders and Southey 1998, 99). Detribalized and dispossessed of their land, many had no choice but to offer their labor to white farmers.

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

139

manumitted without being able to speak and write Dutch. When an official drew up a glossary of Khoikhoi words, the Company undertook to publish it, but added that it was more important that the Khoikhoi learn the Dutch language than the other way round.15 Giliomee 2003, 19

Again, the basic rule of ‘Dutch only’ was enforceable, but to prescribe the kind of Dutch that was to be spoken was – again – beyond the Company’s powers. The VOC could not have prevented the dynamic process of creolization that followed. As Giliomee (2003, 53) interprets the process, slaves and Khoikhoi servants were responsible for the initial creolization of Dutch in the latter half of the seventeenth century while both burghers and their servants, in interaction with each other, took the process further in the eighteenth century. Equally, if not more significant must have been other forms of interaction, more intimate than between master and servant. For the creolization of Dutch cannot be understood separately from what some authors describe as the ‘creolization’ of the Cape settlement during the first 75 years of its existence. By 1690, as Giliomee (2003, 37) points out, the ratio of male to female burghers was 2.6:1. Unsurprisingly, exogamous unions between European men and non-­European women (mostly manumitted slaves) were commonplace. Under the VOC, about a 1,000 of these unions were formalized in Western marriage (Shell 2012, 69). Marriages of Europeans to so-called heelslag [full-caste] slave women (of ‘pure’ Asian or African origin) were prohibited in 1685, but not to marriages to halfslag [half-caste] slave women (i.e., slave women with a European father). For at least another four decades, children born from such marriages stood a fair chance to be absorbed into the burgher community, as did children born out of wedlock to a white father and a slave mother. Of the latter category of children many were born in the Slave Lodge – “a huge building without windows … at the upper end of the main street, next to the Company’s vegetable garden of nine acres and opposite the big Company hospital.” Virtually all slaves in the service of the VOC lived in the Lodge, which was seldom visited by Europeans “except for one hour each night when it became a brothel for the local garrison [and others]” (Shell 2012, 64). Racial fluidity, it should be stressed, did not imply racial equality. On the contrary: the early Cape was stratified according to racial categories constructed by the European settlers. From the outset, everybody else had been “relegated to, or confirmed in, a position of legal and political inferiority” (Davenport and ­

15  To this end, a Dutch teacher for the Khoikhoi was appointed in 1661 (De Villiers 2012, 48). De Villiers (2012, 51) also notes that privately owned slaves were only allowed to wear a hat once they could speak Dutch.

140

Kriel

Saunders 2000, 33). The paradox, as Johnson (2004, 41) points out, is that the racially mixed settlement was at the same time a racially divided one. Divisions grew steadily more rigid, and from the 1730s onwards the ‘white’ community became progressively endogamous – a development that Giliomee attributes not only to the increasing availability of marriageable white women but also to the power they held within the family.16 Yet white endogamy did not mean the end of communication across racial divisions. Accordingly, it did not mean the end of the creolization of Dutch. The late 1700s saw the emergence of the first texts that are classified – on the basis of creole features, and obviously with hindsight – as more Afrikaans than Dutch (Ponelis 1993, 73). It should be noted, however, that early Afrikaans’s status as a creole is not undisputed. In publications dating back to 1897 and 1899, the Dutch linguist Dirk Christiaan Hesseling characterized Afrikaans as a semi-creole patois – the product of a prematurely terminated creolization process (Romaine 1988, 52–53; Holm 2000, 25). Some of Hesseling’s findings were supported inter alia by Valkhoff (1966, 1972) and Meijer and Muysken (1977). Thomas Markey (1982) attempted to solve the question, “Afrikaans: creole or non-creole?” by comparing the language to Negerhollands – a Dutch-based creole that was spoken in the Virgin Islands until the mid-1900s. He concluded that Afrikaans was “a transitional language located on a continuum between creole and non-creole” (Romaine 1988, 62). Two years later, Glenn Gilbert and Dennis Makhudu (1984) came to a more accurate conclusion, namely that the different varieties of Afrikaans located different positions on that continuum or, put differently, that Afrikaans was a loose label for “a set of varieties ranging along a scale from highly European-like (ie similar to Dutch) to moderately creole-like (ie similar to Negerhollands)” (Romaine 1988, 62). While quite a few creole features (such as the lack of nominal gender and case and the lack of subject/object distinctions in pronouns) had survived the standardization of Afrikaans,17 the language’s non-standard varieties display more characteristics of creole grammars than standard Afrikaans. These dialects, namely southwestern and northwestern Afrikaans, are characterized in the next section.

16  Once the ratio of male to female burghers stood at 1.5:1 (in 1730), “European women could now use their relative position of power to employ sanctions against mixed marriages and against legitimizing the racially mixed offspring of their husband and sons” (Giliomee 2003, 37). 17  It had even survived the ‘purification’ process known as the re-Dutchification of Afrikaans This process involved reconstructing the vernacular by, among other things, “eliminating those elements reflecting poverty and lower-class origins” (Marks and Trapido 1987, 12).

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

141

The Dialects of Afrikaans The creole that was born in the shade of the Table Mountain would in time spread far beyond that shade. Today, in main-stream dialectology, a distinction is made between three overarching dialects of Afrikaans (each with its own subdialects): the southwestern, northwestern and eastern variety. The differences between these varieties are not very substantial, and they are on the decrease. This is because Afrikaans entered the era of modernization and industrialization – which was also, in this case as in many others, the era of language standardization – relativity soon after its birth. Before the three dialects could deviate drastically from one another, the process of dialect leveling was set in motion by formal mass schooling – a domain of the standard language. The geographical distribution of Afrikaans’s dialects – like the distribution of North American English dialects – tells tales of migrations, both voluntarily and forced. Represented on a map, the dialects of Afrikaans mirrors a centrifugal dynamic, to borrow Johnson’s phrase, “in which all problems, ambitions and conflicts could be overcome by outward movement” (2004, 44). Up until the end of the second Dutch-Khoikhoi war in 1677, settler farming at the Cape was limited to the peninsular plains. The following century, however, saw enormous colonial expansion as white trekboere pushed the boundaries of the VOC-governed territory deep into the interior – northwards towards the Gariep River,18 and eastwards towards the Great Fish River. Khoikhoi and, to a lesser extent, San resistance to land occupation should not be underestimated, but it was the Xhosa (a Bantu-speaking people) who, in 1778, finally brought the white advance to a halt at the Great Fish River some thousand kilometers east of Cape Town. Afrikaans was eventually standardized on the basis of the language that the trekboere took with them all the way to the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony.19 Here, west of the Great Fish River, some of the farmers continued to regard themselves first as Dutch and later as British colonial subjects, while others sought to escape British rule in the so-called Great Trek of the 1830s. It is through the latter group – the so-called Voortrekkers20 – that eastern frontier Afrikaans (as the eastern variety is also known) reached the northern parts of present-day South Africa, where the Pretoria-Johannesburg area is now the heart of the dialect. 18  In 1779, the Gariep River was renamed the Orange River, in honor of the Dutch royal house. After the end of apartheid, the river’s original Khoisan name was reinstated. 19  It was the most turbulent frontier: within the span of two decades three wars were fought (in 1779, 1793 and 1799), and more would follow. 20  Pioneers; literally: those who travel ahead.

142

Kriel

The two remaining dialects of Afrikaans are the non-standard ones that were born in the mouths of non-native speakers. That explains their creole nature: creolization, at the term is understood in sociolinguistics, is “the result of the influence of imperfect learning by relatively large numbers of non-native adult speakers” (Trudgill 2002, 71). Southwestern Afrikaans is historically associated with the slaves and their descendants, and northwestern Afrikaans with the Khoikhoi, groups of whom (notably the Korana and the Griqua)21 settled north of the colonial border in the vicinity of the Gariep river during the late eighteenth century. By then, wars (or, more accurately, genocide) and waves of smallpox epidemics22 had taken their toll, and the Khoikhoi had become a detribalized, landless proletariat. Some of them were bilingual but many were no longer fluent in their original language and spoke Afrikaans. The Khoikhoi who left the Cape were the first Afrikaans speakers in the north-western parts of southern Africa (Ponelis 1998, 14). At present, according to Johnson and Jacobs (2012:263), the Khoikhoi population of South Africa and Namibia totals no more than 55,000. Even fewer San people have survived. Their precolonial way of life as hunter-gatherers brought them into conflict not only with colonist farmers, but also with Khoikhoi pastoralists and Bantu-speaking migrant groups. The best grazing land, as De Villiers (2012, 49) explains the source of the conflict, was also the best hunting ground.23 Agile and armed with bows and poisonous arrows, the San did their best to protect their territory against the invasion of livestock farmers, but to little avail. Bands of San who were not massacred or dislocated (by white and black forces) were fragmented, with individuals becoming part of exogenous economies. The distinguishing feature of northwestern Afrikaans – also called Orange River/Gariep Afrikaans – is influenced by the Khoisan language. Southwestern Afrikaans, on the other hand, is characterized by Malay, Portuguese and Arabic influences. These are detectable not only in the vocabulary of the dialect (better known as Cape Afrikaans or Kaaps), but also in its phonetic features (cf., Ponelis 1993, 65–67). While a considerable number of Malay loanwords found

21  The Griqua – as the group formally named itself in 1813 – was hardly a ‘pure’ Khoikhoi clan. Initially led by the manumitted slave Adam Kok (c. 1710 – c. 1795), members also included other former slaves, runaway slaves, mixed-race people and even a few white people. In language and lifestyle, the Griqua resembled the white frontier farmers. 22  These epidemics are believed to have been linked to infected laundry that was brought ashore from visiting ships. 23  Cf., also Visagie (2012, 99–100).

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

143

their way into standard Afrikaans,24 there has been a much higher degree of borrowing from Malay in southwestern Afrikaans, particularly in the subvariety of this dialect that is associated with Cape Town’s Muslim community. It was political exiles and convicts as well as slaves from Bengal, India and Indonesia who brought Islam to the Cape. By the end of the eighteenth century, the religion was wide-spread among the slaves (who enjoyed a fair degree of religious freedom). The first Muslim school or madrasah was founded in 1793, and the first mosque a few years later. In the madrasahs, children were taught to read and write in the Arabic script through the medium of Malay. Within two generations, however, the Afrikaans creole had replaced Malay as the language of the Cape Muslim community. By the mid-1800s – according to an observer quoted by Giliomee (2003, 101) – “all the Malays [sic] in Cape Town” spoke Dutch (read: the Afrikaans creole) while only the upper classes understood and wrote Arabic and Malay. Afrikaans also became the language of instruction in the madrasahs, leading to the establishment of what has become known as the Arabic-Afrikaans writing tradition. Though this fact has long been ignored in Afrikaner nationalist historiography, it was the Cape Muslims who first devised an orthography for the Afrikaans they spoke so that it could be used in written form. It was they, too, who produced what has to be regarded as the first Afrikaans books (printed c. 1856).25 Arabic script was employed, and one can hardly ask for a better record of how the southwestern variety of Afrikaans must have sounded at the time. By the end of the nineteenth century, about a dozen Arabic-Afrikaans works had been published, and the writing tradition would survive another century.26 To conclude the story of the birth of the Afrikaans language: at the Cape, as is always the case, language was “entangled … with power relations” (Pred 2002, 172), and the powers that be spoke Dutch. The resultant communicative arrangements had repercussions on various levels. On a micro-linguistic level (that is, the level of language structure), one of the outcomes was the emergence of a ‘simplified’ form of Dutch – a creole, albeit an atypical one. On a macro-linguistic or sociolinguistic level, the long-term consequences involved large-scale language shift: for descendants of the Khoikhoi, the San and the 24  Most famous among them is the word for many/much, namely baie. Others examples include piering [sauser] and piesang [banana]. 25  The first Afrikaans book in the Latin alphabet was published in 1861. Authored by L.H. Meurant, the magistrate of the town of Cradock, it formed part of a minor movement that propagated the segregation of the eastern from the western Cape. 26  Cf., Davids (1992) and Davids, Willemse and Dangor (2012).

144

Kriel

slaves Afrikaans became a first language.27 As time went by, some – to use a crude colloquialism – ‘passed for white,’ but the majority eventually ended up – to put it equally crudely – in apartheid’s category of ‘coloureds.’ It is, then, simply preposterous to claim, as Afrikaners had done for decades, that Afrikaans is the language they had made from Dutch: Afrikaans is Dutch that was recreated in the mouths of whites [blankes]. It is a white man’s language, and had developed alongside the Afrikaanse volk. [It] is our self-acquired own possession, and was not borrowed back from skew speakers. emphasis in the original

This statement, as quoted by Ponelis (1998, 20), was made by the linguist G.S. Nienaber in 1949, 35 years after one of Afrikaans’s most zealous activists, C.J. Langenhoven, had (by now infamously) asserted: Afrikaans is the one and only white man’s language which was made in South Africa and which had not come ready made from oversees. Quoted in Giliomee 2003, 369; emphasis added

This accurately depicts the creation process, but certainly not the creators. It is, further, indeed ironic that a “wonderfully expressive and cosmopolitan new language,” to quote Alistair Sparks again, “which the slaves invented out of their necessity for communication and then passed on from black nanny to white child while the sophistication of High Dutch wilted on the dry and distant veld, should have become the talisman of a narrow racist nationalism dedicated to the oppression of its real creators” (1990, 77). Two qualifications are called for here. First, as has been suggested, there were variations to the “black nanny to white child” scenario: black wet nurse to white child,28 black mother to white child, black child to white child in play. Second, while ‘proper’ Dutch did disappear from this kind of interaction in the home and on “the dry and distant veld,” it remained the (official) language of the Company and the church. In sociolinguistics terms, the language situation was one of simple diglossia: Afrikaans speakers (who could read) could read Dutch but few of them could write the language “properly,” and even fewer could speak it “properly” (Ponelis 1998, 47). By implication, Sparks admits that the slaves, like the Khoisan, were forced (or at least had no choice but) to learn Dutch and in this sense his description 27  The Khoisan languages have become virtually extinct. 28  Cf., Giliomee (2003, 49–50) and Shell (2012, 65–66).

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

145

of the Cape creole as “a language invented out of necessity” is, in my view, closer to the truth than Giliomee’s portrayal of Afrikaans as “one of the genuinely multi-racial achievements” of South Africa (2003, xiv). The latter claim – first articulated in 1975 by white, leftist Afrikaans author Jan Rabie and in recent years often quoted in the South African language debate – should be seen as a corrective to the now debunked myth of Afrikaans’s lily-white history and ownership. And yet one has to ask: is imposition rather than accomplishment not a more honest interpretation of what happened at the Cape, at least initially? For all the emphasis it continues to lay on the injustice of anglicization, Afrikaner nationalist mythology has always turned a blind eye to Dutch’s/ Afrikaans’s own acts of linguicide (as sociolinguist and language activist Tove Skutnabb Kangas controversially interprets the process of language shift or death.) To this day, Afrikaner nationalist mythology represents the English as the inventors of linguistic imperialism. Commenting on anglicization policies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – to which I shall soon turn – even non-nationalist Afrikaner scholars would remark, for example, that British imperialism in South Africa “was myopically and chauvinistically loyal to English” (Ponelis 1993, 59). But was Dutch imperialism any less shortsighted and arrogant? And did Afrikaner nationalism not come to epitomize – ­dramatically so in Soweto in 1976 – what it meant to be myopically and chauvinistically loyal to a language?

The Nationalist Hijack

What is described in this chapter as the nationalist hijack of Afrikaans dates back to the early twentieth century and entailed initiatives that are typically associated with rising ethno-nationalist movements, namely the standardization, codification, modernization, institutionalization and maintenance of the nation’s language. On the face of it, these are innocuous forms of language activism. Yet, metaphors of terror and war – languages being hijacked, languages possessing armies and navies – are perhaps not entirely inappropriate in this context. For the standardization of one linguistic variety usually implies the stigmatization, marginalization and exclusion of other varieties, and the disempowerment of their speakers. It may indeed imply conflict, as Vic Webb (2002, 210–211) explains: “language standardization can (through the determination of the standard variety’s norms) lead to linguistic alienation, even, maybe, to language-internal conflict.” As will become clear in the pages that follow, language-internal conflict – i.e., language-based conflict between two or more groups sharing a mother-tongue – is a defining feature of

146

Kriel

the social history of Afrikaans. This, as I shall demonstrate soon, continues to be the case. Owing to constraints of space, the story of the nationalist hijack – the story of how a “wonderfully expressive and cosmopolitan new language” became “the talisman of a narrow racist nationalism” (Sparks 1990, 77) – has to be told here in very broad outlines. It all started with the sea battle of Trafalgar, which confirmed Britannia as ruler of the waves. After defeating the Cape garrison in the Battle of Blaauwberg [Blue Mountain] less than three months later on January 8, 1806, she came to rule the waves of the Cape of Good Hope too.29 Unsurprisingly, the arrival of the British changed the linguistic landscape of the Cape. Fairly soon, the colony’s simple diglossia was replaced by complex diglossia “with [the Afrikaans creole] as the vernacular and both standard Dutch (in the church, in private education and in the media) and English as languages of culture” (Ponelis 1993, 50). This would remain the situation for more than a century, despite programs of anglicization. According to Saul Dubow, Britain’s imperial ambition to anglicize the institutions of the Cape Colony was first articulated by John Cradock in 1811. Pressures for anglicization, Dubow adds, “were given further force by senior administrators like Henry Ellis, who helped to prepare the way for the 1820 [British] settlers” (2006, 21). The first British official to introduce a formal policy of anglicization in colonial South Africa was Charles Somerset, and the last was Alfred Milner. Somerset’s 1822 proclamation sought to replace Dutch by English as the official administrative language of the Cape Colony. Eighty years later, Milner’s anglicization project targeted not only the Cape, but also the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State that had been conquered by Britain in the war of 1899–1902. Milner’s language-in-education policy for the former republics – now British colonies – was simple: “Dutch should only be used to teach English, and English to teach everything else” (quoted in Davenport and Saunders 2000, 239). This was a crucial part of his nation-building project which, as Louw sums it up (2004, 19, quoting Pyrah), aimed to create one nation out of the “two white races” of South Africa by assimilating “backward Boers” into “progressive British” culture. The effect was quite the opposite: Anglicization efforts contributed to the shaping of a distinct Afrikaner identity by triggering an Afrikaans language movement. On this historians generally agree, and it is not disputed in this chapter: British control of the Cape Colony – and later the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies – provided the catalyst for the rise of Afrikaner nationalism 29  Eight years later, Britain officially acquired the territory in terms of the Anglo-Dutch treaty (also known as the Convention of London).

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

147

which, like many nationalist movements in history, started out as a language movement. What I would like to challenge, is the lay and scholarly belief that white Afrikaans speakers, in the face of anglicization, collectively and simultaneously began “to feel a sense of unity and pride in their own identity” (Watermeyer 1996, 102). Following Miroslav Hroch (1996), I would argue quite the opposite: shame and embarrassment – and, of course, a fair amount of resentment and ambition – on the part of a few, rather than widespread pride, triggered the language activism that constituted the earliest expressions of Afrikaner nationalism. Despite all the contextual differences, there are ways in which Afrikaner nationalism is comparable to those European nationalisms that Hroch included in his so-called periodization model (1985). At the turn of the nineteenth century, white Afrikaans speakers were a group under exogenous rule – in the Colonies of the Cape and Natal from 1806 and in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies from 1902 onwards. Their language lacked not only a continuous literary tradition but any written tradition at all.30 If the English press in the Cape was to be believed, there could be no literature with such a language (Cape Argus, December 19, 1857, quoted in Ponelis 1993, 59). It was when a new class of educated but marginalized men observed these deficits, “[attributes that] the future nation still lacked, and began efforts to overcome one or more of them” that Afrikaner nationalism was born. Like the intelligentsia in Hroch’s examples, they started to talk about their ethnic identity, conceived of it as a national identity, and set out to “persuade their compatriots of the importance of consciously belonging to the nation” (Hroch 1996, 80).31 More than national prestige was at stake. The cultivation (to use Joep Leerssen’s term (2006)) of Afrikaans was part and parcel of attempts to empower white speakers of Afrikaans economically and politically. Cultiva­ tion, the language-cum-nationalist activists knew, would pave the way for institutionalization, and the institutionalization of Afrikaans would facilitate Afrikaners’ access to economic and political resources. The creole had 30  Or, to be more accurate, it lacked a written tradition in the Roman alphabet. 31  In the history of Europe these were movements of opposition, born under circumstances that Hroch explains as follows:  [A]n ‘exogenous’ ruling class dominated ethnic groups which […] lacked ‘their own’ nobility, political unit or continuous literary tradition. [At some point,] selected groups within the non-dominant ethnic community started to discuss their own ethnicity and to conceive of it as a potential nation-to-be. Sooner or later, they observed certain deficits, [attributes that] the future nation still lacked, and began efforts to overcome one or more of them, seeking to persuade their compatriots of the importance of consciously belonging to the nation. (Hroch 1996, 80)

148

Kriel

to be adapted for the modern institutions of print-capitalism (á la Benedict Anderson), schools, churches, courts of law and, last but not least, parliament and other structures of government. Explained in Charles Ferguson’s terms (1959), Afrikaans had to be converted into a high variety that performed formal functions in the public domains of life. Explained in Ernest Gellner’s terms (1997), the language had to become a high code with a high culture. By 1925, when Afrikaans became a co-official language of the Union of South Africa, that goal was achieved. Traditionally, the official recognition of Afrikaans has been regarded as the successful completion of the Afrikaans language movement.32 For language activism initiated by Afrikaners during the 1930s and 1940s the term movement has generally not been employed. This is perhaps ironic, not only because those two decades saw the formation of a mass movement of political opposition among Afrikaners, but also because the organizational coherence that the post-Boer War language movement lacked was finally achieved when the secret Afrikaner-Broederbond33 founded the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge34 (FAK) as its major front organization in 1929. Through the FAK, with which all mainstream extraparliamentary agents of Afrikaner nationalism were affiliated between 1929 and the end of apartheid, the Broederbond virtually controlled organized Afrikaner culture as it controlled, according to some commentators, Afrikaner politics.35 It was the Broederbond – or at least one of its front organizations, the Suid-Afrikaanse Bond vir Rassestudie36 – that coined the term apartheid in 32  For the purposes of this chapter, it is not necessary to distinguish between the so-called First and Second Afrikaans Language Movements. The former had its birth in 1875 as the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners [Society of True Afrikaners] and may be viewed as Afrikaner nationalism’s false start. Carried, for the most part, by two brothers, the project eventually lost momentum, yet not before the way was paved for the Second Afrikaans Language Movement. The latter, on which I focus here, emerged in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War and culminated two decades later in the recognition of Afrikaans as a co-official language of the Union of South Africa (alongside of English). Unlike its forerunner, the Second Language Movement was successful in its endeavor to transform Afrikaans into a standardized written language equipped for modernity and urbanity. 33  League of Afrikaner Brothers, est. 1918. Henceforth, only Broederbond or Bond. 34  Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations, est. 1929. Henceforth FAK. 35  A decade after it created the FAK, the Broederbond induced the birth of an Afrikaner economic movement in October 1939 (at the FAK’s first ekonomiese volkskongres [economic volk congress]). The economic activists succeeded to create a cross-class alliance without which political power would have remained out of reach for the Nationalists. 36  South African League for Racial Studies, est. 1935.

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

149

the mid-1930s, and Bond members’ contribution to the consolidation and dissemination of the ideology of apartheid cannot be overestimated. In essence, apartheid ideologues adopted the Fichtean formula that “wherever a separate language is found there a separate [divinely created] nation exists which has the right to take independent charge of its affairs and to govern itself” (Williams 1994, 5). According to the plan that these ideologues devised in the 1930s and 1940s, speakers of the various African languages of South Africa constituted nations and the existing reserves had to be transformed into ‘fatherlands’ (later called ‘homelands’) for them. The opportunism was clear to see: in a country where Afrikaners formed barely twelve percent of the population, control of the state was unattainable without a policy that restricted the franchise outside the black ‘homelands’ (which made up a mere thirteen percent of land in South Africa) to whites. However, Afrikaner nationalism was not consistent in its application of the Fichtean approach to the relationship between language, nation and state: it tolerated white English speakers as co-voters, but not colored Afrikaans speakers. As a principle of inclusion/exclusion, race took precedence over language. In 1956, eight years after it came into power, the Afrikaner National Party (NP) fabricated for themselves the two-thirds majority required to change the 1910 constitution and removed colored voters in the Cape Province from the common voters’ roll (cf., Van der Westhuizen 2007, 44–50). No less than a quarter of South Africa’s colored population was ‘relocated’ under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Most controversially, more than 60,000 colored people were bulldozed out of their homes in District Six in central Cape Town between 1968 and 1982. By then, Afrikaner nationalists were still hoping that colored people would follow their example and constitute themselves as a nation. One of apartheid’s foremost ideologues, anthropologist P.J. Coertze, concluded his book on Die Afrikanervolk en die Kleurlinge37 with the following appeal to Afrikaners: One cannot call [‘the Coloureds’] a volk yet, but that they form a separate ethnic entity is beyond doubt … They are neither Bantus [sic] nor Whites [sic] but people with their own identity … It is imperative that they are now provided the opportunity to develop into a dignified ethnos alongside the other etnieë [ethnic groups] in South Africa. It is our duty to help them in the fulfilment thereof. Coertze 1983, 138

Such was the paternalistic logic of the ideology of apartheid. 37   The Afrikaner volk and the Coloureds.

150

Kriel

Not only in politics but also in culture were colored people barred from participation. Once in power, Afrikaner nationalists did not lose their taste for language activism. Space allows for one example to be singled out here: the Language Monument and the Language Year. To celebrate the centenary of the establishment of the first Afrikaans language and culture organization (see footnote 32), the NP government declared 1975 the Year of the Language. The FAK published a 325–page hardcover book containing contributions from 22 authors and ample colored photographs – none, however, of colored people. Titled Afrikaans, ons pêrel van groot waarde,38 it was a sequel to another FAK publication, which appeared a decade and a half earlier to commemorate the 30th birthday of the FAK, namely Die wonder van Afrikaans.39 The highlight of the Language Year was the unveiling of the newly-erected Afrikaans Language Monument in Paarl. It was not a bronze bust of a poet in the front garden of a museum that had once been the poet’s house (even though the language has been honored in this way as well). Nor was it anything similar to Gallimard’s Pléiade series of classical French literature which can, arguably, be regarded as a language monument (Huigen 2008, 152). Situated on a hill in the Cape wine lands and visible from the national road, the Afrikaans Language Monument is a 57-meter-high concrete column surrounded by smaller ones – a phallic symbol, as Allister Sparks once described it, of a chauvinist ideal (1990, 77).40 In August of the Language Year, the celebrated South African novelist and liberal-minded anti-apartheid politician, Alan Paton, noted in a newspaper article that “[i]t would be a fool or a philologist that would think it possible to discuss Afrikaans and not to discuss Afrikaner Nationalism [sic]” (The Daily News, August 08, 1975; reprinted in Paton 1987, 65). That was, perhaps, an understatement: even the philologists of the 1970s could not have been unaware of the intimate association that had developed by then between the Afrikaans 38  Afrikaans, our pearl of great value. 39   The wonder of Afrikaans. 40  Unsurprisingly, the smaller pillars (anthills, compared to the main one) represents nonEuropean contributions to the development of Afrikaans. To claim, as a major book on the legacy of apartheid has done (Jansen 2009, 33), that the Afrikaner nationalist movement was the only one in history to produce such a monument would strengthen the point I make in this paragraph. One can even go further and draw attention to the fact that the nationalist ideal also found expression in quite a few other, humbler, language monuments, including one at Burgersdorp. But this Afrikaner tradition is not entirely unique. The Shaheed Minar monument in Dhaka, Bangladesh and its replications elsewhere were by-products of the Bengali nationalism. 

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

151

language and Afrikaner nationalism. Just how intimate this association was in the minds of outsiders was plain for all to see a year later, when young demonstrators took to the streets of Soweto with placards declaring: “We do not want Afrikaans”; “To hell with Afrikaans”; “Afrikaans is a sign of oppression, discrimination – To hell with the Boers”; “Today is the burial of the Boere Taal.”41 The Soweto student uprising was sparked by a decision by the apartheid government to impose Afrikaans as a language of tuition on black high school students, who preferred to be taught in English. In the final analysis, it was a revolt against everything that Afrikaans had come to stand for in the minds of black South Africans: oppression and discrimination, hardship and suffering, brutality and cruelty. Afrikaans, in a word, had come to stand for apartheid. The nationalist hijack of the language had backfired.

The (Failing?) Attempt to Reverse the Nationalist Hijack

The Boere did not want to see their Taal buried, and in a desperate attempt to save it they set out to court not only colored speakers of Afrikaans but also African-language speakers. Towards the end of 1976, as that dark “[y]ear of fire, year of ash” (Hirson 1979) dragged on, the Broederbond – in the disguise of the language committee of the FAK – “decided in principle to pay attention to the possibility of a master plan for the promotion of Afrikaans among black people.”42 Undeterred by the unambiguous message of the Soweto student uprising – “We do not want Afrikaans” – the Bond’s bold ambition was to see Afrikaans replacing English as the second language of Africans. Now, with their language under threat, Afrikaners also realized that it was a mistake to have alienated colored people. A secret Broederbond document dated 29 November 1978 contains this telling comment: “If the Afrikaner could keep the Coloured [sic] on the side of his [read: the Afrikaner’s] language and culture, there could be as many as 14.5 million Afrikaans speakers in 2000” (AB file 1/1/76). Consider also the line of argumentation in the following points that were made in a mainstream Afrikaans newspaper (Beeld) between 1975 and 1983: If the Afrikaner wants to secure a place for his language and culture in Africa, he will have to open his arms widely for the coloured national 41  Cf., photographs at: http://saraouniya.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/to-hell-with-afrikaans/, accessed March 2013. 42  From Afrikanerbond Archives File AB 1/1/76.

152

Kriel

groups, for if the Afrikaner’s language does not survive, the Afrikaner will not survive. Muller 1984, 229

Without their active cooperation Afrikaans cannot survive, and if Afrikaans does not survive, there would no place left for whites on the African continent. Muller 1984, 231

It would be fatal for the Afrikaner to lose non-white speakers of Afrikaans. If he allows that, he allows his own body to bleed to death slowly. Muller 1984, 232

The colored political and intellectual elite saw through this transparent and opportunistic attempt at co-optation. Their frustration found expression, inter alia, in the so-called Alternative Afrikaans Movement of the late 1980s. According to Randall van den Heever, who authored the first self-acknowledged publication in Alternative Afrikaans (a school textbook from 1987 entitled Tree na Vryheid),43 colored speakers of Afrikaans experienced “a terrible identity crisis because Afrikaans, which is also their language, had acquired the image of the white man’s language of oppression” (De Kat, June 1988; own translation; emphasis in the original). After the end of apartheid, there were signs of reconciliation as colored speakers of Afrikaans took up prominent positions in existing and new Afrikaanse taal- en kultuurorganisasies,44 including the Afrikaanse Taalraad.45 On the face of it, a racially inclusive Afrikaans language movement was on the rise. Commentators would concede that this movement was neither integrated nor united. They tended to argue that black/colored language activists – or ‘brown’ activists as they identified themselves – stressed the role of Afrikaans in socioeconomic development, while white activists invoked their language rights. However, debates that took place in the media from 2005 onwards suggested that the ‘brown’-white schism in the primary Afrikaans speech community ran much deeper. For example: in November 2006, the no-longer-secret, open-to-all yet largely deserted Afrikanerbond (as Broederbond renamed itself in 1994) was still trying to demonstrate its philosophy of inclusivity by 43   Step to Freedom. 44  Afrikaans language and culture organizations. 45  Afrikaans Language Council, est. 2008. 



The Ironic History of Afrikaans

153

involving ‘brown’ speakers of Afrikaans in a panel discussion on “Afrikaanses and their culture.” Christo van der Rheede (at the time head of the Stigting vir Bemagtiging deur Afrikaans46 – SBA) was invited along with Allan Boesak (a cleric, politician and former anti-apartheid activist) and Franklin Sonn (a former South African ambassador and at the time a businessman and university chancellor). All three men expressed their doubts about the existence of a community of ‘Afrikaanses.’ Boesak said that he still mistrusted the motives of some taalstryders [language warriors] and their overtures to “other” speakers of Afrikaans. Power, he suspected, continued to be the hidden agenda (Die Burger, November 09, 2006). The SBA head remarked that “[w]e have a long way to go before we are likely to reach this ideal [of a single Afrikaans community]” (Die Burger, November 08, 2006). Sonn added that if the new inclusive Afrikaans movement were to succeed, it would have to be led by “bruines” [brown people] (Die Burger, November 09, 2006).47 Just how difficult (impossible?) the creation of a united and non-racial community of Afrikaans language activists was going to be, became clear towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century when Van der Rheede described the ‘white Taalstryd’48 as reactionary, parochial and “embroiled in controversy and hidden agendas.” With reference to efforts to maintain Afrikaans as a language of tuition at certain universities, he remarked that “the Taalstryders failed to grasp the complexity of the language problem by focusing only on Afrikaans and regard[ing] transformation as an assault on Afrikaner heritage and identity” (Cape Times, July 29, 2009).

Concluding Remarks

It was in an attempt to de-stigmatize their beloved language, the heart and soul of their cherished heritage and identity, that the Afrikaner nationalists of the late apartheid period began to reach out to black speakers of Afrikaans. The latest generation of Afrikaner language activists may no longer be nationalists, but they are as desperate as the previous generation for black support for their project. Allow me to quote, in conclusion, a final example.

46  Foundation for Empowerment through Afrikaans, est. 2000. 47  During 2005, Jakes Gerwel had also called for “non-racialism in Afrikaans ideally under black leadership” (Die Vrye Afrikaan, January 20, 2006: 19) For a rebuttal of Gerwel, cf., Duvenage (Die Vrye Afrikaan, April 21, 2006: 20). 48  Language struggle.

154

Kriel

In an article titled “The Story of Afrikaans: Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future,” one of Afrikaans’s leading activists, Wannie Carstens, propagates reconciliation among Afrikaans speakers, arguing that it can be achieved inter alia by telling the “objective,” complete and inclusive story of Afrikaans – the story of its “white and brown and black speakers.” For too long, the author claims, the white history of Afrikaans has been represented as the history of the language to the detriment of its “brown and black” speakers and (more importantly?) to the detriment of the language itself. By Carstens’s own admission, his article proceeds from the premise that “without reconciliation in the Afrikaans community, there can be no future for Afrikaans” (2013, 22). As a white Afrikaans speaker, reading this left me embarrassed. Why? Why does one cringe when Carstens calls on his readers – and then especially when he calls on his black (or what he calls 2brown”) readers – to escape from the trap of the past, to make peace with the errors and injustices of yesteryear, and to accept that apartheid belongs to the dustbin of history (2013, 32)? Why does it leave a bad taste in the mouth to hear that the time is ripe for Afrikaans speakers to create a shared history out of their divided histories and to focus on the future – on “the Afrikaans of 2060” (2013, 35)? It is easy to dismiss Carstens’s approach, which is shared by a host of Afrikaans language activists, as opportunism at best and self-serving, selfforgiving paternalism at worst, but that would not constitute an intellectually sophisticated critique. To me, Carli Coetzee’s latest book, Accented Futures. Language Activism and the Ending of Apartheid (2013), provides the tool for such a critique. Contrary to what the references to “accent” and “language activism” in the title might lead one to expect, Coetzee’s work does not draw on the existing body of sociolinguistics literature. In fact, as the author emphasizes early on in the book, she understands accent in a figurative sense, “which is at odds with the ways in which the term is defined in linguistics” (2013, 7). In Accented Futures, accent is, “in the first place, understood as resistance to absorption” (2013, 7) or containment; accenting is understood as a form of activism, and in South Africa today it implies activism that is always aware of the violent apartheid past and its asymmetrical legacies. Accenting – i.e., accented thinking, reading, writing, conversing and teaching – acknowledges that conflict may exist under the surface. Accented discourses embrace, rather than shy away from, difference, discord and disagreement, even disappointment, because “these moments are … seen for what they reveal about the apartheid’s past enduring reach” (2013, 168). The activism of Carstens and his fellows, with its emphasis on forgiving and forgetting, is thus not accented activism, for accentedness is

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

155

not “a drive to reconciliation and homogeneity; instead it is an attitude that … aims to bring to the surface conflictual histories” (Carstens 2013, 7). As long as the white-led Afrikaans language movement remains stuck in a mentality of ‘unaccentedness,’ it will not be able to repair the damage of the nationalist hijack. And the real damage, the damage that matters, was to people, not to a language. As long as reconciliation, non-racialism, inclusivity and unity within the Afrikaans-speaking community remains not goals in themselves but a means to the goal of saving the Afrikaans language, its black speakers will continue to feel the impact of the hijack. References Carstens, W.A.M. 2013. “Die storie van Afrikaans. Perspektiewe op die verlede, hede en toekoms.” Tydskrif vir Nederlands en Afrikaans 20(1): 21–49. Coertze, P.J. 1983. Die Afrikanervolk en die kleurlinge. Pretoria: HAUM. Coetzee, C. 2013. Accented Futures. Language Activism and the Ending of Apartheid. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Davenport, T.R.H., and C. Saunders. 2000. South Africa. A Modern History, 5th edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Davids, A. 1992. “The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims from 1815–1915. A Sociolinguistic Study.” MA thesis, University of Natal, Durban. Davids, A., H. Willemse, and S.E. Dangor. 2012. The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims. Pretoria: Protea. De Villiers, J. 2012. “Die Nederlandse era aan die Kaap, 1652–1806.” In Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika. Van voortye tot vandag, edited by F. Pretorius, 39–62. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Dubow, S. 2006. A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa, 1820–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, C.A. 1959. “Diglossia.” Word 15: 325–40. Gellner, E. 1997. Nationalism. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Gerwel, J. 1985. “Afrikaans – ’n toekomsperspektief.” In Skrywer en gemeenskap. Tien jaar Afrikaanse Skrywersgilde, edited by C. Malan and B. Smit, 189–194. Pretoria: HAUM. Gerwel, J. 1987. “Het Afrikaans ’n toekoms?” In Tree na vryheid. ’n Studie in Alternatiewe Afrikaans, edited by R. Van den Heever, 23–30. Kasselsvlei: Kaaplandse Professionele Onderwysersunie. Gerwel, J. 1988. “Alternatiewe Afrikaans op hoërskool.” In Afrikaans en bevryding, edited by R. Van den Heever, 7–20. Kasselsvlei: KPO.

156

Kriel

Gilbert, G., and D. Makhudu. 1984. “The Creole Continuum in Afrikaans: A NonEurocentric View.” Unpublished manuscript. Giliomee, H. 2003. The Afrikaners. Biography of a People. Cape Town and Charlottesville: Tafelberg and University of Virginia Press. Hirson, B. 1979. Year of Fire, Year of Ash. The Soweto Revolt: Roots of a Revolution? London: Zed. Holm, J. 2000. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. 1985. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hroch, M. 1996. “From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The NationBuilding Process in Europe.” In Mapping the Nation, edited by G. Balakrishnan, 78–97. London and New York: Verso. Huigen, S. 2008. “Taalmonumente.” In Van Volksmoeder to Fokofpolisiekar. Kritiese opstelle oor Afrikaanse herinneringsplekke, edited by A.M. Grundlingh and S. Huigen, 149–57. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS. Jansen, J.D. 2009. Knowledge in the Blood. Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past. Stanford and Cape Town: Stanford University Press and University of Cape Town Press. Johnson, K., and S. Jacobs, eds. 2012. Encyclopedia of South Africa. Scottsville: KwaZuluNatal University Press. Johnson, R.W. 2004. South Africa. The First Man, the Last Nation. Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball. Leerssen, J. 2006. “Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture.” Nations and Nationalism 12(4): 559–78. Louw, P.E. 2004. The Rise, Fall, and Legacy of Apartheid. Westport, CT: Praeger. Markey, T.L. 1982. “Afrikaans: Creole or Non-Creole.” Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 2(1): 69–207. Marks, S., and S. Trapido. 1987. “The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism.” In The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa, edited by S. Marks and S. Trapido, 1–70. Essex and New York: Longman. Meijer, G., and P. Muysken. 1977. “On the Beginnings of Pidgin and Creole Studies: Schuchardt and Hesseling.” In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, edited by A. Valdman, 21–48. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Muller, P. 1984. “Wat van die toekoms.” In Afrikaans: stand, taak, toekoms, edited by K.P. Prinsloo and M.C.J. Van Rensburg, 229–33. Pretoria: HAUM. Paton, A. 1987[1975]. Save the Beloved Country. Edited by G. Claassen. Melville: Hans Strydom Publishers.

The Ironic History of Afrikaans

157

Ponelis, F. 1993. The Development of Afrikaans. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Ponelis, F. 1998. “Standaardafrikaans en die Afrikaanse taalfamilie.” Universiteit van Stellenbosch Annale, 1998/1. Pred, A. 2002. “Capitalisms, Crises, and Cultures II. Notes on Local Transformation and Everyday Cultural Struggles.” In Development. A Cultural Studies Reader, edited by S. Schech and J. Haggis, 168–81. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell. Romaine, S. 1988. Pidgin and Creole Lnguages. London: Longman. Saunders, C., and N. Southey. 1998. A Dictionary of South African History. Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip. Shell, R. 2012. “Mense in knegskap.” In Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika. Van voortye tot vandag, edited by F. Pretorius, 63–71. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Sparks, A. 1990. The Mind of South Africa. The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball. Statistics South Africa. 2012. Census 2011. Census in brief. Report no. 03-01-41. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Swanepoel, P.H. 1991. Die liefdesverhouding tussen Afrikaans en die Afrikaanssprekende: ’n blik deur die oë van Mater Matuta. Pretoria: Unisa. Trudgill, P. 2002. Sociolinguistic Variation and Change. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Valkhoff, M.F. 1966. Studies in Portuguese and Creole. With Special Reference to South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Valkhoff, M.F. 1972. New Light on Afrikaans and “Malayo-Portuguese”. Louvain: Peeters. Van den Heever, R. 1987. Tree na Vryheid. ’n Studie in Alternatiewe Afrikaans. Kasselsvlei: KPO. Van der Westhuizen, C. 2007. White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party. Cape Town: Zebra. Visagie, J. 2012. “Migrasie en die gemeenskappe noord van die Oranjerivier.” In Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika. Van voortye tot vandag, edited by F. Pretorius, 97–116. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Watermeyer, S. 1996. “Afrikaans English.” In Varieties of English around the World. Focus on South Africa, edited by V. De Klerk, 99–124. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Webb, V.N. 2002. Language in South Africa. The Role of Language in National Transformation, Reconstruction and Development. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Williams, C.H. 1994. Called onto Liberty! On Language and Nationalism. Clevedon, PA: Multilingual Matters. Wilson, F. 2009. Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy. A Short, Short History of South Africa. Cape Town: Umuzi.

Chapter 9

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau: Socio-Anthropological Perspectives Christoph Kohl Introduction The fact that Kriol, a language once spoken only by a tiny creole minority ­residing primarily in a limited number of settlements, was able to gradually become the lingua franca of independent Guinea-Bissau appears, at first glance, as both unexpected and inexplicable. As a result of this process, only a small minority of Kriol speakers in present-day Guinea-Bissau are creoles, whereas all creoles – Kristons as well as immigrants from the Cape Verdean archipelago and their descendants – are proficient in Kriol. Against this background the question arises as to what specifically facilitated and contributed to the spread of Kriol (also known as ‘Guineense’ or ‘Guinean’), causing it to expand beyond the original creole cultural space by making inroads into new ethnic and geographic settings and eventually turning it into a countrywide medium of communication. The answers can be located in history, particularly in the makeup of creole communities and their relationships to other ethnic groups. The current status of Kriol as Guinea-Bissau’s lingua franca is best represented by the growing number of its speakers since independence was achieved in 1973–74. In 1979, according to the first census conducted after independence, only about 44 percent of Bissau-Guineans spoke Kriol (compared to 11% who were fluent in Portuguese) (Ministério da Coordenação Económica e Plano 1981, 156). The 1991 census found that Kriol was the first language of more than 191,000 inhabitants (approximately 20% of the total population), while Portuguese, Guinea-Bissau’s official language, was spoken by only about 12,000 inhabitants (approximately 1%) (Instituto Nacional de Estatística e Censo 1996, vol. I, table 6.5A). Moreover, the total number of Kriol speakers (who spoke Kriol as a first, second, or third language) already added up to more than 51 percent of the population in that year (Instituto Nacional de Estatística e Censo 1996, vol. I, tables 6.5A, B, C, D). Kriol continued to rapidly gain ground. By 2009 the number of creole speakers increased to 90.4 percent (compared to 27.1% Portuguese speakers), according to official census data (Instituto Nacional de Estatística 2009, 19).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_010

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

159

From the outset, there were few indications that Kriol would be able to achieve such ‘success.’ The emergence of creole culture and identity in what is currently Guinea-Bissau dates back to the early days of Portugal’s maritime expansion during the mid-fifteenth century. Guinea-Bissau’s coastal and riverine regions attracted individuals of various social, professional, and geographic backgrounds, among them seafarers, merchants, adventurers, fugitives, clergymen, exiles, castaways, soldiers, and slaves of European, Cape Verdean, and African origins. As the years and decades passed, people of heterogeneous descent settled and began to work as middlemen between the Africans in the hinterland and the European and Cape Verdean businessmen. A handful of small, isolated Portuguese trading posts linked by water and known as praças developed. They became not only exchange hubs for commodities but also served, more generally, as locations for European-African cultural encounters. Most important, within these praças, due to significant interethnic mixing and intermarriages (thus, due to a process of cultural creolization), there resulted new cultural representations and a new, common creole culture and identity – including a lusocreole language now known as Kriol. Proficiency in both Portuguese and Kriol, belief in the Catholic faith, and a distinctive architecture (Mark 1999, 174–79) served as identity markers among the Kristons, creating a boundary between them and other African ethnic (hence linguistic) communities. Kriston identity can be seen as a kind of umbrella, with individuals able to relate to both creole identity and one or more other, ‘ordinary’ African identities. This constellation has allowed Kristons to maintain their ties with the ‘ordinary’ ethnic groups outside the praças. In this chapter I argue that it has been this openness of creole culture and its identification with other African cultural features and identities that has led to the countrywide spread of Kriol and its transformation into presentday Guinea-Bissau’s lingua franca. The first section elaborates on the socio-­ anthropological concept of national integration in postcolonial settings characterized by cultural – including linguistic – and ethnic diversity. The middle sections trace the emergence and subsequent development of Kriol in both colonial and early postcolonial Guinea-Bissau, analyzing the correlation between Kriol and various identities through historical perspectives based on contemporary sources. In doing so, special attention will be paid to the interrelatedness of Kriol, ethnic identities, and modern nationhood in the twentieth century, particularly since independence. A subsequent section analyses current creole language usage and the interrelations among Kriol, ethnic, and national identities. Evidence in the latter section is based on existing primary and secondary written sources as well as on repeated ethnographic research fieldwork carried out in Guinea-Bissau from 2004 to 2014.

160

Kohl

Creole Culture, Language, Identity, and Nation-Building: Theoretical Approaches

The emergence of creole culture, language, and identity in the trading posts along parts of the West African coast since the sixteenth century (Brooks 2003; Mark 2002) took place in multicultural and increasingly hierarchical settings suitable for processes of cultural creolization. Cultural creolization as an intergenerational process thus involves the emergence of a new, shared culture and common identitarian reference: Old boundaries are dissolved and replaced with new ones. This means that such transformation is accompanied by a creative recontextualization of both identity and culture (Knörr 2010). Apart from an identity reconfiguration that Knörr introduces as ethnicization, cultural creolization necessarily requires indigenization. This means that the emerging creole groups in question gradually developed new collective identifications with their new geographic locality. Hence they increasingly identified their new, shared place of establishment – often in colonial settings – as their ‘home,’ albeit while often maintaining memories of their diverse ancestral homelands. In many cases, creoles perceive themselves as founders and landlords of a certain locality. Should a process of cultural creolization come to an end, the resulting creole identity may continue to have a highly integrative potential (Knörr 2010). The resulting creole identity can be ethnicized to varying degrees, leading either to weakly ethnicized, transethnic categories of identification or to more stable, strongly ethnicized identities (cf., also Eriksen 2007, 173). Guinea-Bissau is an example of the former: Kriston transethnic identity has united people of various, ‘indigenous’ ethnic groups under a Kriston (literally ‘Christian,’ derived from the Portuguese cristão) umbrella (Kohl 2009). In other words, creole identity embraces various ethnic identities and thus encompasses segments of those identities. While individuals from ‘ordinary’ ethnic groups in the hinterland of the trading posts continued to ascribe to Kristons their ancestral native ethnic identity, both fellow creoles and other townspeople regarded them as Kristons. Consequently, Kristons have been able to switch between identities, depending on contexts and situations. This umbrella character of creole identity can have an important impact on matters of language. Creole languages have been regarded as the native language of an ethnic group, but in the case of Guinea-Bissau, Kriol proficiency has not remained limited to creoles. Instead, the vast majority of present-day Kriol speakers do not have an identitarian creole background. Thus, although Kriol is the language of ethnic reference (see Gilman 1979, 269) associated with Kristons (and Cape Verdeans living in Guinea-Bissau), the expansion of Kriol beyond creole boundaries may have been facilitated by the fact that

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

161

the ethnic reference is quite weak due to the umbrella character of Kriston identity. In such a situation, Kriol easily could have been adopted by people of non-creole descent – through a process called transethnicization. In contrast to cultural creolization, cultural transethnicization involves the evolution of new, shared cultural features and the transcendence of identities without leading to the emergence of a new and common ethnic identity. Instead, the original ethnic identities remain intact. However, this process can also lead to the eventual creation of a new transethnic identity. In the long run, therefore, the process of transethnicization may – or may not – result in creolization (Knörr 2010). This transethnicization of creole languages also may have a profound effect on postcolonial nation-building because it may contribute to the development of a language-based, popular national identity that is able to transcend various ethnic identities without replacing them. Transethnicization contributes to cultural integration by “replacing one diversity with another” (Hannerz 1987, 555). Such integration depends on the varying ways and degrees of appropriation of new cultural forms by diverse local groups. Given the integrative character of creole culture and identity – as expressed by the pronounced umbrella nature of Kriston identity in Guinea-Bissau – creole languages appear to be particularly capable of contributing to a (trans-)ethnic, national integration, hence nation-building ‘from below,’ i.e., from a grassroots level. This applies especially to countries that are distinguished by high degrees of cultural and ethnic heterogeneity – of which Guinea-Bissau is a prime example. In fact, cultural transethnicization has commonly taken place in contemporary postcolonial societies with an ethnically diverse population (Knörr 2008, 12–13). In this context, transethnicization may lead to new transethnic identifications. Contrary to many Western European cases where the nation has been conceptualized as homogeneous in identitarian terms, transethnicization allows for the development of a “unity in diversity” or “tree as nation” model of the respective nation in postcolonial settings, which views “smaller,” more exclusive ethnic (and creole) identities as its precedents or roots (Knörr 2008, 31). It must be said, however, that people sharing the same language does not imply a common ethnic or national identity (Djaló 1987, 254). As sociologist Max Weber wrote, a nation “is not identical with a community speaking the same language” (Weber 1978, vol. 2, 922).1 This can be illustrated using the cases of German-speaking Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein or English-speaking United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and 1  Max Weber commented elsewhere: “A common language is also insufficient in sustaining a sense of national identity (Nationalgefühl)” (Weber 1978, vol. 1, 395).

162

Kohl

New Zealand. Conversely, multilingualism does not necessarily constitute an obstacle to national unity (Djaló 1987, 254), as exemplified by Switzerland. Nevertheless, a shared language can contribute to conviviality across ethnic (and linguistic) boundaries, creating solidarity and a shared feeling of belonging (Figueira 2013, 88, cf., 89). In the following two sections I will show how and to what extent GuineaBissau’s creole language follows this model, as well as which roles the colonial and postcolonial states have played in the transformation of Kriol from the trade language of a creole minority in isolated trading posts to a lingua franca2 that unites the nation linguistically across ethnic and cultural boundaries. I will start by shedding light on Kriol’s emergence, followed by elaborations on its geographic expansion and subsequent transethnicization. In this context, I will also attempt to demonstrate the way in which Kriol became increasingly prevalent, finally assuming the status of independent Guinea-Bissau’s ‘national language,’ as it is sometimes popularly conceived.

Kriol and Creole Identity in Colonial Times

The origin of Kriol has been a matter of contention among linguists, notably with regard to whether it emerged first in Cape Verde, continental Upper Guinea, or Europe (see Do Couto 1994, 30–33). The first appearance of the creole language that is currently spoken in Guinea-Bissau and the Senegalese Casamance region can be traced back to the sixteenth century. Its development was intimately connected to the foundation and development of urban praças (Rougé 1986, 36). Perhaps the first reference to a Portuguese-based creole language in the littoral Upper Guinea coast stems from Cacheu and was reported by the Cape Verde–born trader André Álvares de Almada in 1594. Therefore, it can be assumed that a pidgin or creole language had already emerged by the mid- to late sixteenth century. Linguists have proposed that it resulted from a simplified version of Portuguese that was even further simplified and spoken by the local pidgin speakers (Do Couto 1994, 18–20, 34). Historical evidence suggests that, by and large, Kriol continued to be limited to the few trading posts, the praças, that were nominally controlled by the Portuguese by the mid- to late nineteenth century. A traveller reported in 1884 that Kriol was exclusively spoken by “Christian Negroes” in the 2  A lingua franca is a language used in situations where neighboring “communities do not speak each other’s language but use instead a third language as a means of mutual communication” (Chirikba 2008: 31).

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

163

praças of Bissau, Cacheu, Geba, and Bolama (Doelter 1884, 191; my translation). The Kristons maintained multilingual traditions and thus were able to act as economic and cultural brokers. In the 1890s, Kriol did not constitute a monolithic language; instead, three or four creole variants could be distinguished among the handful of settlements. While those of Geba and Cacheu are considered to be the oldest forms of Kriol, those spoken in Bissau and Cacheu are regarded as the most correct versions. Meanwhile, the Kriol spoken in the then newly established capital of Bolama was described as the most “Portugalized” version of the language (Marques de Barros 1897/99, 288, 296–298; cf., Do Couto 1994, 51). By the beginning of the twentieth century, Kriol was propagated further inland by Cape Verdeans who relocated to the country’s interior. This caused the creole vernacular, hitherto primarily restricted to urban settlements, to spread to Guinea-Bissau’s hinterland (Havik 2007, 58–59). At the same time, the Portuguese effectively seized control of the territory of Guinea-Bissau. Subsequently, the colonial authorities began to devalue and legally suppress Kriol, which they regarded as poorly and improperly spoken Portuguese (Do Couto 1994, 54; Gomes 2001, 35) – although they were never powerful enough to enforce this policy. The Basic Law of the colony, which was enacted in 1914, granted franchise and eligibility to citizens provided they were able to read and write Portuguese.3 A law of 1917 stipulated that applicants for citizenship should be able to read and write Portuguese, not merely Kriol.4 Later legislation retained this condition, which was only removed when the Native Statute was abrogated in 1961. Another law passed in 1917 heavily criticized the “constant use of crioulo” in public administration and schools “as if it were the national language.” Under this mandate, only the Portuguese language could be used in public administration and the education system.5 It seems, however, that these endeavors to stamp out Kriol in Guinea-Bissau did not meet with success: The colony’s governor complained in 1923 that few people – some Portuguese officials and traders in Bissau and Bolama – spoke Portuguese. The majority spoke the ‘truncated’ and ‘ridiculous’ dialect, i.e., Kriol, a situation that embarrassed the Portuguese in the eyes of foreigners. Despite the Portuguese being present for centuries, they continued to give the impression that they lived in a 3  “Lei Orgânica de administração civil das províncias ultramarinas,” lei no. 227 of August 15, 1914, in Boletim Oficial da Guiné, 40 (October 3, 1914, 329–43): bases 24 and 44. 4  “Carta Orgânica da Província da Guiné,” decreto no. 3168 of May 31, 1917, in Ministério das Colónias (1917, art. 307). 5  Portaria no. 38 of February 9, 1917, in Boletim Oficial da Guiné, 6 (February 10, 1917, 41).

164

Kohl

foreign land. The governor called it a “disgrace” that even foreign businessmen had to learn and speak Kriol instead of Portuguese (Velez Caroço 1923, 25). A conference of administrators that was held in 1943 also discussed this issue and again advocated the removal of the ‘creole dialect’ from the public service sector and the commercial sphere. The participants labeled the use of Kriol as unpatriotic, signifying the colonizers’ “manifestation of inferiority,” which they equated with “assimilating with the natives” (Colónia da Guiné 1944, 73–75; my translation). Similarly, (basic) education was conducted in Portuguese (Teixeira da Mota 1954, vol. II, 109–110; see Errante 1998, 285–286). However, only 7.7 percent of the citizens (or 641 individuals) who had been registered in Guinea-Bissau were able to read and write Portuguese in 1950 (Mendy 1994, 311), underlining the unofficial, yet growing role of Kriol. The remaining citizens – comprising more than 90 percent of Bissau-Guinean citizens – who were not able to read and write Portuguese included a great number of Cape Verdeans, metropolitan Portuguese, and their legitimate children, who were not required to apply for citizenship and who therefore did not need to prove their ability to read and write Portuguese. These figures revealed the absurdity and hypocrisy of colonial legislation and ideology that purported to spread Portuguese language skills as part of Portugal’s civilizing mission. These measures undertaken by the colonial state suggest that Kriol remained the urban lingua franca, and while Kriol speakers were obviously concentrated in the few urbanized settlements, Kriol continued to spread in the countryside – underlining the weakness of Portuguese colonization. The colonial authorities were aware of this reality, and the 1940s saw the emergence of many debates and contentions that sought to distinguish between Kriol and the Cape Verdean creole language, presumably on the basis of racist considerations as part of the colonial ideology that favored Cape Verdeans over Africans. Apparently, the colonial administration feared that its overly restrictive measures may have completely alienated vast sections of the population towards colonial rule (Havik 2007, 61–62). Only in the mid-1950s did the representatives of the colonial state and media begin to recognize the crucial role played by Kriol as an interethnic means of communication, contributing to the overcoming of “tribal isolation” (Teixeira da Mota 1954, vol. I, 227–233; cf. Havik 2007, 62). This recognition of Kriol went along with the growing importance of the language: In the late 1950s Kriol was already regarded a ‘lingua franca’ that was reportedly understood by almost all people, owing to the supposed Cape Verdean influence. By contrast, the indigenous population was described as almost entirely ignorant of Portuguese, ascribed to the weak Portuguese “cultural influence” (Da Silva Cunha 1959, 62).

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

165

The Cape Verde-born former colonial administrator and longtime colonial administrator, ethnographer, and historian António Carreira recounted that Kriol was predominantly restricted to the praças and was hardly understood in the countryside at the time of his arrival in the colony in the early 1920s. According to him, Kriol’s influence expanded very slowly in the 1920s and 1930s. Only thereafter did it spread more rapidly, coincident with the expansion of colonial rule and infrastructure, which caused many people to migrate to the cities (Carreira 1984, 122–23).

Struggle for Independence and Postcolonial Nation-Building

The emergence of nationalist movements in the 1950s was strongly connected with urbanized speakers of Kriol. When the war of independence broke out in the early 1960s, Kriol served as a crucial means of popular mobilization. During the war, Kriol was employed as the training language for recruits as well as the communication medium in the rapidly spreading basic primary schools run by the independence movement Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, or PAIGC) in the ‘liberated zones’ of Guinea-Bissau. Moreover, the PAIGC also started to broadcast messages, propaganda, and its ideology in Kriol on Rádio Libertação at that time (Carreira 1984, 122–23; Pinto Bull 1989, 78, 116–19; Do Couto 1994, 59; Nassum 1994; Embaló 2008, 105). Thus, reinforced by the war of independence, Kriol became even more widespread throughout the country as a kind of interethnic lingua franca. In its program of 1963, the PAIGC demanded the “stimulation of the use of native languages and of the creole dialect; creation of a script of these languages” (PAIGC Major Program, paragraph VII B 4, reproduced in Chilcote 1972, 360–66, on 365). In this manner, the liberation movement not only advocated a ‘unity in diversity’ model but also highlighted the particular relevance of Kriol. However, it was only after 1974 that the full importance of Kriol manifested itself. Through its use, the different ethnic groups could identify themselves as one nation, united by the same victorious struggle for independence that had promoted Kriol. In this way, Kriol was transformed from a “language of colonization” to a “language of liberation” (Bicari in Scantamburlo 1981, 5). Kriol therefore can be interpreted as representing a sociolinguistic concept of independence (Lopes 1988, 230–31). Additionally, Kriol was officially thought to serve as a unifier of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (Do Couto 1990, 52). Although independent Guinea-Bissau made Portuguese its official language, it has been contended that Kriol was declared the national language and served as a national symbol that was

166

Kohl

spoken all over the country’s territory (Scantamburlo 1999, 16).6 Interestingly, the creole-speaker and nationalist Amílcar Cabral rejected teaching in Kriol and other local languages such as Fula, Balanta, Mandingo, and so on, instead favoring Portuguese as the written language in Guinea-Bissau (Cabral 1990, 59). Believing Portuguese to be a unifying language, he declared: Portuguese is one of the best things the tugas [i.e. the Portuguese, CK] left us because the language is not proof of anything but a tool for men to relate with each other, it is a tool, a means for speaking, to express the realities of life and the world. Cabral 1990, 59

Perhaps not surprisingly, the new political leaders had a very low opinion of their own lingua franca. The linguist Hildo Hónorio do Couto reported that a frontline politician had told him that Kriol was not a language as it possessed neither a grammar nor a dictionary (Do Couto 1989, 107) – a view shared by many politicians (cf., Gomes Godinho 2010, 93). What may have been the reasons for the resistance to Kriol? Clearly, the emerging new elite in Guinea-Bissau, among them many creoles and former citizens, had been the social, political, and economic product of Portuguese colonialism and its socialization and education. Further, producing educational material in Kriol might have proved too costly, whereas Portuguese, as an international language, facilitated the access to Portuguese (and Brazilian) media, education systems, and labor markets (cf., Figueira 2013, 65–66). When the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire began to implement an adult mass literacy program in 1975, it was decided by the political leaders – supposedly against Freire’s own suggestions – to use Portuguese as the language of instruction. The program failed because at the time only a small minority of the population was able to speak and write Portuguese: 5 percent Portuguese speakers versus 45 percent creole speakers (Harasim 1983, 255, 268; Do Couto 1990, 53; Kirkendall 2010, 105–13; cf. Benson 1994). There were attempts in the 1970s and early 1980s to standardize Kriol as a written language, but these did not show conclusive results,7 and to date PAIGC’s 6  Unfortunately, Scantamburlo does not indicate the evidence on which he based this assertion. Guinea-Bissau’s first constitution of 1973 does not provide any regulations on language use, even though it was drafted in Portuguese, not Kriol. 7  See, for instance, the ministerial orthography project dating from 1981 in Rougé (1988, 153–61) and the “Proposal for the Standardization of the Crioulo Script” (Ministério da Educação, Cultura e Desportos 1987).

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

167

o­ riginal plans (as per its program of 1963) to scriptualize Kriol (and other local languages) remain unfulfilled. Thus, whereas Portuguese continues to be a foreign language for most Bissau-Guineans, instruction is, at least officially, in this language from the first class onwards, and Kriol textbooks and grammar guides continue to be unavailable (De Macedo 1989, 35–36). Outside the classroom, however, radio stations active throughout GuineaBissau employ Kriol as the preferred communication medium, thus contributing to the spread of Kriol. In 2007 Guinea-Bissau’s parliament passed a law demanding that radio stations broadcast 50 percent in Kriol, 50 percent in Portuguese (cf., Embaló 2008, 103, 105), in an attempt to balance aspiration (Portuguese as the official language) and reality (Kriol as the lingua franca spoken countrywide). Similarly, Portuguese is reserved to specific social spheres: official publications such as the law gazette are generally in Portuguese. However, political debates in parliament (cf., Augel 1998, 18–19), like discussions and interviews broadcasted by Televisão da Guiné-Bissau, are mostly in Kriol; the same applies to many commercials, public advertisements, awareness campaigns (for example, by the United Nations Development Program), and almost all political debates and conventions. While the low number of locally produced and marketed books and newspapers are almost exclusively in Portuguese (Parente Augel 1998; 2006, 79–87; Do Couto and Embaló 2010),8 the last two decades have seen the emergence of comics in Kriol (Do Couto 1990, 49; Parente Augel 2006, 77–79), even though the number of distributed copies is extremely low. Since Bissau attracts a significant number of people from the countryside who commute between their new and old homes, the capital can be perceived as a primary platform for the spread of Kriol. Although Portuguese is supposed to be the official language of instruction, teachers from all over Guinea-Bissau – many of them poorly trained and barely able to write Portuguese flawlessly – frequently use Kriol during school lessons. Shortly after independence, ideas were circulated about teaching in local languages, but no countrywide implementation of such ideas has occurred (Do Couto 1989, 112; 1990, 55–56). In the last few years, there have been attempts to designate Kriol, by means of a bilingual education pilot project, as a linguistic mediator between the various local African languages and Portuguese (Scantamburlo 2005), but thus far with no effect on language education policy. All of this makes Kriol not only a “language of unity” and interethnic communication but also a means of “business, practical communication at work, and personal contact in almost any local 8  With a few exceptions such as ecclesiastical literature (see Pinto Rema 1982, 913) and belles lettres (cf., Pinto Bull 1989, 119–28; Do Couto 1994, 54; Parente Augel 1998).

168

Kohl

community” (Santo Vaz de Almeida 1991, 3). Today, Kriol is the mother tongue of many Bissau-Guineans, especially in urban settings, and there is a strong trend towards Kriol and Portuguese, sometimes resulting in a de-creolized version of the latter in Bissau. Nonetheless, most children and adolescents continue to grow up in bi- or multilingual settings, in particular in the countryside. Yet, some areas are marked by competing linguae francae, including geographic border areas (Fula in the east; Wolof in the northern part of Guinea-Bissau) and market zones where Wolof, Mandingo, and Fula dominate, also due to the foreign origin of many traders. The spread of Kriol has been apparently fostered by the fact that creoles (Cape Verdeans and Kristons), who originally spoke Kriol, are still not regarded as ‘normal’ ethnic groups (such as Fulas, Pepels, or Manjacos), according to various informants. From that perspective, they are regarded as ‘mixtures,’ given their diverse ethnic, cultural, and geographic origins. From an analytical point of view, Kriol was, in fact, spoken by various ethnic groups in the praças who were united under the transethnic Kriston umbrella. Thus, Kriol bears only a weak ethnic reference. Portuguese cultural workers, however, have criticized the spread of Kriol. For example, the then director of the Portuguese Cultural Centre in Bissau saw an ‘attack’ on the Portuguese language originating from ‘foreign’ – i.e., nonPortuguese – organizations that promoted the spread of Kriol. He accused the French of not only vehemently supporting the use of French – Guinea-Bissau’s neighboring countries Senegal and Guinea are officially francophone – and Kriol “as much as they can” (Matos e Lemos 1999, 35–36). At the time, preceding the Military Conflict of 1998–99, Portugal and France had indeed entered into a geostrategic competition that also affected cultural and linguistic policies, although France had been promoting its language in Guinea-Bissau since as early as 1976 (Rodrigues Zeverino 2005, 71–77; De Macedo 1978, 193; 1989, 37–38; cf. Do Couto 1990, 53–54). French was increasingly identified as a threat to Portuguese and even “as a competitor for the status of official language” (Figueira 2013, 253). The director of the Portuguese Cultural Centre similarly accused the Swedish development agency SIDA and a Portuguese nongovernmental organization of weakening the position of Portuguese by trying to enhance the status of Kriol (Matos e Lemos 1999, 35–36; cf., Figueira 2013: 254). Hence, apart from French, Kriol – building on Portugal’s colonial anxieties – was perceived as a threat to Portuguese cultural-linguistic hegemony, thus reproducing older colonial thought patterns. Portugal’s (neo-)hegemonic attempts and a potentially antiKriol stance are also reflected in the fact that Guinea-Bissau continues to be officially labeled a lusophone, i.e., Portuguese-speaking, country. As such it is

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

169

member of the Comunidade dos Países da Língua Portuguesa (Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, or CPLP), founded in 1996. The spread of Kriol and its increasing number of speakers have also influenced the language itself, to some extent. For instance, Kriol has been significantly influenced by two major developments in recent years. On the one hand, current representations tend to distinguish between Kriol lebi (light Kriol) and Kriol fundu (profound Kriol). The former is a ‘Portugalized’ Kriol that has resulted from the ongoing process of linguistic de-creolization. Over the last couple of decades, Kriol has tended to become increasingly similar to Portuguese, due to which Kriol fundu is increasingly being replaced by Kriol lebi – which is primarily spoken by people with access to education. On the other hand, the substantial numbers of people who grew up speaking their local African mother tongues and who use Kriol only as a vernacular contribute, according to linguists, to the simplification of the creole language (Rougé 1988, 8; Do Couto 1989, 121–26; 1994: 54–55). A major driving force that facilitates the spread of Kriol is popular culture, notably music. Starting with the famous band Cobiana Jazz in the 1970s, Guinea-Bissau has seen the development of a lively musical scene over recent decades (Parente Augel 1997, 2006, 76–77), with Kriol-singing established artists commuting between Lisbon and Bissau. Creole rap music has become very popular among young people. The rap groups communicate their messages, critical of the government and its poor governance, almost exclusively in Kriol, thus not only expressing popular political discontent but also fostering the spread and popularization of Kriol in all parts of the country. Hence, in this way, the role of Kriol as a prime indicator of Bissau-Guinean identity is further strengthened (De Barros and Wilson Lima 2012). Current Kriol Practice and Identity Issues The expansion of Kriol during recent decades has been aided by the weakness of Portugal’s colonial and cultural influence. Even more important, however, has been that – due to the umbrella character of Kriston identity – Kriol has borne only a very weak ethnic reference. Hence, instead of being identified with a specific ethnic group, Kriol could be regarded as an ‘ethnically blind’ language that can easily be adopted by people in Guinea-Bissau irrespective of their ethnic affiliation. This view has been repeatedly expressed to me by Bissau-Guineans of different social, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds. Such observation leads to the question of how and to what extent Kriol continues

170

Kohl

to spread in current Bissau-Guinean everyday life and how it contributes to an interethnic integration ‘from below.’ Which factors contribute to the ongoing acquisition of Kriol? As I have witnessed repeatedly, Kriol serves as a peer language in many, mostly urban settings. During a stay in Bafatá in 2014 I observed intergenerational language interactions within two families that underline the continual spread of Kriol. It became apparent to me that young people have a preference for Kriol instead of local languages because they regard Kriol as ‘modern,’ or at least more ‘modern’ than languages traditionally spoken by different ethnic groups. When I sat on two occasions with families with whom I have been connected for some time, the parents talked to their children in Balanta or Mandingo respectively. The children, however, replied in Kriol and talked in Kriol among themselves and with peer friends. It appeared to me that the children regarded their family’s language, whether Balanta or Mandingo, as ‘backward.’ Indeed, many people of the younger generation have only passive or no knowledge of their ancestors’ language. Rather, Kriol, due to its linguistic proximity to Portuguese, is widely considered to be a medium that underlines social advancement, facilitates participation in Guinea-Bissau’s national and social discourses, and can be regarded as a step towards the acquisition of “membership in the ‘world society’” (Ferguson 2002, 558). Another factor that supports the acquisition of Kriol language skills relates to foster children in urban settings. Currently, parents from the countryside often entrust some or all of their children to the care of close or distant relatives in Bissau and other towns because they hope to improve their children’s prospects. In some but not all cases, these families are of creole descent and are therefore associated with a more urban lifestyle that provides better opportunities in terms of education, training, and income. While helping with the housework, the children rapidly come into contact with Kriol. Another major driving force that facilitates the spread of Kriol is popular culture, notably music and the radio that enjoy widespread popularity among the youth. Since independence Guinea-Bissau has seen the development of a lively popular music scene, with artists mostly performing their songs in Kriol. The past decade has seen the emergence of the hip-hop music genre (De Barros and Wilson Lima 2012). Musicians often criticize politicians and express popular discontent, thus styling themselves as rebels against difficult and unjust living conditions. These messages closely align with collective victimization discourses that are very pronounced in Guinea-Bissau. Such discourses of suffering refer to the struggle for independence and to the charismatic leader of the independence movement, Amílcar Cabral, himself a creole: Some political

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

171

hip-hop bands in Guinea-Bissau use the nation’s assassinated founding father as an idealized role model worthy of imitation, portraying him as a hope for the nation(-state) and as a “messenger of truth” (De Barros and Lima 2012, 99, 111). Yet, Bissau-Guineans are suffering, and this discursive self-victimization itself contributes to the emergence and development of a strong national consciousness among the country’s citizens (Kohl and Schroven 2014). Because these narratives are reproduced by hip-hop bands primarily in Kriol, they perpetrate the spread and popularization of Kriol in all parts of the country across ethnic, social, and geographic boundaries. Hence, by spreading Kriol and discourses of suffering, hip-hop bands’ contribution to national integration is twofold. In recent years, Kriol has gained a greater influence with the emergence of advances in telecommunication- and internet-related services and applications. Nowadays, most Bissau-Guineans own their own cell phone, and particularly the younger generations enjoy chatting and texting. Many, especially younger middle- and upper-class Bissau-Guineans, are also frequent users of Facebook. Here, written communication among family members, friends, and colleagues is mostly in Kriol. Thus Facebook (and potentially other, similar social media sites), chats, WhatsApp, and SMS are among the few occasions in which regular written communication in Kriol takes place. Even though, for the time being, it remains to be seen what effects Kriol spelling in social networks such as Facebook, SMS, and WhatsApp will have on the standardization of Kriol, the effects on interethnic integration ‘from below’ are evident: These new media technologies contribute to the further spread of Kriol among Bissau-Guinean citizens within the country and abroad, notably in Portugal, and, in this way, they reinforce the establishment of the lingua franca as an expression of national integration and cohesion. Although increasing numbers of people have acquired proficiency in Kriol in recent decades, the transethnic linguistic expansion entails the emergence of new diversities and processes of social differentiation. Confident, long-established Kriol speakers, many of them of Kriston ancestry, point to the ‘different’ and ‘broken’ Kriol spoken by individuals coming from the countryside – thus reproducing patterns of argumentation well known from colonial times as regards Portuguese. For instance, particularly non-urban individuals of the Fula ethnic group are ascribed a certain use of words and accent when practicing Kriol. Hence, the national lingua-franca-turned-former trade language is perceived as less and less suitable to serve as a marker of social distinction and proximity to supposedly superior European cultural features. Therefore, new distinctions have to be created, and looking down on individuals with a limited proficiency in Kriol is only one strategy.

172

Kohl

Another strategy is to create new sociocultural boundaries based on one’s proficiency in Portuguese. Despite the growing relevance of Kriol, Portuguese remains the language, particularly among the political, cultural, and economic elite in and around Bissau. Even beyond the elite, Portuguese is ascribed prestige as it is regarded as a means of access to European and Brazilian labor markets, education, and information opportunities. More than Kriol, the command of Portuguese can be conceived of as a prerequisite to social upward mobility. During my fieldwork in 2006–07 it occurred to me that in a few cases upper-class Bissau-Guineans of creole ancestry whom I met ‘officially’ for interviews insisted on speaking Portuguese even though I was fluent in Kriol. Apparently, they intended to emphasize their level of education and to distinguish themselves from ‘ordinary’ Kriol speakers. As literacy in Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau remains confined to a (growing) minority, the intellectual elite and middle classes intend to preserve the prestigious status of Portuguese, keeping it as the social marker that it had been in colonial times. This is illustrated by the following vignette: When a friend of mine of Kriston ancestry and aligned with the long-established creole families passed by a school in Bissau, one of his friends, a teacher, saw him and greeted him, from inside the classroom, in Kriol. My friend angrilymockingly reprimanded the schoolteacher, insisting that he speak Portuguese, not Kriol, when he was on school grounds. However, the situation remains marked by ambiguity: Particularly middle- and upper-class individuals of creole ancestry now not only point to their proficiency in Portuguese but also to their command of ‘good’ Kriol – which they contrast with the ‘Kriol lebi’ spoken by people from the hinterland. In other words, creoles use an essentialist argument to support ownership of “their” language, Kriol, thereby seeking to separate their “genuine,” “good” Kriol proficiency from the “false,” “bad” use of Kriol that has resulted from the transethnicization process (see Eriksen 2007, 174). In short, currently Kriol is the mother tongue of many Bissau-Guineans – ­creoles and non-creoles alike – especially in urban settings, and the trend towards Kriol and Portuguese can be detected in Bissau: Although people continue to identify with a certain ethnic group, increasing numbers of people, particularly young urbanites, possess an insufficient capacity to speak or understand the language of ‘their’ ethnic community. At the same time, the ongoing expansion and transethnicization of Kriol should not obscure the fact that Kriol competes in certain geographic spaces with languages other than Portuguese. For instance, the eastern part of the country has been marked by a strong presence of the Fula and Mandingo languages. Nonetheless, even there, Kriol serves as a primary, interethnic means of communication and as a ‘language of unity.’ ­

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

173

Conclusion The exceptional role played by creole culture, identity, and creoles in the construction of postcolonial nationhood is reflected in the geographic expansion and sociocultural transethnicization process of Kriol across ethnic and cultural boundaries. The spread of Kriol in the past century has been likely fostered by the fact that creoles, originally the only ones who spoke Kriol, have not been regarded as a ‘normal’ ethnic group by most Bissau-Guineans. Rather, they were (and are) conceived as ‘mixtures’ due to their diverse ethnic, cultural, and geographic origins. Thus, to date Kriol bears only a weak ethnic reference. By means of Kriol, creole culture and identity have transcended the rigid, popular dichotomy of a nation that encompasses a number of ‘tribes’ – as delineated in Cabral’s state ideology that sought to construct an integrated nation as an umbrella for various ethnic groups – and thus challenges the popular ‘unity in diversity’ model. Creoles are aware that several of their cultural representations which previously had been largely restricted to urban creole communities, such as Kriol, have turned into representations of the new, integrated national culture. The spread of Kriol has also been facilitated by the weakness of Portuguese colonialism and the disinterest of the postcolonial state that neither promoted nor hindered the development and expansion of Kriol but instead – at least verbally – preferred Portuguese as the official language, thus continuing colonial policies. This was not surprising, because many prominent figures in the independence movement had a creole background and therefore regarded Portuguese as a more prestigious language than Kriol and, in this way, possibly also hoped to monopolize access to power and resources in the postcolonial state through cultural measures. In any event, this policy avoided a politicization of the Kriol language issue and granted Kriol the freedom to spread. Hence, despite the fact that it was never recognized as an official language, Kriol managed to become – through a process of transethnicization from below – the country’s de facto national language. References Augel, J. 1998. “Staatskrise, Ethnizität und Ressourcenkonflikte in Guinea-Bissau.” University of Bielefeld, Faculty of Sociology, Sociology of Development Research Centre Working Papers 309. Benson, C.J. 1994. “Teaching Beginning Literacy in the ‘Mother Tongue’: A Study of the Experimental Crioulo/Portuguese Primary Project in Guinea-Bissau.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles.

174

Kohl

Brooks, G.E. 2003. Eurafricans in Western Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Cabral, A. 1990. “A questão da língua.” Papia-Revista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares 1: 59–61. Carreira, A. 1984. “Os portugueses nos Rios de Guiné (1500–1900).” Lisbon: Self-published. Chilcote, R.H. 1972. Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa Documents. Stanford: University of California Press. Chirikba, V.A. 2008. “The Problem of the Caucasian Sprachbund.” In From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics, vol. 90, Studies in Language Companion Series, edited by P. Muysken, 25–94. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Colónia da Guiné. 1944. Conferência dos administradores. Actas das sessões realizadas em 1944, sob a Presidência do Governador da Colónia, Major de Artilharia Ricardo Vaz Monteiro. Bolama: Imprensa Nacional. Da Silva Cunha, J.M. 1959. Missão de estudo dos movimentos associativos em África. Relatório da Campanha de 1958 (Guiné). Lisbon: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar. De Barros, M. and R. Wilson Lima. 2012. “Rap Kriol(u). O pan-africanismo de Cabral na música de intervencao juvenil na Guiné-Bissau e em Cabo Verde.” Realis-Revista de Estudos AntiUtilitaristas e Póscoloniais 2: 88–116. De Macedo, F. 1978. “A Educação na República da Guiné-Bissau. O passado, as transformações no presente, as perspectivas do futuro.” Itinerarium 23: 158–94. De Macedo, F. 1989. “O problema das línguas na Guiné-Bissau.” Humanidades 22: 33–38. Djaló, I. 1987. “Contribuição para uma reflexão: educação, multilinguismo e unidade nacional.” In II encontro nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, edited by Direcção da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 242–59. Lisboa: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. Do Couto, H.H. 1989. “O crioulo guineense em relação ao português e às línguas nativas.” Linguistica 29: 107–28. Do Couto, H.H. 1990. “Política e planeamento lingüístico na Guiné-Bissau.” PapiaRevista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares 1: 47–58. Do Couto, H.H. 1994. O crioulo português da Guiné-Bissau. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Do Couto, H., and F. Embaló. 2010. “Literatura, lingua e cultura na Guine-Bissau. Um pais da CPLP.” Papia-Revista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares 20. Doelter, C. 1884. Über die Capverden nach dem Rio Grande und Futah-Djallon. Reiseskizzen aus Nord-West-Afrika. Leipzig: Verlag von Paul Frohberg. Embaló, F. 2008. “O crioulo da Guiné-Bissau: língua nacional e factor de identidade nacional.” Papia-Revista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares 18: 101–107. Eriksen, T.H. 2007. “Creolization in Anthropological Theory and in Mauritius.” In Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 153–77. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coat Press.

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

175

Errante, A. 1998. “Education and National Personae in Portugal ̓ s Colonial and Postcolonial Transition.” Comparative Education Review 42: 267–308. Ferguson, J. 2002. “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society.’ ” Cultural Anthropology 17: 551–69. Figueira, C. 2013. Languages at War: External Language Spread Policies in Lusophone Africa. Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau at the Turn of the 21st Century. Vol. 97. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Gilman, C. 1979. “Cameroonian Pidgin English, a Neo-African Language.” In Readings in Creole Studies, edited by I. Hancock, 269–80. Ghent: E. Story-Scientia. Gomes, B. 2001. “‘O mundo que o portugues criou’ – Von der Erfindung einer lusophonen Welt.” Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 2: 27–43. Gomes Godinho, P. 2010. Os fundamentos de uma nova sociedade: o P.A.I.G.C. e a luta armada na Guiné-Bissau (1963–1973). Organização do Estado e relações internacionais. Turin: L’Harmattan Italia. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolization.” Africa 57: 546–59. Harasim, L.M. 1983. “Literacy and National Reconstruction in Guinea-Bissau: A Critique of the Freirean Literacy Campaign (1976–).” PhD diss., University of Toronto. Havik, P.J. 2007. “Kriol without Creoles: Afro-Atlantic Connections in the Guinea Bissau Region (16th to 20th Centuries).” In Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic, Studies of the Americas, edited by N. Priscilla Naro, R. Sansi-Roca, and D.H. Treece, 41–73. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Instituto Nacional de Estatística. 2009. Recenseamento Geral da População e Habitação 2009. Características Socioculturais. Bissau: Ministério da Economia, do Plano e da Integração Regional. Instituto Nacional de Estatísticas e Censos. 1996. Recenseamento Geral da População e Habitação 1991, Vol. I. Bissau: Ministério do Plano e Cooperação Internacional / Secretaria de Estado do Plano. Kirkendall, A.J. 2010. Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Knörr, J. 2008. “Towards Conceptualizing Creolization and Creoleness.” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers 100. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness; or, The World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51: 731–59. Kohl, C. 2009. “Creole Identity, Interethnic Relations, and Postcolonial NationBuilding in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa.” PhD diss., Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Kohl, C., and A. Schroven. 2014: “Suffering for the Nation: Bottom-up and Top-down Conceptualisations of the Nation in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers 152. Lopes, C. 1988. Para uma leitura sociológica da Guiné-Bissau. Lisbon, Bissau: Editorial Economia e Socialismo, Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa.

176

Kohl

Mark, P. 1999. “The Evolution of ‘Portuguese’ Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century.” Journal of African History 40: 173–91. Mark, P. 2002. “Portuguese” Style and Luso-African Identity. Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Marques de Barros, M. 1897/99. “O Guinéense.” Revista Lusitana 5: 271–300. Matos e Lemos, M. 1999. Política cultural portuguesa em África. O caso da Guiné-Bissau (1985–1998). N.p.: Banco Totta and Açores-Bissau. Mendy, P.K. 1994. Colonialismo português em África: a tradição de resistência na GuinéBissau (1879–1959). Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa. Ministério da Coordenação Económica e Plano. 1981. Recenseamento geral da população e da habitação. 16 de Abril de 1979. Resultados provisórios (Fase II). Bissau. Ministério da Educação, Cultura e Desportos. 1987. Propostas de uniformação da escrita do crioulo. Ntindimentu ku acado pa skirbi kiriol di un manera son. Bissau. Nassum, M. 1994. “Política linguística pós-colonial: Ruptura ou continuidade?” Soronda 17: 45–78. Parente Augel, M. 1997. Ora di kanta tchiga. José Carlos Schwarz e o Cobiana Djazz, Vol. 6. Colecção Kebur. Bissau: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa. Parente Augel, M. 1998. A nova literatura da Guiné-Bissau, Vol. 8. Colecção Kebur. Bissau: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa. Parente Augel, M. 2006. “O crioulo guineense e a oratura.” Scripta 10: 69–91. Pinot Bull, B. 1989. O crioulo da Guiné-Bissau. Filosofia e sabedoria. Lisbon, Bissau: Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa. Pinto Rema, H. 1982. História das Missões Católicas da Guiné. Braga: Editorial Franciscana. Rodrigues Zeverino, G.J. 2005. O conflito politico-militar na Guiné-Bissau (1998–1999). Lisbon: Instituto Português de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento. Rougé, J.L. 1986. “Uma hipótese sobre a formação do crioulo da Guinéa-Bissau e da Casamansa.” Soronda 2: 28–49. Rougé, J.L. 1988. Petit dictionnaire etymologique du Kriol de Guinée-Bissau et Casamance. Bissau: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa. Santo Vaz de Almeida, S.E. 1991. Crioulo grammar made simple. US Peace Corps. Scantamburlo, L. 1981. Gramática e dicionário da língua criol da Guiné-Bissau (GCr). Bologna: Editrice Missionaria Italiana. Scantamburlo, L. 1999. Dicionário do Guineense, Vol. I. Introdução e notas Gramaticais. Lisbon, Bubaque: Edições Colobri, Fundação para o Apoio ao Desenvolvimento dos Povos do Arquipélago de Bijagós. Scantamburlo, L. 2005. “O ensino bilingue nas escolas primárias das Ilhas Bijagós: Crioulo Guineense-Português.” In Língua Portuguesa e Cooperação para o

Creole Language and Identity in Guinea-Bissau

177

Desenvolvimento, edited by M.H. Mira Mateus, and L. Teotónio Pereira, 63–78. Lisbon: Edições Colibri, CIDAC. Teixeira da Mota, A. 1954. Guiné Portuguesa. Vols. I, II. Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar. Velez Caroço, J.F. 1923. Relatório anual do Governador da Guiné (1921–1922). Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade. Weber, M. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Two vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Part 3 Ideology and Meaning in Creole Language Usages

⸪

Chapter 10

Multiple Choice: Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance between Convergence and Divergence1 Friederike Lüpke

Introduction: Two Seeming Clashes Scholars studying western Africa are challenged by conundrums involving relationships between languages, social groupings, and cultures. People in western Africa define themselves principally according to kinship and occupational affiliations and only secondarily in linguistic terms. Indeed individuals and families change their languages and modify their social and cultural patterns in ways that are often perplexing to outsiders. Individuals may change their family names to assert their affiliation with elite families (captives once adopted slavemaster names), to express client relationships, apprenticeships, or religious affiliations, and for other reasons. Brooks 1993, 27

1  The ideas presented here emerged during the interdisciplinary research project “Pots, plants and people – a documentation of Baïnounk knowledge systems,” funded by the DoBeS program of the VW Foundation from 2010 to 2013. My heartfelt thanks go to the colleagues and students working with me in this project – Amadou Kane Beye, Alexander Cobbinah, Cheikh Daouda Diatta and Moustapha Sall. The emerging hypotheses on multilingual language use and the ideologies fuelling it resulted in the ongoing Leverhulme Research Leadership Award Project “Crossroads – investigating the unexplored side of multilingualism” in Casamance. I gratefully acknowledge the support of both funders. I am deeply indebted to my students and colleagues Alain Christian Bassène, Alexander Cobbinah, Samantha Goodchild, Abbie Hantgan, Chelsea Krajcik, Rachel Watson and Miriam Weidl for the stimulating multi- and interdisciplinary research and inspiring exchange we are engaging in together. The inhabitants of the Crossroads villages and of Agnack have been very welcoming and actively involved in our research, and I would like to extend my gratitude to them. Through the intense collaboration in the research team and with our research participants, I have been able to develop the ideas presented here. Ño farr!

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_011

182

Lüpke

To an outside observer, apparent contradictions characterize linguistic and cultural interactions in Senegal’s Lower Casamance. The first paradox pertains to the contrast between cultural homogeneity and linguistic heterogeneity: throughout the area, cultural practices are convergent to a large extent. Where they exhibit differences, these are not motivated by ethnic divisions but by local constellations orthogonal to them. Linguistically, the opposite holds, at least at first sight: Lower Casamance is a hotspot of linguistic diversity. It is home to 30+ languages2 of essentially local distribution, with many languages having a village as their nominal home. At the same time, the identity discourses of inhabitants of the region follow ideologies that are, in essential or indexical fashion, based on foregrounding one ethnolinguistic identity, be it in absolute or contextualized manner, although they are spectacularly multilingual and master complex repertoires often containing three or more languages of local distribution (which often are linguistically closely related), two or more regional languages of wider communication and one or two national languages. Another paradox characterizing the coexistence of the many languages of Casamance is that their use and the ideologies surrounding them follow two different configurations of multilingualism. Crucially, the multilingual configuration in local languages does not follow the polyglossic patterns of many Western settings, where languages are assigned specific domains that often go hand in hand with hierarchical relationships between them. Smallscale local multilingual settings follow different patterns based on intense social exchange, and none of the languages involved enjoys a higher status or is used in a broader range of domains than others. Since speakers take part in local and wider national configurations, the different language use patterns and language ideologies associated with both appear to result in incompatible concepts of multilingualism at first sight. My motivation is to explain the reason why speakers within Casamance do not experience this paradox; rather I show that their dynamic and diverse practices are bound together by a deeply entrenched dualism which plays upon sameness and differences. This dualism is rooted in past and current sociopolitical strategies for maximizing flexible alliances and present-day needs for positioning in a national ethnolinguistic marketplace. Small-scale multilingualism – multilingualism occurring in a confined area where it has become part of the social mechanisms creating an ecology – offers the tools to create versatile and multiple bonds through indexical use of different languages 2  Languages are to be understood as constructs that reflect historical, religious, political and social identity concerns and have no grounding in linguistic criteria.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

183

in different contexts. This type of multilingualism is characterized by a particular type of language ideologies, understood here, following Silverstein, as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use” (Silverstein 1979, 193). Crucial for an investigation of the dual patterns of language use and language ideologies at work in Casamance and in a wider national context is the difference between nationalist language ideologies, based on essentializing notions of nation and ethnicity linked to particular languages and hostile to mulitlingualism, and indexical language ideologies that allow situational fore- and backgrounding of particular aspects of identity through linguistic practice or ideological stance (see Woolard and Schieffelin 1994 for a critical review of language ideologies in different fields of humanities, and Kroskrity 2007 for a more recent overview). The language ideologies fostering small-scale multilingualism allow nuanced emphasis of particular aspects of identity for different audiences and are at best partially matched by linguistic practice. The local and regional connections created through ethnolinguistic affinities were indispensable for survival in the precolonial past; in the present-day sociopolitical configuration of the Senegalese postcolonial nation-state, they have been complemented and partly superseded by polyglossic or hierarchical, domainspecialized, multilingual patterns. These local patterns have been overlaid with more recent constellations of regional and national multilingualism that follow different motivations and are driving the emergence of new essentialist language ideologies not only for the larger, but also for the local languages. These more recent ideologies have to be understood as symbolic strategies motivated by a reconfiguration of the linguistic landscape at the regional and national level. That both levels coexist rather than the polyglossic constellation taking precedence follows from the longstanding Frontier identities of inhabitants of Casamance enabling them to enact different aspects of identities in versatile fashion. Frontier societies, discussed in detail in §2 below, are based on small groups continuously breaking up and entering new formations. Versatile language use concomitant with ideologies that valorize it constitute a central part of the semiotic practices central to participate in these societies. Therefore, their role deserves a thorough investigation. It is impossible to reconstruct past language practices, since the available written sources only offer scarce information on language names. From a study of word lists and glossonyms3 collected by travellers to the area, it is possible to conclude that 3  Ethnoym is a term commonly used to designate a term used to name an ethnic group. In analogy, glossonym denotes the name given to a language by its speakers or by outsiders. Ethnonyms and glossonyms sometimes coincide, but often do not (so, for instance, Jóola

184

Lüpke

the spectrum of multilingualism on the Upper Guinea Coast 500 years ago was similar to the present-day situation (Hair 1967). Therefore, it makes sense to look at multilingual patterns of language use in present-day Casamance and at the language ideologies underlying them and connect them to those historical accounts of social and political structures for which we have evidence. Such a procedure can reveal the past motivations for creating the language use pattern that is still attested today while at the same time revealing domains of social organizations that have changed in the postcolonial environment of the Senegalese nation-state and their already tangible impact on language use and language ideologies. Casamance is host to a high number of named languages. Most of them belong to the Atlantic grouping of languages, whose status as genetic or areal, and whose internal division, is currently being debated (Lüpke 2016a). To this grouping belong the languages of the Jóola and Baïnounk clusters which will feature prominently in this chapter, both of them with clear genetic relationships within the clusters. The internal diversity of the Jóola language cluster is variegated, with some varieties very closely related and mutually intelligible. Baïnounk languages are not mutually intelligible. Other Atlantic languages and language clusters present in Casamance languages are Balant, Manjak and Mankanya. Pular and Wolof, two Atlantic languages with high numbers of speakers, do not have ideological home bases4 in Casamance, although they are widely represented. Typologically very different and belonging to the Mande family is Mandinka, a language with a large speaker base that also has an important role as language of Islam in Casamance. Finally, a Portuguesebased Creole is spoken throughout Casamance and adjoining Guinea Bissau and often takes the role of lingua franca, besides being the ethnic language of the area’s Creole population. Although it is possible to assign ideological home bases to languages, it is impossible to generalize the dynamic multilingual repertoires of people. Goodchild (in prep.) provides the salient example of a married couple in the village of Agnack Grand, to the east of Ziguinchor, who each list 9 languages as their individual repertoire, yet only share two languages between them. This example is illustrative of dynamic practices throughout Casamance and, to a lesser extent, the north of the country, where linguistic practice is shaped by personal trajectories throughout an individual’s life and Baïnounk are widely used ethnonyms but cannot function as glossonyms because the members of these groups speak different, albeit related, languages. 4  All languages of Senegal have translocal speaker bases. When I offer geographical locations for languages this means the place they are identified with according to their ideological ‘home base’ as patrimonial languages, see §2.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

185

time, creating unique linguistic biographies. A historical and social explanation for the multilingual habitus enabling this versatility constitutes the core of this chapter. In the following, I describe the kaleidoscope of small-scale multilingualism in Lower Casamance in the wider context of similar settings in precolonial societies against a backdrop of cultural convergence in §2. §3 is devoted to the analysis of the layers of polyglossic multilingualism added through colonial and postcolonial linguistic hegemonies and to the interaction between both small scale and larger patterns. §4 brings together the different dualisms characterizing the complex dynamics of linguistic practices and ideologies surrounding them.

The Historical Development of Small-Scale Multilingualism in Lower Casamance The African frontier we focus on consists of politically open areas nestling between organized societies but “internal” to the larger regions in which they are found – what might be called an “internal” or “interstitial frontier.” Kopytoff 1987, 9



Precolonial Identity Construction and Exchanges at the African Frontier The entire region of Lower Casamance was characterized by the absence of larger states institutions in precolonial times. Situated within the boundaries of the sunken coast line of the Upper Guinea Coast, Lower Casamance is roughly delimited by the rivers Gambia in the north and Cacheu in the south, and traversed by the river Casamance whose countless estuaries criss-cross the area and create marshlands, islands and peninsulas surrounded by mangroves. The topographic situation of Lower Casamance in the tropical savannah climate zone, with rainfalls supporting diverse agricultural activities allowing autonomous subsistence of fairly small groups, has contributed to shaping the settlement pattern of the area as one where small groups without formalized larger state structures have existed for the past two millennia (Brooks 1993). The expansion of the empires to the north and east into this zone was precluded through its situation in a climatic zone with more than 1,000mm of annual rainfall (since the twelfth century coinciding with the river Gambia). This geographical condition entails the presence of tsetse flies, which prevents its penetration by horse warriors and hence renders it inaccessible to conquering

186

Lüpke

armies (Brooks 1993, 22ff.) and thus marks “one of western Africa’s ecological, social and cultural frontiers” (ibid., 22). The area south of the river Gambia was situated beyond the reaches of the “tidal frontier” (Kopytoff 1987) of the expanding state formations to the north and, further inland, to the east. Its situation beyond the last ripples of the Mande empires also made it a prototypical instance of the second incarnation of the internal African Frontier (Kopytoff 1987); the local frontier, a boundary and a region at the same time. In the area below the river Gambia, small, family-based, groups continuously broke off to reconstitute and relocate in order to avoid conflict and find subsistence. Potential conflict and lack of sufficient cultivable grounds could lead at least some sons of one father to migrate and found new villages, which would have their nominal identity founded on an identity based on lineage or clan membership according to patrilineal descent.5 Identity and political structure were, at least historically, much more grounded in lineage than on concepts of ethnicity, which were created in the more recent past. In this chapter, I focus on two ethnicities: Baïnounk and Jóola. In the public imagination, these two groups make up the inhabitants of Casamance, with the Baïnounk taking the place of the autochthones and the Jóola that of the later immigrants that ended their reign. Baïnounk is an older cover term with unclear epistemological value (see Cobbinah 2010, 2013; Lüpke 2010, 2016a) without equivalence in any Baïnounk language.6 Jóola is a recent label emerging from the late eighteenth century onwards used by colonial administrators to regroup culturally and linguistically close peoples that previously had no overarching shared identity (Baum 1999; Van der Klie and de Jong 1995; Mark 1985; Thomas 1958–1959).

5  It is somewhat unexpected to find a patrilineal society in Casamance, as many groups in this area have been described as matrilineal. However, Alexander Cobbinah’s and my fieldwork findings revealing the patrilineal and virilocal characteristics underlying descendance and settlement patterns in two Baïnounk societies are confirmed by Bühnen (1994) who describes the Baïnounk as patrilineal based on the oral histories he collected in the entire language area, although he notes some matrilineal traits regarding inheritance rights. 6  Bühnen (1994), without making any claims on the exact meaning of the term, states that it is used in the oral histories of the Baïnounk elders he interviews and therefore must date back quite a long time. It is notable, though, that his interviews were conducted in Mandinka (the probable donor language of this term), and therefore does not reflect emic perspectives – as Cobbinah (2013) and Lüpke (2016a) have discussed in detail, there is no term in any known Baïnounk language referring to the group as a whole.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

187

A Dichotomy between Firstcomers and Latecomers The Frontier as a region is characterized by the fictional vacuum it presents to its first settlers, who turn themselves into the autochthones, even though they often really are not. Firstcomers are the ones that lay claims to the land and, through their descendants and linguistic identity, determine its patrimonial language. A dichotomy between first-comers and late-comers (Kopytoff 1987), or landlords and strangers (Brooks 1993), underpins the association of settlements with groups and their languages still today. The contrast is reflected in a productive indigenous strategy of naming languages. I exemplify this with the glossonym Kujóolay Jire or Jóola Kujireray. The first part of the name (Kujóolay or Jóola) is changeable and identifies them as belonging to one intermediate level of ethnolinguistic organization, for instance as Jóola, Baïnounk, Balant or Manjak. In many instances, these intermediate levels ultimately originate in classifications of outsiders that have since then been appropriated in past and ongoing processes of ethnogenesis. The second part of the name is often derived from a place-name and characterizes the language as being the language of a particular location. Only the first part identifies this language as an ethnic one, for instance as being Jóola, Baïnounk, Balant, et cetera. Kujóolay Kujireray for instance reads as ‘the Jóola language of Jire,’ Jire being the indigenous toponym of the village7 of Brin (Watson 2014); ku-/gu- is the noun class prefix used for languages in both Jóola and Baïnounk languages. The same language can also be characterized as the Baïnounk language of Brin, or even the Baïnounk-Jóola language of Brin (Rachel Watson, p.c.), attesting at the same time to the layered and versatile nature of ethnic classifications and to the absence of an ethnic connotation from the second part of the name. In fact, the referential entity to which ‘the language of X’ refers is the one currently claimed as the patrimonial language, something I characterize as patrimonial deixis. Patrimonial deixis refers to that language that is currently seen as the firstcomer language of the location, a status that depends on changing political constellations. In current practice either part of the language name can be omitted. Since the second part of the name (which in connotation with 7  Attempts have been made to use meaning or morphological characteristic of toponyms themselves to conclude on the language used by their founders, as in Bühnen (1992, 1994). Given the dangerous status of folk etymologies in oral history, these attempts should be read with caution. Morphological evidence is similarly inconclusive. Thus, Bühnen ascribes toponyms beginning in ka(n)-, as in Kafountine or Kabrousse, a Jóola origin, obviously unaware of the fact that ka(n)- is a productive locative prefix in Baïnounk languages (Cobbinah 2013; Lüpke forthcoming b). Given that there are many homophonous noun class markers in Jóola and Baïnounk, this evidence is of limited value.

188

Lüpke

the ethnic first part makes ethnic claims on autochthony) is primarily of local significance, it is generally omitted for outsiders. Therefore, even the extent of nominal linguistic diversity in Lower Casamance is not revealed to everyone – even less than the full scope of multilingual practice. Hamlets, villages, or entire areas are nominally associated by their inhabitants with one language or language cluster, their patrimonial language. The association to a patrimonial lineage does not reflect actual language use but reveals the nominal or identity language of the founding clan or claims of particular groups to autochthony or land ownership. To those to whom this name is revealed, following the patrimonial model described by Kopytoff (1987), the name contains a strong claim of firstcomer status. Inhabitation of an area by newcomers is sometimes reflected in the names of wards that specify the ethnic identity of the newcomers that settled in them. To illustrate with an example, a ward of the nominally Baïnounk Gubëeher-speaking village Djibonker is called Djibonker Manjak (Alexander Cobbinah, p.c.) because it was settled by people of the Manjak ethnicity. In these cases, the name of the older settlement (e.g., Djibonker) is unmarked, whereas the name of the newer settlement has a modifier detailing the ethnic identity of its inhabitants. Recent settlements are often equipollently marked – the recently founded village Borofaye has two quarters, the ward Borofaye Baïnounk, inhabited by settlers from the Baïnounk Guñaamolo area, and the ward Borofaye Jóola, regrouping inhabitants that are ethnically Jóola. The toponyms each mark the nominal affiliation, thus signifying from the outset that for none of them a claim of autochthony is made. Languages as discrete entities are thus not exclusively construed by outsiders and superimposed on fluid practice, as happened throughout the continent in the wake of colonization (see Blommaert 2008; Lüpke and Storch 2013). Named languages of locations reflect indigenous ontologies, not just Western categorizations; yet the notions around which they are construed and the contexts in which they are revealed and used are radically different from Eurocentric ideas of languagehood and roles of languages. This difference will become apparent through the close inspection of the nature of ties between identities, language ideologies and language use in what follows. Frontier Processes in the Era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade The small, decentralized groups of Casamance were vulnerable due to the location of the region in the geographic sphere of the slave trade on the Atlantic coast (Baum 1999; Hawthorne 2003; Rodney 1969). Rather than being passive reservoirs of slaves for the transatlantic trade, Casamance groups adopted active strategies for survival. In order to be able to defend their communities,

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

189

groups participated in the slave raids themselves in order to capture slaves, either to be sold to traders or to be integrated into the group in order to strengthen the group’s number and labor force (Baum 1999; Hawthorne 2003). Kidnapping for ransom was rife in the entire area (Baum 1999; Bühnen 1994; Hawthorne 2003); vulnerable travellers were taken and held for ransom. Their families would send out search parties and negotiate the conditions of their return. If they were not found in time, the kidnapped were sold to slave traders.8 However, not only strangers and travellers were captured and sold. At times it was necessary to sell group members. Baum describes (Jóola) Esulau oral histories remembering how children were captured and hidden by neighbors before being sold, and special shrines being created to protect those practicing this forbidden practice from the punishment of the community or the spirits. A widespread othering technique active within clan- or lineage-based communities lay in accusing a group member of witchcraft. Even if the trading group members would normally be sanctioned, witches were sometimes exempt from this protection and if they were not killed9 they and their families could be sold among the Baïnounk (Bühnen 1994) and Brames (Hawthorne 2003). While Casamance Frontier groups had to participate in the slave trade for their survival, they also attempted defense alliances against it. Systematic exchanges, both of a symbolic and a practical nature, at all levels of social organization served to fulfill this goal. Although their social purpose has changed since the abolishment of the slave trade, many of these exchanges are still in place, while others, such as the elaborate bukut initiation rites, have been created since then in order to strengthen regional identities in cultural resistance to French colonization (De Jong 2002) and remain in practice through continuous adaptation to changing social circumstances (Cobbinah in prep.). Bonds and support networks between different clans and families are made possible by, and thus necessitate being perceived as different. Symbolic ties include marriage bonds between communities, the evoking of shared religion, shared shrines, communicating ponds, paired holy sites et cetera (see Baum 1999; Hawthorne 2003; Linares 1992). Through the creation of bonds and networks, the difference motivating the people is in reality transcended as they result in cohabitation or close exchange. Rhetorically and in the collective imagination 8  Predating the development of the slave trade is the kidnapping of people for ransom to be paid in cattle (Baum 1999; Hawthorne 2003). 9  People were killed either for being witches or through a diagnostic poison won from the bark of the Tali tree that allegedly killed witches while it made vomit those innocent of witchcraft. This poison test was widespread in the entire area (Baum 1999; Hawthorne 2003; Thomas 1958–1959).

190

Lüpke

of the communities, the difference is often upheld for centuries. Baum’s (1999) reporting of “foreigner villages” among the (Jóola) Esulalu testifies to this ideological distinction. Historical sources allow some of the villages to be dated back to the eighteenth century, the time of the emergence of the first ethnic identities. Like Esulalu townships, they were and are inhabited by a heterogeneous mix of inhabitants, and participated in manifold exchanges; yet they were still categorized as different at the time of Baum’s research. A major historical motivation for the maintenance of manifold ties was the protection these ties offered from being sold into slavery or being kidnapped. At the same time, flexible nature of ties allowed groups to make use of construed differences through religion, language, et cetera. The flexible nature of the ties allowed the necessary distance to be able to capture and sell others into slavery or, mainly in the case of women and children, integrate them into their community. Affinities could be selectively activated, not only through choosing a shared language, but also through other symbolic means, such as worshipping the same shrine, forging marriage communities, symbolizing alliances through communicating ponds or holy trees at different sites corresponding with each other, et cetera. Crucially, however, identities could not be completely transcended, partly because of the ongoing Frontier processes preventing such a complete merger, but surely in large part because they had become part of the semiotic repertoire needed to navigate the frontiers. The dualism between similarity and difference was, and remains, a driving force for maintaining multiple identities and complex multilingual repertoires. Frontier Processes as Nurturing Multilingualism As I have shown, difference and othering were necessary in order to rationalize the participation in slave raids, kidnapping, and warfare targeting close neighbors and group members. At the same time, through the practice of regular exchanges, difference was also needed in order to create the affinities (resulting in sameness) that were based on symbolic ties between perceived different entities and that resulted in being protected from attacks.10 The necessity of small differences does not only entail that identities are multiple and contextually index different aspects in order to invoke particular bonds or negate them. This dialectic principle also entails that a multitude of semiotic practices are used indexically (Silverstein 2003), with dress code, names, languages 10  Joking relationships, rather than relying on static ethnolinguistic criteria, operate very much on the same principle (Canut 2006; Canut and Smith 2006; De Jong 2005; Smith 2006). These relationships are widespread throughout West Africa and rely on differences that can be contextually evoked to create special relationships of inversion or solidarity.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

191

and religious affiliations11 among the signifiers of identity (see Ménard this volume for similar observations in the Sherbro/Kriol continuum of the Freetown peninsula of Sierra Leone). Just like linguistic identity, the identities expressed through these attributes are not monolithic in Casamance and elsewhere. Individuals bear multiple names, some of which express family ties, religion, clan affiliation and lineage, family history, participation in certain rituals, et cetera (see Sagna and Bassène 2016 for a detailed study and Lüpke 2016a for a short discussion). Among them, linguistic codes have a central place, both as actual repertoires and ideological expressions of identity. Social practices in the Lower Casamance have not systematically been investigated in relation to language use. In the following, I draw attention to those among them for which an impact on the internal structure of communities and on linguistic ideologies and practice have been observed. Research on the link between the two is in its infancy, but already reveals that social mechanisms that nurture multilingualism are also central for its maintenance. Exogamy, child fostering and the integration of captives are mechanisms for exchange that both create heterogeneity within groups construed as homogeneous at the ideological level. Two of these processes can be observed today. In Lüpke (2016a) I provide an in-depth account of how in- and out-marrying women bring linguistic diversity with them to the village of Agnack Grand. Nominally, this ward of Agnack is a Baïnounk village; yet, with the exception of one woman, none of the adult women living there has grown up in this village. In many instances, women married into Agnack Grand are issued from nominally Gugëcer (Kassanga) villages in near-by Guinea Bissau, with whom the Baïnounk are claimed to have strong historical ties (Hair 1967; Bühnen 1994). Women from Agnack have their married homes in neighboring villages, regional towns and in Dakar. Bühnen (1994) claims that Baïnounk clans were strictly exogamous until the very recent past. He also describes how time-­ stable marriage exchange communities were created among the North Eastern and Eastern Baïnounk groups through the widespread practice of cross-cousin marriage binding together two lineages as givers and receivers of wives in which 11  Religious affiliations are by no means fixed and unique. Two world religions, Christianity and Islam, coexist with local religions and exhibit a great extent of syncretism and multiple and flexible affiliation (see Baum 1999; Foucher 2003, 2005; Mark 1978, 1992 for detailed studies of religion). In chapter 2 of Lüpke and Storch (2013) I describe the case of a woman who has dual identities as a Christian Baïnounk (as signified by two of her names, Hélène Coly) and a Muslim Mandinka (a signified by her second set of names, Teye Suko). Born as Hélène Coly, she received her second identity in the course of an infertility ritual and now displays both of them according to context.

192

Lüpke

Baïnounk groups were eminent as “pourvoyeurs d’épouses” (Camara 1976, 33). According to Bühnen, giving wives was practiced by clans assuming the position of landlords to subordinate strangers, affirming the widely held claim of autochthony of these clans. Children are as mobile as women through the widespread practice of child fostering (see chapter 2 of Lüpke and Storch 2013 for its significance for ethnolinguistic heterogeneity in Africa and Senegal and references to anthropological studies of this practice, and Lüpke 2016a for detailed examples from Agnack Grand, and Linares 1985 and 1988 for gendered roles and mobility in Jóola societies). The motivation for these exchanges lies in the strengthening of bonds between families. Both women and men have a long tradition of seasonal labor migration (see Linares 1985, 2003; Mark 1978). The constant circulation of women, children and to a lesser extent, men, means that linguistic practice has always been multilingual and heteroglossic. This is confirmed by the accounts of travellers and researchers that were not just in spurious contact with indigenous traders, as is the case of most Portuguese and French traders until the end of the eighteenth century, but that had greater exposure to the social life of rural communities and trading posts from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. These practices, through the constant integration of ‘strangers’ and through the multiple networks maintained by mobile individuals, create the tension between fission and fusion at work at all levels of social organization in the area, since they bring together members of groups otherwise construed as different. As laid out above, the Frontier situation and exposure of small groups to attacks and slave raids historically created the necessity of creating links through social exchanges. These links resulted in a diffusion of cultural patterns that became very similar in the course of centuries of dense multiple relationships. The picture of a dynamic mosaic of practices made convergent through dense interaction at the local level is also confirmed by studies of agriculture, material culture, iconography and religion (Baum 1999; De Jong 1999, 2007; Linares 1992, 2005; Mark 1987, 1988, 1992, 2002; Mark, De Jong and Chupin 1998). All these aspects of culture show small-scale convergences that create a patchwork of identical or very similar practices and artefacts. Although they are now being claimed for particular ethnic groups (see §3 for the motivations of this process) they cannot be ascribed to any of them and are better seen as orthogonal to these recent constructs. Therefore, these convergences cannot be understood as instances of cultural creolization, because the new ethnic identities, such as Jóola and Baïnounk, are not based on cultural convergences – the shared traits and practices transcend these groupings. What is even more poignant in the context of Casamance and of many African Frontier societies is that these creolization processes do not reach the realm of language.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

193

In contrast to the widespread and far-reaching cultural similarities, linguistic differences are strikingly manifest and counteract them. In many areas of Casamance, multilingualism in closely related languages has been upheld over centuries, rather than reduced through the emergence of creolized shared languages or recourse to a lingua franca.12 The maintenance of multilingual repertoires comes with high cognitive demands (Green 2011; Green and Abutalebi 2013), which makes it extremely likely that the motivation for upholding multilingualism in the face of cultural convergence is social. In fact, many of the languages of the region, for instance some of the Jóola varieties such as Eegimaa and Kujireray, are so closely related that it must constitute a great effort to keep them as potentially separate codes in an individual’s repertoire rather than merging them into one. In addition, a Portuguese-based Creole has been present in the area for a long time and offered an alternative identity option that has not been taken up as a general model (see Mark 2002). Kopytoff’s observation on the nature of Frontier interactions and the constantly added layers of identity they result in is of great relevance here. New constellations in which individuals and groups at the Frontier find themselves require the addition of new layers that often systematically contradict the older layers. Yet, they do not supplant them, and therefore make it “possible to assert what was culturally plausible – that one was reviving old lingering ties” (Kopytoff 1987, 73) when creating connections with groups otherwise seen as foes. These identity layers are associated with languages claimed and used, and their multiplicity enables the indexical use of languages to contextually reference otherwise incompatible identities. Once groups and individuals had started to use linguistic resources to maximize and multiply the potential alliances they could enter in this vein, multilingualism became a strategic asset, and a strong social motivation to maintain it was created, turning it into a habitus (Bourdieu 1977). Alliances with different groups are based on and thus necessitate being different and similar in the right contexts, as also described by Cobbinah (in prep.) as a dialectic strategy. 12  There is preliminary evidence that language mixing and creolization occur. Hantgan (in prep.) describes Kujireray as a mixed language, with Jóola Eegimaa and Baïnounk Gubëeher as component languages. It is also possible that a process of cultural creolization is happening in Brin, but it is too early to draw definite conclusions. It is remarkable, however, that speakers of Jóola Eegimaa and of Baïnounk Gubëeher are mostly bilingual in Kujireray (while the inverse holds less frequently), so this merger has a very local character. Oral histories of Djibonker (whose patrimonial language is Baïnounk Gubëeher) describe Brin as a village founded by them as a slave village for slaves from the North bank of the Casamance river (Alexander Cobbinah p.c.), but not from the Eegimaa language area, which does not really offer an explanation for this particular mixing pattern.

194

Lüpke



A Small-Scale Multilingual Area Transcending and Upholding Boundaries Areas with societal and individual multilingualism within societies that can be seen as cultural spaces – Frontier societies – persist worldwide where smallscale pre-industrial societies exist at the margins of larger, stratified societies and survive in the shadow of those settings and languages that are regulated by European standard language culture fuelled by nationalist ideologies. These small-scale societies are sometimes described as practicing “egalitarian multilingualism” (François 2012), “balanced multilingualism” (Aikhenvald 2007) or “traditional multilingualism” (Di Carlo 2016). When attempting a characterization of different settings of this kind, it appears that a useful preliminary generalization might be to group together all those configurations where multilingual language use is not primarily motivated by power relations or prestige accorded to particular codes. This does not entail these societies are necessarily egalitarian or traditional; rather, it means that they have remained at the margin of states and larger polities and therefore of those processes that create more homogeneous and monolingual societies with standard language cultures or stratified polyglossic, i.e., hierarchical, multilingualism. It is likely that these multilingual settings constitute “the primal human condition” (Evans 2013). There are many such societies still thriving across the globe, in particular in Africa, parts of South America and Australia and Oceania (see Lüpke 2016b for a first attempt at systematically comparing some of these settings). The vast majority remain undescribed, and the existing case studies on them leave many questions open. Yet, it already emerges that many of these configurations share a number of characteristics, which are: \

geographic settings • confined shared cultural traits in the entire setting making it a meaningful • many entity exchange dynamics relying on dialectic relationships between • complex similarity and alterity language ideologies • indexical • little or no use of a lingua franca, at least until the very recent past Many of the practices and social motivations that nurtured these settings are undergoing rapid changes of a new scale due to massive social transformation in postcolonial societies. In the following section, I sketch those changes for which we have preliminary evidence for small-scale multilingual settings of Casamance. They are similar to the adaptations occurring in other small-scale multilingual societies as they are being drawn into larger exchange patterns governed by different interactions and power dynamics.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance



195

Recent and Ongoing Transformations [T]he invention of tradition is about the creation of a past into which the present is inserted. Thus, these constructed histories are also about the constructed present. Makoni and Pennycook 2007, 8

Bringing Ethnolinguistic Identities to the Market In the present-day nation-state of Senegal, ethnolinguistic identities – identities based on nationalistic and essentialist ideologies linking ethnic identities to particular languages – have come to play a new role. In the wake of colonization and postcolonial independence, linguistic policies were created that have added a dimension of linguistic stratification and hierarchization very dissimilar to the fluid heteroglossic practices in Casamance and beyond in precolonial times. The proponents of these ideologies do not only draw on languages as discrete objects and create associated ethnolinguistic identities; they also attempt to lift these ideologies to the level of linguistic practice through the enforcement of a standard. The ex-colonial language French is used in few domains (and even in those more in principle than in actual practice), but in those with the highest status according to Western notions of language: parliament, the education system and print media. At the same time, Senegalese French emerged as a partly conventionalized variety of French in its own right, and linguistic practice is fluid between the poles of metropolitan French (mastered by a small elite and, at least officially, taught in schools) and Senegalese French as acquired outside the normative school context and without sharing its main symbol of prestige: prescriptive literacy (Manessy 1994). Wolof, the patrimonial language of Dakar and surroundings, has seen an ascension and broadening of its speaker base in tandem with French. Based on historical textbooks, it is possible to trace the origins of Urban Wolof, a variety of Wolof heavily intertwined with French, to eighteenth century Saint Louis, where it was used as a broker language by métis. Through an imitation of their language use, this Wolof variety “did not arise out of widespread societal bilingualism in Wolof and French, but rather emerged as a prestigious urban code, modelled after the speech of a small group of bilingual elites, including the métis or mixed-race population of Saint-Louis, who dominated commercial and political life at the time” (Mc Laughlin 2008, 714; pace Swigart 1994 and Cruise O’Brien 1998 who see Urban Wolof as a side product of postcolonial creolization). Later, Urban Wolof spread to Gorée, Carabane and other trade posts with Creole populations. While very few Senegalese speak metropolitan French, which is mainly confined to written use, oral language practices constitute a continuum between code-mixing and fused lect (Auer 1999) involving

196

Lüpke

Wolof and French, the exact make-up of this fluid and versatile languaging (Garcia and Wei 2014) determined by personal linguistic biographies, context and interlocutor. Urban Wolof today is the de facto national language of Senegal. In the urban center of Dakar, it is becoming the vernacular language of migrants from rural areas who abandoned their ethnic identities of origin according to Dreyfus and Juillard (2004), making it look indeed like an instance of creolization (Hannerz 1987; Knörr 2010) – the creation of a new common identity deriving from different sources, but crucially with ethnic reference. In other areas of Senegal, Wolof is present as a vehicular language, as described by Dreyfus and Juillard for Ziguinchor, reminiscent of what Knörr (2010) calls a process of postcolonial pidginization: the creation of a new identity and practice without ethnic reference. While the ongoing presence of the ex-colonial language French provokes feelings ranging from ambivalence to rhetorical rejection, the growing use of Wolof evokes fears of ‘Wolofization’ for those Senegalese who do not see it as their identity language. Both languages occupy powerful, if different, positions in the polyglossic linguistic landscape created through their special roles and weight in a centralized state now also encompassing the Frontier societies in the South. The new linguistic order of Senegal constitutionally regulates which languages, in addition to the official language French, are to be seen as ‘national languages.’ While until 1971, no other language achieved any official status, the 1971 amendment granted the status of ‘national language’ to Jóola, Mandinka, Pular, Sereer, Soninké and Wolof. A standardized variety of each of these language clusters, which often have considerably internal diversity, has been provided with a codified orthography. A crucial change occurred in 2001, when this list of languages was expanded with the addition “and any national language that will be codified” (Diallo 2010, 62). This new version of Article 1 of the constitution opened up the possibility of ‘other’ languages of Senegal to at least symbolically overcome the marginal status imposed on them through their existence beneath the threshold of official recognition. To do so, they had to be made to resemble the languages that already had been awarded national language status through a process of codification. This process consists of the development of a standardized orthography and spelling rules. I have described this in detail for the Baïnounk languages (Lüpke 2011; Lüpke and Storch 2013; Lüpke forthcoming a). Codification and orthography development are not motivated by practical needs to read or write these languages, and the actual use of minority languages in writing remains rare, and in the new prescriptive orthographies virtually unattested. Rather, orthography development is to be understood as staking a claim on the new ethnolinguistic market place of the Senegalese nation state. As noted by Jaffe (2000, 505):

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

197

“as a linguistic boundary-marking device, orthography both differentiates a code from other codes and displays an internal coherence and unity (sameness) of that code. In this respect, orthography is one of the key symbols of language unity and status itself.” Paraphrasing Jaffe, what is crucial in this context is for minority groups to ‘have’ an orthography, not to use it. Despite the orthography never being used, this process of codification has far-reaching consequences. It goes far beyond the technical task of identifying a convenient way of writing a language, as it in fact involves creating a language, an abstraction grouping together and excluding codes through boundaries. To provide an example, the codification commission for ‘the Baïnounk language’ has provided sample texts in three varieties: Gujaher, Guñaamolo and Gubëeher, and thus de facto decreed them to constitute Baïnounk. Other varieties that seem similarly eligible, from a linguistic and cultural perspective, such as Gugëcer, Gufangor, Guñun, et cetera, have not been included, for reasons unknown. Yet, this omission is not relevant, as it is not the actual usability that is crucial for the success of codification, but rather the visibility of otherwise invisible codes and by extension of the groups that claim them. It is perhaps not accidental that this process of identity formation resembles the historical processes of forging symbolic alliances described earlier. Indeed, I would like to argue that it follows the logic of the local Frontier. Creating unity through codification is an instance of a contextualized symbolic unity. What makes this alliance particularly interesting is that it brings versatile Frontier processes into a domain based on essentialist, not indexical identities. Strategic Essentialism as a Political Tool For the ethnic identities currently en vogue in Senegal and elsewhere, there is compelling evidence that they were forged from the late eighteenth century onwards and that links between ethnic and linguistic identity and ethnicity and language use are ideological constructions (see Lüpke and Storch 2013 for a detailed discussion and references). The still ongoing process of ethnogenesis is best understood as a metadiscursive regime (Bauman and Briggs 2003) that can be seen as an instance of strategic essentialism (Spivak 1990) also described for minority groups elsewhere (Stanton 2005; Blackledge and Creese 2010). Oral histories claiming homogeneous and monolingual groups do not remember the past; they create the past, as Makoni and Pennycook (2007) remind us, just as codification does not maintain languages but creates them. Both for the Jóola and Baïnounk, this process of ethnogenesis has been described in detail elsewhere. Here, I am interested in the interaction between essentialist and indexical processes and strategies, and at which levels these seemingly contradictory processes operate.

198

Lüpke

It is not accidental that diaspora organizations are instrumental in promoting essentialist ideas about belonging, and in creating those discourses that justify them. In the Casamance context (see Bühnen 1994; Lüpke 2011; Lüpke and Storch 2013; Smith 2006), statutes decree the ancestors as monolingual, homogeneous groups, oral histories are streamlined to create particular lineages, carnivalesque cultural manifestations claim elements of material culture for particular ethnic groups. Strikingly, these activities enforce the subaltern status of ‘minority’ cultures rather than gaining them full membership in the kaleidoscope of ethnolinguistic units. A cultural carnival organized in July 2013 in Dakar by Senegalese historians and linguists aimed at promoting Baïnounk and Bassari culture came under the name “Le Sénégal découvre ses autres cultures. Des villages culturels Bédik, Bassari et Baynounk à Dakar” – “Senegal is discovering its other cultures,” inscribing the cultural hegemony of the unmarked Wolof-centric culture. It is to this hegemonic standard culture (itself a fiction) that these and similar gestures are addressed, making the carnival resound of Bakhtin (1993) in more than in name. Similarly, a manifestation exhibiting the masques and dances of a number of Casamance groups in Ziguinchor in 2010 (see Figure 10.1 below) was not designed for members of these groups as the audience. Dancers were ordered to perform, while carrying placards with ethnic labels, for representatives of the regional and national political elite. But it is not just diasporic groups, faced daily with the need to affirm an identity that is feared to becoming lost in transition, that enact essentialist gestures. In 2015, a ‘Baïnounk’ king was crowned in Jegui, in Guinea Bissau (Abbie Hantgan, p.c.). Delegations from various Baïnounk villages attended this event. It was clearly inspired by myths of Baïnounk kingdoms, which have been converging towards the myth of one kingdom, epitomized by the last king Sira Bana who was killed by his own people (Bühnen 1994) and whose final curse of his murderous subjects has become symbolic for the decline of the Baïnounk people in the public imagination.13 We do not know exactly who organized this event, which is unlikely to have any political consequences but constitutes a symbolic affirmation of Baïnounk unity that clearly draws its legitimation from past, not present, symbols of power. What emerges more clearly, however, is that this unity is created out of very present-day concerns and for a national public, as Figure 10.2 illustrates. It shows the note “Délégation Baïnounk 13  Incidentally, this myth is a prototypical instance of the Frontier ruler-subject interdependence, where kings could be deposed or killed if subjects were disappointed that is enshrined in many Frontier myths (Kopytoff 1987). The myth points to the fact that Frontier societies were not homogeneous, even when construed as such in patrimonial fashion, but consisted of several factions (minimally “firstcomers and “latecomers”) and that power struggles and changes in leadership and political status were frequent.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

Figure 10.1

Cultural manifestation in Ziguinchor © Amadou Kane Beye for the DoBeS project “Pots, plants and pepple”

Figure 10.2

Car of the Baïnounk delegation © Kris Dreessen for the Leverhulme Crossroads Project

199

200

Lüpke

de Djibonker” – “Baïnounk delegation from Djibonker” – in the front window of the car in which delegates from Djibonker traveled to the coronation. The wording plays out the formats of the political elite and thus identifies it as the addressee of the message that the Baïnounk are a contemporary unified political group deriving its legitimation from a strong historical tradition. Abbie Hantgan reports that Baïnounk languages were not spoken at the coronation ceremony, since in fact, their use would have hindered understanding, as they not mutually intelligible and individuals are hardly ever bilingual in two or more Baïnounk languages. Clearly, the lack of linguistic unification was no obstacle for the political claim, and likewise, languages were unsuitable to make it. The Baïnounk languages index affiliation with a patrimonial location, and in many cases this affiliation is not with a polity14 but with a Frontier village. Thus, claiming a particular language means that one belongs to the lineage of the founding clan of a location where one lives (if that clan are seen as the firstcomers) or from where one originated (if one’s clan are seen as newcomers). The latter case is relevant not just at the level of Casamance, but also at a much larger geographical scale. A New Frontier Kopytoff (1987) has described urban migration as creating new frontiers. There is ample evidence that African cities are not just melting pots where old identities are eradicated and new urban ones evolve, but where newcomers tap into networks of local and regional associates who have preceded them in migration (Potts 2009; Vigouroux and Mufwene 2008). The former metropole remains the patrimonial home, the place of the ancestors to which one returns for important celebrations and rituals, the location feeding many aspects of identity, for as long as one remains a newcomer or retains strong links with the territory of origin. At the same time, of course, new repertoires are acquired and existing practices and identities are adapted in the city. The interaction between these two frontiers, a local and a translocal, is important for Casamançais, who have a 14  There is evidence from historical sources (i.e., Baum for the Esulalu, Bühnen for some Baïnounk groups) that some larger Frontier polities with reduced heterogeneity were present in precolonial Casamance, and still today, some polities, such as the Jóola Eegimaa ‘kingdom’ Mov Avvi remain in name, although Mov Avvi has not had a king for forty years. There is preliminary evidence that multilingualism and Frontier strategies are somewhat reduced in the Mov Avvi, which would be in line with Kopytoff’s observation that these larger polities, which were usually called kingdoms, transcend Frontier dynamics to some extent and result in political formations closer to the ‘tribal’ model than Frontier societies.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

201

long history of labor migration, and most of them navigate these two poles throughout their lives. It is frequent to see families divided between a village in Casamance and Dakar, with great mobility between these two locations. Most family members will return to their patrimonial home during the summer holidays, and this is now the time during which important ceremonies such as the bukut male initiation is held, in order to accommodate attendees having to travel far (De Jong 2002; Cobbinah in prep.). Children are often raised by family members, not by their biological parents, and interesting patterns appear: while single women migrating to cities as domestic workers often send their children to Casamance to be brought up by relatives there (Vandermeersch 2002), children are also sent to Dakar, mainly in the interest of their education or better medical care. As said before, Kopytoff describes Frontier identities as layered because new ones are added instead of being suppressed, resulting in identity claims often contradictory at face value, and this is exactly what is observable in the Senegalese context as well. It is not just visible in seemingly contradictory identities such as ‘Jóola-Baïnounk’ that subsume latecomer and firstcomer identities and groups divided by manifold antagonisms under one label if warranted by a context; it is also observable at the level of language regimes. Weidl (in prep.) describes how LS, a woman who has lived in Dakar for a number of years and has now returned to her patrimonial village makes contradictory statements about Wolof – claiming on the one hand that she would only mix Wolof and French, not Wolof and a local language, but in the next utterance making a statement to the contrary, asserting that people would mix all their languages all the time. Once one dissects these statements as pertaining to two different language regimes significant for the two different Frontiers she navigates, the first operative in Dakar, the second in Djibonker, the contradiction can be analyzed as referring to two different linguistic contexts. LS would be in a different language mode (Green and Abutalebi 2013) in Dakar, where the local languages are not part of many of her interlocutors’ repertoires, than in Djibonker, where they are. People move physically between the local and the translocal Frontier; and they move ideologically between the two areas of language use and language attitudes associated with them, bringing them in proximity through their mobility.

Conclusion: A Constant Interaction of Patterns The African societies we know were all born not “in the beginning” but as part of a continuous and variegated process of interaction and social formation – a process that included these forms as part of the condition

202

Lüpke

in which they were created and re-created. It was an ecology that made for the fact that states and stateless societies have existed side by side for over nearly two millennia. Kopytoff 1987, 78

In this chapter, I have argued that a dualism between sameness and difference is running deep through all areas of social and linguistic organization in Casamance. This dualism can be understood as a Frontier process, and the Frontier as a location and locus of numerous boundaries that create both the motivations and the habitus to keep complex patterns of multilingualism alive. Driven by a need to form flexible alliances and dissolve them where needed, inhabitants of the Frontier have developed this deeply entrenched dialectic pattern of firstcomers and latecomers (Kopytoff 1987) or landlord and stranger (Brooks 1993). It is worthwhile to dedicate more detailed study to this particular Frontier, and to the possible Frontier societies constituted by small-scale multilingual societies worldwide. In these societies, speakers have exhibited an astonishing multitude of contextualized repertoires in rural areas beyond the reach of centralized states that for many sociolinguists are associated with radically new and opposed settings of urbanization and globalization, resulting in a qualitatively new ‘superdiversity’ (Vertovec 2007, 2011; Blommaert and Rampton 2011). The following quote poignantly illustrates how strong this ideological association of diversity with globalization is: Under the condition of globalization, speakers participate in varying spaces of communication which may be arranged sequentially, in parallel, juxtapositionally, or in overlapping form. At different periods in their lives, at different moments of their day, or even simultaneously (with the help of digital means of communication, for example) speakers participate in several spaces that are socially and linguistically constituted in different ways. Each of these spaces has its own language regime – its own set of rules, orders of discourse, and language ideologies – in which linguistic resources are assessed differently. Busch 2015, 4

Yet in Casamance, as in other Frontier locations in Africa (see Di Carlo 2016; Good 2013; Di Carlo and Good 2014 for an exemplary study of the Lower Fungom area of Cameroon) and beyond, the varying, juxtaposed and overlapping spaces of communication predate globalization by far (even though they were arguably exacerbated by the first wave of globalization, the transatlantic slave trade, in the case of Casamance). Historically old models of interaction

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

203

create the prerequisites to navigate new Frontiers. A deeper understanding of language use in these Frontier societies is therefore of great promise for an understanding of the driving forces of continuing linguistic complexity and multilingualism, in particular against a backdrop of linguistic homogenization across the globe. Languages, in this microcosm of dense interactions, cannot be understood as stable, conventionalized parts of repertoires. Since speakers navigate local and translocal Frontiers, the roles attached to languages in these different contexts shape their practices into flexible, adaptive repertoires. The dichotomies between creolization and pidginization, between vernacularization and vehicularization, between language maintenance and language shift are fed by the underlying dualism that is the language habitus at work here. This means that dynamic languaging patterns activate or transcend, negate or change these opposite poles and the boundaries they create according to the powerful Frontier logic. Individuals will engage in all of these processes, depending on their trajectories. None of them constitutes an irreversible end point, and several roles for languages can be active within one and the same individual at the same point in time, creatively using language to index different parts of a complex identity. References Aikhenvald, A.Y. 2007. “Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective.” In Grammars in Contact – a Crosslinguistic Typology, edited by A.Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon, 1–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Auer, P. 1999. “From Codeswitching via Language Mixing to Fused Lects: Toward a Dynamic Typology of Bilingual Speech.” International Journal of Bilingualism 3(4): 309–32. Bakhtin, M.M. 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: University of Texas Press. Baum, R.M. 1999. Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bauman, R., and C.L. Briggs. 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blackledge, A., and A. Creese. 2010. Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum. Blommaert, J. 2008. “Artefactual Ideologies and the Textual Production of African Languages.” Language & Communication 28: 291–307. Blommaert, J., and B. Rampton. 2011. “Language and Superdiversity.” Diversities 13: 1–22. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage.

204

Lüpke

Brooks, G.E. 1993. Landlords and Strangers. Ecology, Society and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bühnen, S. 1992. “Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction with Examples from Southern Senegambia and Germany.” History in Africa 19: 45–101. Bühnen, S. 1994. “Geschichte der Bainunk und Kasanga.” PhD diss., Justus-Liebig University Giessen. Busch, B. 2015. “Linguistic Repertoire and Spracherleben, the Lived Experience of Language.” Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 148: 1–16. Camara, S. 1976. Gens de la parole: Essai sur la condition et le rôle des griots dans la ­societé Malinké. Paris: Mouton. Canut, C. 2006. “Construction des discours identitaires au Mali. Ethnicisation et instrumentalisation des senankuya.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 46: 967–86. Canut, C., and É. Smith. 2006. “Pactes, alliances et plaisanteries. Pratiques locales, discours global.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 184. DOI: 10.4000/etudesafricaines.6198. Cobbinah, A. 2010. “The Casamance as an Area of Intense Language Contact: The Case of Baïnouk Gubaher.” Journal of Language Contact THEMA 3. 175–201. Cobbinah, A. 2013. “Nominal Classification and Verbal Nouns in Baïnounk Gubëeher.” PhD diss., SOAS, London. Cobbinah, A. In preparation. “The Dialectics of Flexible Alliances and Identities: An Ecological Approach to Multilingualism in Lower Casamance.” Cruise O’Brien, Donald. 1998. “The Shadow-Politics of Wolofisation.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 36: 25–46. De Jong, F. 1999. “Trajectories of a Mask Performance: The Case of the Senegalese Kumpo.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 39(153): 49–71. De Jong, F. 2002. “Politicians of the Sacred Grove: Citizenship and Ethnicity in Southern Senegal.” Africa 72(2): 203–20. De Jong, F. 2005. “A Joking Nation: Conflict Resolution in Senegal.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines 39(2): 389–413. De Jong, F. 2007. Masquerades of Modernity: Power and Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute. Di Carlo, P. 2016. “Multilingualism, Affiliation, and Spiritual Insecurity: From Phenomena to Processes in Language Documentation.” Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication 10: 71–104. Di Carlo, P., and J. Good. 2014. “What Are We Trying to Preserve?: Diversity, Change and Ideology at the Edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields.” In Endangered Languages: Beliefs and Ideologies in Language Documentation and Revitalization, edited by P.K. Austin and J. Sallabank, 231–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diallo, I. 2010. The Politics of National Languages in Postcolonial Senegal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

205

Dreyfus, M., and C. Juillard. 2004. Le plurilinguisme au Sénégal: Langues et identités en devenir. Paris: Karthala. Evans, N. 2013. “Keynote Address.” 9th International Symposium on Bilingualism, June 10–13, 2013. Singapore. Foucher, V. 2003. “Church and Nation: The Catholic Contribution to War and Peace in Casamance (Senegal).” Social Sciences & Missions 13: 11–40. Foucher, V. 2005. “La guerre des dieux? Religions et séparatisme en Basse Casamance.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines 39: 361–88. François, A. 2012. “The Dynamics of Linguistic Diversity: Egalitarian Multilingualism and Power Imbalance among Northern Vanuatu Languages.” International Journal for the Society of Language 214: 85–110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022. García, O., and Li Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Good, J. 2013. “A (Micro-)Accretion Zone in a Remnant Zone?: Lower Fungom in ArealHistorical Perspective.” In Language Typology and Historical Contingency: In Honor of Johanna Nichols, edited by B. Bickel, L.A. Grenoble, D.A. Peterson, A.Timberlake and J. Nichols, 265–282. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Goodchild, S. In preparation. “Social Networks, Gender, and the Maintenance of Multilingual Repertoires in the Casamance, Senegal.” PhD diss., SOAS, London. Green, D.W. 2011. “Language Control in Different Contexts: The Behavioral Ecology of Bilingual Speakers.” Frontiers in Psychology 2: 2–4. Green, D.W., and J. Abutalebi. 2013. “Language Control in Bilinguals: The Adaptive Control Hypothesis.” Journal of Cognitive Psychology 25(5): 515–30. Hair, P.E.H. 1967. “Ethnolinguistic Continuity on the Guinea Coast.” Journal of African History 8(2): 247–68. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolisation.” Africa 57(4): 546–59. Hantgan, A. In preparation. “Kujireray as a Mixed Language.” Hawthorne, W. 2003. Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Jaffe, A. 2000. “Introduction: Non-Standard Orthography and Non-Standard Speech.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4): 497–513. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9481.00127. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness, or: The World in pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731–59. Kopytoff, I. 1987. “The Internal African Frontier: The Making of African Political Culture.” In The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Society, ­edited by I. Kopytoff, 3–84. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kroskrity, P.V. 2007. “Language Ideologies.” In Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by A. Duranti, 496–517. Malden: Blackwell.

206

Lüpke

Linares, O.F. 1985. “Cash Crops and Gender Constructs: The Jola of Senegal.” Ethnology 24(2): 83–93. DOI: 10.2307/3773551. Linares, O.F. 1988. “Kuseek and Kuriimen: Wives and Kinswomen in Jola Society.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines 22(3): 472–90. DOI: 10.2307/485950. Linares, O.F. 1992. Power, Prayer and Production: The Jola of Casamance, Senegal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linares, O.F. 2003. “Going to the City … and Coming Back? Turnaround Migration among the Jola of Senegal.” Africa 73(1): 113–32. Linares, O.F. 2005. “Jola Agriculture at a Crossroads.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 39(2): 230–52. Lüpke, F. 2010. “Language and Identity in Flux: in Search of Baïnouk”. Journal of Language Contact THEMA 3:155–74. Lüpke, F. 2011. “Orthography Development”, in The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, edited by P.K. Austin and J. Sallabank, 312–36, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lüpke, F. 2016a. “Pure Fiction – The Interplay of Indexical and Essentialist Ideologies and Heterogeneous Practices: A view from Agnack.” Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publicaton 10: 8–39. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24650. Lüpke, F. 2016b. “Towards a Typology of Small-Scale Multilingualism.” Critical Multilingualism Studies 4(2): 35–74. Lüpke, F. Forthcoming a. “Escaping the Tyranny of writing: West African Regimes of Writing as a Model for Multilingual Literacy.” In The Tyranny of Writing Revisited, edited by K. Juffermans and C. Weth. London: Bloomsbury. Lüpke, F. Forthcoming b. “Gujaher.” In The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa, edited by F. Lüpke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lüpke, F. Forthcoming c. “Atlantic Classification.” In Handbook of African Languages, edited by R. Vossen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lüpke, F., and A. Storch. 2013. Repertoires and Choices in African Languages. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Makoni, S., and A. Pennycook. 2007. “Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages.” In Disinventing and Reconstuting Languages, edited by S. Makoni and A. Pennycook, 1–41. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Manessy, G. 1994. Les français en Afrique noire: Mythe, stratégies, pratiques. Paris: L’Harmattan. Mark, P. 1978. “Urban Migration, Cash Cropping, and Calamity: The Spread of Islam among the Diola of Boulouf (Senegal), 1900–1940.” African Studies 21(1): 1–14. Mark, P. 1985. A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance since 1500. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

Language Use and Cultural Practice in Rural Casamance

207

Mark, P. 1987. “The Senegambian Horned Initiation Mask: History and Provenance.” The Art Bulletin 69(4): 626–40. DOI: 10.2307/3051002. Mark, P. 1988. “Ejumba: The Iconography of the Diola Initiation Mask.” Art Journal 47 (2): 139–46. Mark, P. 1992. The Wild Bull and the Sacred Forest. Form, Meaning and Change in Senegambian Initiation Masks. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Mark, P. 2002. “Portuguese” Style and Luso-African Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mark, P., F. de Jong, and C. Chupin. 1998. “Ritual and Masking Traditions in Jola Men’s Initiation.” African Arts 31(1): 36–47. DOI: 10.2307/3337622. Mc Laughlin, F. 2008. “On the Origins of Urban Wolof: Evidence from Louis Descemet’s 1864 Phrase Book.” Language in Society 37(5): 713–35. Potts, D. 2009. “The Slowing of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Urbanization: Evidence and Implications for Urban Livelihoods.” Environment and Urbanization 21(1): 253–259. Rodney, W. 1969. “Upper Guinea and the Significance of the Origins of Africans Enslaved in the New World.” The Journal of Negro History 54: 327–45. Sagna, S., and E. Bassène. 2016. “Why Are They Named After Death?: Name Giving, Name Changing and Death-Prevention Names in Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Banjal).” Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication 10: 40–70. Silverstein, M. 1979. “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology.” In The Elements, edited by P. Clyne, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer, 193–248. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Silverstein, M. 2003. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic life.” Language & Communication 23: 193–229. Smith, E. 2006. “La Nation ‘par le Côté.’ Le Récit des Cousinages au Sénégal.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 66(184): 907–965. Spivak, G.C. 1990. The Post-Colonial Citic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. London: Routledge. Stanton, C. 2005. “Serving Up Culture: Heritage and Its Discontents at an Industrial History Site.” International Journal of Heritage 11(5): 415–31. Swigart, L. 1994. “Cultural Creolisation and Language Use in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Senegal.” Africa 64(2): 175–89. Thomas, L.-V. 1958–1959. Les Diola: Essai d’analyse fonctionnel sur une population de Basse-Casamance. Dakar: IFAN. Van der Klie, J., and F. de Jong, eds. 1995. The Making of a Jola Identity: Jola Inventing their Past and Future. Utrecht: CERES. Vandermeersch, C. 2002. “Les Enfants Confiés âgés de Moins de 6 ans au Sénégal en 1992–1993.” Population 57(4): 661–68.

208

Lüpke

Vertovec, S. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–54. DOI: 10.1080/01419870701599465. Vertovec, S. 2011. “The Cultural Politics of Nation and Migration.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40(1): 241–56. Vigouroux, C., and S.S. Mufwene. 2008. “Globalization and Language Vitality: Perspectives from Africa.” In Globalization and Language Vitality: Perspectives from Africa, edited by C. Vigouroux and S.S. Mufwene, 1–31. London: Continuum. Watson, R. 2014. “Verbal Nouns in Joola Kujirerai.” PhD diss., SOAS, London. Weidl, M. In preparation. “Loo wax!? [What Did You Say!?]: The Use of Wolof in Multilingual Conversations in Senegalː The Dynamicity of Linguistic ‘Systems’.” PhD diss., SOAS, London. Woolard, K.A., and B.B. Shieffelin. 1994. “Language Ideology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23(1): 55–82.

Chapter 11

Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion Related to a Creole Language: ‘Krio’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Present-Day Sierra Leone Anaïs Ménard This chapter is an invitation to rethink ethnicity through the case study of a creole identity.1 After having been long divided between essentialist and instrumentalist approaches, theories of ethnicity have stressed the ability of actors to engage with the manifold components of identification, including the ‘given’ such as language and ancestry, and “assume various identities in different situations” (Hutchinson and Smith 1996, 8). Ethnicity is defined alternatively as situational and relational (Eriksen 2002) or variable and manipulable (Jenkins 2008). Similarly, the boundaries of creole identities have been described as flexible and open to newcomers of various ethnic origins (Eriksen 2007; Knörr 2008, 2010b). However, it often involves that the process of ‘becoming creole’ requires individuals to abandon their previous ethnic belonging, which in turn implies a certain degree of boundedness of identities. In this chapter, I move from such a perspective to look at ethnicity, following Austin (1962), as ‘something that people do’ in certain situations and contexts, which results in certain identification processes and practices. With the case of Krio identity in Sierra Leone, I argue that acquiring creole identity does not necessarily imply that individuals relinquish their previous ethnic identity2 and that identifying with or distancing oneself from a creole group (and identity) constitutes a flexible and dynamic social process supported by individual semiotic strategies. I look at ethnic identities as registers of language, meaning linguistic repertoires “associated, culture-internally, with particular social practices and with persons who engage in such practices” (Agha 2006, 24). Actors are able to display a particular ethnic identity by using semiotic signs – both linguistic and non-linguistic (such as gestures, physical attitudes, clothes) – that are part of that register. Metapragmatic processes are central to such social practices – that is the ability of actors to use semiotic signs strategically and to socially evaluate these signs with regard to a specific 1  I understand ethnicity as a specific form of identity. 2  For a similar argument, see Knörr (2010b, 2014).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_012

210

Ménard

social context. Through metapragmatic evaluations by the audience, signs become indexes of a specific ethnic identity. They acquire indexical meaning by pointing to elements of context that inform, for instance, the speaker’s social status or her relations with the audience (Duranti 1997, 296). This chapter looks at Krio identity in Sierra Leone from a semiotic perspective. The Krio register has acquired various social values and meanings constituted at different periods of Sierra Leonean history. The word ‘Krio’ in contemporary Sierra Leone refers to an ethnic identity. The Krio group emerged out of processes of integration between various groups of settlers and former slaves who populated the Colony of Sierra Leone from the late eighteenth century onwards. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Krio identity acquired a distinct social value that resulted from the privileged status of Krios within the British colonial society. Hence, in contemporary practice, individuals use signs of the Krio register to display social excellence. However, the social value of the Krio register has changed over time. Particularly after the civil war (1991–2002), Krio identity has become a marker of a modern urban life shared by individuals who migrated (or whose parents migrated) to urban centers and who have little or no contact with their ‘home.’ Thus, the Krio register can be used in two ways, as its signs can index two different social values. The fact that indexes of an ethnic register can become social markers shows that an ethnic identity can be used as a social identity by people of other ethnic origins (cf., Knörr 2014). In other words, navigating ethnic registers is a critical social practice that leads to social positioning within a certain society. At the same time, these contemporary social processes invite us to reconsider ethnicity itself as the strategic enactment, in a specific social context, of semiotic signs indexing the speaker to a distinct register of language that was constituted through various historical processes, and which use reflects and enforces power relations (cf., Blommaert 2005).

An Ambivalent Register

The Krio group in Sierra Leone appeared as the product of a specific colonial history. On the West African Coast, the Province of Freedom was established in 1787 by a group of British abolitionists led by Granville Sharp. Formerly enslaved Blacks, many of whom had fought on the British side in the American War of Independence, lived a destitute life in Britain, and the British abolitionists sought to resettle them in a place, where they could start a new life. A number of 411 settlers first reached the shore of West Africa in 1787. Two groups later joined the new colony in 1792 and 1800 respectively: the Nova Scotians, who

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

211

had gained their freedom by fighting on the side of England in the American War of Independence, and the Maroons, who were slaves who had revolted against their masters in Jamaica. Finally, when the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, the slaves who had been captured on ships by the British on the West African coast were freed in Sierra Leone. The resettled slaves came to be known as the Liberated Africans. They soon constituted the largest group in the Colony. In 1948, Liberated Africans and their descendants numbered 40,243 out of a total population of 46,511 inhabitants.3 The establishment of the Province of Freedom in 1787 was part of the British ‘patriotic’ project. In her seminal work on the construction of the British nation, Colley shows that the American war’s defeat in 1775 caused the emergence of a new patriotism in Britain based on the importance of the monarchy, the governmental elite and the imperial project (2012, 147). In this context, the anti-slavery campaign appeared as a symbol of moral integrity and national virtue. The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and of slavery in 1833 became important in the discourse of British supremacy in the Victorian era. As Colley writes, “it supplied the British with a powerful legitimation for their claims to be the arbiters of the civilised and the uncivilised world” (2012, 367). The early settlers of the Province of Freedom were endowed with the mission of spreading Christianity and ‘civilizing’ other Africans. The Victorian reign that started in 1837 further unified settlers and newly-arrived Liberated Africans around the values and norms that would prove central to the construction of the British nation (see Colley 2012). The Liberated Africans, soon after their arrival in the Colony, acquired social and economic skills based on Western standards that allowed them to move up the social ladder of the colonial society. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Krio group had emerged out of processes of mixing between the early settlers, the Liberated Africans and local populations.4 Krios constituted at first a rather exclusive group. Most of them had access to education and were Christianized. In Freetown particularly, Krios were rapidly able to enter prestigious professions and became civil servants, medical doctors, or missionaries. They were expected to be examples for autochthonous Africans, adopt Christian values and European manners, as well as reject African traditions (Spitzer 1974, 39). This process became increasingly important as the idea of ‘civilization’ united Britain around a felt superiority towards alien cultures (Colley 2012, 377). In the necessity to prove their 3  Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions (1849). 4  In the Sierra Leonean context, it is important to distinguish between ‘creole’ and ‘Krio.’ The Krio group is ‘creole’ in reference to the process of its ethnogenesis, whereas ‘Krio’ is the ethnonym qualifying the group that was formed in the course of creolization (Knörr 2010b, 735).

212

Ménard

belonging to the British social world, Krios adopted the European lifestyle and set of values and habits judged as ‘superior’ or ‘civilized’ (Cohen 1981; Spitzer 1974). They forged an identity based on cultural distinctiveness and the preservation of European social standards to distinguish themselves from other African groups, who fell into the category of ‘natives.’ In contemporary Sierra Leonean perceptions, Krio identity remains associated to a high educational and professional achievement. Indexes of the Krio register tend to indicate social and cultural distinctiveness. As a result, Krio identity is used as a social category by people of other ethnic origins who intend to display indexes of social success. At the same time, Krio identity and language are increasingly adopted as a shared culture associated to a modern urban lifestyle. This new social value attached to the Krio register emerged in the postwar setting and has become relevant as people of heterogeneous origins and languages have migrated and continue to migrate to Freetown and its Peninsula. Knörr (2010a) shows that Krio identity appear in a new positive light in the aftermath of the war, as Krios are seen as having been less involved in the conflict as perpetrators. They are considered less attached to a particular indigenous identity, less likely to indulge in corruption practices, and therefore, better able to work for the common good. Knörr (2010b, 747) further argues that in postcolonial societies that are characterized by cultural and ethnic heterogeneity, creole cultures can become a transethnic form of identification to which people of various origins can relate, while retaining their own ethnic identities. In postwar urban Sierra Leone, such common identification has become necessary. The conflict displaced thousands of people from their homes, many of whom moved permanently to urban centers. The search for new economic opportunities has also caused significant migrations from rural areas to Freetown. The figures presented in the 2004 census on ethnicity and language support empirical observations that in the Western Area, Krio is now widely employed as lingua franca, also by recent migrants.5 Children of migrants 5  In the Western Area Urban, only 7% of people identify themselves as Krio, yet 42% claim Krio to be their first language, and 51% their second language. People identifying themselves as Temne are the most numerous (37% of the population), but only 26% of the total population claim Temne to be their first language, and 7% their second language. In the Western Area Rural, Krios form 5% of the population. Temnes constitute the majority group, with 45% of the population. Krio and Temne rank similarly as first languages, with respectively 36% and 37%. Krio dominates as second language, as 54% of the respondents mentioned Krio, against 8% for Temne (Data gathered during the Population and Housing Census 2004 and obtained from the office of Statistics Sierra Leone, Freetown).

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

213

who were born in Freetown are easily mocked as they master imperfectly their parents’ language, which they tend not to use in their daily activities. Most of them do not consider themselves Krio, but usually admit that, as they speak better Krio than their parents’ language, and as they live as young urbanites with no intention to ‘go back to the village,’ they can appear as Krio to others and do not mind. Being ‘Krio’ today has become a social status that one achieves.6 It indicates an urban and modern lifestyle, mostly of individuals who associate ‘the village’ not only with the violence of the war, but also with an acute lack of educational and economic opportunities. Self-identification as Krio, for young urbanites, symbolizes a transition between two lifestyles that they consider to be in opposition with regard to individual chances of social achievement. In this context, Krio tend to be used as an identity that conveys one’s belonging to the global socioeconomic order and asserts one’s rights to modernity, urbanization and similar economic and institutional conditions as exist in the Western world (cf., Ferguson 2002). In that sense, it opposes the word kɔntri, derived from English country, which is used pejoratively to qualify the livelihood of rural populations and a lifestyle judged as lacking sophistication (cf., Murphy 1981, 674; Tonkin 1981). For young urbanites, ethnic origins ascribed by blood and family connections is perceived as less relevant in the postwar urban world than performing a new social identity as Krio. Being Krio is also considered more neutral and safer, particularly in a highly diverse cultural setting. As the social value of being ‘Krio’ changes progressively, the possibilities of performing the indexes of Krio identity also expand. This process does not require abandoning one’s own ethnic identity anymore: claims to being Krio can be combined with another ethnic identity (Knörr 2010b). With the aim of illustrating the ambivalent use of the Krio register in contemporary social practice, I present in this chapter data collected on the Freetown Peninsula among people of Sherbro origin. Sherbros ­constitute a rather small ethnic group and live mainly along the southern coast of the country. Historically, Sherbros acted as economic and cultural brokers between 6  Historically, Porter (1963, 5) argues that the social stratification system of the Colony of Sierra Leone alternated between periods of ‘high status crystallization,’ during which social mobility was limited, and periods of social change, during which people at the bottom of the social ladder could move upwards by acquiring the necessary attributes of social proficiency. In the first case, privileged groups were mostly determined by ascribed criteria, whereas in the second case, social and economic achievements could propel someone to the top of the social ladder.

214

Ménard

early European traders and African populations. On the Peninsula, coastal populations forged early interactions with various groups of settlers and their descendants. Oral tradition in Sherbro settlements emphasizes early contacts between Sherbros and Liberated Africans, who created new villages on the Atlantic coast over the course of the nineteenth century, such as Kent (see Ménard 2015). In the nineteenth century, Sherbro society was gradually penetrated by Western influences and Christianity. Long-term geographical proximity and social interactions between Sherbro and Krio settlements explain that Sherbros can easily navigate Krio culture. Being Krio is a key narrative of Sherbro identity discourses. As a result of intermarriages and practices of fostering between the two groups, most Sherbros on the Peninsula have typical Krio names, such as Smith, Martin, Thompson, or Campbell. Sherbro and Krio families are often related. Individuals often define themselves as Sherbro/Krio or Krio/Sherbro and use the two identities interchangeably based on the context and audience. Sherbros use indexes of the Krio register as emblems of a distinct social status. For instance, they often claim to have adopted ‘the Krio system’ by which they understand a set of social values based on Western education and socialization, and Christianity. Sherbro identity is socially dual: individuals easily move between an identity as Krio and one as kɔntri or netiv.7 As a result of historical processes of interaction between Sherbros and Krios, social and cultural features that are considered distinctively Krio became part of Sherbro identity. Therefore, the two semiotic registers of Krio and kɔntri, in Sherbro social practice, do not appear as opposed classificatory categories, but as two sets of indexes that complement each other in various social contexts. The navigation between these two registers largely depends on the audience for which semiotic signs are deployed. On the Peninsula, this is often related to the presence of migrants: indexes of the kɔntri register are displayed to support autochthony claims, whereas indexes of the Krio register become emblems of social distinctiveness. Thus, both registers can be alternatively used as derogatory (towards others) or valorizing (towards oneself). For instance, being a kɔntri man, belonging to a trayb (tribe), having a tradishɔn (tradition), are important Krio words used to valorize Sherbro autochthony in certain interactions with migrants, whereas the world kɔntri man may be used pejoratively against migrants in other situations.

7  In Krio, kɔntri (kɔntri man/kɔntri woman) and netiv – derived from English native – are used to indicate a Sierra Leonean indigenous identity, with reference to the historical opposition between local populations and settlers/Krios.

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

215

The Krio register can be used both as a linguistic repertoire and as an identity register that serves purposes of differentiation in a context of in-migration. In this particular sense, historical social hierarchies are being re-enacted in a context of migration and reinterpreted on the basis of contemporary political concerns. At the same time, the use of the Krio register tends to provide a common identification to people from various ethnic origins. This shows the ambivalent position of Krio identity as a factor of both inclusion and exclusion. I intend to illustrate this ambivalence in the next sections by looking at specific identity performances and their audiences.

The Use of Registers in a Context of Migration

On the Peninsula of Freetown, the context of in-migration is critical to understand how people use indexes of the Krio and the kɔntri registers. Freetown and its Peninsula have become areas of in-migration. During the Sierra Leonean conflict (1991–2002), many people fleeing the combat zones settled in the Western Area. For the past decade, the significant fishing activity on the Peninsula has attracted many new migrants. Tensions have appeared between Sherbros, who consider themselves autochthonous in this area, and migrants, who claim equal political and land rights. Among Sherbros, who now form a minority group on the Peninsula, a strong discourse has emerged that emphasizes their autochthonous status in relation to these other populations. Against this background, performing Krio identity in interactions with migrants, who often come from rural places of the interior, has become a strategy to mark social differentiation. I would like to illustrate this point by mentioning a conversation I had with my Sherbro assistant, Jonathan. One day when crossing a river, Jonathan and I sat on the boat with a girl who looked about fifteen of age. Jonathan talked to her in a provocative way and called her kɔntri. The girl escaped quickly when the boat landed, but when we came across her later, Jonathan started joking again and the girl responded bravely. This is the conversation that developed between Jonathan (JC) and myself (AM): AM: Why do you call her kɔntri? JC: Because when she came here first, she did not speak any word of Krio. She is from upcountry. She spoke only Temne. Now she has picked up Krio. You heard that she told me ‘Mi nɔtɔ kɔntri.’8 AM: So if you are not a kɔntriman, who are you? 8  I’m not a country girl.

216

Ménard

JC: Me? [Pause] I’m English. AM: How come you’re English? JC: Because I speak good English and I speak good Krio. [At that moment, two boys passed in front of us discussing in Temne.] JC: Temne is a kɔntri language. AM: Sherbro is not? JC: Well, no, we are civilayzd [Krio word for civilized]. We are able to dress with style. We are able to wear these fine Krio clothes. When we go to church, we don’t go with a shirt. We go with print. Like yesterday, I saw late at night the wife of the headman coming from town. She was dressed like a real Krio woman. She had a beautiful Krio dress and I teased her for that. AM: So you said that Sherbro is not a kɔntri language? JC: Well … yes. But the Peninsula [Sherbro] almost entirely adopted the Krio system. We are almost Krio-dominated. If you go to Shenge, every family speaks Sherbro at home. Here they will tell you: my father is Sherbro, my mother is Sherbro, I am a Sherbro but I don’t speak it. We are not natives [netiv], we are Europeans. If you are a native, you must practice your own system. We are the British Sherbro. (November 02, 2011, on the road from Number Two to Tokeh) This conversation took place at the beginning of my stay in Sierra Leone, as Jonathan and I had just started working together. My presence clearly influenced the interaction he had with the girl and his subsequent self-representation. At first, he qualifies the girl as kɔntri and she recognizes it as an offence. As we discuss, he justifies his position by making a metapragmatic evaluation of linguistic and behavioral signs with reference to the kɔntri/civilayzd dichotomy. He opposes these two social identities to mark the difference between the social status of the migrant and his own. Sherbros often employ civilayzd as a synonym for krionayzd, a word that can be used both as an adjective (qualifying somebody who has become Krio) and as verb (designating the process of becoming Krio). It indicates the ability to use indexes of the Krio register, while remaining an autochthonous Sierra Leonean – a status that Krios were long denied in Sierra Leonean history. Jonathan associates each register, civilayzd and kɔntri, with distinct status emblems. He defines Sherbros as civilayzd with regard to language – the knowledge of English and Krio – and clothing – the use of Krio clothes. Through metapragmatic activity, otherwise disparate signs are turned into normative criteria of group membership “that convert facts of social difference into measures of rank or hierarchy” (Agha 2006, 75). This positional classification

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

217

between civilayzd and kɔntri is a discourse intended both for the girl, who is the object of Jonathan’s joke, and for the researcher, who is the witness of the joke. Self-representations as Krio, particularly in Sherbro personal narratives, often aim at creating a specific social bond with the researcher based on the perception of having distinct historical and cultural links with the European world. Individuals stressed the cultural heritage and features indexing them as Krio. In Jonathan’s representation, both language and clothing are emblems of a Krio identity that is considered socially distinct. The Krio Language Krio is often qualified as a lingua franca, in that it allows people of diverse ethnic origins to communicate. In the Western Area, people increasingly use it as such. Moreover, it remains the language of officialdom, government administration and education. However, on the Peninsula, Krio is also the native language of most Sherbros and the expression ‘British Sherbro’ designates people’s inability to speak the indigenous language. Language loss is sometimes deplored, yet it is seldom stated as a significant problem to claim Sherbro identity. Sherbros consider the Krio language to be an ethnic marker to the same degree Sherbro is. Yet, these two languages index social values that are linked to different social situations. Krio is valued as the language of education and of intimacy, as it is used at home and between relatives. The progressive shift to Krio as native language is commonly attributed to social achievement: people who are educated and work in Freetown are not willing to maintain knowledge of the language. Most parents also do not try to teach Sherbro as first language to their children. At the same time, Sherbro is maintained as the language of rituals and its use connects to an important social and emotional part of an indigenous identity. The young generation rarely practice Sherbro, but often learns the basics with their parents and songs in Sherbro during initiation into secret societies. Thus, both Krio and Sherbro have cultural and social significance. They are co-constitutive symbols of ethnic attachment, because they indicate two different social dimensions of identity. In Acts of Identity (2006), Le Page and Tabouret-Keller show that linguistic behaviors indicate individual choices of being identified with or being distinguished from a certain group. The choice of language is intimately related to specific social situations, since individuals project identities through speech acts. In a context of migration, Krio has become the language of social differentiation. Although most people speak Krio, the way Krio is spoken remains a major social indicator. Most people consider that Sherbros talk a purer, a clearer Krio than migrants who learned it as a second language. Hence, the type of Krio accent and vocabulary, as well as the selected use of English in certain

218

Ménard

contexts continue to be emblems of social prestige. In the dialogue above, language marks a higher social status in the context of a joke with a migrant. Particularly on the south of the Peninsula, where in-migration is significant, addressing migrants in Krio becomes a way of contesting the increasing local use of Temne. Migrants who have settled as fishermen are mainly Temne-speakers. As a result, Temne tends to supplant Krio in fishing and fishtrading activities. As Temne gradually emerges as the language of business, Krio remains the language of education and public meetings, a situation that imbues these two languages with social values related to distinct institutional spheres. The social opposition created through the use of language between business and education is meaningful, since Temnes have long suffered from negative stereotyping in Sierra Leonean society and described as uneducated (see Bolten 2012). In personal interactions, language becomes an emblem of the educational status of the speaker, which leads to tensions and increased stereotyping. Nonetheless, Temne-speakers are also strongly associated with the leading party All People’s Congress (APC), whose members clearly support the installation of migrants in the Western Area. These two factors, institutional and political, result in a stronger ethnic and social polarization along language lines. As Sherbros employ Krio as the language of resistance against migrants, they also present it as the language of neutrality. They argue that it is lingua franca devoid of tribal and political implications and highlight its transethnic dimension in contrast to languages linked to specific ethnic identities (Knörr 2010b). In Freetown, social mixing imposes de facto Krio as the neutral language. On the Peninsula, this call for neutrality conceals a strategy of resistance. This becomes apparent in local disputes, as local populations usually refuse to use Temne and ask migrants to ‘speak locally’ or ‘use the broad Krio.’ The use of language in greetings also becomes an emblem of the speaker’s social status. Most Sherbros are able to greet in Temne, but greet strangers in Krio. My host in Kissi Town, for instance, could speak Temne very well, yet she did not respond to greetings in Temne from female traders passing by in front of her house. She told me that when people spoke Temne to her, she pretended that she did not understand. She considered Krio to be the most neutral language to be used with strangers, but also pointed at the fact that migrants should adapt to specific cultural conditions by greeting either in Sherbro or Krio. Paradoxically, Krio becomes the emblem of autochthony, while being presented as the language of neutrality. The Social Dimension of Clothes In the first dialogue, Jonathan not only mentions language but also clothing as another emblem of the Krio decorum to be opposed to the habits of migrants.

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

219

Blommaert (2005, 203) stresses that “every act of semiosis is an act of identity” in which we disclose information about ourselves. Dress is a critical example of a non-verbal semiotic sign through which information about identity is being revealed, which leads to immediate metapragmatic evaluations from the audience. In colonial Sierra Leone, dress became early on a sign of social differentiation. The settlers and Liberated Africans used Western dress-codes. Later, in line with Victorian values, Krios publicly complained about the ‘indecent’ nakedness of local populations (Porter 1963, 102; Spitzer 1974, 86). Western dress-codes indexed distinct social and moral values that positioned individuals within a socially-dominant circle, whereas discourses about the indecency of local Africans de-humanized these by maintaining them on the other end of the ‘civilizational process.’ In contemporary practice, clothing remains a strong element of social performance. The dress code depends on the nature of the occasion and its location, which shows the strategic intentionality in the sign use. People tend to wear different clothes inside and outside of Sherbro settlements. Krio emblems are displayed in relation to formal work, institutions and services in Freetown. For instance, I accompanied once a friend for a meeting with the Public Representation Officer (PRO) at the District Council. For the occasion, she put on a print dress. She said that I would see her wearing her lapa9 in Bureh Town, but for such a meeting, she had to dress with a print and look like a Krio; jokingly, she added that she had to make a good impression on the PRO and show that she was an educated woman. By this, she acknowledged a direct relation between Krio clothing – the print dress would be identified by the right audience as an index of Krio identity – education, and social respectability. In general, women wear print dresses when going to Freetown or church services or during travel. Yet, knowing the right way to tie a lapa around the waist and the occasions for which one should use it are necessary condition to qualify as Sherbro. For example, as a sign of her Krio identity, one Krio woman explained to me that she had never known how to tie a lapa, because ‘Krio women only wear skirts and print dresses.’ The lapa is an emblem of Sherbro indigenous identity, for it is used during performances of secret societies. During performances of the male secret society Poro, members wear the lapa and dance with it. During initiation into the female secret society Bondo, girls learn how and when to wear it. Clothing can indicate belonging or non-belonging to secret societies. In Lakka, when the Bondo society was initiating a dozen of girls, performances of members included songs targeted at a woman who had refused initiation. She was born 9  A lapa is a piece of cloth tied around the waist. It may derive from the English word ‘wrapper’ (Spitzer 1974, 16).

220

Ménard

in Tokeh from Sherbro parents, but had moved to York, a Krio settlement, and then to Freetown at a very early age. She had married in Freetown, but later moved in with her brother in Lakka. She explained her decision not to be part of Bondo as a result of her Krio training, as Krio women do not usually get initiated: I would not agree to [being initiated]. My mother and my father are part of their own [society]. All my sisters and brothers went to Bondo and Poro. It is my big brothers who sent the smaller ones to be initiated in Baw-Baw…. I told [my parents] that I would not go because I am not used to that…. [Bondo women] cause me problems. They put hints that [I am not a real Sherbro]. But I am not afraid. I avoid them. I do not go when they have their ceremonies. But when they meet me, they sing against me. I wear long skirts. They will sing ‘You, long skirts, you long skirts’ all the time. May 21, 2012, Lakka

Her statement shows that clothes are semiotic signs, which become “identified with certain social beings and their activities” (Agha 1998, 178). Trajano Filho (2002), in the case of Guinea Bissau, argues that the mention of clothes can suggest religious or ethnic differentiations without clearly spelling them out. In this example, the song constitutes a metapragmatic discourse over a nonverbal sign: it is a critique of wearing skirts, which indexes the absence of secret society training. Krio and kɔntri identities are essentialized through the attributes of the skirt and the lapa, which link to normative criteria of womanhood. The lapa indicates secret society training. During the time of initiation, girls are said to be taught social rules that prepare them to become adult women, such as rules regarding pregnancy and child-birth, the performance of household duties, or their relations with in-laws and Poro members (Bledsoe 1984, 457) The lapa is the kɔntri dress that women wear “in the privacy of their homes” (Spitzer 1974, 16) to perform household tasks. Conversely, the skirt infers the absence of specific female skills related to a kɔntri identity. Mention of secret societies is socially significant, as membership in Poro and Bondo have been revived as emblems of a Sherbro autochthonous status in the postwar context (see Ménard forthcoming). As Fanthorpe points out (2007, 12), the post-conflict phase has been characterized by the reestablishment of former political allegiances and social networks formed through secret societies. Moreover, migrants have been challenging Sherbro autochthonous status by rejecting the political authority derived from Poro membership.

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

221

Hence, commitment to African traditional beliefs becomes a statement of identity that is considered compatible with social distinctiveness.

Social Transformation through Semiotic Processes

Krio identity is not only a factor differentiation, but has become a category of transethnic identification in the post-conflict years. As Krio is an identity increasingly perceived as attached to an urban life and its promises in terms of educational, social and economic achievements, being considered Krio has become socially desirable. From this perspective, Sherbro identity plays a role in bridging between kɔntri and Krio social registers. Sherbro identity, due to its Krio dimension, provides a common identification to people of various ethnic backgrounds, who can relate to Sherbro identity rather flexibly and in doing so, employ the indexes of the Krio register. Historically, Krios were seen as forming an exclusive group, since they refused to marry local African populations, with the exception of Sherbros. Although this has changed, it is often stated by other groups as a reason for the persistence of Krio social exclusivity. For instance, it is not uncommon, for people in Sherbro and Krio settlements, to highlight the difficulties that migrants may encounter when marrying Krios on the Peninsula, for adapting to their lifestyle may be challenging. In contrast, Sherbro consider themselves, and are considered by others, as a population that can rapidly absorb Krio habits and standards as their own. As a result, they are able to move between ethnic and social registers. The fact that they have a historical social capital to access, invoke and use the Krio register allows for further processes of integration with other groups. Sherbros continue to cohabit and marry with members of other ethnic groups, who can identify as Sherbros rather flexibly, integrate into Sherbro communities and learn how to use Krio emblems as part of Sherbro identity. In other words, acquiring the attributes of Sherbro identity leads migrants and their descendants to include Krio indexes in their social performances. Many Sherbros have varied ethnic origins resulting from migrations. The Sherbro kinship system places the emphasis on matrilineal ties, which facilitates the integration of male migrants into local communities (see Ménard 2015). Ethnic origins other than Sherbro are easily concealed by mentioning a Sherbro female forebearer. Due to this specific pattern of integration, the process through which one has ‘become’ Sherbro (in Krio: dɔn tɔn Sharbro) is a critical part of individual identities. This ‘idiom of transformation’ is not specific to Sherbro society: scholars of the region have noted the possibility

222

Ménard

to rapidly become a member of a specific ethnic group by adopting a set of attributes, such as pursuing a certain livelihood or joining a secret society (Berliner 2010, 261; Sarró 2010, 237). In personal narratives, Sherbros often mention forebearers who migrated to the Peninsula and specify the way(s) these acquired Sherbro identity, for instance through adoption/fostering, marriage, or initiation.10 Mechanisms of ethnic transformation are usually clearly identified. Furthermore, personal narratives become an occasion to explain how one, or one’s parents, learned to use Krio attributes as a consequence of becoming Sherbro. Acquiring Sherbro identity thus gives a justification to the adoption of Krio habits. Conversely, taking up indexes of the Krio register is relevant for claiming being Sherbro. People use the Krio and kɔntri registers as complementary sets of attributes to prove their Sherbro identity: it is possible to claim being Sherbro by calling on specific kɔntri indexes, such as a fishing lifestyle and Poro/Bondo membership, and by proving an education and socialization along Krio standards.11 Such personal narratives perform social transformation through semiotic activity. They are individual performances through which people make a statement about their identification to others as well as to themselves (Bell 2007, 99). They address various audiences: the researcher, the self, but also members of other ethnic groups, who are involved in the speech act, as they represent the broader context in which self-representation takes place. Self-representations intended for the researcher often accentuate Krio features of individual identities, but they also serve in confirming one’s Sherbro identity to onself, particularly in a context where certain ethnic identities are politically-loaded. Temne origins in particular are frequent among Sherbros on the Peninsula, but they are purposefully concealed or mitigated in personal narratives. This is partly due to the stigmatization of Temnes since colonial times and the negative stereotypes attached to it, but it is also an intimate consequence of the local politicization of ethnicity and autochthony between Sherbros and migrants. To deny Temne family connections is imperative to dissociate oneself from newcomers and prove one’s commitment to Sherbro identity. Moreover, the Krio dimension of Sherbro identity reproduces and reinforces the historical colonial hierarchy that represented Krios and Temnes at the two opposite ends of 10  For instance, many people describe their father as ‘Sherbro’ as long as he was a migrant who took a Sherbro wife, turned to fishing, and joined the male secret society. 11  Family stories in Krio settlements show that marriage to a Sherbro and marriage to a Krio are considered to lead to the same type of social transformation (the adoption of Krio attributes). Sherbro family connections are enough to support self-representations as Krio, as both identities are perceived to involve a similar set of social norms.

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

223

the civilizational ladder. This clearly emerges in local Sherbro discourses that emphasize stereotypes about the rudeness and lack of education of Temne migrants – features that are contrasted with emblems of Krio identity. Thus, personal narratives perform ethnic transformation (as one has become Sherbro) and social transformation (as one has acquired the capacity to use indexes of the Krio register as part of Sherbro identity). Ethnic and social transformation becomes mediated and constituted by the semiotic activitiy of identity self-ascription. This metasemiotic process may be prompted by a necessity of differentation: in a context of migration, people essentialize, through metasemiotic activity, certain attributes as part of certain ethnic identities (Krio/Temne), transform them as symbols of opposed social identities, and position themselves with regard to the social hierarchy thus created. In this process, defining oneself as Sherbro and stating the reasons for that becomes a performative act. Ethnic identity becomes the outcome of a ‘semiotic process of representation’ by which individual select situationally-relevant indexes for a purpose (Blommaert 2005, 203). Nevertheless, the semiotic process through which people position themselves socially also reveals that Sherbro identity has an integrative role between various populations. Although self-representations as Sherbro may be driven by a need for social differentiation, the semiotic process itself shows people’s ability to move from one register to the other, because Sherbro identity is socially dual and can index a person as Krio and kɔntri. The following example illustrates the general pattern of personal narratives: the person mentions a parent who migrated and integrated into a Sherbro community, and describes how he himself later krionayzd through education. My great-grandfather was a Lokko and he married to my great-grandmother who was a Sherbro. They gave birth to my grandfather here [in Mama Beach] and my father after him became pure Sherbro…. I can be proud [of being Lokko]. I usually say that my grandfather was a Lokko and even a part of the village is called ‘Lokko tɔng [town]’ for our sake.12 Mr Smith, March 07, 2012, Mama Beach

Then, he explained that his grandfather’s brother worked in Waterloo and had placed him, when he was a child, with a Krio family. He had stayed fifteen years in town with them:

12  ‘Lokko town’ is a subsection of Mama Beach.

224

Ménard

That’s why if you look at me, if you have never seen me before, you will say that I am a Krio. And if I tell you my surname Smith, you will believe that I am a Krio…. You are the one choosing what I am and you will probably think that I am a Krio. I can say that I am a Lokko because of my roots. I can say that I am a Sherbro because I speak it. But if I don’t want to talk, if I don’t want you to know me, I will say that I am a Krio because I behave the correct Krio way. This narrative distinguishes three identities that attach the person to different ethnic and social registers. Lokko is presented as an ascribed identity defined by blood. It also positions Mr Smith as a member of a founding family of Mama Beach.13 Sherbro appears as an in-between identity: it is both an ascribed and an achieved status that bridges between his Lokko ethnic origins and his Krio identity. Krio identity appears as a social achievement and a result of education. With Comaroff (1978, 16), this example invites to see “achievement and ascription may be seen as two levels of one reality, rather than as opposed principles.” Mr Smith plays on his own Sherbro identity as both an ascribed and an achieved status. Signs of identity ascription are rather related to the kɔntri register, such as ancestry, place of birth, Poro membership, and the Sherbro language, whereas signs of identity achievement are rather related to the Krio register (Krio language, education, social behavior). Nonetheless, Mr Smith considers that attributes that others in the community may perceive as ascribed are actually the outcome of long-term achievement. Thereby, he preserves his right to be considered Lokko in certain situations. Mr Smith is born in Mama Beach, has Sherbro connections on both sides of his family tree and is a member of the local Poro. In his own community, he is considered Sherbro by ascription. Yet, he sees his own Sherbro identity as the result of the social achievement of previous generations on his father’s side, whose members gradually acquired Sherbro identity. He describes this process of ethnic transformation by defining his great-grandfather as Lokko, his grandfather as Lokko/Sherbro, as he was born in Mama Beach, and then his father as ‘pure’ Sherbro, because – as he explained to me – he was a fisherman and Poro member. It is a process that involves only men, which separates this branch of the family from his Sherbro relatives on his mother’s side – the side on which his Sherbro identity is traced through female ancestorship, and 13  Claiming forefathers who migrated from the interior is a common strategy to claim land on a customary basis, since migrant groups were often farmers, by contrast to Sherbros who are mostly fishermen.

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

225

therefore, is considered as ascribed by blood. Mr Smith was also keen on explaining the Christian origin of his family name, which his Lokko great-grandfather had acquired when he had migrated to the Peninsula. Thereby, he could highlight the early adoption of Christianity in his family through contacts with the Krios, but also play on the idea of identity achievement: the name was acquired, transmitted through the father’s line, and became an index of the family’s Sherbro identity. The congruence of that semiotic sign with other indexes of the Sherbro register such as fishing and initiation encourage others to perceive Mr Smith’s identity as ascribed, but his own representation of the family’s history is one of achievement and ethnic conversion. Mr Smith also states his ability to use the Krio register. Krio emblems, such as the Krio language and a proper social behavior, are part of his Sherbro achieved identity. It is a social identity that he achieved during his lifetime, for his skills were acquired through education in a Krio family. As in many personal narratives collected on the Peninsula, presenting these skills as a matter of social achievement is a way to stress the autochthonous dimension of one’s Sherbro identity. Mr Smith defines his strategic use of the Krio register as a surface identification displayed to outsiders when he wants to appear as a welllearned and accomplished individual. Thereby, he states that he is able to conceal his kɔntri identity on purpose in certain social contexts: social navigability thus becomes a symbol of the inherent duality of Sherbro identity. Mr Smith’s narrative shows a progression from the ethnic conversion of his relatives to his later social transformation as a Krio. Sherbro becomes a pivotal identity that allows for social transformation over generations. It is as both an ascribed and an achieved identity that allows Mr Smith to be considered Krio, while retaining his Lokko identity. Mr Smith can thus perform different roles attached to three different ethnic and social registers, each of these three identifications becoming relevant in specific social contexts and towards specific audiences. In this process, Sherbro ethnicity enable him to use the Krio and kɔntri semiotic registers as two sets of emblems that complement each other and allow flexible social identifications. Conclusion Social positioning vis-à-vis migrants and social transformation are two aspects of semiotic processes that involve the intentional use of signs for certain audiences. The context of migration changes economic and social relations and people reinterpret social hierarchies inherited from the colonial past to create new discourses of differentiation. Ethnic identities are construed through

226

Ménard

communicative practices with regard to a new context that requires social positioning. Certain ethnic identities become associated through metasemiotic activity with certain social registers (Krio and kɔntri). Semiotic registers thus work as generalizations: they produce stereotypical images of individuals that become symbols of a social status. Emblems necessary to prove ethnic or social membership, such as speech, demeanor and social habits, become normative criteria of ethnic authenticity (Agha 2007, 74). As historical relations of power continue to frame contemporary social practice, the current context tends to sharpen the perception of Krios as a category of people socially privileged and distinct from the rest of the Sierra Leonean population. However, Krio identity has also now become a social register that allows for transethnic identification. Sherbros, who are perceived and perceive themselves as socially dual, use the two registers of their identity, but also play on the two (contradictory) social values attached to the Krio register. The Krio register serves two purposes: its indexes are used by Sherbros to distinguish themselves from migrants, but they also constitute a set of common social attributes for people of various ethnic backgrounds. In this latter process, Sherbro identity plays a critical role, as it allows people of different origins to acquire Krio attributes through ethnic conversion. Semiotic processes are performances of identity that rely on strategic representations of the self. In that sense, ethnicity is, in social practice, an enactment of semiotic signs that are part of a specific register of language, in a context that requires the social positioning of the self. Semiotic activity involves the reproduction of certain hierarchies and relations of power, but also ensures the continuous transformation of the social value of semiotic registers. The social value of a semiotic register changes over time, as users change, adapt the register to new situations, employ signs in innovative ways, or compete over how these should be used (see Agha 2007). Similarly, the Krio register is being reinvented in the postwar context. Its social meaning is being transformed by its speakers, who use it for new purposes and in new social circumstances. The contemporary social practice of the Krio register thus rests on a critical ambivalence. On the one hand, its social value is a remnant of colonial history. It indexes relations of power that are being reproduced today through metasemiotic activity. On the other hand, it has become a new identification that bridges between specific ethnic identities. This ambivalence leads in two ways to processes of exclusion or inclusion of outsider groups. The social value attached to the Krio register becomes situational, depending on how people use it and in which contexts. Changes in the Krio register leads us to reassess two analytical premises found in the literature on Krio identity: the sociohistorical dichotomy usually

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

227

drawn between Krios and indigenous peoples, and the descriptions of Krios as forming a culturally homogeneous group (Cole 2006; Peterson 1968). Relations between Krios and other groups were often painted as unidirectional: Krios spread Christianity and krionayzd native populations through education and adoption (see Porter 1963; Cohen 1981). In contrast, the Sherbro/Krio case points to the role of a particular Sierra Leonean group in the making of Krio society. It offers a new perspective on historical and present relationships between Krios and other ethnic groups as part of a process of cultural and social integration, which impacts present dynamics of identity ascription. In short, it is critical to approach Krio identity – and certainly other creole identities – as inherently flexible and unbounded, but also as allowing particular individual creativity in identity performances. References Agha, A. 1998. “Stereotypes and Registers of Honorific Language.” Language in Society 27(2): 151–93. Agha, A. 2006. “Registers of Language.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by A. Duranti, 23–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bell, C. 2007. “‘Performance’ and Other Analogies.” In The Performance Studies Reader, edited by H. Bial, 98–106. London: Routledge. Berliner, D. 2010. “The Invention of Bulongic Identity (Guinea-Conakry).” In The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 253–71. Leiden: Brill. Bledsoe, C.H. 1984. “The Political Use of Sande Ideology and Symbolism.” American Ethnologist 11(3): 455–72. Blommaert, J. 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bolten, C.E. 2012. I Did It to Save My Life: Love and Survival in Sierra Leone. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Cohen, A. 1981. The Politics of Elite Culture. London: University of California Press. Cole, G.R. 2006. “Re-Thinking the Demographic Make-Up of Krio Society.” In New Perspectives on the Sierra Leone Krio, edited by M. Dyxon-Fyle and G.R. Cole, 33–52. New York: Peter Lang. Colley, L. 2012. Britons. Forging the Nation, 1707–1837. Second edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

228

Ménard

Comaroff, J.L. 1978. “Rules and Rulers: Political Processes in a Tswana Chiefdom.” Man 13(1): 1–20. Duranti, A. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Eriksen, T.H. 2002. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. Second edition. London: Pluto Press. Eriksen, T. 2007. “Creolization in Anthropological Theory and in Mauritius.” In Creolization. History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 153–77. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Fanthorpe, R. 2007. Sierra Leone: The Influence of the Secret Societies, with Special Reference to Female Genital Mutilation. UNHCR: Writenet Report. Ferguson, J. 2002. “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society’.” Cultural Anthropology 17(4): 551–69. Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions. 1849. “Sierra Leone No. 25.” Report on the Annual Blue Book of Sierra Leone for the Year 1848: 297–308. Hutchinson, J., and A.D. Smith, eds. 1996. Ethnicity. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, R. 2008. Rethinking Ethnicity. Second edition. London: SAGE. Knörr, J. 2008. “Towards Conceptualising Creolization and Creoleness.” Working Paper No. 100. Halle/Saale: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. http://www.eth .mpg.de/cms/de/publications/working_papers/wp0100. Knörr, J. 2010a. “Out of Hiding? Strategies of Empowering the Past in the Reconstruction of Krio Identity.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past. Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 205–30. Leiden: Brill. Knörr, J. 2010b. “Contemporary Creoleness; or, the World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731–59. Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Le Page, R., and A. Tabouret-Keller. 2006. Acts of Identity. Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Second edition. B-Fernelmont: EME. Ménard, A. 2015. “Beyond Autochthony Discourses: Sherbro Identity and the (Re-)Construction of Social and National Cohesion in Sierra Leone.” PhD diss., Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Ménard, A. 2017. “Poro Society, Migration, and Political Incorporation on the Freetown Peninsula, Sierra Leone.” In Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies: Change and Continuity, edited by J. Knörr and W.P. Murphy, 29–51. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Murphy, W.P. 1981. “The Rhetorical Management of Dangerous Knowledge in Kpelle Brokerage.” American Ethnologist 8(4): 667–85.

‘ Krio ’ as an Ambivalent Semiotic Register in Sierra Leone

229

Peterson, J. 1968. “The Sierra Leone Creole: A Reappraisal.” In Freetown: A Symposium, edited by C. Fyfe and E. Jones, 100–17. Freetown: Sierra Leone University Press. Porter, A.T. 1963. Creoledom. London: Oxford University Press. Sarró, R. 2010. “Map and Territory: The Politics of Place and Autochthony among Baga Sitem (and their Neighbours).” In The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 231– 52. Leiden: Brill. Spitzer, L. 1974. The Creoles of Sierra Leone. London: The University of Wisconsin Press. Tonkin, E. 1981. “Model and Ideology: Dimensions of Being Civilised in Liberia.” In The Structure of Folk Models, edited by L. Holy and M. Stuchlik, 305–30. London: Academic Press. Trajano Filho, W. 2002. “Narratives of National Identity in the Web.” Etnográfica 6(1): 141–58.

Chapter 12

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies of Political Disloyalty in the Sierra Leonean Civil War William P. Murphy Introduction Civilians in the Sierra Leonean civil war (1991–2002) were constantly under suspicion of being disloyal, and even resistant, to the military regime controlling their captured territory – whether controlled by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) insurgency, civil defense militias, or the government army. Every small detail of civilian behavior – verbal and nonverbal – had the potential of being interpreted as a sign of disloyalty or opposition, which justified punishment including death. Civilians could be seen as having ‘different intentions’ (i.e., hidden, oppositional intentions) – a cultural idiom central to the political ideology of violence in the interrelated Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars. Civilians worried that a soldier from one warring regime or another could ‘find fault’ with whatever they did, thereby finding a reason (or excuse) for imposing punishment and even death – as well as justifications for looting. Behavior interpreted as a sign of allegiance to one warring group implied disloyalty to another warring group. Civilians felt caught in the middle among warring factions, and vulnerable to shifting interpretations of loyalty or disloyalty depending on political changes in the conflict. For most civilians, the day-to-day violence of the civil war meant, not liberation from a corrupt government, but a constant anxiety of being punished or killed for having ‘different intentions’ as construed by one warring faction or another. One sign evoking this social anxiety was language usage. Civilians knew that the language they spoke, whether the English-based creole, the lingua franca of Sierra Leone country, called ‘Krio,’ or one of the many indigenous languages, could be used as a marker, a ‘diacritic,’ as well as a test, of political loyalty or disloyalty in the war. Encounters with soldiers of any military regime – for example, at checkpoints – became a frightening test of demonstrating allegiance to the military organization controlling that territory. Speaking a language different from the organizational language of the military regime could be interpreted as having ‘different intentions,’ such as planning to escape or plotting against the regime – all of which were severely punished.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_013

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

231

The argument in this essay focuses on language usage not as a sign of ethnicity but as a sign of potential disloyal communicative practices in opposition to the military regime controlling a captured territory. While the Krio language was often viewed by the main insurgency in the Sierra Leonean civil war – the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) – as the lingua franca of the civil war, the indigenous languages could be interpreted as a communicative means to oppose and plot against the occupying RUF military regime. Alternatively, there was a reverse language ideology used by the civil defense force called Kamajors (the Anglicized form of the traditional Mende term for ‘hunters’) fighting against the RUF later in the war and in the geographical regions of Mende-speaking towns and villages of the eastern and southern regions where the rebel incursion began in 1991.1 Speaking only Krio, in this civil defense context of the war, indexed an outsider and threat – unless the person could also speak some Mende and thereby index potential local loyalties. Krio or indigenous language usage as indexes of political loyalty or disloyalty in the social ecology of a civil war is a species of the generic research problem of relating creole language to social identity.2 The basic theoretical question centers on understanding the sociopolitical formations shaping the politics of identity construction as semiotically marked through the various diacritics of creole language usage – e.g., phonological, lexical, and grammatical elements – which signify an ethnic identity in a multilingual (and multiethnic) context. The creation of social differentiation as formed by the markers of creole language and culture (i.e., nonverbal markers) creates “social expectations that require them [creole groups] continuously to balance out being ‘different from’ and ‘the same as’ other groups in different social, political and historical contexts and situations” (Knörr 214, 199; brackets added).3 But the genesis of social differentiation becomes a matter of life or death when the social ecology of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ determines friend or enemy in a civil war. Simply put, speaking Krio – or, alternatively, speaking an indigenous language – could get you killed in the Sierra Leone civil war. 1  On this and other civil defense forces in the Sierra Leone civil war, see Hoffman (2007), and Ferme and Hoffman (2004). 2  See Knörr (2014, 19–21ff.) on the history and etymology of the word ‘creole.’ For Sierra Leone, Knörr clarifies the different labels ‘creole’ and ‘Krio’: “Creole designates the group (the Krio) as creole in reference to the social and historical context of its ethnogenesis and the ensuing creoleness in its culture and identity, while Krio is the group’s ethnonym, which emerged in the process of its ethnogenesis.” (Knörr 2014, 25). 3  The problem of language and identity is fundamental to anthropological approaches to sociolinguistics – especially in interactional rather than correlational sociolinguistics (see Gumperz 1982; Blommaert 2005, Chap. 8).

232

Murphy

This essay takes up the puzzle of trying to figure out this sociolinguistic pattern when the common, easy answer that language usage signifies an enemy ethnic group overlooks an important piece of the puzzle. The following argument “deconstructs creole” (to borrow a phrase from Ansaldo and Matthews 2007) insofar as the creole language is treated not as a diacritic of ethnicity, but as a diacritic of disloyal communicative practices transcending ethnicity.

Political Belonging and Secret Disloyalty

One approach to this puzzle begins with the idea that violence against civilians in a civil war is shaped by the nature of the occupying military organization. Specifically, such organizations based on military force are total institutions, in Goffman’s (1961) sense of organizations imposing nearly complete social control over subjects. Absolute conformity to the organization and its institutional order of rules and sanctions is demanded. Civilians as well as soldiers must adapt to harsh and rigid social control because the various military regimes involved – e.g., rebel insurgencies, civilian militias, government armies, et cetera – are engaged in a fierce competition over control of territory and civilian populations. Much of the violence against civilians was generated in the form of violent sanctions imposed either for a lack of conformity to the total institution or for suspicions of disloyalty despite public appearances of allegiance. Excessive violence against civilians, moreover, leads to civilian alienation from the military regime – resulting in widespread disloyalty. The potential of civilian alienation creates the organizational need to determine whether the civilians are loyal to the military regime and its cause – whether the cause is revolutionary or counter-revolutionary. Disloyalty is manifest in many social forms. One type examined in this essay is the disloyalty and resistance ascribed to special social bonds and gatherings that are interpreted as being used to plot and plan against the wider group and its leaders. Organizational rules and sanctions are commonly formulated, as documented in political history, to prevent acts of disloyalty by restricting special social bonds and groupings. Innumerable examples from political history could be cited: e.g., Philip the Fair of France in 1305 “forbade all meetings of more than five persons, regardless of their rank or the form of the meetings”; and under the Ancien Régime of France, “twenty noblemen were not allowed without special concession from the King to assemble even for a conference” (Simmel 1950 [1908], 175).

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

233

Clandestine gatherings function like a formal secret society, which “emerges everywhere as the counterpart of despotism and police restriction,” … in the “struggle against the overwhelming pressure of central powers …” (Simmel 1950 [1908], 333–34). Unauthorized gatherings, especially clandestine ones, indicate a lack of allegiance to the wider normative order. Analogously, the threat is similar to formal secret society activity, which creates a social domain in which “the norms of the [wider social] environment do not extend” (Simmel 1950 [1908], 360). Conversely, all social groupings that seem suspicious to political authority are viewed as dangerous secrecy societies potentially fomenting conspiracies (Simmel 1950 [1908], 376). The political threat of an unofficial gathering or special social bond is compounded when the language of social interaction is different from the official language of the political regime. This is a common pattern in civil wars in multilingual societies when the military regime conquering a particular territory operates with a language different from the local language.

Contingent Identity and Violence

The organizational partitioning of loyal and disloyal civilians exemplifies the contingent nature of identity in the micro-politics of violence in a civil war. Social identity is context-contingent because every human being consists of a plurality of potential identities that take on variable social significance in different contexts. Amartya Sen uses his own “robustly plural” identity to dramatize this sociological principle: I can be, at the same time, an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a nonreligious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a nonBrahmin, a nonbeliever in the afterlife (and also, in case the question is asked, a nonbeliever in the “before-life” as well). Sen 2006, 19

But what identity is significant at a particular time and place depends on the social relations, priorities, applicable norms, and interpersonal politics in that context: for example, “when going to a dinner, one’s identity as a vegetarian may be rather more crucial than one’s identity as a linguist, whereas the latter

234

Murphy

may be particularly important if one considers going to a lecture on linguistic studies” (Sen 2006, 25).4 Even the apparently straightforward identity of ethnic heritage can be robustly plural and context-contingent when the variety of one’s ancestors is taken into account. Plural ethnic identities in African communities are typical: e.g., one’s father may come from one ethnic group, one’s mother from another, and one’s grandmother from a third, and one’s spouse from a fourth, et cetera. Plural ethnic identities, moreover, provides African politicians with a rhetorical resource for invoking an ethnic heritage that adapts strategically to different audiences. The politics of equating individuals with particular (and singular) identities is “skillfully cultivated and fomented by the commanders of persecution and carnage” (Sen 2006, 175). Such classifications are not primordial logics of conflict; rather, the creation of opposing identities “must depend on social [and political] circumstances” (Sen 2006, 26; brackets added).5 This is especially true in a civil war – or any context of collective violence – when possessing a particular identity and exhibiting particular diacritics of identity can get you killed. Further complexities of identity construction are involved when ethnic identity is treated as robustly plural at the level of the defining features used to mark a person’s ethnicity. The identifying criteria of ethnicity are multiple, consisting of a wide variety of attributes: e.g., language, dress, cosmetics, food, rituals, house types, art, narratives, et cetera. But a particular attribute, such as language usage, may also index other types of social identity besides ethnic heritage. An ethnic language can signify a civilian disloyal to the occupying military regime – a traitor even – because of the negative meanings associated with specific communicative practices enabled through that ethnic language. This semiotic logic is clarified in the next section.

Concepts and Method: Metalinguistics and Language Ideologies of Identity

The study of metalinguistic discourse provides an important method for analyzing the little details in social interaction that signify who is who – e.g., who belongs to what group – in order to differentiate those loyal or disloyal, or even dangerous, to a particular group. The concept presupposes the common 4  The selection of clanship versus ethnic identities is an example of the situational choice of identity in Africa (Schlee 1989). 5  For some anthropological cases of cultural and social organizational circumstances of identity and violence, see Schlee (2002).

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

235

communicative practice of assigning meaning to the concrete linguistic details of social interaction, and also presupposes that those meanings can be used in a political ideology to justify power and social hierarchy. The little details of social life are ‘indexical’ in the sense of conveying meanings about the identity of persons and their actions in context, e.g., raised eyebrows means she disapproves of what he just said. ‘Social indexes’ tell us something about happenings in the social world. They are ‘diacritics’ (differentiating marks) because they communicate the little details that give meaning to social identities taken up in context (Agha 2007, 235) – e.g., the leopard skin shirt he is wearing means that he is a religious leader.6 When the little details of social life signifying identity – or the meaning of a social activity – are linguistic details, the comments construing the meaning of those social indexes are metalinguistic – e.g., ‘she talks like a doctor.’ Metalinguistic activity in social life can be defined as a “vast range of meaningful behaviors that typify the attributes of language, its users, and the activities accomplished through its use” (Agha 2007, 17). This activity provides important data for anthropologists because it points to a fundamental social fact: namely, a lot of talk in social life is talk about talk, i.e., talk interpreting other talk, often in order to criticize or sanction that talk (e.g., ‘he talks too fast,’ or ‘she always promises, but doesn’t keep her promises’).7 In this essay, the important data takes the form of the metalinguistic discourse used by perpetrators in a scene of violence to construe whether speaking Krio or one of the indigenous languages indexes someone loyal or disloyal to the rebel insurgency – or, alternatively, to local civil defense militias, or the government army.8 Political ideologies that use language as a diacritic legitimating domination and subordination (and violence) – social hierarchies and inequality generally – are language ideologies.9 The interview material in the 6  The concept of indexicality is fundamental to Peirce’s (e.g., 1985[1897–1903]) theory of the logic of signs. See Jakobson (1977; also Silverstein 1976) on Peirce’s metalinguistic (and metasemiotic) theory of indexical meaning. 7  In addition, when nonverbal signs are the object of interpretation, the activity can be defined as metasemiotic (in the sense of using signs to construe the meaning of any sign, whether verbal or nonverbal); moreover, it is metapragmatic when the activity of using signs functions to construe the meaning of an action, whether linguistic or non-linguistic, e.g., ‘she is promising,’ ‘he is voting’ (see Silverstein 1993, on the concept of metapragmatics). 8  This analytical approach to the metalinguistics of speech interpretation as a social activity of identity construction differs from studies of ‘social markers in speech’ that focus more on the linguistics of social cues rather than the metalinguistics (e.g., Scherer and Giles 1979). 9  The study of language ideologies is central to contemporary linguistic anthropology as a research problem that links language usage to power and social hierarchy (e.g., Blommaert 1999; Kroskrity 2000; and Schiefflen, Woolard, Kroskrity 1998).

236

Murphy

three cases below is filled with reports of metalinguistic evaluations, which reveal the language ideology of violence used by a military organization.10 An important piece of ethnographic documentation is that type of metalinguistics called ‘reported speech.’ Reported speech as “one utterance describing another” means that the object being interpreted or typified “is depicted as a speech event distinct from the act of utterance” (Agha 2007, 29). In the three cases examined below, what is reported in a scene of violence is what the perpetrator said to justify the violence, or what the victim said in order to avoid to try to avoid the violence. The logic of this local interpretive process highlights a key social fact about the semiotics of identity construction – for both anthropologists as well as community members – namely, identity requires the ability to read a social identity from the little things that have meaning. This method of interpretation is based on the ontological premise that “a person’s social identity, or identities, become determinate only through a class of semiotic processes whereby images of personhood are coupled to or decoupled from publicly perceivable signs” (Agha 2007, 233). In the ethnography of civil war violence presented here, the semiotic process concerns language usage as well as the metalinguistic discourse interpreting that usage.

Theoretical and Ethnographic Puzzle: Language Ideology of Violence against Civilians

One established insight in the study of contemporary civil wars is that violence is often more concerned with controlling territory by terrorizing and subjugating civilians (for their labor, resources, allegiance, loyalty, symbolic capital, etc.) than defeating the military forces of the government or competing insurgencies. Conversely, defeating government armies or rival insurgencies is often necessary for maintaining controlling of territory and populations. Nevertheless, violence against civilians is not simply a matter of collateral damage in war. Rather, violence is an organizational means of controlling subjects in a captured territories and punishing those who are judged disloyal and uncooperative.

10  Non-linguistic details are also important diacritics for identifying the ‘enemy,’ i.e., clothing, ways of walking, racial features, et cetera. The idea of a language ideology of violence can be generalized to include both verbal and nonverbal diacritics by formulating a concept of ‘semiotic ideology’ (see Keane 2003, for a clarification of this concept).

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

237

Excessive civilian violence as a modern phenomenon of warfare – in contrast to earlier wars, such as World War II – has stimulated new theoretical analyses about the nature of war. Two influential formulations invoke the ideas of ‘new wars’ (Kaldor 2006), in contrast to the ‘old wars’ of the two world wars, or ‘irregular wars’ (Kalyvas 2006, 66–68). The frequent absence of a front line of military operations in ‘irregular wars’ is replaced by a segmentary structure of sovereignty over territory divided between the various insurgent groups and government armies (Kalyvas 2006, 87ff.). Violence in this political context functions to maintain internal control of territory and civilian populations, as well as to ward off external competition for labor and resources in a territory. These day-to-day social control mechanisms implies that the violence against civilians had a micro-order of organizational aims and justifications different from the professed causes of revolutionary violence enunciated in official documents and speeches (see Kalyvas 2006, 3ff., on the distinction between the macro-level causes versus the micro-level patterns of violence in the logic of civil war). The Sierra Leonean civil war provides a powerful case of this organizational pattern of violence against civilians. The RUF adopted in captured territories a language ideology that ascribed to civilians in certain territories a lack of loyalty and even resistance to the insurgency projects if someone spoke one of the local indigenous languages of the territory instead of Krio. Because of the multilingual and multi-ethnic nature of Sierra Leone, this language pattern could vary in different regions of the country controlled by the RUF. RUF members from the Mende group in the Eastern Province and RUF members from the Temne group in the Northern Province could use their indigenous language as well as Krio. This multilingual context created, in addition, the sociopolitical conditions for civilians to try to avoid punishment by establishing some solidarity with a soldier that shared their indigenous language and ethnic heritage. One of the cases examined below demonstrates that strategy. But, in the logic of language and violence in this civil war, a civilian and RUF soldier talking in an indigenous language can also be interpreted as colluding against the normative order of the regime. The civil war that broke out in March, 1991 with the incursion (across the border from Liberia) of the RUF led by Foday Sankoh (and supported by the rebel leader in Liberia, Charles Taylor) added a new chapter in the Sierra Leonean story of using linguistic markers to define social identities.11 In the 11  Background on the civil war, including debates over the organizational and institutional nature of the rebel insurgency, including the use of child soldiers as well as legal questions of war crimes, can be found in a variety of important studies, to mention only a few

238

Murphy

eleven year historical period of civil war, language usage was used to define friend or enemy in the logic of violence. The case analyses in a subsequent section demonstrate the sociolinguistic pattern of shifts of targets of violence based on the diacritics of disloyal communicative practices. The next section sets the historical stage by documenting the semiotics of metalinguistic evaluations and language ideologies of Krio (and indigenous languages) that supported sociopolitical structures of domination and subordination in Sierra Leone before the civil war.

Historical Sketch: Metalinguistic Evaluations of Domination and Subordination

The link between creole language and identity emerges in multilingual situations of contact through trade, migration, colonial political economies (including slavery), as well as modern nation-state ethnic politics, et cetera, in which language variation provides the diacritics of sociopolitical hierarchy (e.g., Ansaldo 2009; Hymes 1971; Knörr 2014; and Mufwene 2001).12 Historically, ideas about language often justify – within a cultural scheme of social worth, status, and even human intelligence – the subordinate position of those speaking creole, including racial justifications equating creole language speakers with ignorance, poverty, et cetera (e.g., DeCamp1977, 8; Bickerton 1977, 49).13 Creoles from colonial Sierra Leone, for example, faced such racial prejudices when they visited England, signified by their English being judged as incorrect and uncivilized (Spitzer 1974, 46).14 in book form: Abdullah (2004), Bolton (2012), Coulter (2009), Denov (2010), Gberie (2005), Hoffman (2011), Keen (2005), Kesall (2007), Peters (2011), Reno (1998), Richards (1996), and Shepler (2014). 12  I thank Asif Agha for introducing me to Umberto Ansaldo’s research. 13  Modern anthropology has challenged claims of racial and social inferiority based on erroneous ideas about language structure, which were often used for ideological purposes in racial and ethnic politics. Edward Sapir and his professor, Franz Boas, in the early decades of the twentieth century, for example, energetically challenged this prejudice. Sapir liked to demonstrate the formal, grammatical completeness and complexity of so-called primitive languages: “it is not absurd to say that both Hottentot and Eskimo possess all the formal apparatus that is required to serve as a matrix for the expression of Kant’s thought” (Sapir 1949 [1924], 154). 14  Ideologies of Krio language usage persist in different forms in contemporary Europe, as Maryns (2006) demonstrates for the constraints and limitations of using Krio in asylum hearings (see also Maryns [2000] study of Krio language in refugee camps).

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

239

Colonial history of creole language and identity reveal an important political and sociolinguistic pattern: namely, the ideological construction of colonial superiority was iterated in all the daily metalinguistic evaluations of language usage (e.g., ‘you don’t speak proper English’). The colonial history of Sierra Leone illustrates this pattern. Social hierarchies emerged not only in relation to the British colonists but among the settler groups arriving at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth – e.g., the Nova Scotian group of former American slaves claimed higher status than African recaptives brought to settle in Freetown. Later in the nineteenth century, however, differences between the various groups were still recognized (especially class differences), but the identity of ‘Creole’ served to categorize all the descendants of these different settler groups (Spitzer 1974, 12). And the Krio language thus emerged as a lingua franca – shaped over time by the linguistic (and social) process of mixing English and African languages into a new creolized form.15 Krio language and identity became a marker of social differentiation from the upcountry ‘natives,’ and even a marker of ‘civilized behavior,’ with British customs setting the standard to be emulated (see Ménard 2014, Chap. 5, on the social complexities of being ‘civilized’ in the hybrid mixture of indigeneity and Krio identity). Krio identity encoded signs that could be emulated by indigenous people seeking upward mobility (see Cohen 1981, on the performativity of Krio style, elite identity, and power). An up-country person, for example, “could ‘pass for Creole’ if she was willing to dress in European style, adopt a Creole name – that is, a European name – and cultivate certain Anglicized social manners” (Spitzer 1974, 13; see Little 1967 [1951], on this upward mobility process for the Mende indigenous group). The performative drama of identity construction, however, had its ambiguities and contradictions.16 While Creoles could look down on, and separate themselves from, the ‘primitive’ behavior of up-country natives, they were also acutely sensitive to their own “public activities which Europeans might label as ‘barbaric’” (Spitzer 1974, 22; see also Alie 1990 and Wyse 1989, on the political economy of Krio mobility in Sierra Leone). 15  Knörr (2014, 31; see also Knörr 2008) provides a concise definition of this linguistic creolization process: it is a “a process in the course of which the characteristics of different languages develops into a new common language that adopts ethnic reference and replaces the original ethnic languages and/or their respective references.” For these processes in Sierra Leone, see Knörr (2010). 16  Cohen’s (1981) ethnography of Krio identity construction as dramaturgy emphasizes the nonlinguistic signs of identity, e.g., dress, ceremonies, etc., while the focus of this paper are the linguistic – and metalinguistic signs – mediating identity construction.

240

Murphy

Two major ideological camps divided the Krio community over the question of Krio language. One group professed “the rejection of anything suggesting a ‘less civilized’ African past”; the other group “wished to preserve elements of African culture not in contradiction with their modernizing position” (Spitzer 1974, 138–39). For the first group, one of the ‘less civilized’ elements was the Krio language, which was considered an “inferior form of English” (Spitzer 1974, 139). Local newspapers and scholarly writing were filled with expressions of metalinguistic evaluations disparaging Krio language usage. One article in the Sierra Leone Weekly News in 1911, for example, listed numerous shortcomings: Krio represented a “‘poor metaphysical standard’ and was ‘unsatisfactory ethically’” (Spitzer 1974, 141). Krio was also inadequate for rhetoric and public speaking as one newspaper article argued in 1897, “an obstacle to the study of free and perfect expression of the mind in appropriate language,” and another argued in 1911, “almost a language of invectives,” too terse for rhetoric (Spitzer 1974, 140) – an obstacle, in other words, to the civilization process. One Krio school principle wrote in 1901 that Krio “is a standing menace and disgrace hindering not only educational development but also the growth of civilization in the colony” (Spitzer 1974, 141). Another eminent, and irate, teacher around 1887 referred to Krio as “broken English” forbidden at his school, with severe punishment to students who disobeyed (Spitzer 1974, 139–40). As resistance to colonialism began to grow in the twentieth century, political debates over Krio language changed as evidenced in newspaper articles and scholarly works of the 1930s and 40s. Krio began to be seen more as a national language integrating not only the various Creole groups but also uniting Creoles with the diverse ethnic groups in the Protectorate who also use Krio as a lingua franca (Spitzer 1974, 145). Metalinguistic judgments favored Krio over English as an expression of the national identity and spirit of the people. One notable advocate was Thomas Decker, a Krio, who felt that the Krio language better expressed the “innermost hopes and feelings of a people”; he contributed regular columns to one newspaper in which he translated poetry, plays, Biblical passages into Krio, and eventually wrote his column in Krio changing the column name from English to Krio – from “Relaxation Corner” to “Loosboddi Conna” (Spitzer 1974, 146). Even St. Peter in heaven spoke Krio, as depicted in one of Decker’s plays, while heavenly voices in the play criticized those who were too arrogant to speak their “modda tongue” (Spitzer 1974, 139). Of course, there was still resistance to this validation of Krio language. Some diehards were “scandalized by Decker’s passion for Krio,” with one newspaper contributor in 1939 interpreting “the agitation for the recognition of the

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

241

Creole vernacular as a plot to destroy the ability of Africans to speak English” (Spitzer 1974, 146). But the historical tide of independence from the colonial system as well as the rise of African nationalism supported the ideas and values about language espoused by Decker and his supporters. Spitzer (1974, 147) summarizes this historical change in the ideological debate over Krio by concluding that “the achievement of independence, therefore, the debate over Krio was dead.” Krio language, in other words, had become an accepted and valued index of African national character, identity, and heritage. But this claim of the end of language ideology battles with independence in 1961 was premature. New historical events at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, such as a civil war and postwar reconstruction, created a new social ecology of pressures on the meaning of multi-ethnic and multilingual variation – which, in turn, produced new language ideologies about the meaning of that variation. We can observe these changes in the new metalinguistic discourse communicating the meanings of Krio language usage as a matter of political loyalty or disloyalty – and, thus, life and death in the violent social ecology of a civil war. The three cases examined in the next section document this intricate relationship between a language ideology encompassing Krio as well as indigenous language usage legitimating a micro-logic of violence against civilians in a civil war.

Three Cases: Signs of Disloyalty

The metalinguistic discourse documented in the three cases below demonstrates the anxiety about language usage for military organizations controlling captured territories and populations. Violence, in these three cases, follows the cultural logic of language usage signifying unauthorized and potentially disloyal social bonds, gatherings, and conversations, rather than signifying ethnicity per se. Case A: Krio Language as Index of Political Loyalty Several dramatic examples of Krio language as an index of either revolutionary belonging or opposition are documented in Coulter’s (2009) study of the political fate of women in the Sierra Leone civil war. Coulter’s fieldwork took place largely in the northern province – in a Temne-speaking region of Sierra Leone. Krio functioned, in this context, as the operating language of the insurgency, and thus as an emblem of allegiance to its project. Conversely, speaking

242

Murphy

any indigenous language of this region meant potential disloyalty to the insurgency because it represented the communicative potential of secret planning against the insurgency. Coulter summarizes this language ideology of Krio versus indigenous languages based on her interviews with these women about the RUF organization controlling this region of Sierra Leone, with its headquarters in the large town of Makeni: The language mostly used by the rebels was Sierra Leone’s lingua franca, Krio. To speak another language could invoke death. I have mentioned in chapter 1 that the war was not fought along lines of ethnicity or ethnic belonging. The prohibition of local languages in a multilingual country had more to do with total control. Rebel groups consisted of people from many different ethnic backgrounds, and of people who did not always know the language of the area they operated in. Therefore Krio was given preeminence, as almost everyone knew it. Coulter 2009, 117

This summary does not include all the regional variation in the complex landscape of languages across the geographical range of insurgency-held territories in this civil war – e.g., Mende speakers recruited and abducted after the original RUF invasion across from Ivory Coast into the eastern and southern Mende-speaking regions. But it points to the general social fact that language variation had political meaning, which transcended ethnic identity. Language ideology as a form of social control characterized a political culture of heightened concern about civilians plotting and planning by using a language less familiar to those in authority: “Most informants also explained how their abductors suspected them of making plans to escape or plotting against them if they were speaking in their native tongue” (Coulter 2009, 117). These suspicions (and accusations) were articulated in metalinguistic critiques used by the rebels to warn and punish women. Women abducted for sexual services (called ‘bush wives’), domestic labor, and even combat duty were very careful about not being caught using their indigenous language. Women captured in the war were prime suspects of disloyalty and plotting to escape the ‘liberated territory’ because of the friendships they developed with other women, which indexed bonds and belonging beyond those of allegiance to the insurgency. ‘Talking in their own language’ with other women was interpreted as a sign of those special allegiances. Coulter describes this worry as articulated by one of these women, Aminata, who was abducted by the RUF:

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

243

Aminata told me that they were not encouraged to make friends, and that she had no friends apart from the girl who saved her; still, even they would not talk to each other in their own language in the presence of others because of the risk of punishment. Coulter 2009, 117–18

These examples demonstrate that the linguistic habitus of friendship is “mediated largely by metalinguistic processes, i.e., by discursive events that typify and assign values to speech” (to borrow Agha’s [2007, 229] phrase in his critique of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as automatic, nondiscursive, and unreflexive behavior). In this civil war, metalinguistic processes were used to redefine and explicitly sanction a linguistic habitus of friendship among these women. Case B: Krio Language as Index of Political Disloyalty The civil defense forces – called the Kamajors – in the Mende areas of the civil war often followed a reverse ideological calculus of language usage, namely, that those who spoke only Krio were probably loyal to the rebel insurgency and thus disloyal to the civil defense militia. Comments from an interview carried out by the anthropologist, Anne Menzel, with a young Mende man in the eastern region of the country clarifies the language ideology as shaping the logic of violence followed by the Kamajors: The thing was that the Kamajors were not able to distinguish civilians from rebels. And the Nigerians, who had come to help, had the same problem. So they just distinguished by who was able to at least speak a little Mende. They expected like … let’s say you are Temne, but you have lived here for some time, you will be able to greet in Mende and such things. You will be able to explain … because the typical Mende man who joined the Kamajors had been living in his village and didn’t speak Krio. That was the problem. They didn’t kill people for the reason that they didn’t speak their language; they just used this to distinguish. Anne Menzel, personal communication; from an interview she recorded in Bo Town, Sierra Leone, April 200917

The ability to speak Mende indexed local allegiance and loyalty – even if you also could speak Krio or another ethnic language. Speaking only Krio (or only Temne), however, meant you were an outsider to the community, and indexed a potential lack of loyalty and commitment to the community. 17  I thank Dr. Anne Menzel for sharing this fieldwork material.

244

Murphy

The Kamajors used this language ideology ‘to distinguish’ the enemy – and to decide who deserved to be killed. The ideological calculus rested on a more subtle sociolinguistic equation than linking ethnic language to enemy ethnic group – as demonstrated by the metalinguistic data about the political meaning of being able to ‘greet in Mende’ and ‘explain’ oneself in Mende versus only being able to speak Krio (or Temne).

Case C: Indigenous Language as Index of Social Bond with Rebel Soldier For civilians in civil wars one desperate strategy in situations of violence is to create a special social bond with a soldier who might provide some protection from the violent predations of other soldiers in the group. Coulter’s (2009) book on girls and women abducted to become ‘bush wives’ of RUF soldiers documented the related strategy of captured women manoeuvring to become the ‘bush wife’ of a powerful commander in order to secure his protection from the sexual predations of other soldiers in the rebel camp. The first case above portrayed the constant vulnerability captured women faced in rebel camps in which speaking their indigenous language together rather than the common Krio lingua franca of the rebel organization could mean suspicion and punishment for planning and plotting in secret against the rebel group. In this final case, indigenous ethnic language usage plays a different role, namely indexing social ties between civilian and soldier, a social bond outside the control of the rebel regime. The young woman in this case, Mariatu Kamara, desperately tried the strategy of using her indigenous language of Temne as a cultural resource for creating a special social relationship with one of the boy soldiers she heard speaking this language when RUF rebels attacked her village in the northern Temne region, near the town of Port Loko. She describes this attack and its violence against the villagers in her memoir of the civil war (Kamara 2008). Although many villagers were killed, she was captured. Then she was told she was free to go. An older rebel soldier, however, decided that her hands should be amputated before she was released. He commanded three boy soldiers to take her away and amputate her hands. The older soldier asked her to make a decision about the style of amputation: “‘You must choose a punishment before you leave,’ he said …‘Which hand do you want to lose first?’” (Kamara 2008, 39). Then the three soldiers took her to a big rock to carry out the amputation. She pleaded with one of the boy soldiers because she had heard him speak her indigenous language of Temne while other rebels had spoken Krio. She reports the dialogue, and describes her desperate attempt to create a social bond that might save her from the amputation:

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

245

“Please, please, please don’t do this to me,” I begged one of the boys. “I am the same age as you. You speak Temne. So you might be from around here. We could have been cousins, had we lived in the same village. Maybe we can be friends.” “We’re not friends,” the boy scowled, pulling out his machete. “And we’re certainly not cousins.” Kamara 2008, 39–40

Mariatu invoked the metalinguistic argument of linking ethnic language to family and friendship. In contrast, the boy soldier’s discourse – as reported by Mariatu – formulated a different linkage, in which the nonverbal diacritic of amputated hands meant she was being punished for disloyalty to the rebel group by participating in the national election in support of the president (held in 1996). The boy soldier outlines a semiotic ideology of violent punishment for involvement in a recent national election, which the RUF opposed. “I like you,” I implored, trying to get on his good side. “Why do you want to hurt someone who likes you?” “Because I don’t want you to vote,” he said. One of the boys grabbed my right arm, and another stretched my hand over the flat part of the boulder. “If you are going to chop off my hands, please just kill me,” I begged them. “We’re not going to kill you,” one boy replied. “We want you to go to the president and show him what we did to you. You won’t be able to vote for him now. Ask the president to give you new hands.” Kamara 2008, 39–40

A person voted by putting marks on paper with her hands. Punishment followed an iconic logic: namely, the part of the body that carried out the act of betrayal, i.e., voting, becomes the target of punishment.18 The boy soldier’s metasemiotic (and metapragmatic) discourse interprets the disloyal meaning of voting as betrayal. In addition, his discourse about showing the amputated hand to the president and asking for a new hand is a form of mockery about the president’s powerless to protect civilians in contrast to the power of the rebel group to control and punish civilians. 18  Foucault (1995 [1975]) discusses this logic of punishment in his analysis of the public spectacle of punishment in eighteenth century France.

246

Murphy

Mariatu’s metalinguistic discourse about shared ethnic language and identity was a strategy to find some mercy in this civil war. But it didn’t work. Two boy soldiers held her while a third cut her two hands off – two attempts with the machete to cut the right hand, and three attempts for the left hand. As she fell to the ground, she records how the boy soldiers reacted to their violent deed of punishment: “I saw the rebel boys giving each other high-fives. I could hear them laughing. As my mind went dark, I remember asking myself: ‘What is a president?’” (Kamara 2008, 41). Her metasemiotic report of the boy soldiers’ gesture of high-fiving to congratulate themselves, and their act of laughing, provides an insight (from the victim’s point of view) into the meaning perpetrators gave to the violent act. The boy soldier’s metapragmatic discourse explaining the amputation as punishment for voting, or supporting the voting, was reinforced with the nonverbal behavior of mockery and satisfaction after the punishment. During this particular period of a national election, many of the civilian reports of what was said in scenes of violence document this widespread organizational project to punish civilians. It was a broad policy that swept up many civilians, like Mariatu, who may have known very little about presidential elections. The larger terroristic motive was to demonstrate the power represented by a military regime’s ability to carry out violence against civilians with impunity – “show him [the president] what we did to you.” The amputated limb became a diacritic of a disloyal citizen, and thus a threat to other civilians. Mariatu’s attempt to create a human social bond of ethnic solidarity with the boy soldier could not overcome the totalizing organizational power of a military regime, especially when child soldiers were trained and forced to carry out commands.

Conclusion and Theoretical Implications

Violence against civilians in Sierra Leonean civil war was justified by political ideologies (and metasemiotic typifications encoding those ideologies) about the meaning of diacritics of disloyalty – whether the disloyal acts were linguistic, like using an ethnic language to plan escape, or a non-linguistic act, like voting in a national election. Military organizations in civil war, in general, are preoccupied with civilian disloyalty, and must rely on coercive power to gain compliance from civilians in captured territories – through punishment or the threat and terror of punishment. The lower participants in an authoritarian organization, such as the civilians under military occupation, react to harsh social control in highly negative and alienated ways (see Etzioni 1961, on the

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

247

compliance theory of organizations). In the Sierra Leone civil war, the occupying military organizations were typically highly coercive in imposing control over civilians – leading to civilian alienation and disloyalty. The definition of ‘coercive power’ (in contrast to normative power and remunerative power) in compliance theory captures the empirical picture of this political logic of harsh social control and civilian alienation.19 Coercive power “rests on the application, or threat of application, of physical sanctions such as the infliction of pain, deformity, or death,” creating “frustration through restriction of movement” and frustration through the forceful “satisfaction of needs such as those for food, sex, comfort, and the like” (Etzioni 1961, 61). The expected effect of these frustrations is the alienation of civilians from the aims and violent means of the military organization. One manifestation of alienation is the civilian social practice of plotting together to escape the territory controlled by a military organization – and to create social bonds of support and assistance beyond the totalizing control of the regime. Language, of course, is a necessary means for making such plans and creating these social bonds, and is thus a threat to authoritarian regimes because it is a resource for forming secret collusions and resistance. This danger is compounded in multilingual situations when a military organization uses an operating language different from the local language of the community occupied. The military regime often fears the local ethnic language not because of primordial ethnic animosities, but because the language can be a practical tool of collusion and resistance – and disloyal behavior (see BrochDue 2005, on violence and social belonging). Metalinguistic discourse in civil war confirms the centrality of loyalty as a key political value in the authoritarian organization of the military regimes involved, and demonstrates that disloyalty is heavily sanctioned as a major political ‘sin’ against that military authority. Weber (1978, 1069 and 110–1109) theorized this relationship between the ideology of loyalty and the personalistic, authoritarian form of political organization, notably exemplified by that specific autocratic form of father-like ‘big man’ authority in patrimonial regimes.20 Disloyalty is viewed, in these regimes, as a form of filial ingratitude 19  Compliance theory has its intellectual roots in Weber’s model of types of legitimate domination and motives of compliance – e.g., domination is “based on the most diverse motives of compliance” (Weber 1978, 212), which includes the three types of normative commitment, economic rewards (and sanctions), and coercive force. 20  See Murphy’s (2003) application of Weber’s model of patrimonialism to the organizational role of child soldiers in the military regimes of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars.

248

Murphy

and disobedience – a violation of the total control of the father-like figure of personal authority (a role characteristic of military commanders’ relations with civilians, who were often referred to as ‘children’). Civilian reports of the metalinguistic discourse (i.e., reported speech) used to justify the violence they experienced in the civil war demonstrates that this violence had a different micro-order of everyday social practice than the professed causes of revolutionary violence enunciated in official documents and speeches. The relationship between macro- and micro-levels of identity and violence can be theorized by clarifying the semiotic relation between the diacritics of identity in social context and the macro-social ideological partitioning of identities in institutions and organizations, as well as the metalinguistic and metapragmatic construals of those diacritics in context (see Silverstein 1993, on metapragmatic processes). This relationship between the macro-partitioning of social identities and the micro-processes of enacting and construing diacritics of identity points to a challenge for postwar social reconstruction in Sierra Leone: namely, building a national imaginary of social belonging and citizenship by reframing the social meanings of language variation in a multilingual and multiethnic society.21 Just as the entrepreneurs of violence during the civil war used language to construct social conflict through the diacritics of difference, the entrepreneurs of peace in the post-war public sphere have an opportunity to shape a new ideological and indexical order of peaceful and valued social difference and sameness. Acknowledgements I thank Jacqueline Knörr and Trajano Wilson Filho for convening a conference on creole language and identity, which stimulated me to address in my research on violence against civilians the question of language ideologies of violence. I also want to thank the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany for hosting and sponsoring this conference in October, 2014. 21  Knörr (2010) analyses the potentiality of Krio identity in postwar Sierra Leone as a cultural resource for transethnic loyalties and identifications replacing the ethnogenesis of sociopolitical separation. Trajano Filho (2010) analyses a similar sociopolitical process of creating a national imaginary as a Creole project in Guinea-Bissau. See also Arbaugh (2014), on the sociolinguistics and politics of multilingualism in Africa. For the case of redefining kinship tropes of ‘big men’ patronage and the moral economy of social reciprocity in postwar national discourse in Sierra Leone, see Murphy (2017).

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

249

References Abdullah, I., ed. 2004. Between Democracy and Terror: The Sierra Leone Civil War. Dakar: CODESRIA. Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alie, J.A.D. 1990. A New History of Sierra Leone. London: Macmillan. Ansaldo, U. 2009. Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Ansaldo, U., and S. Matthews. 2007. “Deconstructing Creole: The Rationale.” In Deconstructing Creole, edited by U. Ansaldo, S. Matthews, and L. Lim, 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Arbaugh, E. 2014. State Building and Multilingual Education in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bickerton, D. 1977. “Pidginization and Creolization: Language Acquisition and Language Universals.” In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, edited by A. Valdman, 49–69. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Blommaert, J., ed. 1999. “The Debate is Open.” In Language Ideological Debates, edited by J. Blommaert, 2–38. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Blommaert, J. 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bolton, C. 2012. I Did It to Save My Life: Love and Survival in Sierra Leone. Berkeley: University of California Press. Broch-Due, V., ed. 2005. Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Post-Colonial Africa. London: Routledge. Cohen, A. 1981. The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coulter, C. 2009. Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Denov, M. 2010. Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeCamp, D. 1977. “The Development of Pidgin and Creole Studies.” In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, edited by A. Valdman, 3–20. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Etzioni, A. 1961. “A Basis for Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations.” In A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations, edited by A. Etzioni, 59–76. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Ferme, M.C., and D. Hoffman. 2004. “Hunter Militias and the International Human Rights Discourse in Sierra Leone and Beyond.” Africa Today 50(4): 73–95. Foucault, M. 1995 [1975]. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.

250

Murphy

Gberie, L. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Goffman, E. 1961. Asylums: Essay on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books. Gumperz, J.J. 1982. Language and Social Identity. Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoffman, D. 2007. “The Meaning of a Militia: Understanding the Civil Defence Forces of Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 106(425): 639–62. Hoffman, D. 2011. The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Durham: Duke University Press. Hymes, D. ed. 1971. Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jakobson, R. 1977. “A Few Remarks on Peirce, a Pathfinder in the Science of Language.” Modern Language Notes 92(5): 1026–32. Kaldor, M. 2006. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kamara, M. with S. McClelland. 2008. The Bite of the Mango. Toronto: Annick Press. Kalyvas, A. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keane, W. 2003. “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.” Language and Communication 23: 409–25. Keen, D. 2005. Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford: James Currey. Kelsall, T. 2007. Culture under Cross-Examination: International Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knörr, J. 2008. “Towards Conceptualizing Creolization and Creoleness.” Working Paper No. 100. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Knörr, J. 2010. “Out of Hiding? Strategies of Empowering the Past in the Reconstruction of Krio Identity.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W.Trajano Filho, 205–28. Leiden: Brill. Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. Kroskrity, P., ed. 2000. Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Little, K. 1967[1951]. The Mende of Sierra Leone: a West African People in Transition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Maryns, K. 2000. English in Sierra Leone: A Sociolinguistic Investigation. Ghent: Ghent University Press. Maryns, K. 2006. The Asylum Seeker: Language in the Belgian Asylum Procedure. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.

Krio Identity and Violence: Language Ideologies

251

Ménard, A. 2014. “Beyond Autochthony Discourses: Sherbro Identity and the (Re-)Construction of Social and National Cohesion in Sierra Leone.” PhD diss., Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Mufwene, S.S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, W.P. 2003. “Military Patrimonialism and Child Soldier Clientalism in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean Civil Wars.” African Studies Review 46: 61–87. Murphy, W.P. 2017. “Kinship Tropes as Critique of Patronage in Postwar Sierra Leone.” In Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies, edited by C. Højbjerg, J. Knörr and W.P. Murphy, 99–122. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Peters, K. 2011. War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Peirce, C.S. 1985[1897–1903]. “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs.” In Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology, edited by R.E. Innis, 4–23. Loomington: Indiana University Press. Reno, W. 1998. Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Richards, P. 1996. Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone. London: James Currey. Sapir, E. 1949[1924]. “The Grammarian and His Language.” In Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality, edited by D.G. Mandelbaum, 150–59. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scherer, K.R., and H. Giles, eds. 1979. Social Markers in Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, B., K. Woolard, and P. Kroskrity, eds. 1998. Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schlee, G. 1989. Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya. Manchester: Manchester University Press for the International African Institute. Schlee, G., ed. 2002. Imagined Differences: Hatred and the Construction of Identity. Münster: LIT. Sen, A. 2006. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York: W.W. Norton. Shepler, S. 2014. Childhood Deployed: Remaking Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone. New York: New York University Press. Simmel, G. 1950[1908]. “The Secret and the Secret Society.” In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by K.H. Wolff, 305–76. New York: Free Press. Silverstein, M. 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description.” In Meaning in Anthropology, edited by K. Basso and H.A. Selby, 33–58. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Silverstein, M. 1993. “Metapragmatic Discourse and Metapragmatic Function.” In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, edited by J.A. Lucy, 33–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

252

Murphy

Spitzer, L. 1974. The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Trajano Filho, W. 2010. “The Creole Idea of Nation and Its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 157–83. Leiden: Brill. Weber, M. 1978. Economy and Society, 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wyse, A. 1989. The Krio of Sierra Leone: an Interpretive History. London: C. Hurst.

Chapter 13

Indexing Alterity: The Performance of Language in Processes of Social Differentiation in Postwar Liberia Maarten Bedert Introduction In this chapter, I analyze the use of Liberian English in processes of social differentiation amongst the Dan in postwar Liberia. I argue that language use serves as an act of identity and that people are able to articulate multiple identities within a particular context as they shift between languages. This dynamic is illustrated with reference to the opposition between country and kwii semiotic registers. A semiotic register here is understood as a collection of performable signs recognized by a sociohistoric community (Agha 2007). Language is only one of a series of signs that can be invoked to index a register. Other examples include, for instance, dress style, occupation, religion, food habits,1 et cetera. Kwii is an emic notion that has its origins in the Kru language family but has, over time, come to be used in English as well as in other African languages. It is most commonly translated as denoting ‘civilization’ and is opposed to the country semiotic register. Analytically these notions can be interpreted as opposing modernity to tradition respectively. In this chapter I demonstrate how meaning attributed to these registers is expressed through language use in moments of interaction. In a context where multilingualism is the norm, the choice for a particular language serves as a way to articulate social differentiation and belonging. The distinction between kwii and country is an old one and precedes the establishment of the Liberian state in the early nineteenth century (Fairhead et al. 2003; Tonkin 1981). The grounds on which differentiation is based are not unique in the Liberian or even the West African context but occur in many contexts characterized by diversity and migration furthered by the experience of colonialism (Kohl 2010). Kwii is associated with modernity in that it stands 1  In Dan, a differentiation is made between ‘civilized clothes’ (Kwii sɔ) and ‘traditional attire’ (danpö sɔ, litt: Dan speaking clothes). In terms of food, a clear distinction is being maintained between so-called ‘country rice’ and ‘imported rice.’

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_014

254

Bedert

for being educated, familiarity with state bureaucracy, having access to salaried jobs, living in the city, wearing western-style clothing, attending Christian church and, not in the least, the ability to speak English. The country semiotic register stands for the opposite, including, subsistence farming as a mode of production, speaking a ‘dialect,’2 wearing traditional cloths and adhering to one of the many local, ‘indigenous’ religions. These idioms have come under scrutiny following the episodes of violence that have characterized Liberia and its neighboring countries until the early twenty-first century as the cause for the outbreak of the civil war (1989–2003) has been partially attributed to power abuses by so-called kwii members of society (Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report 2009, 300). In the postwar context, the question of belonging and social status is particularly urgent and these idioms prove resilient. The use of English as an index of kwii-ness and Dan as an index of countryness in moments of interaction serves as one way through which the distinction between both registers continues to be being reproduced. In this way, the organization of social heteroglossia, the coexistence of multiple languages or variants of one language each with their own social status, into registers and individual repertoires serves as a way to deal with the question of otherness (Hastings and Manning 2004, 301). Rather than as a property of an individual, the meaning ascribed to a language is the outcome of performances that are considered ‘acts of identity’ (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). The ethnographic examples presented here result from over seventeen months of fieldwork in Nimba County, Northwestern Liberia. In the districts bordering Ivory Coast and Guinea, Dan speakers3 claim to be owners of the land. From their firstcomer status, they derive political authority over strangers who arrived later. The Dan language is spoken in Liberia as well as in Ivory Coast. It belongs to the Southern branch of the Mande language family.4 The social and linguistic variation that constitutes the diversity in this region is the result of long term historical patterns of migration and interaction but also, not in the least, due to increased flows of people that have intensified during, as well as in the aftermath of the civil war. From the end of the nineteenth 2  In Liberia, so-called ‘African’ languages are referred to as dialects. 3  In English people refer to the Dan with the label ‘Gio’ and as speakers of the ‘Gio language’ (cf. Holsoe and Lauer 1976). In the Dan language, no ethnonym is used. When speaking Dan, people will refer to themselves as adanpömika (lit. I am a Dan speaking person, pl. danpömenu). In making this differentiation, thus, either in English or in Dan between people index a wholly different register linked to ethnic identities and modern citizenship. 4  For some historical and linguistic details, see the work of Valentin Vydrin (2004, 2005, 2007, 2009).

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

255

century, Manding traders have traveled into the forest region and gradually settled among the Dan from the early twentieth century (Ford 1990, 52). The Americo-Liberian settlers have also had significant influence as they introduced the state structures into the interior following the pacification between 1912 and 1918 (ibid., 167–72). Members of neighboring communities have, in the past and in more recent years passed through and settled. In short, the incorporation of strangers based on the rights of the first settler, socially and linguistically, is a key component of the political culture among the Dan, as well as elsewhere in the region (Rodney 1980).

The Changing Meaning of English and the Kwii Semiotic Register

To understand how the shift between Dan and English in interaction serves as a shift between two semiotic registers, it is necessary to consider how these registers emerged, historically. The attribution of meaning and value to both kwii and country is the outcome of historical processes that are referred to as processes of enregisterment (Agha 2003; Newell 2009). A closer look at these historical processes of enregisterment reveals how kwii has turned from a naturalist and racist idea of differentiation into a more inclusive cultural construct. This change in meaning is important because it demonstrates how English as an index of kwii-ness has changed from being an imported elements by strangers to something that people have made their own. The notion of civilization is often associated with the Americo-Liberians who established the Liberian State. The kwii semiotic register which I take as a broader cultural notion that encompasses the notion of civilization actually precedes the establishment of the Liberian state. Mary Moran (1990) has described in detail how the Glebo people around Cape Palmas in the southeast of the country had been in touch with Portuguese traders since the fifteenth century. These were later succeeded by Dutch, French and English traders and explorers. In these encounters, Krumen especially, as crew working the ships in the local ports but later also as migrant laborers, played an important role in the sharing of experiences and the exchange of goods and ideas amongst local population groups (Brooks 1972; Moran 1990, 43). They already used the notion of kwii to indicate differences between colonists and natives. The notion of kwii came to be associated with settlers and state officials only after the establishment of the Liberian state by freed slaves in 1847. As part of a possible solution to problems posed by the abolition of slavery, abolitionists in the US came up with the idea of a ‘return to Africa’ policy (Fairhead et al. 2003; Liebenow 1969). They established the American Colonization Society (ACS) in

256

Bedert

1816 and set out to acquire land which would be used to repatriate the freed slaves. This colonization mission was carried out under the general banner of ‘civilization and Christianity,’ the two pillars that were used to express the intentions of the settlers. Tonkin (1981, 307) remarks how the vocabulary used by the ACS officers used in official reports, despite their ‘noble intentions,’ very much reflects a double standards that reflects the racist and differentiated attitude towards their African and native counterparts (cf., Akpan 1973, for a more general discussion of the importance of race in early African nationalism, see Appiah 1990). Settlers who returned to Africa had been exposed to scientific racism in the US and their idea of civilization and distinction was based on the idea of racial segregation. The other way around, Africans in the interior would also refer to the settlers as ‘white’ in the same way that Mandingo traders in the north were considered to be white.5 The Amercio-Liberian explorers into the interior were looking for mythical Mandingo places as these peoples were believed, by the settlers, to be superior to the ‘primitive’ forest peoples (Fairhead et al. 2003, 29–30). Some key signs associated with civilization as envisioned by the settlers are, up till today, framed in a rigid, clear-cut opposition to country signs. Adherence to a Christian church or another monotheistic religion served as an important sign through which civilization was articulated. Education was a second aspect of being civilized. Here too, missionaries and the church played an important role as they linked education to conversion. The settler state managed to stay in place over a hundred years and installed a hegemonic regime that saw these measures implemented and imposed on the indigenous population. The coup d’état in 1980 made an end to the AmericoLiberian rule and the one-party state. As a minority, the original settlers have since lost the monopoly over economic and political power. In much of the interior of Liberia, the label Congoe people is more often used than Americo-Liberian to refer to the initial settlers. This notion originally referred to the recaptives of slave ships who were resettled on the Liberian coast without ever having reached the US. Today, the notion has outgrown its colonial legacy and has come to stand for an elusive urban elite of divergent backgrounds. Kwii is now frequently associated with this notion of Congoe people. It stands for, as mentioned before, the ability to speak English, having access to the civil service, a salaried job or widespread networks through trading activities, and with education and Christianity all of which correspond to 5  Kwii is also used in Dan to refer to ‘white person.’ Kwii puu literally means white civilized and explains the reference between the two concepts. The identification of Africans as ‘white’ is not uncommon. Bruner (2004) mentions how the Ghanaians use the term obruni to refer to Europeans and Americans alike, regardless of their skin color.

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

257

an aspired membership in the modern world (Ferguson 2002). Despite the significance of these social and political changes, there is a continuity in the signs that are indexes through which differentiation and distinction is articulated. Rather than imitation or mimicry though, these signs have become people’s own in the postcolonial era. This also counts for the English language as it is used throughout Liberia. English as an Index of the Kwii Semiotic Register Through historical processes of enregisterment, English has become one of the many ‘African’ languages in Liberia rather than a mimicked import from the outside by Americo-Liberian settlers. In fact, like the notion of kwii, the English language has been around since before the arrival of the Americo-Liberians (Singler 1989, 1997). In 1826 already, Jehudi Ashmun, missionary and governor of Liberia noted how “very many in all the maritime tribes, speak a corruption of the English language” (quoted in Singler 1976–1977, 75). From the very start though, language and language description have been important aspects of the state’s civilization mission outlined above. For instance, the speech given by Alexander Crummell celebrating Liberian independence in 1860 was devoted to the issue of “English in Liberia” and has become an often quoted exponent of the views pertaining to English and civilization. In that address, he claimed that: The exile of our fathers from their African homes to America, had given us, their children, at least this one item of compensation, namely, the possession of the anglo-saxon tongue; that this language put us in a position which none other on the globe could give us: and that it was impossible to estimate too highly the prerogatives and the elevation the Almighty bestowed upon us, in our having as our own, the speech of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Milton and Wordsworth, of Bacon and Burke, of Franklin and Webster. Crummell 2005, 132

With this statement he glorifies the English language over any other in Africa. He sees it as part of his mission to spread it amongst the Africans as a means to redeem them from backwardness. He notices how, “within a period of thirty years, thousands of heathen children have been placed under the guardianship of our settlers. Many of these have forgotten their native tongue and know now the English language as their language” (ibid., 134, emphasis in original). With ‘guardianship,’ Crummel mentions one of the main tactics through which civilization was achieved, namely fosterage. In this practice, country people

258

Bedert

from the interior are sent to the urban areas or to sociopolitical patrons in order to be immersed in a kwii culture so (Bledsoe 1990; Trajano Filho 1998, 448–57). Other means of transferring this language are through trade relations and by education in which missionaries have been playing an important role in Liberia. As the notion of kwii has moved from a racialist, evolutionary concept to a cultural construct, English has moved from being the language of the settler to an African language of which multiple varieties have developed. Linguists like Singler (1981, 1997) and Holm (1989) argues that English has passed through several episodes of de- and re-creolization. In linking language to identity, Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985, 187–91) argue against this type of linear, evolutionary view of language as many of these variations continue to exist next to one another. They lament the fact that languages rather than people are at the center of analysis. Instead they propose that, despite systemic constraints (ibid., 182), “the individual creates for himself the patterns of his linguistic behaviour so as to resemble those of the group or groups with which from time to time he wishes to be associated” (ibid., 181). The use of English thus is not a matter of mimicry or imitation but becomes a cultural asset that so-called ‘natives’ consider their own. When Crummel speaks of English in Liberia, he refers to what has been made into a standardized version of English. This variant became institutionalized with the foundation of the Liberian Herald newspaper in 1926. In reports, quotes in ‘Liberian English’ were written in a different orthography than ‘standard English’ (Singler 1976–1977). Breitborde notices how the attitude towards standard English language changed rapidly in the aftermath of the coup in 1980 that made an end to the Americo-Liberian rule. Early radio broadcasts by Samuel K. Doe, leader of that coup that year, “evoked critical comments about his use of non-acrolectal speech and speculation about his lack of proficiency in [Liberian Standard English]” (Breitborde 1988, 20). On radio broadcasts today, English is still ‘broken down.’ The news is broadcast, for instance, both in ‘English’ and in ‘Liberian English’ to make it comprehensible for a broader listening audience. Linguists have attempted to categorize and label these different varieties of English spoken throughout Liberia (Singler 1976–1977, 1981) by recreating their various historical trajectories.6 These labels in and off themselves of course are infused with socially marked values in which one is ranked higher than the other. In practice, they are used to indicate difference and variation in moments of interaction. 6  For an overview of the different variations of English(es) in Liberia, see Hancock (1974), Singler (1997).

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia



259

Two Ethnographic Examples: A Land Dispute Settlement and an Inauguration Ceremony

The following ethnographic examples deal with two issues that figure prominently in the postwar literature namely land disputes and the legitimacy of local state representatives. First, as a result of the war (1989–2003), land disputes continue to be perceived as a threat to security. Claims to land are part of autochthony discourses in which ownership is derived from being the first settler in a territory. Competing autochthony claims are said to be potential causes for future conflict (Højbjerg 2009, 2010; Munive 2010). Second, within the context of postwar reconstruction, signs associated with kwii and country registers coexist and are instrumentalized to legitimate political leadership. State actors and actions, which are commonly associated with kwii signs, are constantly being scrutinized and challenged for political ends by idioms based on kinship and territory. The use of either English or Dan as a language serve as a way to further these political claims as the ethnographic examples will show. In moments of interaction, the use of language is seen as an act of identity in which people reveal or reinforce their belonging to a particular group (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). Even though invoking English happens at the level of everyday interaction, the two examples presented here focus on formalized and ceremonial language. The settlement of a land dispute and the inauguration ceremony of a local state official are two occasions within which these languages are employed. They are recognized as such because they take on a particular narrative structure to start with (Fabian 1991). In this regard, the crossing between registers by switching between languages carries potentially even more weight since they also challenge the genred speech and narrative structures that are associated with the occasions at hand (cf., Goffman 1974). Land Dispute and the Logic of Articulating Belonging Since the end of the war, land disputes continue to cause tension between individuals and groups. In determining who has the right to land, the question of belonging is turned into a legal matter. In Liberia, two legal frameworks within which belonging can be articulated exist next to each other. One is based on customary claims relying on kinship, descent and being the first settler, the other is based on statutory claims and deals with government documentation and recognition. In settling land disputes, as the examples will show, both frameworks are invoked to legitimize claims. Rather than the settlement of the dispute in this case, I am interested in the hearings that led to a settlement and the ways in which these develop discursively. A detailed analysis of the signs that are invoked at these hearings and the context within which they are

260

Bedert

utilized tell us something about the organization of experiences as kwii or as country amongst participants. The case at hand concerned a dispute between two families who quarreled over the boundary demarcating their adjacent plots. The town chief had been dealing with the issue but was unable to reach an acceptable solution for the parties involved. With an administrative reach that encompassed the town and the clan level, the District Superintendent was brought in hoping to surpass local grievances and to bring in a more administrative approach. The day of the meeting, as inhabitants of the town walked in and out of the meeting hall, the two parties involved were called to come forward. The accused was said to have taken a piece of land and of removing farmers from it without any authorization. Upon hearing this claim, the Superintendent expressed his concern that the case should be resolved in this customary setting, rather than taking it forward, i.e., going to court, presumably because this would be perceived as a key sign that indexes kwii-ness. Many perceived this case to be settled in a ‘traditional’ way. As the presiding authority, the Superintendent is considered by many to embody the country register. As a descendant from a warrior who held off the Americo-Liberian settlers in their attempts at pacification, he is seen as an autochthonous and prominent Dan native speaker. His political career started when he was called back to his home district by his family while he was working in Monrovia as a police officer. Since that time, almost thirty-five years ago, he has served in chieftaincy positions at various levels, most of these elected by the people. Nevertheless, in his current capacity as District Superintendent, he is an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The proceedings of the case he presided moreover resembled a court case with a division between the plaintiff and a defendant and the audience physically divided in two camps in their seating arrangements. The plaintiffs stated how, back in 2006, this same case was brought before the town chief. The latter prepared a ‘tribal certificate,’7 stipulating the boundaries of the land and the legal ownership. The plaintiff never recognized this certificate as they believed the chief to be biased. This certificate was presented by the defendants to the Superintendent. The scope of the case was widened when the plaintiffs stood up and mentioned that the land had been in the hands of his family and the citizens of his town for generations. People from the neighboring town (i.e., the accused) 7  Because of the dual legal standard (customary and statutory), land titles are not always straightforward. Official deeds need to be signed by the President in order to be valid. A tribal certificate is usually signed by the chief who is responsible and by several elders and local authorities as witnesses who approve of the transaction.

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

261

are said to be their bɛa (cousins) so, since before the war they allowed them to use a portion of the land but it never belonged to them. At this time, the plaintiffs turned to the landlord-stranger idiom which is used all over West Africa in order to assess ownership of land based on the firstcomer status.8 More than land, though, this idiom is also, more generally, used as a customary strategy to articulate belonging based on matrilateral exchange. This country way of articulating belonging is contrasted to the kwii tribal certificate that was prepared. As cousins or as strangers, they never had the right to prepare legal documentation for the land. This dynamic speaks to the basis for argumentation. However, the use of the Dan language is key to pursue this line of argumentation. After the opening statements, the two parties were asked to put together their list of witnesses. They came up with fifteen persons in total, eight to testify on behalf of the plaintiffs and seven on behalf of the accused. All fifteen witnesses were called to the front and a bible was brought to the Superintendent. Again, the bible here serves as a key sign that indexes kwii-ness as Christianity was one of the main incentives of the civilization mission initiated by the Americo-Liberian settlers. He read out, in English, a section on speaking the truth and all fifteen witnesses swore an oath by putting their tongue on the bible. The superintendent questioned all of the witnesses. Up till the end of the questioning, the whole procedure was conducted in Dan. Moreover, all the witnesses called invoked the landlord-stranger idiom as a legitimate way to claim ownership over the land. In other words, even though the proceedings resembled very closely that of a kwii court proceeding, speaking Dan and referring to matrilateral reciprocity were two crucial signs that serve as an index of the country semiotic register. When the hearings were over, another spin was given to the procedure when the Superintendent asked to see the certificate that was prepared. After examining the document for a few minutes, he became furious and exclaimed in English: “this is not even a document.” By switching to English, he switched registers and conducted a rant that lasted for several minutes. He did not only change language but also his composure. As he talked, he stood up, raised his voice and opened his eyes wide. With these changes, several shifts took place. The Superintendent distanced himself from the parties involved in the dispute and addressed very explicitly and exclusively his fellow colleagues working for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The latter consisted of town and clan chiefs. Although they are not paid by the ministry directly, their activities 8  On the division between landlords and strangers, see Murphy and Bledsoe (1987), Højbjerg (1999), Knörr and Trajano Filho (2010).

262

Bedert

fall under the purview of the Superintendent to whom they are accountable. He turned away from the association with ‘traditional’ authorities that many of the citizens have. In doing so, he turned his back to the landlord-stranger idiom and instead questioned signs linked with kwii-ness. One of these concerned literacy which he clearly expects from state officials. He lamented the opaque formulation of the measurements and demarcations of the disputed land. Moreover, the paper was written by the town chief and, according to statutory rules, land claims have to go through the clan chief’s office. In his fury, he called the town chief who prepared the documents and fined him 2,500 LD.9 If he could not produce this fine, he would go to jail until somebody would pay for him. He then turned back to the two parties involved in the conflict and apologized by stating that they were misled by their administration. In other words, by switching to English he left the land dispute that was being discussed and rather opened up a new case dealing with the question of governance by the local authorities. Summarizing the land dispute settlement, two distinctive phases can be identified based on the languages used. In a first phase, actors try to legitimize their right to land. The plaintiffs, the witnesses and the local authorities all rely on the Dan language and the idiom of landlord-stranger reciprocity to give weight to their claims. Within this context, the tribal certificate prepared by the accused proves of little value. As a document that represents a statutory legal framework, it is hardly recognized in these proceedings. The signs associated with the country register outweigh those of the kwii register. The second phase starts with the superintendent examining the tribal certificate. He distances himself from the land dispute and utilizes the document in order to discipline his administrative subordinates. By speaking English in this moment, he explicitly diverts from his mediating role between the disputing parties and asserts his political superiority within the local administrative network. From the moment he starts speaking English, the Superintendent shifts the political orientation. He changes from being an adjudicator who is perceived to be Dan, as the case he presides over is presented as a country matter, to a civil servant criticizing his subordinates which requires him to be kwii. His actions have no bearing on the eventual outcome case and reflect on his own person and position more than on any of the other parties present in this meeting. By initially going along with the country way in which the case was being negotiated, he was able to identify with his subjects and to legitimate his presence as a judge in this forum. As the position of Superintendent is the highest administrative position at this level and is appointed by the president. 9  Roughly €33.

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

263

This link, whether real or administratively, with the national elite allows him to also distance himself from his subordinates. The use of the bible in swearing the oath, speaking English, and the written declaration of land demarcations are key signs associated with a state bureaucracy and with monotheist religion that constitute the kwii semiotic register. By convincingly demonstrating knowledge of and mastery over these signs, the Superintendent is able to distinguish himself and to reinforce his political leadership position. Performing Social Distinction at an Inauguration Ceremony Similar to the double legal standard in land dispute cases, local authorities are divided between customary positions and statutory ones. As the result of historical processes of governing the Liberian Hinterland, the line between statutory and customary authorities is often a thin one and overlaps. The description of the inauguration ceremony of a new township commissioner in a small town along the Ivorian border crossing illustrates this. At this occasion, the newly appointed commissioner shifts between the kwii and country semiotic registers in order to articulate belonging in two divergent ways. On the one hand he stresses his belonging to a network of state officials, connections to the president and to national leadership while on the other hand, he stresses his local integration by pointing out his ritual connection to the land. The newly appointed commissioner is an ambiguous figure in both his home town and in the district. This ambiguity results from his past. His father used to work as a soldier with the Liberian Frontier Force.10 He later became the first tax collector at the border crossing and a representative to the national parliament. As a result, the commissioner is part of a family that has built a name and a reputation that relies on the signs associated with the kwii register. Township Commissioner is one of the many positions that still depend on appointment by the President. Even though the Senators and Representatives in the Parliament are consulted before the appointment is made, these positions exists by the grace of the President.11 Soon after his appointment, opposition from the villagers started being voiced who rejected him based on

10  The Liberian Frontier Force is the predecessor to the Armed Forces of Liberian and was used to pacify the Liberian Hinterland in the early twentieth century. It was composed of a mix of foreign and ‘Liberian’ fighters (Akingbade 1978; Akpan 1973). 11  During Fieldwork, a decentralization policy was introduced. In the years to come, more power and autonomy would be transferred to the counties and a more democratic procedure should be put in place in order to replace these appointments with elected positions.

264

Bedert

an ongoing land dispute.12 As a tax collector, the commissioner’s father had obtained over fifty acres of land by virtue of then President Tubman. His son still has the deed for this land to prove his ownership. It took the involvement of the Superintendent and the County Authority, both appointed by and members of the ruling Unity Party of the President, to find a solution for the local community’s grievances. As a result of their interventions, the people of the border town seemed to have accepted their commissioner and an inauguration ceremony was set for a few days later. The ceremony started with an opening prayer at the town’s roofed in market. Besides the outgoing and the newly appointed commissioner, this event was witnessed by a great number of dignitaries comprising of local elder, members of the community, Americo-Liberian traders who work in the area, United Nations officials13 who are stationed at the border, national police and immigration officers, journalists from the local, community owned radio station, and chiefs representing the town, clan and chiefdom levels. Because of the diverse, international nature of this audience, the ceremony was conducted in English. In a first act, the outgoing commissioner put down the ‘gavel of authority’ by hitting it on the table. The Superintendent then took it up and hit the table again so that everybody could sit down. In a second act, the new commissioner was asked to stand up and accept the gavel. In this process it was stressed several times how he was “appointed by the president after being nominated by the members of the Senate and being inducted by the County Superintendent.” He stressed how “it is a great honor to represent the President in this town” and he saw it as his first task to “care for all of his citizens whether they be crazy, crippled, old, young, male, female, nobody should be excluded at any occasion.” In this exchange of the gavel, the focus and the stress was very much on the importance of the connection with a kwii, national elite and the larger decision making bodies in Monrovia. The appointment by the president is by many conceived as a high honor and privilege rather than a democratic deficit. The idea of representing the president is also a way of identifying with a modern state bureaucracy and, at the same time as being part of an important clientilist network. His mentioning of ‘citizens’ is a further way to signify identification with the state bureaucracy. Because of the history as an official border crossing, people from all walks of life and backgrounds are currently living in the town. When the commissioner 12  The land dispute in this case has no relation to the land dispute presented in the previous example. 13  In the aftermath of the war, a large UN contingent was deployed throughout the country to ensure security.

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

265

continued with his acceptance speech, it came as a surprise to this mixed audience that he switched to the Dan language. When he started talking, nonDan speakers shouted out that he should conduct his speech in English. The Commissioner apologized and explained that he was going to go “deep into it, for the sake of unity.” To accommodate the “strangers,” a local journalist was called out to conduct a simultaneous translation. After he started off by saying “where are the old folks” four times in a row simply because he could not understand what the commissioner was saying, he was quickly dismissed. Other Dan native speakers also had a hard time following the story since it was the “traditional way of talking.” Afterwards, a knowledgeable elder interpreted what was said in a way as to mean: I was the same person whom you sacrificed for at the Denton riverside to have been born. When my mother could not conceive, you did not neglect her or dismiss her. You took it upon yourselves to make a sacrifice after which she soon conceived. Where are we talking about neglecting me, where are our old parents who founded this town before talking about land disputes today. I want you to consider me as your son, brother and uncle in order to build peace. I have come to reconcile with you so that we can develop our community. In response, the elder of the community continued this country way of talking when he addressed the difficult relation between the outgoing commissioner whom he supported and the newly appointed one. He pointed out how both of their mothers came from the same village. This implies that they share the same mother’s home (lɛgbë) and “the mother’s home is one of peace and love. If any other thing would come up between them, they would bring it to their people to resolve it.” Referring to the lɛgbë in this way served as a strong indication of how ‘traditional ties’ bound the two together.14 This expression was perceived by community members and local chiefs as opening the door for future cooperation while also cautioning the new commissioner for the possible repercussions in case he betrays their trust. The ‘traditional ties’ of which the elders speak are supposed to remind the new commissioner of his responsibility toward the autochthonous population of the town.

14  In the matrilateral idiom, the mother’s home, home of the mother’s brother, is said to be a place of ease and peace. Children going to their mother’s home are considered bɛa, cousins and are, according to the tradition, free to take whatever they desire without consequence.

266

Bedert

In this event, the initial fault line exist between the newly appointed commissioner and a kwii audience consisting of local traders, government officials and representatives from the international community overseeing the postwar interventions on the one hand and the local community on the other hand. The commissioners’ appointment by the president and his nationalist rhetoric are signs that confirm his status and are further validated by his use of English during the ceremony. However, whereas the Superintendent sought to distance himself from an autochthonous audience in the previous example, the commissioner in this case needs to legitimate his position by stressing his ritual connections to the land and its population. In order to achieve this, he reverts to the Dan language and to kinship idioms that stand for integration rather than differentiation. The commissioner’s use of Dan and his mentioning of the ritual incorporation of his family serves as a way to identify with the elders and with the landowners following the landlord-stranger reciprocity model. The switch here serves as an act of identity as proposed by Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985). It serves as a way to distance himself from the kwii audience and articulate his belonging to the autochthonous Dan population of the town. Especially his reference to ‘deep Dan’ is significant as even a native Dan speaker cannot adequately translate what is being said. The fact that his performance is recognized by the audience as being authentic Dan demonstrates that he is successful in articulating a sense of belonging and membership in the community.

Interpreting the Shift between English and Dan in Moments of Interaction

The ethnographic examples detailing the land conflict and the inauguration ceremony are not concerned with language description but rather with language use. In a context in which the question for belonging is particularly urgent, the use of English and Dan invoke the kwii and country semiotic registers respectively. In moments of interaction, the performance of language, becomes an act of identity (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985). There might be several variations of English or of Dan from a linguistic point of view. The ethnographic examples have shown that recognition of a performance by an audience is more important than trying to identify the actual variety that is spoken. The switching between English and Dan is constitutive of how social difference is articulated and experienced. Goffman’ (1974) notion of frames is helpful in understanding this process. In much of his work, he is interested in figuring out how experiences are organized. A frame refers to the interpretive

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

267

universe in which utterances are set and offered for interpretation. Goffman acknowledges the simultaneous existence of multiple and layered frames. Besides primary frames that serve as models of interpretation, it is possible to shift between and within frames through a process he labels keying. Keying consists of the transformation of a given activity that is already meaningful by a set of given conventions into one that might be patterned on the original but recognized by participants as something else (Goffman 1974, 43–44). Elsewhere, Goffman (1981) refers to shifts in footing, the different ways in which people present themselves vis-à-vis others in interaction, as a way to achieve this keying. Therefore, the shift between English and Dan in the cases outlined above serves as an example of shifts in footing that result in the transformation from one frame to another. Recall the land dispute in which the Superintendent shifts to Interior Liberian English when he discusses the validity of the documentation that is presented as evidence. His tone in this part of the discussion becomes much more aggressive, threatening to fine the town chief, as he attempts to reinforce his position as an authoritarian leader. By switching to English and by taking a stand like that, he achieves a double shift. Not only does he index the kwii register as it invokes knowledge about ministerial structures, bureaucracy and literacy, he also changes footing and transforms the frame within which this discussion is being recognized and understood. Bystanders recognize that in this instance, he talks explicitly to the local authorities under his command. He talks about the nature of documentation rather than on trying to find a solution to the dispute at hand. In changing the language of conduct, in other words, he opens up a new frame within which these activities are interpreted by the audience. Similarly, when the newly inaugurated township commissioner expresses how he is anchored in the community because of the rituals that were performed on his behalf, he invokes the country register. By speaking ‘deep Dan,’ he furthermore diverts from the inauguration-frame and adds a different layer of understanding to this event. Rather than as a commissioner, he identifies himself, argumentatively, as a member of the community who understands the idioms that are attributed to this register. His announcement of reverting to so-called ‘deep Dan,’ marks the linguistic shift from one frame to the next. The fact that he actually speaks in a way that is incomprehensible to many of the bystanders who are native speakers does not seem to matter in that regard. It is recognized by the bystanders as an authentic and meaningful way to articulate belonging in this case. The construction of social difference and belonging by indexing divergent semiotic registers relies on a sense of mutual recognition between

268

Bedert

interlocutors. The relationship between country and kwii semiotic registers is perceived as hierarchical. In the modernizing theories, shaped by colonialism these hierarchies are presented as a trajectory in which kwii is the ultimate goal. Instead, the ethnographic examples have indicated that the two registers coexist within one social person. In both the land dispute settlement and the inauguration ceremony, it is clear that the superintendent and the newly appointed commissioner switch between registers easily. English and Dan mean different things, depending on the context within which these languages are used and articulated. This obviously is influenced by the historical layers out of which the current linguistic ideological division has grown.

Concluding Remarks

In the Liberian postwar moment, the question of belonging is particularly salient. The distinction between kwii and country semiotic registers as a way to create social distance is one of the idioms used through which belonging is articulated. Even though these registers are persistent over time, their meaning and the way they are interpreted are not stable. In the case of kwii-ness, the original focus on natural and racial differentiation has shifted to a more cultural framework of interpretation. Ideas related to modernity like education, civil service, ‘western’ dress and national citizenship regardless of physical characteristics have become signs that serve as an index of the kwii semiotic register. Beyond mimicry and imitation, people have made these signs their own and are able to index two apparently opposing registers as one social persona. In this chapter, I have explored the use of language as a way to index either the kwii or country semiotic registers. A focus on the use of English and Dan in formalized moments of interaction is linked with the articulation of belonging to a particular group of people. Rather than taking these languages and their characteristics as a point of departure, the analysis focuses on the actual practices of social actors aspiring to articulate belonging to specific social groups. The description of the settlement of a land dispute, navigating around a plural legal system, has shown that both kwii and country semiotic registers can be indexed depending on the context of the interaction. Similarly, state legitimacy continues to be difficult to enforce, especially in the so-called Hinterland of Liberia. For those reasons, the installation of a new commissioner is framed in multiple ways as to ensure the legitimacy of the state agent from various audiences. The use of English and Dan and the shifting between both languages in these events is a way in which the organization of experiences can be framed.

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

269

More than as an index of the kwii and country semiotic register respectively, the shift between English and Dan provoke a transformation in frames, the way in which these events are recognized. Crossing between languages is therefore acts of identity. Rather than looking at kwii and country as two separate lifeworlds that are disconnected, both can coexist within one individual and serve as a way in which belonging or social differentiation can be articulated. References Agha, A. 2003 “The Social Life of Cultural Value.” Language and Communication 23(3–4): 231–73. Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Akingbade, H. 1978. “The Role of the Military in the History of Liberia 1822–1947.” PhD diss., Howard University. Akpan, M. 1973. “Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over the African Peoples of Liberia: 1841–1964.” The Canadian Journal of African Studies 7(2): 217–36. Appiah, A. 1990. “Alexander Crummell and the Invention of Africa.” The Massachusetts Review 31(3): 385–406. Bledsoe, C. 1990. “No Success without Struggle: Social Mobility and Hardship for Foster Children in Sierra Leone.” Man 25(1): 70–88. Breitborde, L. 1988. “The Persistence of English in Liberia: Sociolinguistic Factors.” World Englishes 7(1): 15–23. Brooks, G. 1972. The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Compendium. Newark, Delaware: Liberian Studies Association of America. Bruner, E. 2004. Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Crummell, A. 2005. “The English Language in Liberia.” In Postcolonialisms and Anthology of Cultural Theories and Criticisms, edited by G. Desai and S. Nair, 132–42. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Fabian, J. 1991[1978]. Time and the Work of Anthropology. Chur: Harwood. Fairhead, J., T. Geysbeek, S. Holsoe, and M. Leach, eds. 2003. African-American Exploration in West-Africa: Four Nineteenth-Century Diaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ferguson, J. 2002. “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society’.” Cultural Anthropology 17(4): 551–69. Ford, M. 1990. “Ethnic Relations and the Transformation of Leadership among the Dan of Nimba, Liberia (ca. 1900–1940).” PhD diss., State University of New York Binghamton.

270

Bedert

Goffman, I. 1974. Frame Analysis: And Essay on the Organisation of Experience. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Goffman, I. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hancock, I. 1974. “English in Liberia.” American Speech 49(3/4): 224–29. Hastings, A., and P. Manning. 2004. “Introduction: Acts of Alterity.” Language and Communication 24(4): 291–311. Holm, J. 1989. Pidgin and Creoles: Volume 2 Reference Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holsoe, S., and J. Lauer. 1976. “Who Are the Kran/Guere and the Gio/Yacouba? Ethnic Identifications along the Liberia-Ivory Coast Border.” African Studies Review 19(1): 139–49. Højbjerg, C. 1999. “Loma Political Culture: A Phenomenology of Structural Form.” Africa 69(4): 535–54. Højbjerg, C. 2009. “Root Causes: The Inversion of Causes and Consequences in Civil War.” Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 8(2): 1–22. Højbjerg, C. 2010. “Victims and Heroes: Manding Historical Imagination in a ConflictRidden Border Region (Liberia-Guinea).” In The Powerful Presence of the Past. Historical Dimensions of Integration and Conflict in the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano-Filho, 273–93. Leiden: Brill. Knörr, J., and W. Trajano-Filho. 2010. “Introduction.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past. Historical Dimensions of Integration and Conflict in the Upper Guinea Coast, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano-Filho, 1–24. Leiden: Brill. Kohl, C. 2010. “Creole Identity, Interethnic Relations and Postcolonial Nation Building in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa.” PhD diss., Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Le Page, R., and A. Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liebenow, G. 1969. Liberia: The Evolution of Privilege. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Moran, M. 1990. Civilized Women: Gender and Prestige in Southeastern Liberia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Munive, J. 2010. “Ex-combatants, Returnees, Land and Conflict in Liberia.” DIIS Working Paper 5, Danish Institute for International Studies. Murphy, W., and C. Bledsoe. 1987. “Kinship and Territory in the History of a Kpelle Chiefdom (Liberia).” In The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, edited by I. Kopytoff, 123–47. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Newell, S. 2009. “Enregistering Modernity, Bluffing Criminality: How Nouchi Speech Reinvented (and Fractured) the Nation.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19(2): 157–84. Rodney, W. 1980. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast: 1545–1800. New York: Monthly Review Press.

The Performance of Language in Postwar Liberia

271

Singler, J.V. 1976–1977. “Language in Liberia in the Nineteenth Century: The Settler’s Perspective.” Liberian Studies Journal 7(2): 73–85. Singler, J.V. 1981. An Introduction to Liberian English. Peace Corps: Michigan State University Press. Singler, J.V. 1989. “Plural Making in Liberian Settler English 1820–1980.” American Speech 64: 40–64. Singler, J.V. 1997. “The Configuration of Liberia’s Englishes.” World Englishes 16: 205–31. Tonkin, E. 1981. “Model and Ideology: Dimensions of Being Civilized in Liberia.” In The Structure of Folk Models, edited by L. Holy and M. Stuchlick, 307–30. London: Academic Press. Trajano Filho, W. 1998. “Polymorphic Creoledom: The Creole Society of Guinea-Bissau.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. 2009. “Consolidated Final Report.” https://web.archive.org/web/20170415010956/http://trcofliberia.org/resources/ reports/final/volume-two_layout-1.pdf. Vydrin, V. 2004. “Areal and Genetic Features in West Mande and South Mande Phonology: In What Sense Did Mande Languages Evolve?” Journal of West African Languages 30(2): 113–25. Vydrin, V. 2005. “Reconstruction of Initial Consonants in Proto-South-Mande.” In Studies in African Comparative Linguistics, edited by K. Bostoen and J. Maniacky, 43–88. Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa. Vydrin, V. 2007. “South Mande Reconstruction: Initial Consonants.” In Aspekty komparativistiki-2. Orientalia et classica XI, edited by Trudy Instituta vostochnykh kul’tur I antichnosti, 409–98. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Rossijskogo Gosudarstvennogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta. Vydrin, V. 2009. “On the Problem of the Proto-Mande Homeland.” Journal of Language Relationship 1: 107–42.

Chapter 14

Bambinos and kassu bodi: Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands Andréa de Souza Lobo The following article analyzes the ways in which the experience and the practices of the so-called The Cape Verdean Diaspora are connected to local forms of sociability and how those who have stayed home have incorporated them, therefore bringing complexity onto the archipelago’s status games. My approach is not a generic one. I focus on the exchange of language expressions between emigrants and locals, on borrowings, and on code switching as linguistic and cultural contact phenomena. I begin the analysis of this switching process with the emigrants’ language mixture, as they speak Creole with relatives and friends who have remained on the islands. I argue that language exchange and borrowing are signs stirred up as keys to a Cape Verdeanity marked by flows and the aggrandizement of a cosmopolitan style. My inspiration is Agha’s (2007) model for semiotic register. According to this author, register is a reflexive model that considers whether a semiotic repertoire is appropriate to specific types of behavior, to the classification of people who display such behavior and role-playing, and to the establishment of relationships between roles. The resources that count as elements of a given repertoire can be linguistic or of a different nature. Hence, registers would be historical formations that can be grasped in the processes of group valuing or devaluing (Agha 2007, 148). Similarly to Agha, I perceive the identity games among migrants and locals as processes of differentiation where linguistic repertoires and other signs (clothing, food habits, corporeality, religion) are deployed as indexes of an identity constituted through valuing the ‘other.’ This chapter explores the subtle play of closeness and distancing by emigrants in their interaction with locals. When they return from abroad, they are both esteemed and envied. Although emigrants are expected to come back different, more attractive and experienced, displaying these assets should not cross over certain barriers, lest interaction be broken up. Therefore, I focus not only on the influence of emigrants who visit the country or return for good, but also on those who have been deported from the United States, because their specific language and behavior, and what these mean to Cape Verdeans, help account for the complexity of these flows.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_015

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

273

In the late 1990s, the second and the third generation of emigrants, called DPs in Cape Verde, were the target of concern and debate on the islands. Like other emigrants, the deportees bring along words and behavior styles that enter into the local universe and remodel conceptions of success and failure linked to migration. Whereas emigrants on vacation try to reinforce their economic success, deportees carry the weight of negative itineraries coupled with crime and the possibility of arrest. Once on the islands, they set up strategies to invert the negative evaluation about them; in these interaction games, fluency in a foreign language and other prestigious cultural idioms play a special role in crafting a new social place. The challenge is to demonstrate how certain expressions have traveled from one society to the other and how their meanings are appropriated as powerful and effective keys to identity building. They function as status markers in this Creole society which, in both time and space, has nourished and reproduced itself with inter-society exchanges in a cosmopolitan process of appropriation of the other and of (re)definition of status and membership.

Creole, Mother Tongue

The once uninhabited Cape Verde archipelago was annexed to the Portuguese Colonial Empire in a process that led to the occupation of the islands in the late fifteenth century, with a population enlarged by African slaves brought from the continent. Due to a close and prolonged encounter of peoples with diverse origins and mutually unintelligible languages, linguistic Creolization began in Cape Verde. The Portuguese language provided the lexical basis, which, added to other African languages met by the colonizers, gave rise to Cape Verdean Creole. Unlike other Creole languages with a Portuguese basis that appeared in West Africa, and whose variants are spoken in Guinea-Bissau and southern Senegal, Cape Verdean Creole coexists with Portuguese, while the former African languages at its origin disappeared (Trajano Filho 2009). In his analysis of Creolization, Trajano Filho regards Cape Verdean Creole as a sociolinguistic phenomenon derived from the commitment of groups belonging to communities not only with language differences, but also economically, socially, and politically unequal, which presupposes interdependence and a relative balance of forces among the parties involved. The outcome of this process is not a mere syncretism, but a new language whose structure is more complex than the ­pidgin from which it had originated (Trajano Filho 1993, 2006). ­

274

Lobo

In Cape Verde, the word Creole means a Cape Verdean person. It can also mean anything related to Cape Verdeans; hence, Creole and Cape Verdean are synonyms. Creole is also the name of the country’s language, the mother tongue spoken by those born on the archipelago as well by the majority of Cape Verdeans and their descendants who are abroad in various countries where they cultivate their Cape Verdean identity and culture. Portuguese is the official language used in almost all written communication, in schools, in most political and academic events, bureaucratic acts, formal rituals, and radio and TV programs. Fluency in Portuguese is not widespread. A significant part of the population does not speak Portuguese fluently. Only the elite and the educated petty bourgeoisie have a good knowledge of the language. Linguists state that Creole and Portuguese coexist in an unequal context of diglossia, permeated with a complex power relation; they also affirm that full bilingualism represents a mark of social distinction (Veiga 1995, 29–33). It is clear that the polarity of the diglossia model does exist in Cape Verde; but we should not overlook the variety of Creole ways of speaking on the islands. Creole variations cross over many levels, namely, geographical regions, social classes, urban and rural contexts, and generations. I focus on regional differences with two large linguistic variations that roughly correspond to the Sotavento and Barlavento island clusters, or, in local parlance, the Praia Creole and the São Vicente Creole. However, this division includes a much larger variation: on the limit, each island would have its own way of speaking Creole. I will return to this point. This complexity is perhaps responsible for the fact that Creole still has no consensual set of writing norms. The inconclusive debate among intellectuals on how to officialize the language drags on. As an example, I cite the celebration of the International Day of the Mother Tongue, on February 21, 2014. Creole classes were taught at elementary and high schools, and the country’s main TV network, TCV (Cape Verde Television) was broadcast in the mother tongue. That day marked the beginning of the campaign named “2014 – the year of the mother tongue in Cape Verde.” The National Director of Education at that time, Margarida Santos, presented the project entitled “se ca fila tudo ta fila um ponta” (if not all is achieved, a part will get better). It consisted of the implementation of a bilingual project of teaching in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole. According to her, “it is a new project meant to introduce Cape Verde’s mother tongue into the educational system and also improve the teaching of the Portuguese language.” Two elementary schools would be testing the

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

Figure 14.1

275

Entrance to the central building of Campus do Palmarejo – UniCV Photo: A. de Souza Lobo

new system. If successful, it would extend to the entire education network. In turn, the University of Cape Verde, which displayed the debate on mother tongue at the entrance of its main building, organized seminars and debates about the pros and cons of the possible language officialization. This is a relevant discussion, because the use and status of the Portuguese language in Cape Verdean society is associated with power and authority (Dias 2002; Vasconcelos 2007). It is the language of the colonizer, politics, schools, writing, and the official vehicle of independent Cape Verde. Full or partial fluency is a status symbol; bilingual Cape Verdeans use it on formal and solemn occasions to discuss high matters and to mark distance. Portuguese is an index of Cape Verdeanity, which, in various moments in the country’s history, represented the negation of African condition and heritage, and the internalization of European values and visions (Furtado 2013). As a Brazilian researcher, who is a native Portuguese speaker, I cannot help but bring about more complexity to this scenario with the distinction Cape Verdeans make between European and Brazilian Portuguese. I currently speak Creole with some fluency; but when I first arrived on the islands, whenever I rehearsed some sentences in Creole, I was told to speak ‘Brazilian,’ because they considered it more sab (delightful) than the Portuguese spoken in Portugal. The differences between Portuguese and ‘Brazilian’ take us to a set of relationships between Cape Verde and Brazil that would merit another article.

276

Lobo

For now, it is worth emphasizing that whereas Portuguese is the language of power and authority, this is not quite true of the Portuguese spoken in Brazil. The latter conveys the relations Cape Verdeans state they have with what they call their ‘brother country’ and its language, which is ‘sab, pretty, with a soft melody.’ For me, a neophyte researcher in Cape Verde, ‘Brazilian’ was no doubt a language and nationality that opened many doors. In this polarized system, Portuguese and Creole are on opposite sides and each takes on either a positive or a negative character depending on the context: who speaks, and what is the relational content at stake. In turn, Brazilian Portuguese is also contextualized – closer to or farther from the Portuguese in Portugal – depending on the emphasis one puts on relations of either proximity or distance. As I will state in the following sections, other languages are part of this linguistic universe between the Portuguese and Creole opposite poles, thus adding further complexity to the processes that create status, identity, and belonging on the islands and their Diasporas.

Emigrants: Disputed Language and Status

What follows is an attempt to bring some complexity into this scenario and underline certain aspects that are central to the understanding of the play of language and identity in Cape Verde today. Firstly, I argue that the Creolization process continues with the incorporation of outsiders as a necessary social reproduction strategy (Trajano Filho 2009). Secondly, in focusing on the Creole internal variations and their connections to expressions borrowed from other languages, I consider that disputes in the realm of social relations go beyond the Creole versus Portuguese opposition. As I have pointed out, there are several levels of variation in the islands’ Creole; from now on, I will focus on those who favor cosmopolitan exchange between Cape Verdeans and their closest ‘others,’ namely, the emigrants. The culture of migration in Cape Verde has been shaped across space and time. From the time it was discovered to the present day, successive generations of Cape Verdeans have grown up seeing mobility as an intrinsic part of life. The flow of young males began under the Portuguese colonial rule, when Cape Verdeans were sent to the Guinea coast; later, around mid-nineteenth century, a migratory flow to the Americas began. In the early twentieth century, a forced migration to other Portuguese colonies – due to the closure of migration to the United States – was launched with varying degrees of coercion. More recently, Cape Verdean migration to Europe gained impetus – Portugal,

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

277

Netherlands, Italy became places of destination. Initially this was mainly a masculine trend, but from the 1960s onward, there have been a growing number of young women leaving for places such as Italy (Lobo 2014). Many studies on the archipelago (Carling 2008; Åkesson 2004; Fikes 2010; Carter and Aulette 2009; Drotbohm 2012; Trajano Filho 2009; Dias 2004) have pointed out that a unique feature of Cape Verde’s social structure is the outward flow of its members, reaching destinations far beyond its limits. We dare say that people migrate because they need to be connected to those who stayed home as a way to constitute themselves. Cape Verdeans leave their homeland to construct their lives, their homes, and have a better future. Money remittances, the sending of goods, periodic visits, and the flow of things in general would represent a sort of material contextualization of affective ties, a fundamental strategy to maintain the sense of proximity, both for those abroad and for those at home. I went to the airport around 4:30 p.m. Today I heard that a plane would arrive bringing the talianas (Italian women). The plane is an ATR with capacity for 48 passengers and it was full. The situation at the small airport on Boa Vista Island was no different; it was packed full, with people crammed along the wire grid that separates the runway from the parking lot. Anxiety ran high. The plane landed at 5:15 and, when the doors opened, I saw some dozen women stepping out in grand style. All of them very well dressed, made up faces, with colorful clothes and high heels with enormously pointed tips! They spoke Creole with some difficulty, with a charming ‘forgetfulness’ of everyday expressions in the local language. Their style is not exactly surprising to those who awaited, but provoked remarks of admiration. The airport was a feast with kisses, hugs, and shouts of amazement for the changes that occurred during the time of absence! The emotion and cheerfulness about the reunion contaminated everybody and few managed to hold their tears in the presence of women who cried as they hugged their children, who were kids when they left, and now they wouldn’t recognize if they saw them on the street! Amidst Italian and Creole, relatives embraced each other and lamented the time spent apart. In tears, they cried how good it was to be home, how nice it was to hug their bambinos. Field notes, August 2004

This scene portrays the special place emigrants have when they go back on holidays to their native island. Expected and admired by those who stayed

278

Lobo

home, their arrival stirs up the emotion of getting together, triggers off a process of social differentiation, and draws a new sketch as ‘others’ of those who departed. These people are distinguished for their experience abroad, based on smells, fashion, and ways of speaking, in a display (Rodrigues 1999) that sets them apart from other Cape Verdeans. Nevertheless, the emigrant’s new place also carries on tension and the possibility of rifts. An image of popular culture exemplifies this complexity. It illustrates the relational contexts between emigrants and locals and highlights the role of language in that universe. It is the lyrics of a coladeira, a Cape Verdean musical style with duple meter and fast pace, suitable for dancing. The lines have a critical overtone seasoned with a generous dose of humor: Just the other day I ran into this girl who bid me good night in a strange language she was one of those Italian Creoles I heard it from a buldônhe1

Góstordia um’ encontá um flana Que dam’ bonôte num linga estrónhe Ela era um dêss crióla italiana Um’ sube pa boca dum buldônhe

our land is filled with foreigners we know from their demeanor with makeup and fake hair trying to put all Creole men in a frenzy

nos terra ta cheio di strangera nô ta conches na sis manera di maquilagem e cabel postiço pa bem pô criol na raboliço

show off little Talian come show off back home look how ripe you look come make Creole men fight amongst themselves

Manel de Novas / Talianinha

Talianinha marozinha Bem exibí li na bô terra Oiá cma bô ta madurinha Já bô bem pô criôl na guerra

Manel de Novas / Talianinha

My description of the emigrants’ arrival at the airport and Manel de Novas’ lyrics stress the emigrants’ visible and outstanding place in the Cape Verdean context; the mixture of Creole and the language of the emigration country is an important feature of this difference, as it conveys distinction. The composer, 1  Buldônhe in Creole sanpadjudu (from the island of São Vicente) is a person with many skills and abilities acquired not from formal learning in schools. A possible translation would be someone with ‘street smarts’.

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

279

in turn, describes the features of one of the recently arrived immigrants from Italy, ‘talianas’ or ‘fiats,’ as the locals call them. The first feature is that the woman said good night in a ‘strange language,’ adding to it other behavioral aspects that make them easily recognizable: makeup and wig! He presents these items as positive, but at the same time in a critical tone; after all, these women, with their attractive selves (gorgeous, charming), stirred Creole men into hustles and even fights. Moacyr Rodrigues tells us that coladeiras “are sarcastic and irreverent texts, which focus on the behavior of some individuals (particularly women), everyday situations, and social problems” (Rodrigues 1992, 14 quoted in Dias 2004, 24). Dias states that the critical nature of the coladeira lyrics connects to the Creole expression colá benfêt, which means to denounce and criticize blunders and ridiculous actions among the people, sometimes maliciously. Both scenes reveal the delicate balance in the play of distance and proximity between emigrants and locals. As is well depicted by Manel de Novas, Creole language uses a stranjeru (foreign) form to refer to the emigrants. It is true that they are internal others, but the fact of naming the home comers as talianos, mercanos or franceses makes us wonder about the place of relative distance where those who have stayed put those who have left. This distance is reinforced by behavioral traits that enhance the status and prestige a returning emigrant must display. Although these traits are expected, enjoyed, and imitated by the locals, when exaggerated, they can scratch the relationship, thus generating conflicts that may jeopardize the emigrants’ (re)entry into the local universe of sociability, and making them the target of criticism. Several works on migration show this ambivalence. Riccio (2005), for example, in an article about the ambiguities of being an emigrant in Senegal, also reflects upon the double place of representation occupied by the emigrant in his research context. The emigrants are celebrated for their solidarity and the hardships they endure for the sake of their families. But they are also perceived “as modou modou, as people able to trick who become rich only in a fraudulent manner. (…) They are the “heroes” but also the “tricksters”, leaving for the “eldorado”, but also for an unfair place to live in” (Riccio 2005, 99). During my fieldwork in Boa Vista, an island with a significant female emigration to Italy, I followed a summer vacation when many emigrants returned home on holiday. As other researchers have reported (Dias 2004; Rodrigues 1999), the summer brings along a new rhythm to life on the islands. Between July and September, the intense circulation of people, events, and the outstanding presence of emigrants alter the quiet local routine. The plaza and the shore at the center of Vila de Sal Rei (named Praia Diant) become crowded

280

Lobo

and the emigrants are the great characters in the performed actions. Above all, they are visible, as they carry with them symbols of distinction: clothes, wardrobe complements, headdresses, and, most important here, language as a differential marker. When in groups of emigrants alone, these women may not use Creole, but rather the language they learned abroad: Italian, in the case of Boa Vista, but also French and English. In turn, when they speak Creole, they strategically ‘forget’ one or other expression, switching to the equivalent in Italian (or in another language). Therefore, language switch is a semiotic sign by means of which they can convey identity transformations. In other words, it is not a mere code switch, but rather a process constitutive of social differences as these are constructed and lived by those involved. In August 2014, when Boa Vista received a large number of emigrants, the Municipal Chamber organized a Meeting of Emigrants. The Chamber President intended to “hear the emigrants’ demands and remarks as special citizens to whom Boa Vista Island owed so much.” Months earlier, the President had been reappointed to this post. In his speech, he reported his previous deeds and made himself available to hear “the important demands of the emigrants.” When it was the public’s turn to speak, we heard for hours the demands of the emigrants about a number of issues. These ranged from garbage in the towns to youth violence, the high taxes they have to pay to release the goods they bring in, problems with Cape Verde Air Transportation (TACV) flights, inadequacies of the local airport, power shortages, lack of water, difficulties to invest in their home land, and the unequal treatment they get from the Municipal Chamber vis-à-vis Europeans who invest on the island. These speeches are valuable because they reveal the emigrants’ strategic play in that particular context: a quest for recognition and the demand for a place as special citizens. Here I call attention to the fact that most of the speeches were in Portuguese or in Creole intermingled with words in Italian and French. These are some examples freely translated from Creole. – What I have to say is a personale (personal) account, but I believe it serves as an example to everyone here … – I think che Boa Vista has improved a lot! – I think the local government should consider nos avenir (our future) more … – That is all I wanted to say, Grazzia (thank you)! This language mixture, added to the other signs of success in their migratory project, and to their generosity in bringing gifts, money, and fulfilling requests,

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

281

set them apart from those who never left the islands. However, all these attributes can produce negative interpretations about their behavior through the categories of basofaria (from the Portuguese bazófia, bragging, conceited) and ingratitude. I often heard negative comments about emigrants accused of “pretending to forget their mother tongue just for basofaria, to show off that they are better off.” As states Dias (2004), basofaria in Creole can have negative and positive meanings, depending on the context. It can be used as a compliment to someone’s beauty, a synonym of pretty, attractive, well dressed. ‘Today So-and-so is basofo,’ or ‘What a basofa little girl’ are common expressions intended to compliment or praise someone. On the other hand, the same term is used when these attributes are exaggerated or a display of superiority. Thus, beauty, experience, wealth, and similar features can become the target of negative comments expressed in the same category basofaria. Thus, when referring to emigrants, this Creole utterance summarizes the risky universe they cross when returning to their home country. They are expected to come back as basofos, that is, pretty, elegant, well off, and other success symbols, but they are also pressured to bear out this success with parsimony and especially with kindness and solidarity. For instance, a returning emigrant must visit nearby kith and kin on the first days upon arrival. Particularly, she must let the elders know she is on the island and tell them about her life in the estranjeru (abroad). If she does not carefully observe this norm, she may be dubbed a basofo, ungrateful, ‘full of the whites’ tricks.’ Language switching should also be used with care, as it can quickly jump the barrier between being charming and showing off as superior. The emigrants’ behavior seems to be a procedure that conveys their intention to cause both admiration and envy. When building such a personal façade, those who go back to Cape Verde are searching for a new place by displaying wealth. Their frequent linguistic code switching, the almost deliberate forgetting of the most ordinary terms in Creole and their substitution with foreign words they learned abroad are an important part of the emigrants’ self-­ representation and of the play with closeness and distance. Nevertheless, language mingling, which is the main characteristic of the emigrants who go back home, is not limited to them. Boa Vista Creole includes borrowed expressions from Italian that are Creolized and become part of the daily vocabulary. Walking on the streets, people often greet each other Italianstyle, changing manera (how are you?) to ciao. It is also common to say grazzie for thank you, and sweetly call the children bambinos. Local Creole incorporates expressions brought in from abroad, used as though they were Creole,

282

Lobo

thus appropriating the other and approximating those who crave to be different, namely, the emigrants. Emigrants’ social position is an aspect of semiotic processes that involve the intentional use of distinctive signs in certain contexts. In the present scenario, the circulation of migrants vacationing on the islands socially exposes the economic and status changes resulting from mobility. Hence, people reinterpret social hierarchies and create new interaction discourses. Semiotic registers produce stereotyped images that are then transformed into social status (Agha 2007). Hence, the emigrants’ strategic language switching, when done by local people, represent novel tactics of self-representation, thus activating membership or approximation to the emigrants’ cosmopolitan world. The linguistic play typical of the emigrants’ specific experience is copied locally and incorporated into the island’s everyday life. They become an extension of the emigrants’ experience and migratory success to those who never tasted ‘the world out there.’ Consumption of modernity − through exchange with the emigrants who have physical access to that world – seems to reduce the gap between the living place and the world ‘out there,’ a locus of multiple possibilities aspired by those who apparently do not move transnationally (Weiss 2009). When Cape Verdeans appropriate the other for their own social reproduction, they incorporate this other’s things, values, and language traits by activating a sense of cosmopolitanism and differentiation typical of their Creolization process. However, not all migratory projects are successful; there are trajectories of failure, which, to a certain extent, can invert the positions between locals and emigrants. In the following section, I will explore this opposition with cases of deportation.

Deportees: Language and Belonging at Stake In January, State Rep. Marie St. Fleur joined a delegation to Cape Verde to meet with government officials and address growing concerns among Cape Verdean communities at home and abroad. The group held a session with over 10 deportees to discuss the hardships they face as they struggle to reintegrate in Cape Verde. Justin Fernandes, a Cape Verdean community organizer who filmed a documentary about the deportees a few years back, said in Cape Verde, “being deported is the worst thing that can happen to a person. As a deportee, you are not even to be spoken to because you are an outcast. You are a disgrace to your culture.” Fernandes said he knew a deportee – dropped off on the island of Sal by immigration

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

283

agents and left to fend for himself in an unfamiliar country – who hung himself from a tree in the middle of the city within a few days. “He had no money, no food, no friends, no family, he even didn’t know how to speak the language,” Fernandes said. Having already served his time in prison in the U.S., “he thought he had suffered enough.” “Cape Verdean deportees import U.S. problems”, March 2006. Link: http://www .dotnews.com/capevern.html

Deportation of Cape Verdean emigrants from the US has increased since the 1990s. The isles of Brava and Fogo, with a strong emigration to that country, receive most of the deportees. As Drotbohm (2012) emphasizes, a hostile atmosphere surrounds the announcement of their arrival. The reasons and legal conditions of their return are topics of conversation. Although close relatives are willing to receive them, deportees feel excluded and discriminated against. These hostile reactions are understandable when we analyze their context. Unlike emigrants who embody success, cosmopolitan mobility, and share these benefits with the local people, Cape Verdean deportees cannot fulfill the expectations linked to migratory projects. Added to this picture are the cultural codes that reinforce the image of deportees associated with narratives of violence. One of the debated issues is their dress code. The majority of deportees continue to wear their urban American clothing, consisting of baggy pants and large basketball shirts with NBA names and numbers, as well as a particular type of baseball hats worn backward (Drotbohm 2012, 132). Language is another important feature. Most of these youths have great trouble communicating with the local people, as they have never learned to speak Creole. Unable to speak to the locals, this is a key issue when they try to talk about their difficulties to integrate. For the vacationing emigrants, language switching is a strategy to reinsert themselves in a new social place. Whereas for the deportees, their total ignorance of Creole can reinforce their condition as outsiders, as well as the stereotypes associated with violence. But again, things are not so simple. Despite the negative mood that pervades the arrival of these deportees in Cape Verde (they come from nowhere and are not fluent in any language), the fact that they speak English and bring with them symbols related to the United States are like bridges to their entry in local society. Many young Cape Verdeans admire the deportees’ experiences abroad: their aura of having been there, and where they wish to go but are not able to, and hence, by copying their bodily behavior, they tend to grasp

284

Lobo

bits and pieces of materialization of those far-away worlds – called merca in Cape Verde kriolu. Drotbohm 2012, 134

In this mixture of strangeness and admiration, locals and deportees find points of connection and of cultural exchange. Language learning is one of these points. In fact, it is encouraged by the Cape Verde state in its projects for the integration of deportees. With the slogan “union through language,” young people are stimulated to participate in the ‘social integration of young people who were deported and abandoned in Cape Verde, and often pushed into marginality.’ The reinsertion project presented by the Ministry of Communities in 2012 takes the Creole language as a factor of integration and the possibility of approximation between deportees and locals, where the latter would be the potential teachers of the ‘mother tongue’ to those who ‘need to recover their Cape Verdeanity’ ( Jornal O Liberal Online, December 2012, http://www .cabodiario.com/liberal.php). Two current expressions in local Creole summarize these experiences in a Cape Verde going through times of violence, a violence that is not intrinsic to the islands, but brought in from the outside: thugs and kasu bodi. The noun thug is used in Cape Verde for groups of young people who gather around violent acts. The thug phenomenon was exported to Cape Verde by the so-called retornados, young delinquents in the United States with Cape Verdean origin … Source: http://ibinda.com/noticias.php?noticia=1000079

In turn, “[a] crime phenomenon called ‘Kasu Bodi,’ has appeared in the Cape Verdean community, and the locals blame deportees who steal to have something to eat, said Neves” (Source: http://ibinda.com/noticias. php?noticia=1000079). A Creolized pronunciation of ‘Cash or Body,’ people are robbed on the streets, raped or killed if they do not have any money. Cape Verde natives, mimicking the more hardened criminals sent from America, have adopted the phenomenon as another American trend. “Just like every summer there is a new song, Neves said, Kasu Bodi was the thing that caught on one year” (“Cape Verdean deportees import U.S. problems,” March 2006. Link: http://www.dotnews.com/capevern.html). Both terms arrived in Cape Verde and were incorporated into Creole not as a fad, as Neves sustains, but as language expressions that reflect well a negative period. I recently heard Gossi na Praia ta dado kasu bodi, toma cuidado (now at

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

285

Praia they are committing kasu bodi, be careful), as soon as I arrived in town for a short stay. When I asked what it was all about, the taxi driver said there were some thug gangs who had come from merca (America) and spread violence in nos terra (our land). He finished by saying that Cape Verde is no longer what it used to be, too many people from all over the place hanging together! Therefore, the origin and causes of this change are attributed to a kind of movement regarded as negative, because it inverts the expectations about migratory projects that affect this society so deeply. The arrival of others, closely associated with the success of emigrants and to circulation as a means to acquire status and upward social mobility, takes on a new appearance. It is a negative feature of violence in opposition to the once peaceful and quiet Cape Verde, until the country became the target of new arrivals who are not all welcome.

To Conclude …

Whether mouthed by emigrants, deportees, or through other means, utterances in Italian, French, and English place the islands in a vast network of interaction with admired societies (via music, movies, internet, tourists and other foreigners). These expressions reach the archipelago frequently, are incorporated into the Creole spoken on the islands, are modified in form and meaning, are Creolized and included in the local lexicon. By showing some of them, I intend to deepen the debate about the opposing language fields in Cape Verde: Creole and Portuguese, the latter filling a power slot. In this chapter I have tried to show in what way the return of emigrants, whether on vacation, or as deportees, can be a suitable medium to think about the processes of reproduction in Cape Verdean society and its incorporation of new elements. Like many other symbols traded in the emigrants’ worlds (customs, domestic objects, clothes), the language expressions presented here are not only incorporated, but also turned into something unique. As the social value of semiotic registers changes over time, in Cape Verde, speakers reinvent and transform the social meanings of proximity and distance in the context of linguistic exchanges. In the mixture of idioms that reveals connections and cosmopolitanism, social positions and status become ever more complex through spoken Creole. Beyond the oppositions and social classifications marked by fluency or the lack of it in Portuguese, Creole variations highlight the multiple processes of proximity, distance, and distinction. In present-day Cape Verde, language

286

Lobo

transit can be a productive way to see how certain expressions have traveled from one society to the other and how their meanings have been appropriated as identity signs and status markers. References Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Åkesson, L. 2004. “Making a Life: Meanings of Migration in Cape Verde.” PhD diss., University of Gothenburg. Braz Dias, J. 2002. “Língua e poder: transcrevendo a questão nacional.” Mana 8(1): 7–27. Braz Dias, J. 2004. “Mornas e coladeiras de Cabo Verde: versões musicais de uma nação.” PhD diss., Universidade de Brasília. Carling, J. 2008. “Interrogating Remittances: Core Questions for Deeper Insight and Better Policies.” In Migration and Development: Perspectives from the South, edited by S. Castles and R.D. Wise, 43–64. Geneva: International Organization for Migration. Carter, K., and J. Aulette. 2009. Cape Verdean Women and Globalization. The Politics of Gender, Culture and Resistance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Drotbohm, H. 2012. “It’s Like Belonging to a Place that Has Never Been Yours. Deportees Negotiating Involuntary Immobility and Conditions of Return in Cape Verde.” In Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by M. Messer, R. Schroeder, and R. Wodak, 129–40. Wien: Springer. Fikes, K. 2010. Managing African Portugal. The Citizen-Migrant Distinction. Durham: Duke University Press. Furtado, C. “Cabo Verde: dilemas étnico-identitários num território fluido.” Ciências Sociais Unisinos 49(1): 2–11. Lobo, A. 2014. Tão longe tão perto. Famílias e “movimentos” na ilha da Boa Vista de Cabo Verde. Revised edited E-Book. Brasília: ABA Publicações. http://www.portal.abant .org.br/index.php/65-publicacoes. O Liberal Online News. December 2012. http://www.cabodiario.com/liberal.php Riccio, B. 2005. “Talkin’ about Migration. Some Ethnographic Notes on the Ambivalent Representation of Migrants in Contemporary Senegal.” Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 8(05): 99–118. Rodrigues, G. 1999. “O strass e o preto. Notas sobre casos de emigração.” Anais AECCOM 3: 77–79. Trajano Filho, W. 1993. “Escrita e oralidade: uma tensão na hegemonia colonial.” Série Antropologia 145. Brasília: Universidade de Brasília. Trajano Filho, W. 2006. “Some Problems with the Creole Project for the Nation: The Case of Guinea-Bissau.” Paper presented at the Seminar “Powerful Presence of the Past,” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany.

Comments on Linguistic Appropriations on Cape Verde Islands

287

Trajano Filho, W. 2009. “The Conservative Aspects of a Centripetal Diaspora: The Case of the Cape Verdean Tabancas.” Africa 79(4): 520–42. Vasconcelos, J. 2007. “Espíritos atlânticos: um espiritismo Luso-Brasileiro em Cabo Verde.” PhD diss., Universidade de Lisboa. Veiga, M. 1995. O crioulo de Cabo Verde: introdução à gramática. Praia: Instituto CaboVerdiano do Livro e do Disco. Weiss, B. 2009. Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops: Global Fantasy in Urban Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Part 4 Creolization and Pidginization in Popular Culture

∵

Chapter 15

Language and Music in Cape Verde: Processes of Identification and Differentiation Juliana Braz Dias

Bilingualism in Cape Verde

The language situation in Cape Verde has usually been described as one of societal bilingualism. In this speech community, two languages – Portuguese and Creole – are in close contact, being regularly used in social interactions. Some authors prefer to describe it as a situation of diglossia, stressing the inequality between the two languages.1 According to Duarte (1998), bilingualism in Cape Verde has always been a matter of social class: … bilingualism in our country has been a class issue, Portuguese has always been the language of the petty bourgeoisie with formal instruction (in addition to Creole, it is true); but the mass of the population has never had access to Portuguese. And even when they had it (or have it now), their lives never progressed (or progress) in Portuguese. They continued (and continue) to progress in Creole, that is, in the language that is for them the basis of their identity. Duarte 1998, 31; my translation, emphasis in the original

The Portuguese language arrived in Cape Verde in the second half of the fifteenth century, along with Portuguese settlers. However, it soon had to adjust to the existence of an emergent language – Creole. Close and continued contact between peoples of diverse linguistic backgrounds gave rise to a process of linguistic creolization. The Creole language developed from Portuguese, which provided its lexical base, and from the languages of African peoples brought to the archipelago as slaves. According to António Carreira (1972, 344), Creole emerged in Cape Verde in the sixteenth century, less than fifty years after the beginning of settlement in the islands. Other researchers have contested this hypothesis, arguing that the Creole language arose in the African continent, only then proceeding to Cape Verde through the slave trade (Rougé 1986). 1  See, for example, Duarte (1998) and Fonseca (1998).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_016

292

Braz Dias

What we know for sure is that, once in the islands, Creole quickly developed into an important medium of communication, even though having to face an unequal struggle with the Portuguese language, which was strengthened by the colonial power. Until today, uses of the two languages are often pervaded by questions of authority and resistance, identity and social distance. Portuguese is the only official language of the country. It is used, for example, at schools and in government procedures. Nevertheless, Cape Verdean Creole is the mother tongue of almost the entire population in the archipelago. It is strongly present in everyday activities and frequently thought of as the national language. Discourses on language in Cape Verde often point out the constitution of two different fields – the national language (Creole) and the official language (Portuguese). These discourses are largely related to the old but never concluded project of making Creole an official language in the country. Actions have been adopted by the government for the last two decades aiming at the officialization of the ‘national language,’ but this policy has never been definitely implemented. The main reason for delaying the execution of this project is the fact that Creole is not standardized. As we shall see, there is a wide dialectal variation. In such a context, it seems necessary to choose one of the dialects as the national standard. But therein also lies the biggest challenge, raising practical and political issues. Speakers throughout the country never willingly accepted the proposal of having as standard the variety usually spoken in the capital city, Praia. What I want to stress at this point is that most Cape Verdean intellectuals have approached the issue of Creole’s officialization as a major need for the country. This project is portrayed as the only way out for a situation they present as unfavorable for the establishment of a unified and independent nation. In a previous work (Braz Dias 2002), I addressed a series of articles written by a representative portion of the Cape Verdean intelligentsia about the need and challenges for the officialization of the Creole language. Manuel Veiga, Mário Fonseca, Tomé Varela da Silva, José Luís Hopffer Almada and Wladimir Brito have described the language situation in Cape Verde emphasizing the coexistence of two fields in opposition. According to this perspective, the Portuguese language finds its strength as a channel for formal communication, within and outside the country. In turn, Creole may be found in the field of informal communication, associated with the domain of orality and recognized as a symbol of the Cape Verdean nation (Veiga 1998, 95). The authors’ evaluations of the linguistic situation in Cape Verde suggest a dichotomic reality. On the one hand, the Portuguese language is

Language and Music in Cape Verde

293

perceived as official, formal, international, written, modern, representing the state, the elites and their cultural dominance. On the other hand, Creole stands as the maternal language: informal, oral, traditional, representing the nation, the Cape Verdean masses and their cultural resistance (Braz Dias 2002, 15). The definition of these rigid and opposing fields is part of a dominant language ideology. Actually, the relationship between Portuguese and Creole composes a much more complex picture. First, Cape Verdean Creole has a large geographic variation. It is not accurate to take it as a static, uniform field. Secondly, there is considerable continuity between Portuguese and Creole. Linguistic situation in Cape Verde may be described as a continuum that ranges from the basilect, the variety of Creole that is most remote from Portuguese, to the acrolect, much similar to the Portuguese language (Couto 1996, 73). Furthermore, everyday life in Cape Verde provides plenty of evidence for doubting any dichotomous model regarding its language situation. Although Portuguese is the language of formal education – “[s]chools’ exclusive language” (Duarte 1998, 17) – Cape Verdean schools regularly celebrate the importance of Creole as the people’s mother tongue.2 Besides, the widespread practice of sending electronic messages between mobile phones and other portable devices, mostly in Creole, has been changing local experience with the ‘national language,’ which can no longer been seen as exclusively oral, in stark contrast to Portuguese. However, the opposition between Portuguese and Creole is an important element for nation-building in Cape Verde. The Creole language has been crucial in representing the uniqueness and cohesion of the Cape Verdean nation. Even members of the educated elite, who are quite familiar with Portuguese both in public and private situations, they often describe the Portuguese language as an exogenous element. Meanwhile, Creole is taken as the base on which the nation rests as a very old community, prior to the existence of Cape Verde as a modern nation-state. Tomé Varela da Silva, a writer and philosopher who was also a deputy to the national assembly and has held other important positions in public administration, stated that a large portion of the Cape Verdean population learns Portuguese as a foreign language. On the other hand, the author describes the Creole language as a mirror of the Cape Verdean soul (Varela da Silva 1998, 120). Discourses such as this one reveal a language ideology that plays a crucial role in the larger endeavor of nation-building in the country.

2  For instance, in 2014 the University of Cape Verde celebrated what was called the ‘year of the mother tongue.’

294

Braz Dias

Internal Diversity of the Creole Language

In the literature that deals with Cape Verdean Creole, a less discussed issue concerns its internal diversity. Differences between linguistic varieties used in each of the country’s islands (or in different social strata) should not be overlooked. What is conventionally called ‘Cape Verdean Creole’ is a set of varieties (or dialects) that are related but may become mutually unintelligible in some situations. The uses of the Creole language are a subject of interest for many Cape Verdeans, easily attracting attention during long conversations. There are many stories involving the difficulties of intelligibility among Creole speakers from different islands. A good example of that may be found in the stories involving inhabitants of the islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão. Despite the physical closeness between the two islands and the historic flow of people between them, there is a significant difference in the Creole varieties spoken in the two contexts. This difference may lead to misunderstandings, as the one that happened in a dialogue between two youngsters in a school in São Vicente. The young man, born in São Vicente, was talking to a young lady just arrived from the Santo Antão Island. In a flirtatious way, he asked her: “Lá pe bo zona ca tem uns dôs fiminha?” (“Aren’t there a few [interesting] girls in your hometown?”). She quickly replied, with a strong accent: “Mim seb se lá pe nha zona tem uns dôs fi bossa?” (“How am I to know if in my hometown there are a few children of yours?”). The misunderstanding was caused by the similarity between fiminha (‘girl,’ in the São Vicente variety) and fi minha (‘my child,’ in the Santo Antão variety). Another story, following the same line, involves a candidate running for elections. Born in São Vicente, the candidate was in the Santiago Island giving an impassioned speech to the population living in the rural areas. He promised to facilitate and encourage the development of the livestock sector. Unfortunately, he made reference to bitxe, a term that, in São Vicente, relates to domesticated animals, such as cattle and goats. In Santiago, however, bitxu refers exclusively to lizards, cockroaches, and other animals that are not really welcome in the livestock sector, allowing for mockery of the candidate’s speech.3 The anecdotal flavor of these stories does not obscure the tension in the perception of certain weakness regarding the unity of the national language. Actually, tensions between the many Creole varieties have been the major factor hindering the officialization of the language. As already mentioned, the 3  In Santiago, the semantic equivalent for bitxe would be limária.

Language and Music in Cape Verde

295

construction of Cape Verde as an independent nation has led to several attempts to standardize the writing of Creole in order to enable its adoption as the official language of the country. In 1998, the Council of Ministers of Cape Verde approved on a trial basis the ‘Unified Alphabet for the Writing of Cape Verdean’ (ALUPEC). Yet, the selection of a single standard of Cape Verdean Creole has been a difficult process, privileging the interests of certain groups over others. How is it possible to choose a variety as the standard without offending speakers of all the other varieties? This is a movement based on the idea of national unity, but often confronted by issues related to the nation’s internal diversity. The problem is so difficult to deal with that it has led to a deadlock. In a resolution issued in 2005, the Government of Cape Verde officially recognized ALUPEC as the “only systematized alphabet for writing the Cape Verdean language,” admitting, at the same time, the use of “any other models of writing, provided they are presented in a systematic way” (Cabo Verde 2005, 1243; my translation). Ordinary people in Cape Verde certainly note the flimsiness of the governmental project to officialize the Creole language. The professor in Linguistics Manuel Veiga, who also occupied important positions in public administration, has recently made an optimistic statement on the linguistic situation in the country, predicting the rapid conclusion of the long process of Creole’s officialization. Yet, the event was reported on a website in a sceptical (and sarcastic) way: “The year of 2015 will be the year of the officialization of Creole, Manuel Veiga believes in that.”4

Identification and Differentiation in Music

A similar pendular movement, going from national unity to its internal diversity, may be observed in the field of music. If the Cape Verdean nation as a singular cultural entity finds its basis in the common use of the Creole language, we may say that music – particularly the genre known as morna – is another crucial element in the conception of this cultural totality. Both are closely related to the idea of Cape Verde as a nation, often presented as the most important aspects of cultural heritage in the country. In this matter, I quote the writer Pedro Cardoso who defended the use of Creole during colonial times, with an especially powerful statement: “As corn, as grass, the doomed Creole language 4  In the original: “Anu 2015 ta ser anu ki ta oficializadu kriolu, Manuel Veiga ta akredita na kela.” Retrieved in July 20, 2015 from the website Do you … papia krioulu? – http://dypk-portal.com/ anu-2015-ta-ser-anu-ki-ta-oficializadu-kriolu-manuel-veiga-ta-akredita-na-kela/.

296

Braz Dias

will resist the sirocco5 and, evolving, it will live – ‘as long as Cape Verde exists and the Morna is sung’” (Cardoso 1933, 3; my translation). It is important to note that Pedro Cardoso made this public declaration on the vitality of the Creole language and the morna more than 80 years ago – and 42 years before the country’s independence. This shows how both elements have played a key role in processes of social and cultural identification in Cape Verde. Music is an attribute of the Cape Verdean nation especially valued by its people. Cape Verdeans take their music as the primary form of presenting the archipelago to the world. There is a strong awareness regarding the fact that Cape Verde is a small, poor and relatively unknown country, usually absent in world maps. However, these islands are made known throughout the world by the works of musicians and singers, such as Cesária Évora, Bana, Ildo Lobo and, more recently, Lura and Mayra Andrade. Cape Verdean music is thought of as ‘the country’s only export’ or its ‘diamond.’ Discourses about the morna trigger strong feelings of belonging to Cape Verde as a unity. Mornas were a recurrent theme in productions of Luso-Cape Verdean intellectuals, whose works played an important role in the construction of this musical genre as a symbol of Cape Verde. Since colonial times, mornas have been described as the “lyrical expression of Cape Verdean feelings” (Lopes 1968). The same author stated that Cape Verdeans “respond to all aspirations and appeals from their soul with the morna, their typical music, all impregnated with melancholy and sweet nostalgia […]” (Lopes 1968, 38). Until today this notion is reinforced in writings that portray the morna as a “synthesis of the spirituality of the Cape Verdean people” (Lima 2001). The way in which migration affects the Cape Verdean population also contributes to strengthen such ideas about the morna. The many Cape Verdeans living as immigrants in countries such as Portugal, France, the Netherlands and the United States often make reference to the morna as a means of connection with their homeland. People born in any of the Cape Verdean islands find in the morna an element of identification, inside and outside the borders of the country. Musicians as well reproduce such ideas in the songs they compose. This may be observed in the song “Torrão di meu” (My Homeland), by Daniel Spencer Brito:

5  The sirocco is a hot and dry wind blowing from Northern Africa and affecting Cape Verde.

Language and Music in Cape Verde

297

Morna Nhas raízes ta finkóde Na bô seiva N kria debóxe de ternura de bôs verses N dormi embalóde Na bô melodia

Morna My roots are stuck To your sap I grew up under the tenderness of your [verses I fell asleep lulled By your melody

Ku bô N ta falá ku tude munde Sem bô mi ê um moribundu sem ar

Through you, I talk with the whole world Without you, I am a breathless man about [to die You are a message For all the lovers who have left You are the language For all Cape Verdean beings

Bô ê mensagem Pa tude kretxeu na terra longe Bô ê linguagem Pa tude kriston cabeverdeanu

The above song reveals how the morna itself is used as a means of enhancing the reception of this musical genre as a symbol of the Cape Verdean nation. The same feature may be found in many other similar songs. Mornas are used as a language to describe and value this same language. Another musician, Mario Lucio Sousa, wrote in the booklet of an album by the musical group Simentera, Barro e Voz (1997), the following definition of the morna: Perhaps, [the morna is] the most genuine Capeverdean and universal musical type. Played on every island, morna reflects our people’s identity, their sadness, their gloominess and their beauty. Its melody is rich and full of harmonious variations backed with guitars, ‘cavaquinho’ (little 4 strings guitar), violin and 10 strings guitar. The morna is thus portrayed as a genuine product of Cape Verde as a whole. However, careful observation of the uses of language in Cape Verdean music may also show the existence of significant variability. The choice of words and accents in a song relates to the themes addressed in the lyrics, expressing affinities and differences between the musical genre and each of the islands in Cape Verde. This may be especially significant when discussing the origins of the morna. Eugénio Tavares, one of the most important Cape Verdean songwriters, made the first written reference to the origin of the morna. Besides being a

298

Braz Dias

great composer, Eugénio Tavares was a very special character in the development of this musical genre. While the vast majority of musicians belonged to the working classes, Eugénio was part of the local intelligentsia. He was, at the same time, an educated poet and a composer of mornas. He is claimed to have been one of the first Cape Verdeans to write poems in Creole. He has also been seen as the one responsible for the introduction of a refined lyricism in the composition of mornas. In an overstatement, the style of his lyrics has even been identified with the writings of the great Portuguese poet Luís de Camões (Mariano 1950). Eugénio Tavares’ relevance for Cape Verdean history is clearly attested by his appearance on the two thousand escudos bill (Figure 15.1), together with a transcription of one of his songs, in Creole. The image of the poet on the bill, together with the transcription of a very sentimental morna composed in Creole,6 represents the close connection

Figure 15.1

The composer Eugénio Tavares on the two thousand escudos bill

6  Eugénio Tavares’ lyrics on the two thousand escudos bill, translated into English: “If I am to live in this evil life/ Of not having/ Someone who wants me,/ So I want to die without light/ In my cross,/ In this pain/ Of giving my life/ In the martyrdom of love!” (my translation).

Language and Music in Cape Verde

299

between the state, the nation, language and music. Modern national currencies have shown over economic history their crucial role for the state, relating sovereignty to the making of money. Coins and banknotes are symbols of the complex relationship between markets and political authority. They are a commodity guided by the logic of anonymous markets, but they also remind us that “states underwrite currencies and that money is originally a relation between persons in society” (Hart 1986, 638). As such, money is also a symbol of a shared experience – in this case, as part of a nation. It is “a durable ground on which to stand, anchoring identity in a collective memory” (Hart 2007, 15). Taking this into account, it is especially relevant that the two thousand escudos bill displays a renowned morna composer, together with one of his lyrics, in Creole. Morna and Creole represent in a banknote the state that issued it and the national community in which it rests. They are symbols and tools for the construction of an entity that presents itself as a totality.7 Eugénio Tavares, this somewhat ambiguous figure who was part of the Cape Verdean elite but simultaneously became recognized for his connections with the morna and the Creole language, said in 1930 that this musical genre is originally from the Boavista Island (Tavares 1969 [1932], 17). Eugénio Tavares also described the route of the morna, passing by the other islands. According to the poet, on each island where the morna arrived, it was adjusted, “getting the psychic feature of each people” (ibid., 17). Eugénio Tavares introduced an idea that turned into a kind of dogma: the morna originated in the Boavista Island. No other author has contradicted this claim, even though Eugénio Tavares himself was born in the Island of Brava and the morna had its heyday in the Island of São Vicente. It is not unusual today to hear a Cape Verdean saying that the morna was born in Boavista, grew up in Brava, and matured in São Vicente, then spreading to the other islands. This specific relationship between the morna and each of the Cape Verdean islands is gradually revealed in the songs. In Cape Verdean music we can often notice a close link between the artist and a specific location. This relationship is built in two ways: the form and the content of the song, simultaneously. While the lyrics of a song praise a particular location, the variety of the Creole language in which it is sung reinforces the notion of belonging of the artist to that place. An example of this may be seen in the song “São ‘Cent bô ê sabe,” by M. Almeida:

7  It should be added to this discussion the fact that the two thousand escudos bill has recently been replaced. In December 2014, the Bank of Cape Verde presented the new two thousand escudos bill – this time in honor of the world-famous singer Cesária Évora and, again, of the musical genre with which she is identified, the morna.

300

Braz Dias

São ‘Cent bô ê sabe, sim São ‘Cent bô ê sabe

Yes, São Vicente you are delightful São Vicente you are delightful

Ês d’zê’m c’ma São ‘Cent dá tchuva N’ ti ta bá c’mê midje verde, oi N’ ti ta ba passá só sabe Lá na Matiota e na Baía

They told me that it rained in São Vicente I’m going there to eat corn I’m going to spend some delightful time On Matiota Beach and at the Bay

Mostrá’m quês foto di féria Qui bô fazê na São ‘Cent, oi Qu’ê pa’m bem matá sodadi Pa quê sodadi ta matá’m

Show me those vacation pictures That you took in São Vicente So I can stop missing it Because this feeling is killing me

N’ ta lembrá daquês paródia Na Rufins, na Matiota e na Baía Na Lameirão, naquês tempo di féria Ta sperá pa sol cambá Qu’ê pa voltá lá pa Morada

I remember those parties In Rufins, on Matiota Beach and at the Bay In Lameirão, during those vacation days Waiting for the sunset So I could come back to Morada

The song makes evident the feelings of a migrant who misses his homeland, São Vicente. The lyrics mention particular places in the Island: Matiota, Baía, Lameirão, Morada. Moreover, the whole song is sung according to the Creole variety spoken in São Vicente. For example, we can compare the sentence “N’ ti ta bá c’mê midje verde” with the form that could be found in the Santiago Island: “N sa ta bai cúme midju verdi.” These sentences reveal different grammatical structures, such as the use of different aspect markers (ti and sa). Syntactical differences become evident along with phonological ones, as we may notice in the sentence “Qui bô fazê,” which contrasts with “Qui bu fázi,” found in Santiago. Through the uses of language, the specificity of São Vicente is reinforced in the song. Mornas that have as their main topic a particular island, or one of its villages, are quite usual. We may find a wide variety of morna lyrics related to islands such as Boavista, São Nicolau, São Vicente, Brava, Fogo and Santiago. Below, there is an excerpt of a morna composed by Rodrigo Peres (apud Leitão 1982, 41) as a praise for the island of Brava, where he was born, using the Creole variety found in that place. Djabraba, terra de morna amá flor. Djabraba, nha doce jardin d’amor.

Island of Brava, land of morna and flowers. Island of Brava, my sweet garden of love.

Language and Music in Cape Verde

Djabraba, alegre cumá un sorriso, Que Nhor Des dâ sé bençon P’el transformabo bo tchon Nun canto de Paraiso.

Island of Brava, happy as a smile, To which Lord God gave his blessing To transform its soil Into a part of Paradise.

Djabraba é puro simá un rapariga Nun palmanhá ta sonhâ co alguén. Vila é sé rosto fresco e moreno Ma coraçan stâ pulsâ la na Lém. […]

Island of Brava is pure as a lady In the morning, daydreaming about someone Vila is her brown and fragrant face But the heart is beating in Lém. […]

301

We may observe a few recurrent elements. One island – Brava or, in the local Creole variety, Djabraba – is praised as the composer makes reference to its pleasurable qualities and two of its villages (Vila and Lém). Furthermore, the place is explicitly related to the morna (“land of morna and flowers”). In contrast with discourses that reinforce this musical genre as a national symbol, mornas are mentioned in the lyrics above as a particular feature of the island of Brava. Sometimes a song makes no explicit reference to a place, but it mentions events and circumstances that may be related to one of the Cape Verdean islands. Such is the case of the morna below, “Enterro Camponês” (“Burial of a peasant”), by Ney Fernandes (apud Simentera 1997). Quem quê dono des nha destino É ca pa céu qu n’ta pedi’l nem é ca pa lua qui fari strela mi é camponês faltam voz pam tchiga patron

Who owns my destiny I don’t ask the sky I don’t ask the moon, much less the stars I am a peasant what I lack is the voice to reach the boss

E ca so abandono m’crê direito de um homem livre vida desafogado pa m’ca spera tchuba natureza ingrata qui deporta nhas companheros pa [longe de Terra

It is not only abandon I want the rights of a free man An easy life not to wait for the rain Ungrateful nature which exiled my fellows far away from my [motherland

Mi n’crê so sustento pa m’da nhas [ fidjus nha vida dexa bai n’ta empalha nho San Titino nhô raspondem

I just want my sustenance to give to my [children Let my life go Mr San Titino, answer me

302

Braz Dias

Na nha morte n’crê gaita ta pupa enterro camponês corpo na skifi ladainha de nhô Pedro ta lebam pa [cemiterio.

On my burial I want the accordion groaning A burial of a peasant, the body in the coffin Mr Pedro’s litany to take me to the [cemetery.

The composer Ney Fernandes, who was born in the Santiago Island, is known for writing songs with a political content. The morna above conveys a social critique related to the precarious life of the population in rural areas. They lack basic rights and favorable working conditions, depending on the rain to sustain their children. Death is their only certainty, as indicated in the text. Despite the absence of explicit reference to a particular island, one may identify the locale when paying attention to the Creole variety used in the song. Moreover, this morna points out the dilemmas faced in places where agriculture is the main source of income, as in the rural areas of Santiago. Finally, the lyrics mention a practice closely related to the Santiago Island: the burial of a peasant, with the sound of an accordion. It should be stressed that the accordion, or gaita, is the leading instrument in the funaná, another Cape Verdean musical genre. Contrasting to the morna, the funaná (and the accordion associated with it) was never really absorbed by a national discourse, remaining as a cultural element exclusively related to the Santiago Island. Therefore, in an elaborated way, the composer Ney Fernandes uses the ‘national musical genre’ to bring up subtle connections between music, language and local identity. Another paradigmatic illustration is observed in the works of Cordas do Sol, a musical group whose members are from the Santo Antão Island. Below, we may see an excerpt of “Linga de Sentonton” (Language of Santo Antão): Linga d’Sentonton É um sobura Folod no moda de nhô ovó Bô te ouvil n’uvid ta znib seb

The language of the Santo Antão Island Is delightful It is spoken in the same way as my grandfather You hear it in your ears and it resonates [pleasantly

In the text above (in this case, not a morna), it is possible to notice the existence of a language ideology that is explicit about the difference between the many varieties of Creole. As indicated in the lyrics, the way of speaking in Santo Antão Island is not a simple accent. It may be said to constitute a whole new language: the “linga de Sentonton.” This language is permeated by

303

Language and Music in Cape Verde

memories and feelings, closely related to the construction of social identity in a local level.

Music and Code-Switching

When discussing music and language in Cape Verde, another important issue to be observed is the way code-switching constitutes an instrument regularly used in songwriting in order to convey meanings. It is not rare to find songs where Creole is mixed with English, Portuguese, or other languages. One example may be found in the song “Sampé,” composed by Valdemiro Ferreira (also known as Vlu): Dizem na vida aqui se faz Aqui se paga Nton ca é maldade ninhum Nem vingança M’crê oiob pagá mal que bô faze […]

They say that, in life, here it’s done Here it’s paid Then it is neither malevolence Nor revenge Wanting to see you pay for the evil that you have done […]

The first two verses of the lyrics above were composed in Portuguese, while the rest of the song was composed in Creole. The verses in Portuguese refer to an idiomatic expression incorporated into Creole. They set the theme of the song, which is later developed in the ‘mother tongue.’ Code-switching is especially instrumental to portray life in a context characterized by intense migration flows. This is the case of “Vida dur’ê ná Merca,” by Frank Cavaquinho. The author’s name itself may be seen as an example of code-switching: a genuine non-Portuguese name (Frank) attached to the Portuguese word ‘Cavaquinho.’ In the referred song, the author describes how difficult life is for Cape Verdean migrants living in the United States. They have to work hard and there is no time for flirting: Nem qu’ês crê ma es ca podê Qui everyday tude gente ê busy

Even if they want, they cannot [flirt] Because everyday everybody is busy

Code-switching from the Creole language into English is used in the text above to convey information about the context and social identity of the individuals addressed in the song: Cape Verdean migrants living in “Merca” (America). This linguistic tool is also used for joking, as in many other societies where

304

Braz Dias

switching leads to humor (Siegel 1995, 100). In this case, the use of code-switching by Cape Verdean migrants is the object of mockery and a sure way to get a laugh. As in the examples above, we may find both inter- and intra-sentential code-switching in Cape Verdean music. Besides, code-switching can also occur when two Creole varieties are used in a single song. This is a recurrent feature in the composition and interpretation of mornas. Below we may find the lyrics of “Lua Nha Testemunha,” composed by B.Léza: Bô ka ta pensa Nha kretxeu Nem bô ka ta imaginá K’ma long’ di bô m’ tem sufrido. Pergunta lua na céu Lua nha kompanhera Di solidão.

You don’t think, My love, And you don’t imagine How much I have suffered when away [from you Ask the moon in the sky. The moon is my companion In loneliness.

Lua, vagabundo di spaço Ki ta konxê tud nha vida, Nha desventura. El k’ ta kontabu Nha kretxeu Tud’ k’um ten sufrido Na ausência E na distância.

The moon, vagabond in space, Who knows all my life, My misadventure. It is the one who will tell you, My love, All that I have suffered In your absence And distance.

Mundo, bô tem roladu ku mi Num jogu di kabra-céga, Sempre ta persigui’m Pa kada volta ki mundu dá El ta traze’m um dor Pam txiga más pa Deus.

World, you have rolled with me In a children’s game, Always chasing me. For every turn made by the world, It brings me a pain So I can get closer to God.

This song was recorded by Cesária Évora on the album Miss Perfumado (1992), nominated for a Grammy Award. Listening to Cesária’s interpretation, it is possible to note that words are sometimes pronounced in the São Vicente Creole variety: imaginá, konxê. Other words are pronounced in the Santiago Creole variety: pensa, pergunta, kontabu, roladu, txiga. Apparently, there is no particular reason for that. When discussing the use of more than one Creole variety

Language and Music in Cape Verde

305

in the same song, most composers and singers tend to relate it to an aesthetic option. That is, they tend to choose the variety that best fits the music, creating a pleasant sensation. But code-switching is rarely a random feature. It also tends to convey meanings every time a different Creole variety is chosen. I will illustrate this with the song “Cabral ca mori,” by Daniel Rendall: Oi Cabo Verde, bô óra djá tchiga Sima bôs irmons da África gritá

Hey, Cape Verde, your time has come Just as your brothers from Africa have [shouted Independência, fidjos djá nô tem Independence, we already have it, children Pa nós ser livre, livre di tudo alguém So we can be free, free from everybody Cabral ca mori Cabral é grito qui djigidi mundo Cabral ca mori Cabral é grito na nha pêtu Cabral ca mori Cabral é liberdade Honra e memória di herói di povo

Cabral didn’t die Cabral is a cry that stirs the world Cabral didn’t die Cabral is a cry in my heart Cabral didn’t die Cabral is freedom Honor and memory of the people’s hero

Di PAIGC, partido de luta PAIGC, a political party of struggle Na finaçon nô ca podê squecê We cannot forget it when singing finaçon Di tudo irmon, herói qui dá sê sangue We cannot forget all our brothers, heroes [who gave their blood] Pa liberdade, justiça di nôs povo For freedom and justice for our people This morna is especially interesting because of its content. The lyrics of the mornas usually deal with sentimental topics such as love, emigration, the pain of separation from the loved one and the attachment to the homeland. The text above, however, deals with the fight for independence in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, highlighting the memory of Amílcar Cabral. There have been only few attempts to compose mornas with a more political character. “Cabral ca mori” (“Cabral didn’t die”) is one of them. Emphasizing this political context, the composer used the Creole variety found in Santiago. This is the island where the struggle against colonialism became stronger. Santiago Island is also more closely related to Cape Verde’s African heritage – closer to the African brothers who first shouted for independence, as mentioned in the song. The Creole variety spoken in the Santiago Island is the one that shares

306

Braz Dias

more similarities with the variety spoken in Guinea-Bissau. Moreover, Santiago was home for the anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral during his early years. Therefore, the option for this Creole variety is full of meanings. But the historical significance of São Vicente for the development of morna is still vital and it is difficult to find an interpretation of a morna that does not show any sign of the São Vicente variety of the Creole language, as in the sentence: “Na finaçon nô ca podê squecê.” Finaçon, a musical style characteristic of the Santiago Island, is mentioned in a sentence where words are pronounced according to the Creole variety found in São Vicente.8 Code-switching may also be related to the life history of an artist. Musicians who were born in São Vicente but migrated, spending years among a Cape Verdean community abroad, with many compatriots from other islands, on some occasions compose songs using other Creole varieties (Júlio dos Santos Rocha, personal communication, November 5, 2014). The Creole variety spoken in the Santiago Island, considered the most remote from Portuguese, is also particularly strong in migrant communities. This may be reflected in musical productions.

Concluding Notes

This discussion points out the relevance of variability for explaining Cape Verdean linguistic situation. The idea of Cape Verdean Creole as a unified language, relatively homogeneous and mutually intelligible throughout the islands, may be understood as a cultural construction. As such, it is remarkably important in a nation-building process. This is particularly appropriate for analyzing the ideology that sets the ground for public policies related to the officialization of the Creole language. Members of the elite, who are much familiar with the Portuguese language, are the ones who also proclaim the relevance of Creole as a national language (and the relevance of the morna as the national musical genre). This project for the Cape Verdean nation is based on a model that associates a country with an exclusive language, working as a symbol of its cohesion and uniqueness.

8  For this discussion, I use as reference the most famous version of this song, recorded by Ildo Lobo (leading vocalist of Os Tubarões) on the album Pepe Lopi (1976). His performance clearly reveals shifts from one to the other variety of the Creole language.

Language and Music in Cape Verde

307

However, as I have been trying to show, there are competing projects for the nation, based on different language ideologies. Popular music and other events observed in everyday experience disclose a different notion of the Cape Verdean nation, presented as a plural entity. Careful observation reveals discourses and practices based on the same tokens – language and music – to indicate the internal diversity that characterizes this small nation and its connections with distant lands through intense migratory flows. Cape Verdean music and language – morna and Creole – may be understood as symbols that are able to both unite and disclose the diversity and porosity of Cape Verde as a nation. References Braz Diaz, J. 2002. “Língua e poder: transcrevendo a questão nacional.” Mana 8(1): 7–27. Cabo Verde. 2005. “Resolução n. 48/2005.” Boletim Oficial da República de Cabo Verde I(46): 1242–43. Cardoso, P. 1933. “O Crioulo.” O Eco de Cabo Verde Suplemento Folha Literária I(5): 3. Carreira, A. 1972. Cabo Verde: formação e extinção de uma sociedade escravocrata (1460– 1878). Lisboa: Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa. Cesária Évora. 1992. Miss Perfumado. Paris: Lusafrica. Couto, H.H. do.1996. Introdução ao estudo das línguas crioulas e pidgins. Brasília: Editora Universidade de Brasília. Duarte, D.A. 1998. Bilinguismo ou Diglossia? Mindelo: Spleen Edições. Fonseca, M. 1998. “Padronização do alfabeto: sua importância (defesa da língua caboverdiana, do bilingüismo e do multilingüismo) .” Cultura 2: 98–107. Hart, K. 1986. “Heads or Tails? Two Sides of the Coin.” Man 21(4): 637–56. Hart, K. 2007. “Money Is Always Personal and Impersonal.” Anthropology Today 23(5): 12–16. Leitão, B., ed. 1982. Mornas: cantiga que povo ta cantâ. Taunton: Atlantis Publishers. Lima, A.G. 2001. “A morna: síntese da espiritualidade do povo cabo-verdiano.” Africana 6: 239–67. Lopes, J. 1968. “Morna: expressão lírica do sentimento cabo-verdiano.” Boletim do Círculo de Estudos Ultramarinos IV(2): 36–38. Mariano, G. 1950. “O amor na poesia de Eugénio Tavares.” Cabo Verde: Boletim de Propaganda e Informação I(11): 3–8. Os Tubarões. 1976. Pepe Lopi. Portugal. Rougé, J.L. 1986. “Uma hipótese sobre a formação do crioulo da Guiné-Bissau e da Casamansa.” Soronda: Revista de Estudos Guineenses 2: 28–49.

308

Braz Dias

Siegel, J. 1995. “How to Get a Laugh in Fijian: Code-Switching and Humor.” Language in Society 24(1): 95–110. Simentera. 1997. Barro e Voz. Austria: ORF. Tavares, E. 1969[1932]. Mornas: cantigas crioulas. Luanda: Liga dos Amigos de Cabo Verde. Varela da Silva, T. 1998. “Kiriolu: spedju di nos alma.” Cultura 2: 108–21. Veiga, M. 1998. “Implementação do ALUPEC.” Cultura 2: 94–97.

Chapter 16

Between Purity and Creolization: Representations of Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa1 Kees van der Waal … creoleness may unfold its pidgin potential as an identitarian frame of reference, linking people across ethnic boundaries by enabling them to share (selected) ethnic and transethnic identifications Knörr 2010, 747

…

Creolisation would finally help imagine the Relation of South Africa to the world … Martin 2006, 173

∵ Introduction It is Sunday morning, just after 8 a.m., September 14, 2014, my wife and I listen habitually to an Afrikaans radio program on Radio Sonder Grense (Radio Without Boundaries), called Loof die Here (Praise the Lord). Fanie Smit announces the Christian music items. Today he plays a Griekwa Psalm, a beautiful lament, different in tone and dialect from the white musical tradition and standard Afrikaans, followed by a song in the standard. He says: ‘… eers in Griekwa Afrikaans en dan in, laat ons sê: gewone Afrikaans’ (‘… first in Griekwa Afrikaans and then in, let us say: normal Afrikaans’). He and most of us ‘whites’ take the standard as the norm even in a program that celebrates cosmopolitanism and creolization in 1  I am grateful towards Fanie Jansen van Rensburg, Margriet van der Waal and Cherryl Walker for valuable comments on a draft of this article.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_017

310

van der Waal

Christian music. Due to the new sensitivities around identity claims one would not say ‘Afrikaner Afrikaans’ or ‘white Afrikaans’ on the air, but that is what the norm of this standard linguistic form implies. Also, on this radio station, white Afrikaans-speakers, when they need to use an English word, will usually first apologize: ‘verskoon die Engelse woord’ (‘forgive me for using the English word’), while coloured2 Afrikaansspeakers will, without any trace of unease, throw in a few English words in their colloquial use of Kaaps (a non-standard variety of Afrikaans). In South Africa linguists have debated creolization with reference to the origin of Afrikaans, while Denis-Constant Martin (2006) has promoted the creative and reconciliatory potential of the notion for a cultural strategy towards nation-building. South Africa has a long history of essentialized white identity claims that denounced racial and cultural mixing. In the new South Africa dominant notions about nationhood still tend to be informed by essentialist assumptions, e.g., with regard to multiculturalism and indigeneity. However, there are processes at work that are open to a more fluid conception of history and cultural strategy. Nevertheless, a prominent social scientist, Ivor Chipkin (2007), concluded that with regard to the years after 1994 a positive answer to the question: ‘Do South Africans Exist?’ could not be given, as a fully democratic and inclusive citizenship had not developed. The new South Africa was inaugurated with high hopes around nationbuilding in 1994 (Maharaj 1999). The language of multiculturalism pervaded the discourse around the creation of a democratic constitution and an attempt at coming to terms with a divisive and traumatic past through the reconciliation process embodied in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. By using an Afrikaans poem, Die kind (wat doodgeskiet is deur soldate by Nyanga) (The child (that was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga)) written by Ingrid Jonker, in the opening of the first democratic parliament in 1994, President Nelson Mandela indicated how a symbol of oppression (Afrikaans) could become a symbol of reconciliation and commonality. While the Bill of Rights contained the basic principles of non-discrimination and equality that guided the process of nation-building, the Constitution made provision for the development of cultural identitarian processes and acknowledged the institution of traditional 2  Terms like white, colored, Afrikaners, etc. are used here as social constructions derived from common everyday use without any claim to their validity or essential nature. I use the term ‘white Afrikaans-speakers’ as a broad social category in distinction to ‘colored Afrikaansspeakers,’ while the term ‘Afrikaners’ refers to those white Afrikaans-speakers who identify with a nationalistic and exclusivist project that found its high point in apartheid.

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

311

leadership. This strategic balancing act was prompted by a realization in the African Nationalist Congress of the destructive potential of recurrent episodes of violent extra-parliamentary identity politics. With the adoption of the new South African Constitution in 1996, the vice-president, Thabo Mbeki, spoke fluently of the many identities that were coming together in the South African nation in his speech “I am an African.” He named several of the historical leaders and groups that make up the nation, thereby giving recognition to the mixed history of the South African people. Denis-Constant Martin points to the irony that the people with the most mixed background, the so-called coloreds, were not mentioned in this speech (2006,165). A few years later, in 2000, South Africa adopted a national motto for its national coat of arms: ‘ǃke e: ǀxarra ǁke’ (unity in diversity) that was promoted as a symbol of national unity. The language used for this motto is ǀXam, a Khoisan language with very few speakers in South Africa. The choice for this language symbolized a recognition of the first people in the country and their history of dispossession. Their suffering, dispossession and lack of domination, even their vulnerability, were used to express the South African search for unity after the centuries of white domination and also to put forward an identity that was not one of the dominant African identities. These interventions by the government indicate the uneasy process in South Africa in its journey away from divisive identity politics towards a politics of nation-building, while seemingly trapped in using the language and practice of multiculturalism. Attempts at promoting the very necessary process of redressing the injustices of the past through affirmative action of dispossessed (racial) population categories lead to the essentialization of population classifications. In a context of persistent inequality and crystallized population classifications that have been handed down from the past and that refuse to disappear, there are signals of a common equitable citizenship that is, however, ever pushed into a distant developmental space of hopefulness, while the intervening noises from countervailing claims based on historical identities clamor for recognition. The local politics of protest against poor service delivery in marginalized communities is sometimes infused with identity claims. This prevents a strong sense of shared citizenship and strengthens an inward-looking and exclusivist tendency, although these orientations are highly situational. This chapter seeks to address the following questions: How, if at all, has creolization been given recognition as a historical process in South Africa? Do people who are associated with the racial categories of white, colored and black (sometimes with an emphasis on purity) move to a more creole version of identity and language? What new forms does creolization take in the new South Africa with its democratic ideals and a conscious process of

312

van der Waal

nation-building in a context of racialized inequality? Which comparative issues are emerging with regard to processes of pidginization and creolization?3 Against the background of centripetal and centrifugal cultural and identity processes in South Africa, this chapter uses the lens of creolization and pidginization (Knörr 2010) to investigate the relational positioning of two creolized sections of the population (Afrikaans-speaking whites and coloreds) who share a common history, as is evident from their use of the Afrikaans language. The racial boundary that has been constructed between them coincides with a difference in orientation towards exclusivity and inclusivity. The chapter investigates the development and persistence of this separateness/ openness especially with regards to language and music and looks at the pidginization potential of Afrikaans for overcoming the divisions between these two sections of the population as well as their linkages across the body of the nation.

Creolization and Pidginization, Conceptually Because creole groups emerged in the process of interaction and integration of different ethnic groups, they often – yet by no means always – continue to have a high integrative potential as far as accepting people of different ethnic backgrounds into their group is concerned. Knörr 2010, 736

Creolization implies not only the amalgamation of diverse cultural forms and features but also the latter’s ethnicization by a diverse group of people undergoing ethnogenesis, the result being new cultural representations plus a new ethnic identity associated with them. Cultural pidginization, on the other hand, can be conceptualized as a process over the course of which a common culture and identity are developed in specific contexts 3  This article is part of a group of papers that arose from the work of Knörr (2010) around the question about the heuristic value of the Creolization versus Pidginization (CvP) model that she has developed and which was discussed at a conference on Creolization, held on October 9 and 10, 2014 at the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology in Halle, Germany. The CvP model entails that some creole groups seem to represent a strong pidginization potential, meaning that they are considered, at least symbolically, to link disparate groups in a nation state together towards greater social cohesion. The notion of pidginization in this context builds on the meaning it has acquired in linguistics, namely that a pidgin language is one that links groups with very different histories and languages for specific purposes, e.g., colonial trade.

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

313

of ethnic and cultural diversity as well, yet in contrast to creolization, this process does not involve ethnicization. Knörr 2010, 739

A range of theoretical approaches to creolization has been put forward since the term was borrowed from linguistics and started to appear in social science literature. It is generally understood as a process of cultural mixing that may or may not lead to a new ethnic consciousness. However, as Zimitri Erasmus points out (2011, 635, 639), ‘creole’ may also denote degeneration of physical type and the unhelpful idea of bounded cultures. Thomas H. Eriksen (2003, 234) foregrounds the dynamic aspect of creole: The most dynamic, and perhaps most genuinely creative cultural identity is nonetheless the creole one, which cannot draw on existing classifications but is forced to transcend them. A creole identity that rejects the boundary logic of hyphenated and pure identities has to define and redefine itself continuously; it has to rebuild the ship at sea. However, some want to tie the process of creolization more concretely to the Caribbean, or to plantation economies under colonization, from where the notion emerged (Stewart 2007, 4), but others, such as Ulf Hannerz (1987), look at creolization as a term for cultural borrowing and cultural indigenization that can be generalized to the whole world. Robin Cohen (2007, 369, 370) focuses on power relations in his characterization of creolization as an aspect of fugitive power (a notion coined by Zygmunt Bauman and referring to elusive forms of power found in collective shifts of attitudes and behaviors). Knörr (2010) regards the current phase of cultural blending (and identification with ethnic identities that symbolize blending) as a process of ‘pidginization,’ building on a prior process of creolization. In her work the theoretical potential of the notions of creolization and pidginization are taken beyond general claims about assimilation. She identifies a postcolonial phase in which pidginization (contemporary openness and connectivity) is the main cultural transmission process (what she terms a CvP model = Creolization versus Pidginization). She sees the appropriation of cultural elements as a contemporary process based on the potential for social cohesion that may be expected to follow from a creole ethnicity. The benefit of the CvP model is that it starts to disaggregate the process of creolization more analytically. This is done by differentiating between successive cultural and ethnogenic processes based on intense contact between related social categories and tying them to colonial and postcolonial historical phases.

314

van der Waal

How are creolization and pidginization related to other notions that denote cultural mixing and ethnic assimilation? The first one that comes to mind is ‘multiculturalism.’ As Terence Turner (1993) has pointed out, one may profitably distinguish between difference and critical multiculturalism. Difference multiculturalism takes cultural differences for granted, while critical multiculturalism asks questions about the context and identifies factors that uphold difference and power relations between culturally different groups. Similarly, a study of processes of creolization and pidginization can benefit from asking these questions in order to gain a deeper understanding of specific localized processes. Linked to this issue is the challenge to avoid ‘essentialism’ (Fuchs 2001) which distorts the complex nature of the dynamic process of ‘culturing’ (Wright 1998). This can be a problem in approaches to creolization that tend to homogenize and simplify an entangled and open process, e.g., the idea of creolité promoted by some Caribbean scholars (Martin 2006). Any account of creolization that puts the emphasis on groupness is by definition essentialist, something that Glissant (1997) has powerfully argued against, offering the notion of Relation as the basic condition of all cultural and identification processes. While multiculturalism and the CvP model share a focus on national identification processes, the CvP model is analytically more open to the specificity and entanglement of ethnic and cultural dynamics, whereas multiculturalism is less of an analytical lens and more often a political policy that emphasizes tolerance for essentialized identifications within a nation. Another notion that is closely related to creolization, but more orientated to individual citizenship, is ‘cosmopolitanism’ (especially in the form of ‘critical cosmopolitanism’), associated with a commitment towards greater social justice and international relation-building. The term has developed in the sphere of transnational social movements and progressive politics. Some authors link cultural creolization with cosmopolitics as a kind of political creolization, closely associated with multiculturalism and human rights (Hornby and O’Byrne 2012, 388; Werbner 2012, 153): ‘In the broadest sense possible, cosmopolitanism is about the extension of the moral and political horizons of people, societies, organizations and institutions. It implies an attitude of openness as opposed to closure’ (Delanty 2012, 2). Also related is the notion of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ that emphasizes the need to retain diversity while promoting unity in the articulation of local identifications (Delanty 2012, 6) and which resonates with the notion of pidginization in the CvP model. However, cosmopolitanism is less of a social scientific analytical lens (sharing this aspect with multiculturalism) and more a political ideal associated with democracy and human rights oriented towards a common humanity and the global level, in which cultural and ethnic differences are underplayed.

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

315

From the discussion thus far, we can infer that the notions of creolization and pidginization not only refer to linguistic, cultural and ethnogenic phenomena (processes in specific locations), but are also considered to be useful as theoretical lenses. The benefit of the CvP model is that it allows for a theoretical analysis of cultural and ethnicization processes in contemporary nation-building situations following colonial and postcolonial violence.

Contested Creolizations: Exclusive and Inclusive Identities

The process of creolization in the Cape under conditions of slavery and colonial control was shaped by the emergence of a racial hierarchy, despite the many shared cultural elements and unions between the colored and white sectors of the Cape population. By the late nineteenth century this had led to the emergence of two creolized populations: the white Afrikaans-speakers (Afrikaners) who generally denied their creole status and the population that increasingly was labeled as ‘colored’ and who embraced their creoleness. The two populations shared many cultural elements, apart from the language Afrikaans, such as food, music and dance, but to some extent also developed separately due to the politicized and legislated separation between them (Martin 2013, 86, 87). In the early twentieth century and onwards, the dominant white stratum based their idea of social and political superiority on claims to racial purity and descent. White Afrikaans-speakers claimed as their heritage Dutch culture which they merged with the socially dominant English lifestyle and manners. Despite the history of a shared process of creolization and shared cultural elements that pointed in that direction, a doctoral thesis in Cultural History at the University of Pretoria, by Hettie Claasens in 2004, claimed that the Cape cuisine had mainly European roots and no Malay influence (Die Burger, April 22, 2004). The struggle to keep Afrikaners pure was also evidenced in the appropriation of Afrikaans (the language) as a white code, used as the prime symbol of ethnonationalist politics up to the end of apartheid and beyond (based on specific material interests, see Hofmeyr 1987). Race, language and culture were often idealized as pure and Western in a discourse of resistance to the challenges of the new South Africa in which whites had lost their political domination but were still socially and economically extremely powerful. While an exclusive white Afrikaner identity and cultural purity was still often expressed in the new South Africa, it was increasingly becoming a sign of conservatism, associated with nostalgia about the apartheid past. Political projects that sought to mobilize Afrikaners towards withdrawal into white enclaves (the Volkstaat Council, Orania, Kleinfontein) were not very successful, but the

316

van der Waal

orientation towards a ‘pure’ ethnic discourse remains latent among a section of white Afrikaans-speakers (Afrikaners) (Steyn 2004, 70). However, young white Afrikaans-speakers increasingly define themselves as South Africans firstly, in opposition to a conservative and haunting past that was associated with the generation of their parents and grandparents. White Afrikaans-speakers in the new South Africa now seem to resemble the social position of the Krio of Sierra Leone who are also not comfortable with their creolized past. At the same time, in the new South Africa, white Afrikaans-speakers increasingly need links to the Afrikaans-speaking coloreds, e.g., for their support of the Afrikaans language struggle and for demonstrating non-racialism to the South African population as a whole. However, the continued widespread use of the term ‘Afrikaner’ for self-identification indicates the strength of a racial basis for social classification and an orientation towards racial and cultural exclusivity. In contrast, coloreds have emerged as the representatives of the process of creolization in South Africa. While many coloreds accept this characterization, the negative association with racial hybridization as degeneration and cultural mixing as marking a lack of culture is deeply resented as being an ascribed identification by racists. The ascribed “sense of in-between identity was a source of considerable discomfort for them under the apartheid system which entrenched so-called ‘pure’ ethnic identities” (Field 1998–1999, 238; see also Grunebaum and Robins 2001). The colored population derived from the interaction of a number of population categories (slave, Khoisan, white and black) and these lines of ancestry continued to be identifiable within this category. However, colonialism and apartheid also led to the development of a sense of coloredness, even if mainly based on shared experiences of exclusion: The principal constituents of this stable core [of a sense of colouredness] are the assimilationism of the coloured people, which spurred hopes of future acceptance into the dominant society; their intermediate status in the racial hierarchy, which generated fears that they might lose their position of relative privilege and be relegated to the status of Africans; the negative connotations, especially the shame attached to racial hybridity, with which colouredness was imbued; and finally, the marginality of the coloured community, which severely limited their options for social and political action, giving rise to a great deal of frustration. Adhikari 2006, 467

It was therefore understandable that many progressive political leaders in this population rejected being classified as colored, and many today question assertions about one shared way of being colored. In the new South Africa a new colored assertiveness has emerged that is linked to what is either a fear of

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

317

African dominance (Adhikari 2006, 471, 472) or a celebration of Africanness in indigenous roots (Grunebaum and Robins 2001, 170). A Khoi identity, driven by some colored leaders and with a reference to first people status, also emerges in the public space from time to time. The different approaches to creolization appear nowhere more clearly than in attitudes towards language and music. The next sections deal with the ways in which white Afrikaans-speakers have used a closed model and colored Afrikaans-speakers a more open model as identitarian strategies. Following this discussion, and addressing the applicability of the CvP model, the question of the potential of these two forms of cultural creolization for pidginization towards nation-building will be addressed.

Standard Afrikaans and Kaaps

The creole history of the Afrikaans language is now well-established, although this aspect was often denied by white Afrikaans-speakers. We now know that Malay slaves and the mixed population at the Cape had a strong share in the early development of Afrikaans, as was evident in the first publication in Afrikaans, written by Muslim teachers using the Arabic script (Davids 2011). The symbolic role of Afrikaans in the nationalist Afrikaner political movement culminated in the opening ceremony of the Afrikaans language monument in 1975 and the enforcement of Afrikaans teaching in black schools. The Soweto youth revolt against the dominance of Afrikaans in black schools in 1976 was a powerful rejection of the racialization of the language. The transition to democracy in 1994 led to the recognition of 11 official languages in the country, with English increasingly becoming a lingua franca. While Afrikaans is a highly developed language in terms of literature and the so-called ‘higher functions,’ its continued use in the public space is contested. Highly emotional language struggles in higher education point to the extent to which language is continuously politicized and racialized amongst speakers of Afrikaans. Several varieties of Afrikaans have developed in South Africa’s long history of creolization: the standardized Afrikaans with public functions, spoken by whites as well as the colored elite, and vernacular varieties, of which Kaaps, spoken by working class coloreds on the Cape Flats, is the best-known. Kaaps not only has its own accent, vocabulary and a few grammatical peculiarities, but it is also characterized by an openness towards English, for example by general code-switching between Kaaps and English. In recent times it has become strategically important for Afrikaans language activists to reject the former white exclusivist approach to the preservation of the language and to react to the many calls for multilingualism. Wannie

318

van der Waal

Carstens (2013, 514–33), the chair of the Afrikaanse Taal Raad (ATR, Afrikaans Language Council), stressed the need to engage an inclusive Afrikaans community in order to guarantee the future of Afrikaans. In 1996 attempts were started to unite white, colored and black Afrikaans language representatives into one body which led to the Afrikaanse Oorlegplatform (Afrikaans Consultation Platform) in 1998. Due to the fact that the Platform was driven by whites, the initiative had only a limited success. A Taalberaad (Language Conference) in 2004 was also characterized by tension between the white and colored representatives. At the conference, Jonathan Jansen indicated that Afrikaans could become a language of reconciliation if it was opened to all its speakers and beyond. He argued that whites saw the language in terms of identity and legal issues, whereas for many coloreds Afrikaans was viewed in terms of empowerment. Hein Willemse supported this critique of the white ‘ownership’ of Afrikaans by pointing to the danger that the language was too strongly associated with Afrikaner interests and he added that new, shared symbols and practices of Afrikaans were needed. It seems that a more sustainable cooperative structure was initiated in 2008 in the form of the ATR, but one of the bones of contention remained the use of the term ‘Afrikaner’ in association with the Afrikaans language. The tension about Afrikaans along the lines of division created by the color castes of colonialism and apartheid led to a discussion of creolization as a cultural strategy, revealing the cleavages between some white and colored Afrikaans-speakers. At the Roots Conference in Cape Town in 2009 the linkages between Dutch and its derived varieties in the former Dutch colonies were celebrated. Hein Willemse, Professor of Afrikaans at the University of Pretoria, stated that the future of Afrikaans would be a creole one, that apartheid was based on a fear of mixture and that diversity was an asset (Willemse 2009). Willemse stated that Afrikaans needed to be liberated from its enforced association with nationalism which was still evident in the way in which (white) people were talking about Afrikaans as if they were the only representatives of the language. Due to demographic changes (whites are a minority of Afrikaansspeakers now), he continued, the pressures on standard Afrikaans are associated with loss and the ongoing process of creolization is denied, for example, in the continued emphasis on standard (‘Germanized’) forms of speech and writing in education. In a stringent response to Willemse, Danie Goosen (2009), the executive chair of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (FAK, Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations) portrayed the views of Willemse and other colored authors as insulting to Afrikaners. Goosen countered the arguments of Willemse about inescapable creolization by claiming that, internationally, identity politics was extremely viable and that instead of

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

319

moving away from a desire for purity, the world became increasingly identity conscious. A greater openness, such as in creolization, would lead to the end of Afrikaans as the postmodern orientation of creolization prevented the laying down of protective boundaries. This intense worry about the continued life chances of pure Afrikaans emerge forcefully in contestations about the use of Afrikaans in former Afrikaans language universities. The new demographics of university students and the demands of transformation towards more diversity are especially worrisome to those white Afrikaans-speakers who have invested in the language as symbolic of whiteness. Generally, young white Afrikaans-speakers express less of this anxiety and are more open to mixing and the use of English in higher education and in the workplace. The sense of loss around the gradual contraction of the space for Afrikaans at Stellenbosch University has been forcefully expressed by language activists (e.g., Giliomee 2009) in the metaphors of death and the finality of loss. Giliomee talked about a ‘language war’ and castigated the university about its language policy that would allow the ‘British lion’ to consume the ‘poor lamb of Afrikaans.’ In contrast, the colored poet Ronelda Kamfer (Krog and Schaffer 2005) reflects on the use of the non-standard form and code-switching in a racialized and stratified political economy where colored Afrikaans-speakers and their variety of the language remain marginal: Dis weird hoekom ek skaam is vir ’n taal wat ek praat Dis even nog meer weird dat ek en my vriende Nooit na die ‘kultuur’-events toe genooi word nie Daar is ’n groot panic attack aan die gang oor ’n taal Maar hulle sal nooit ons hulp vra nie … It is weird why I am ashamed of a language that I speak It is even more weird that I and my friends Are never invited to the ‘cultural’ events There is a big panic attack happening about a language But they will never ask for our assistance…. (My translation)

In the poem the use of English words in an Afrikaans text reflects the way that many coloreds, especially in the Cape region, use both English and Afrikaans in their daily speech in a non-ethnic and non-purist form of language. This indicates the lack of a culturally significant boundary with English that has become a marker of Cape colored identity, going back to social life in District

320

van der Waal

Six. Using single English words, when speaking Afrikaans, is associated with a warm, local sociability. District Six was a multilingual area in the nineteenth century where both Dutch and English functioned as lingua franca. Pure language was not the basis for social or political identity as in the case of white Afrikaans-speakers (McCormick 2002, 216–24; Stone 2002, 381). Similarly, there was a strong shift towards English among economically mobile colored people more recently, given the increasing economic importance of English (Webb 2010, 113). As indicated above, the tendency of white Afrikaans-speaking language activists to lament the expected death of Afrikaans, inspired by a history of Afrikaner nationalism, is not shared by colored Afrikaans-speakers. While the non-standard variety of Afrikaans has an open and creole orientation, (even potential for pidginization in terms of the CvP model), there seems to be little potential for pidginization towards a common South African identification on the basis of the widespread focus on language purity and linguistic anticreolization among whites, even if this search for purity concerns a historically creole language. But do the differences about creolization that appear in language politics also emerge in the reception of popular music?

Creolization, Anti-Creolization and ‘Black-Facing’ in Afrikaans Popular Music

In contrast to language, music can be enjoyed across language differences. In music, as performance, the direction of communication is more unidirectional, from sender to receiver, than in the case of speech that is highly interactive. Nowadays, music travels easily along channels of mass-communication and fashionable performances and associated lyrics quickly become available as texts. For this discussion combinations of language and music and references to mixing and alterity are especially interesting. Denis-Constant Martin (2013) has recently provided an analysis of music in the Cape in which he uses the lens of creolization very productively. Creolization here means more than the mixing of diverse musical elements (as would be the case when the notion of hybridity would be used). Creolization, deriving from the interactions of people in a stratified colonial and postcolonial context, was often a conscious strategy of musicians to demonstrate openness to outside influences across racial and class boundaries. Martin shows that in this regard the development of jazz in Cape Town is of special interest as it had a strongly integrating function based on the celebration of blackness and racial mixing. It was based on South African and American mixed origins and made people meet across racial boundaries in apartheid times.

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

321

Cape Jazz was understandably not favored by the South African Broadcasting Corporation under apartheid (Martin 2013, 210–39). Popular music in South Africa, as Martin indicates, had a strong resistance role that contributed to a sense of unity among black people and despite legal prohibitions, colored, white and African music continued to mix even in the times of segregation and apartheid (Martin 2013, 105). An example of that mixing of musical elements was identified by Alex van Heerden in the vastrap dance of white Afrikaans-speakers that he interpreted as historically deriving from contact between farmers and their workers. The vastrap mixed the ghoema beat used by slaves, Khoisan dance steps and German dance music (Martin 2013, 142). However, for many white Afrikaansspeakers under apartheid and even beyond, the notion of creolization and the idea of mixture were not embraced as these threatened a sense of cultural purity. Looking ahead, Martin stated that although the collective memory of South Africans post-1990 was filled with knowledge about violence and separation, it also contained economic and cultural exchanges and entanglements. Therefore, music carries the ‘germs of a common future.’ He has a positive interpretation about this history of sharing: “… it tells a story of creolisation in which inputs from the outside, imitations, and appropriations led to original inventions that served to build new conceptions of being South African, based on a sense of self-esteem that did not derive from power but from creation” (Martin 2013, 248). As indicated, among Afrikaans-speakers it is especially the colored population that has a very positive association with the idea of a creole history and the continuous creation of music that celebrates their mixed origin. The Minstrel Carnival / Kaapse Klopse festival is an annual celebration of the Capetonian creole history and social identifications associated with the colored social category. It is “… no longer a shameful display of ‘alienation’ but a renewal festival akin to innumerable rites celebrated across the world” (Martin 2013, 271). While historically linked to the celebration of the freedom from slavery, the festival has become more inclusive in the new South Africa. This was partly facilitated by the appearance of President Nelson Mandela in minstrel uniform (in ANC colors) in 1996, but also by more frequent allusions to African people in the musical forms and lyrics of the Klopse (Martin 2013, 272, 274). Martin takes this line of interpretation further by discussing the potential for an inclusive South Africanness in various musical expressions. The Libertas choir of Stellenbosch, for example, expresses its support for inclusiveness in its membership composition across racial lines and by performing in Afrikaans, English, African languages and many other languages of the world (Martin 2013, 276). However, he found that while some rock groups also use Afrikaans in combination with English and refer to South Africanness by articulating the

322

van der Waal

white Afrikaans-speaking youth’s “concerns as to their place in the new South Africa,” white Afrikaans rock mostly remains relatively isolated and monolingual (Martin 2013, 289, 322). On a more positive and idealistic note, Martin observes that: … South African music can undoubtedly be considered as a “lieu de memoire”, a red thread running across the history of South Africa, illustrating the workings of creolisation, and demonstrating what South Africans have in common, in spite of centuries of racism and segregation, emphasising what they have been able to create together. Martin 2013, 370, 371

While this is certainly true, the many messages of exclusiveness in the popular music of white Afrikaans-speakers continue to limit the potential for cultural and social bridging. The orientation of Afrikaaps is different: it is a musical and multi-media ‘hipopera’ that takes the hegemony of standardized Afrikaans in the hands of whites head-on through the medium of popular music, visual material and theatre, thereby claiming recognition for the creolized character of other varieties of Afrikaans. The production had a successful run at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town (2010 and 2014) and the Oudtshoorn Klein Karoo Arts Festival in 2010, was turned into a video and went on tour in the Netherlands in 2012. The main aim of Afrikaaps was to “reclaim and liberate Afrikaans from its reputation as the language of the oppressor, taking it back for all who speak it” (Becker and Oliphant 2013, 1). The cast consisted of colored actors and musicians who performed the mixed history of Afrikaans through speech acts and historical reconstructions. At the same time Afrikaaps emphasized the social identifications of the marginalized voices in Afrikaans (Kaaps and Khoi): Afrikaaps is the aesthetics of a linguistic political identity claim that asserts the validity of different versions of the language, particularly the variants spoken by the Coloured working class on the Cape Flats, which have previously been dismissed as ‘non-standard.’ Becker and Oliphant 2013, 3

In Afrikaaps there is a direct attempt in engaging with the notion of creolization and turning it against the hegemonic standard in a plea for a more inclusive Afrikaans language politics. Afrikaaps makes strong identitarian statements about the non-standard. To some extent the message of Afrikaaps is like that of creolité in the Caribbean context that foregrounds a creole identity as the preferred one.

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

323

A less assertive celebration of creolization can be found in the musicals produced by David Kramer and Taliep Pietersen, for example, the Ghoema musical of 2005, in which the creolized nature of music and language among the colored population since slavery is asserted, although without strong claims about creolization as a preferred future. The lyrics express the mixing of English and Afrikaans words that is common in the speech of colored people and they contain references to sexual relationships across the color bar: Dina: Julle moet verstaan. Om te spot is al ’n lang tyd deel vannie ghoemaliedjie tradition. Jy sien: toe die slawe vir die baas ennie noi gesing het, het hulle hulleself mos oek entertain. Millah: Vertel hulle sister. Dina: Is true. Julle sal ‘it sieker nie wietie, ma hulle’t gesing van dinge wat net hulle onner hulle verstaan het. Millah: Ja. Innie woorde het hulle goed weggesteek. Secret dinge wat oppie plaas gebeur het. Dina: Baie van die songs het ’n double meaning. ’n Jakkals is nie net ’n jakkals nie. Millah: En koringsny is nie net koringsny nie. Dina: En assie rietjie innie water lê issie rietjie nie ’n rietjie nie. Ennie water is ’n anner ding. Millah: En ’n ding is nie ’n ding nie. Baie vannie songs het sexual connotations. Dina: Seks tussen die baas ennie slawe. Seks tussen die slawe ennie noi. Millah: As daar van ’n tannie of ’n blom gesing word moet jy weet dit gaan oor die noi

Dina: You have to understand. To mock has been a part of the ghoema song tradition for a long time. You see: when the slaves were singing for the master and the mistress, they also entertained themselves. Millah: Tell them sister. Dina: Is true. You would not know it, but they sang of things they only understood amongst themselves. Millah: Yes. In the words they were hiding certain things. Secret things that happened on the farm. Dina: Many of the songs have a double meaning. A jackal is not only a jackal. Millah: And cutting wheat is not only cutting wheat. Dina: And when the reed lies in the water [reference to a song] the reed is not a reed. And the water is another thing. Millah: And a thing is not a thing. Many of the songs have sexual connotations. Dina: Sex between the master and the slaves. Sex between the slaves and the mistress. Millah: When they sing about an aunt or a flower you should know it is about the mistress.

Willemse 2010, 37,38, my translation

324

van der Waal

This mixing of languages and populations and the creative meaning-making associated with this process was also extended into the celebration of musical mixing that has a wide appeal in South Africa and is to be found in the Afrikaans songs of David Kramer, in the Zulu songs of Johnny Clegg and his partners in the Juluka band, as well as in the Solms-Delta Oesfees’s blending of older music forms with pop folk music. These are good examples of contemporary creolization in music. However, as has been indicated above, white Afrikaans-speakers generally did not celebrate creolization as a process that indicated historical roots shared across racial boundaries. Therefore, while some white Afrikaansspeaking composers of popular music introduced African elements in their music, the famous Boeremusiek performer, Nico Carstens and others who publicly gave recognition to historical links between white Afrikaans, Malay and black music were ostracized by the South African Broadcasting Corporation during apartheid. This was similar to its marginalization of jazz (Martin 2013, 143, 162, 170), clearly because of the need for ‘cultural purity’ among dominant Afrikaner cultural managers. This sense of a need for cultural purity, expressed in linguistic and musical purity, amongst others, is still around. It underlies the nostalgia and exclusiveness celebrated in the highly contested song of Bok van Blerk ‘De la Rey’ (Van der Waal and Robins 2011) and in the musical in General De la Rey’s honor: Ons vir Jou (We for You). In the musical the General and his men sing these defiant words:

Laai … mik … vuur!!!!

Come Boer warriors, be heroes now, The day of reckoning is here, The enemy now storms across the pastures Load … aim … fire!!!

Die khakis sal ons nooit verower Ons beloof hul pyn en smart, En as jy skiet, skiet my deur En as jy skiet, skiet my deur, My Afrikaner hart.

The khakis [British] will never conquer us We promise them pain and suffering, And when you shoot, shoot me through And when you shoot, shoot me through, My Afrikaner heart.

Kom Boerekrygers wees nou helde, Die dag van rekenskap is hier, Die vyand jaag nou oor die velde

Opperman and Else 2008, 58, my translation

The politicized nature of this nostalgic honoring of the famous Afrikaner general in the South African War, though denied as intentionally referring to the present political situation by both performing artist and producer of the lyrics, emerged in the positive reception of the song and musical by those

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

325

self-identifying as Afrikaners and victims of the current political system. The singing of the former national anthem, Die Stem van Suid-Afrika (The Call of South Africa), in one of his recent performances by popular right-wing leaning singer Steve Hofmeyr is, similarly, an indication of how lyrics and music evoke nostalgia, longing for the past of a more white and culturally pure South Africa that negates the characteristics of the new South African dispensation: democracy, interdependence, justice and often an expressed need for further creolization (Women24 2014). More difficult to assess in terms of creolization because of the many complexities involved, is the music of Die Antwoord, produced by two internationally highly successful white artists, a male English-speaking and a female Afrikaans-speaking rapper, who set out to convey an overall sense of a mixed and anti-establishment image through the medium of their pop music. In the words of Watkin Jones, the male performer (Ninja) in the music videos and musical shows: Checkit. Hundred per cent South African culture. In this place, you get a lot of different things. Blacks, whites, coloureds. English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, watookal [whatever]. I’m like all these different things, all these different people, fucked into one person. Haupt 2012, 419

Adam Haupt recognizes the value of questioning established separate identities that this music achieves by in-your-face carefully orchestrated reversals of taken-for-granted classifications. He then proceeds by giving a penetrating analysis of the class position of the performers and asks whether their music and performances are perhaps to be understood as a form of blackfacing.4 He points to the fact that the artists are well-resourced, white, English- and Afrikaans-speakers respectively. He then looks at the content of the performances and notes their use of Kaaps and their strategy of ‘going native’ in their performances. Haupt argues that the use of Kaaps, the content of the performances and the body marks used by the artists amount to appropriation and that this music is therefore a form of blackfacing. He claims that, in contrast to the rap music on the Cape Flats in the 1980s, Die Antwoord is not providing 4  Blackfacing surfaced in controversies around white students at Pretoria University and Stellenbosch University in August and September 2014 when they painted themselves black for ‘fun’ in social celebrations. Few whites saw anything problematic in these performances. The practice has a long controversial history in the United States and is denounced for its roots in the racist diminishing of black people.

326

van der Waal

a positive message and not involved in the empowerment of previously disadvantaged people. Haupt’s analysis alerts us to the need to disaggregate the notion of creolization in terms of power and context. Indeed, the use of cultural elements from different backgrounds may be termed creolization but can have very different messages and effects, depending on context. In the case of Die Antwoord, following Haupt, it seems to be a form of creolization-for-appropriation which is some way off from creolization for the purposes of building Relation á la Glissant (1997). Creolization is therefore more than just the mixing of racial or cultural elements. It takes its meaning in the first place from the colonial context with its dimensions of injustice, racism and inequality. In that context, despite oppression and dispossession, people from various backgrounds have interacted and create, on an ongoing basis, new sociocultural forms and identifications that are sometimes the foundation for a process of ethnicization as well. Finally, in light of the CvP model, what pidginization potential do the various forms of Afrikaans creolizations have? The next section looks into this question and asks whether South Africa has managed to move sufficiently away from its devastating racial, cultural and economic divisions driven by colonialism, segregation and apartheid towards more unity and national reconciliation. Also: which factors promote or retard the process of pidginization?

What Is the Potential for Social Pidginization in Afrikaans Creolizations? The pidgin potential of creole identity tends to be high where diversity of origin is considered an ethnic marker of creole identity and where the heterogeneous roots of creole groups are conceptualized and represented as connections to different “others” within a given society and locality, thereby connecting ethnic specificity with transethnic connectivity. The pidgin potential of creole identity tends to be low where a creole population seeks distance and exclusiveness, where its being different from is seen as a result of its being better (off) than others. Knörr 2010, 747

Relative to the South African history before the 1990s, conditions since the transition are more conducive for nation-building as the political transition included the democratization of the country and a change towards the inclusive nature of citizenship. The question is: to what extent has that change contributed to the emergence of a process of pidginization, in terms of the CvP model

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

327

of Knörr? Has the experience of a common nationhood, the increased use of English as a lingua franca and shared membership of one political system contributed to a stronger sense of co-citizenship? Apart from the experience of the transition and what this meant in terms of nationhood, South Africans are increasingly exposed to each other as equals and peers in educational institutions and in the workplace. Has this led to increased social distance and competition (a closed and exclusive orientation) or to a stronger sense of interdependence (an open and inclusive orientation)? The South African constitution is ambivalent in its formulations about the unity and diversity of the population. The Bill of Human Rights is the basis for a common South Africanness, but the constitution also recognizes the rights of cultural communities. The South African identity that is emerging is mainly one of multiculturalism, mostly in the sense of difference multiculturalism (Turner 1993), where the emphasis is on separate identities that have to tolerate and accommodate one another without affecting a sense of separateness and difference. This persisting uneasiness about a common future, mainly along class and racial lines, is evident in the latest Reconciliation Barometer Report of the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation (Wale 2013). The report shows that while race relations have improved in South Africa since 1994, inequality has not been overcome and the combination of class and race continues to provide a huge challenge to a sense of South African cohesion. Maybe this is not surprising, given the historical background of violent racism and colonialism that has marked the historical road of South Africa. Whites have the lowest level of tolerance for other population groups and are less in favor of economic redress for former disadvantaged population groups. A general decrease in trust in the government among all population groups is a further hurdle on the route towards reconciliation. While the divisive lines of class and race in South Africa post-1994 do not directly reflect or overlap with ethnic consciousness, they do provide a context for a further investigation of the pidginization potential of Afrikaans-speaking creole identifications in South Africa. Colored people often assert that they were seen as too black under apartheid to share in the benefits of full citizenship with whites, while in the new South Africa they are perceived as being too white to be considered with blacks in terms of redress due to former disadvantage. They have been in a liminal position (Turner 1974[1969]), as an in-between population group with a mixed origin and a culture that is commonly identified as creole. While coloreds are sometimes considered to be a potential bridge between diverse South African population groups, this potential for pidginization is undermined by the perception that they have been the recipients of privileges in the Western Cape under the apartheid government, their support of the National Party

328

van der Waal

historically and current support of the Democratic Alliance. Both of these parties struggled to relinquish the image of being primarily associated with ‘white politics.’ It seems, then, that the integrative potential of coloreds may not be that strong in terms of an ethnic, creole identification that points to a common national and overarching political identification at the moment. The social distance between coloreds and blacks on the level of everyday contact is sometimes marked by incidents of racism, based on a feeling of racial superiority among coloreds who were in some cases trying to be assimilated into the dominant white population, something that has been called ‘whitemindedness’ (Adhikari 2006, 476–87). The picture of the pidginization potential of coloreds changes when it is viewed in relation to Afrikaans-speaking whites (most of whom self-identify as Afrikaners). The upbeat attitude towards Afrikaans among coloreds, in contrast to the pessimistic anticipation of languicide among many conservative white Afrikaans-speakers, is remarkable. There are indications of the growth of a sense of being culturally and historically creole among coloreds as the desire to be associated with whites as the dominant class, in opposition to blacks, wears thinner and a broader identification with South Africanness emerges. This is evident post-1990 in the rediscovery and celebration of the once-forgotten slave heritage and a Khoi identity in a process of indigenization related to its potential benefits. New museums and monuments express this creole background, a mixed history and the rehabilitation of once shameful identifications. Examples are the museums and monuments at Pniël, Solms-Delta, Boschendal and the Afrikaans Language Museum in Paarl that celebrate diverse origins and cultural heterogeneity of the population that is classified as colored. One may conclude that the pidginization potential of this population is very specific: it is high in relation to linking Afrikaans-speaking whites and coloreds to one another and to a common South Africa. At the same time, there is also a counter-tendency: of essentializing coloredness, as is evident in the buildup towards land claims on the basis of a primordial Khoi identification. With regard to the divisions in the Afrikaans-speaking sector of the South African population, the public roles played by prominent black Afrikaansspeaking intellectuals in institutional spaces that were formerly exclusively white Afrikaans-speaking is remarkable. Some of these leaders had a political leftist role in addition to being academic leaders. Examples are Neville Alexander, a prominent linguist and language policy activist, in his support for mother-tongue education and the use of Afrikaans at Stellenbosch University and Jakes Gerwel as the chair of a government commission that recommended that two Afrikaans-medium universities should be identified. The

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

329

Vice-Chancellorship of the University of the Free State and of Stellenbosch University has in recent years moved to prominent black Afrikaans-speaking intellectuals: Jonathan Jansen and Russel Botman, respectively. Similarly, black intellectuals chair prominent bodies that promote the Afrikaans language and culture: Michael le Cordeur is the chair of the ATR and Danny Titus of the Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuur-Vereniging (ATKV, Afrikaans Language and Culture Association). These intellectuals have a challenging task in managing processes of transformation while building relationships between social categories that are viewed as highly divided (especially Afrikaner conservatives and black ANC members). The death of Russel Botman in 2014 brought his role as a bridge-builder into prominence. Botman was honored for practicing a reconciliatory style, for embracing justice and for being a person who knew that compromises were necessary in situations of polarization that needed to be overcome. He was characterized as a person who functioned well in boundary situations and who was constantly looking for reconciliation based on justice (Koopman 2014, 9). While this may be seen as important interventions due to personal qualities, the bridge function of black intellectuals, assisting former Afrikaner institutions with transformation in the new South Africa, is remarkable. One may conclude that the pidginization potential around Afrikaans in the post-1994 situation is realized by individuals who are seen as representing a creole and inclusive background by those lacking it. Their leadership is enhanced by their ability to perform a bridging function and take white Afrikaans-speakers across the bridge towards a national inclusivity. In contrast, conservative Afrikaans-speaking whites (Afrikaners) seem to have a low pidginization potential. At the same time, one can observe many social situations in the new South Africa that indicate that changes among whites are under way, examples being the educational institutions that are becoming increasingly integrated and the popularity of the TV soapie, 7de Laan, that projects an integrated social setting in Afrikaans. Several recent Afrikaans novels written by white Afrikaans authors explore the role of a slave ancestress in white Afrikaans-speaking families. Afrikaans art festivals are increasingly oriented towards the inclusion of productions by colored Afrikaans artists. It is clear that many prominent white Afrikaans-speakers are supporting the shift towards an alliance with black Afrikaans-speakers, although the demands made around purity of language and language activism are often bones of contention and suggest ‘blackfacing’ in the use of black identities. White Afrikaans-speakers who do not like the idea of even virtual integration find exclusiveness in private TV channels and radio stations.

330

van der Waal

Conclusion Creolization can be taken as the normal state of affairs in cultural processes, but also as a very specific and complex process in a highly segmented and stratified postcolonial society. Two broad social identifications emerged in South African history around Afrikaans and its creolized past. In terms of ethnic identifications, the social category of Afrikaner is associated with racial and cultural essence, purity and exclusivity, while allowing for some creole characteristics in terms of a mixed European heritage and the development of Afrikaans. Those designated as coloreds have been classified as an in-between social category with a creole past and internal variation in terms of origin, viewed as its main characteristic. The examples in this study show that there are many different forms of creolization, ranging from an ascribed category to a claimed identity, a strong rejection by purists (anti-creolization), and the appropriation of a creole identity for instrumental purposes. In terms of the CvP model, there is not much pidginization happening in the country as yet as the emphasis is mostly on a kind of multicultural nation-building in terms of unity in separateness, even though the notion of multiculturalism does not feature much, in contrast to countries like Australia and the United States. There are examples of pidginization tied to individuals, e.g., the role of black intellectuals in the language politics of Afrikaans. However, the openness to black leadership among whites can also be read as a form of ‘blackfacing’ where such leadership is instrumental for supporting a racial identity in the name of a language that had become the core marker of ethno-nationalism. What is the heuristic potential, then, of the terms creolization and pidginization? I think they are useful to open up discussions around collective identifications and processes of contact and cultural flow, but they may lead to the traps of romanticization and essentialism. Perhaps the concept of Relation (Glissant) is a better tool, both for describing entanglements in cultural and identification processes and for having a cultural strategy. This ties the discussion to the political ideal of cosmopolitanism, with the emphasis on a common humanity, responsible individual citizenship and less focus on ideas of mixing as a process of a special kind. Creolization, pidginization and Relation are not only dependent on trust, shared knowledge and a political will to be inclusive, but also on political economic factors that shape experience, consciousness and, very basically: access to resources. At the moment the experience and consciousness of inequality decreases the pidginization potential of Afrikaans-speakers in South Africa. High levels of unemployment, dissatisfaction about levels of service delivery and high levels of violent crime hinder the growth of social cohesion among all citizens and enhance class, race and cultural cleavages. The international

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

331

climate of aggressive nationalisms and neoliberal capitalism drive the trend towards difference and exclusiveness. The challenge, then, is to study these issues in such a way that the inequalities caused by political economic factors and the complexities of identifications emerge more strongly. References Adhikari, M. 2006. “Hope, Fear, Shame, Frustration: Continuity and Change in the Expression of Coloured Identity in White Supremacist South Africa, 1910–1994.” Journal of Southern African Studies 32(3): 467–87. Becker, H., and C. Oliphant. 2013. “A Hip-Hopera in Cape Town: The Aesthetics, and Politics of Performing ‘Afrikaaps’.” Seminar paper, University of the Western Cape. Carstens, W. 2013. “En Route from a Divided to a Shared Future in the Afrikaans Language Community: The Role of the Afrikaanse Taalraad (ATR) in the Process of Reconciliation.” Litnet Akademies 10(1): 513–50. Chipkin, I. 2007. Do South Africans Exist? Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Cohen, R. 2007. “Creolization and Cultural Globalization: The Softs Sounds of Fugitive Power.” Globalizations 4(2): 369–84. Davids, A. 2011. The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims From 1815 to 1915. Pretoria: Protea Book House. Delanty, G., ed., 2012. Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies. London: Routledge. Erasmus, Z. 2011. “Creolisation, Colonial Citizenship(s) and Degeneracy: A Critique of Selected Histories of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and of the Cape, South Africa.” Current Sociology 59(5): 635–54. Eriksen, T.H. 2003. “Creolization and Creativity.” Global Networks 3(3): 223–37. Field, S. 1998–1999. “Ambiguous Belongings: Negotiating Hybridity in Cape Town, 1940s–1990s.” Kronos 25: 227–38. Fuchs, S. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Giliomee, H. 2009. “A Deadly War of Languages.” Mail & Guardian, 5 October. Glissant, É. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Goosen, D. 2009. Hein Willemse se voorspraak vir kreolisering. Available at: http://praag .co.za/feuilleton-magazine-386/opstelle-magazine-389/6069-hein-willemse-sevoorspraak-vir-kreolisering.pdf, accessed September 25, 2014. Grunebaum, H., and S. Robins. 2001. “Crossing the Colour(ed) Line: Mediating the Ambiguities of Belonging and Identity.” In Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town, edited by Z. Erasmus, 159–72. Cape Town: Kwela. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolisation.” Africa 57(4): 546–59.

332

van der Waal

Haupt, A. 2012. “Is Die Antwoord Blackface?” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 13(3–4): 417–23. Hofmeyr, I. 1987. “Building a Nation from Words: Afrikaans Language, Literature and Ethnic Identity, 1902–1924.” In The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism, edited by S. Marks and S. Trapido, 95–116. Harlow: Longman. Hornby, A., and D. O’Byrne. 2012. “Global Civil Society and the Cosmopolitan Ideal.” In Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies, edited by G. Delanty, 387–99. London: Routledge. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness Or The World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731–59. Koopman, N. 2014. “‘n Mens vir die Toekoms.” Kampusnuus, August 2014: 8–9. Krog, A., and A. Schaffer, eds. 2005. Nuwe Stemme 3. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Maharaj, G. 1999. Between Unity and Diversity: Essays on Nation-Building in PostApartheid South Africa. Cape Town: Idasa. Martin, D.-C. 2006. “A Creolising South Africa? Mixing, Hybridity, and Creolisation: (Re)Imagining the South African Experience.” International Social Sciences Journal 187: 165–76. Martin, D.-C. 2013. Sounding the Cape. Somerset West: African Minds. McCormick, K. 2002. “Code-Switching, Mixing and Convergence in Cape Town.” In Language in South Africa, edited by R. Meshtrie, 216–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Opperman, D., and S. Else. 2008. “Ons Vir Jou: ‘n musiekblyspel.” Unpublished text and lyrics. Stewart, C., ed. 2007. Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Steyn, M. 2004. “Rehybridizing the Creole: New South African Afrikaners.” In Under Construction: ‘Race’ and Identity in South Africa Today, edited by N. Distiller and M. Steyn, 70–85. Sandton: Heinemann. Stone, G.L. 2002. “The Lexicon and Sociolinguistic Codes of the Working-Class Afrikaans-Speaking Cape Peninsula Coloured Community.” In Language in South Africa, edited by R. Meshtrie, 381–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, T. 1993. “Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What is Anthropology that Multiculturalists Should Be Mindful Of It?” Cultural Anthropology 8(4): 411–29. Turner, V.W. 1974[1969]. The Ritual Process. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Van der Waal, K., and S. Robins. 2011. “‘De la Rey’ and the Revival of ‘Boer Heritage’: Nostalgia in the Post-apartheid Afrikaner Culture Industry.” Journal of Southern African Studies 37(4): 763–79. Wale, K. 2013. “Confronting Exclusion: Time for Radical Reconciliation.” SA Reconciliation Barometer Survey: 2013 Report. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.

Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa

333

Webb, V. 2010. “Constructing an Inclusive Speech Community from Two Mutually Excluding Ones: The Third Afrikaans Language Movement.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 47(1): 106–20. Werbner, P. 2012. “Anthropology and The New Ethical Cosmopolitanism.” In Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, edited by G. Delanty, 153–65. London: Routledge. Willemse, H. 2009. “Verandering en toekoms: om ’n kreoolse Afrikaans te bedink.” Litnet, available at http://www.litnet.co.za/verandering-en-toekoms-om-n-kreoolseafrikaans-te-bedink/, accessed September 24, 2012. Willemse, H. 2010. “Kreolisering en identiteit in die musiekblyspel, Ghoema.” Stilet 21(1): 30–42. Women24. 2014. “Steve Hofmeyer defiant about ‘Die Stem’.” Available at: http://www .women24.com/News/Steve-Hofmeyer-defiant-Die-Stem-20140709, accessed September 29, 2014. Wright, S. 1998. “The Politicization of ‘Culture’.” Anthropology Today 14(1): 7–15.

Chapter 17

Influence and Borrowing: Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures and Societies Wilson Trajano Filho This chapter analyzes contrasting representations of influence and borrowing associated with popular culture in two African countries, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. They are displayed in the attitudes and discourses of producers and consumers of cultural goods about the role and importance of external and internal flows in establishing supposedly authentic manifestations of culture and tradition. In Cape Verde, such attitudes and discourses revolve around the idea of ‘influence.’ In specific contexts, influence is regarded as highly negative; this is particularly the case with external influences and with the incorporation of cultural elements that originate in foreign countries. In the case of Guinea-Bissau, I examine cultural producers’ understanding of the word ‘tradition,’ which is often associated with things external to the creole world in which they live; for them, tradition has to do with the tabancas (villages) of indigenous groups.1 In the last section of the chaper, I relate these contrasting attitudes to the fact that societies in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau are at different stages in the process of creolization. The former exemplifies a case of decreolization, whereas the latter is undergoing a process of pidginization. Before I proceed further, two points need to be clarified. First, I must spell out who are the people who articulate these attitudes on and representations of tradition, borrowings and influence. It might appear that in these creole milieus there is a homogeneous perspective on these issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. The discourses and attitudes that I will examine are produced in social spheres that hold high cultural and symbolic capital. They are mainly voiced by the local intelligentsia, acclaimed musicians (singers, instrumentalists and composers), recognized artists and musical producers, governmental policy makers and NGOs experts associated with culture and with empowering whatever they call ‘tradition.’ They are, therefore, discourses imbued with legitimacy. The second point has to do with the context in which these representations occur. A negative attitude towards influences from 1  On the various meanings of tabancas, see Trajano Filho (2016).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_018

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

335

abroad and the idea that tradition is always rooted outside the world in which people live have arisen recently in these creole societies as a by-product of the increasing flows of values, ideas, people and goods which have characterized postcolonial times and the commodification of culture. Furthermore, they are not found throughout the cultural landscape; they are found in the specific context of popular culture.

Popular Culture

My understanding of popular culture is at variance with the standard treatment that this concept has traditionally received in the social sciences. Briefly, students of popular culture can be grouped into two heterogeneous groups. On the one hand, there are those whom Eco (1987) once called “apocalyptic intellectuals.”2 Basically, these scholars endorse a critical view of popular culture and its artifacts. From their perspective, popular culture products are repetitive, and they are passively consumed by a faceless crowd of automatonlike individuals. Instead of being produced according to rules created by their own agents, popular music, blockbuster movies, television shows, popular literature, mass forms of entertainment and other artifacts are highly dependent on the rules of market production and their content is mostly determined by corporate CEOs. In this regard, they are unlike the products of an elite culture, which are based on rules generated internally, independent of market rules; they are also unlike folk culture items, which are bound to tradition (Bourdieu 1974). Because of its low institutionalization and alienating nature, popular culture is viewed with contempt and is rarely taken seriously by apocalyptic scholars. It is not treated as sociologically relevant, except when one wants to point out the negative aspects of contemporary Western society. Thus, it is not surprising that for a long time popular culture has been approached either as mass culture – a form of spurious culture (Sapir 1924) highly commercialized and intimately linked with the culture industry – or as a counterculture, a kind of rebellion animated by the idea that plus ça change plus c’est la même chose. In contrast with apocalyptic intellectuals, ‘integrated scholars’ emphasize the positive aspects of popular culture in today’s urban world. According to them, it makes cultural artifacts more accessible to all social strata; it democratizes the consumption of cultural goods by partially removing the exclusiveness and elitism that characterize the high forms of culture. However, for many 2  Adorno (1982), Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), Lowenthal (1957), MacDonald (1957) and, to a certain extent, Eco (1987) are examples of apocalyptic scholars.

336

Trajano Filho

scholars popular culture is, above all, the most liberating form of culture. It is the field in which the possibility of change is embedded. In some socio-historical contexts it plays a revolutionary role. This idea has marked the heated debates promoted in Brazil in the early 1960s by the Popular Culture Center (CPC) of the Students National Union (UNE). Then, popular culture was seen as the most liberating dimension for the Brazilian peasantry and the working class, playing an important role in the cultural and political mediations between traditional or folk culture – considered to be ahistorical and resistant to change – and the high culture of the elites – considered to be conservative by nature. Moreover, popular culture was seen as a creative locus on the basis of which engaged intellectuals, artists, the urban working class and the peasants organized in associations would work to change society and build an egalitarian nation.3 In other contexts, integrated scholars emphasize the ambivalent nature of popular culture as an arena of consent and resistance; a context where hegemony arises and can be challenged (Hall 2006). They reckon that producing popular culture (which includes creating items such as songs and movies, as well as thinking about them) can empower the subordinate to resist to the dominant ways of framing the world. They also say, however, that most of the time the consumers of popular culture are a kind of cultural dupes, ideologically manipulated by the corporate executives of the culture industry (Storey 2006).4 Both apocalyptic and integrated scholars tend to see popular culture as a sort of warehouse packed with assorted cultural goods ready for consumption. In their view, these items form an uneven set of genres and styles (music, fashion, films, popular dramas, television series, etc.) that are distinct both from the artifacts of high culture and from those of folk or traditional culture. I have a different perspective on this issue. I do not see popular culture as a set of specific genres of music, films and fashion that are opposed to others genres, or as a collection of items made for mass consumption. Instead, 3  See the texts republished in the first three issues of Arte em Revista, particularly those by Martins (1980), Gullar (1980) and Chauí (1980). Other important studies on this issue, somehow inspired by the oppositions and distinctions that emerged from the debates of the 1960s, are Tinhorão (1966), Bosi (1972), Martins (1975) and Fry (1977). Two comprehensive reviews of these debates may be found in Magnani (1982) and Arantes (1986). 4  Other representative exponents of the group (some of them adopting diametrically opposed standpoints in the field) are Frith (2006), Fiske (2006, 2010), McGuigan (1992). See also Strinati (2005), Brenan (1997), McRobbie (1999), and Denning (2004) for a review of the relevant literature.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

337

I argue, this is a field pregnant with ambivalence and contradiction. It is a rebellious area of culture in which culture belies itself, striving against itself through unending incriminations about its truth and its alleged non-imitative nature (pace During 2005, 193). It is a dimension where culture blames culture for deceptive maneuverings that hide its supposedly lost authenticity. It is a site where the very idea of authenticity is no longer an authentic expression of the authentic, but only a marketing tool. Here prevails a logic of improvisation based on repetitive (though, sometimes, creative) use of practical formulas (clichés) and schemes that guide the way in which people cope with the difficulties of everyday life. In the case of popular culture, instead of rules and structural principles related to taste, beauty and form we find an environment permanently open to incorporation of all that shows a productive potential. In African contexts, popular culture is associated with spaces of heterodoxy and self-decry, as well as with contentious and unofficial (as opposed to normative) dimensions of social life. It resists institutionalization. It is often a creative domain that operates out of the reach of the market and of state control. It is a space for parody and ironic comments on power and the powerful, but also for praising all kinds of important people and for sanctioning manifestations of power and wealth. Furthermore, it is a temporal dimension in which there is a fusion of the opposites (e.g., tradition and modernity). Popular culture has no fear of contradiction; in fact, it houses contradictions and inconsistencies of various kinds. The messages it conveys often carry their own negation as soon as they are uttered. Popular culture is at once a site of creative appropriations and a realm of repetition and awkward imitation. There, forms that are radically rooted in tradition (often conservative, but sometimes liberating) flourish with the same vitality as all kinds of vacuous fashions. Paradoxically, these extremely ephemeral products can be both politically conservative, via alienation, and momentarily liberating, via catharsis.5 Thus understood, there are various expressions and artifacts that gain new colors and new contours when they are examined through the lens of popular culture. One thinks of syncretic religious movements (Fabian 1971); various genres of popular music (Braz Dias 2004, 2011a); popular dramatic arts (Fabian 1990; Barber et al. 1997); films and dramas broadcast by radio and television (Larkin 1997); photography; popular painting and a whole set of decorative arts (Fabian 1998b); fashion (Gandoulou 1989; Hendrikson 1996; Gondola 1997, 1999; Allman 2004); sports (Fair 1997, 2001; Baller 2014; Domingos 2012); forms

5  Fabian (1978, 1998a) Hannerz (1987, 1996) and Barber (1997) are my sources of inspiration in this regard.

338

Trajano Filho

of leisure and entertaining (Martin 1995); dance (Kringelbach 2013); and associations aimed at promoting conviviality (Trajano Filho 2010a, 2010b).

Three Ethnographic Excerpts

In what follows, I discuss three ethnographic cases from the domain of popular culture in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. These cases show that the ideas of influence and tradition have diametrically opposite meanings in these creole societies, which are historically, demographically and politically related. Two cases are from Cape Verde, the third is from Guinea-Bissau. In Cape Verde, policy makers argue that music, fashion, performing and visual arts, literature, physical landscape and oral traditions are all creative industries (Caves 2000; Hartley 2005; Howkins 2001, 2005; Jeffcutt 2000; Jeffcutt and Pratt 2002; Ferreira 2015) and, as such, they are strategic resources for the development of the country. For this reason, they and experts in economics and culture have encouraged people working in these fields to promote the Cape Verde ‘brand’ nationally and internationally. The idea is that people living in the islands as well as abroad could associate Cape Verde to a brand that has its own characteristics in these fields. Fashion Fashion is becoming a popular subject in some Cape Verdean circles. Fashion shows and presentations of collections of clothing, jewelry and accessories made by local designers have received extensive mass media coverage alongside model castings and workshops for models and other professionals such as photographers, makeup artists and hair stylists. In a period of five months of fieldwork in 2014 and in 2017, I collected over two dozen such news stories. I attended three fashion shows and a model casting in a fashionable spot in Mindelo city, and talked to 30 fashion professionals: models, photographers, hair and makeup stylists, clothing designers, tailors, seamstresses, embroiderers and artisans who make (and repair) shoes and various kinds of accessories such as bags, necklaces, earrings and bracelets. A considerable part of these conversations focused on the inclusion of fashion in the category of creative industries and the challenge of developing a Cape Verde ‘brand.’ The major issue raised by designers, photographers, models and other experts is what a Cape Verdean fashion style would be like. If there is such a thing as a ‘Cape Verdean fashion style,’ what would be its distinctive features in terms of forms, colors and materials? How would these products reach the market? On the

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

339

whole, there are no clear-cut answers to these questions, but the general consensus is that at the moment there is no fashion style that could be branded as Cape Verdean. Several deficiencies explain this pessimistic consensus. Firstly, my informants pointed out that the small size of the internal market militates against the emergence of a local fashion style and makes it difficult for a significant number of people to make a living in this field. I did not meet anyone who made a living solely on the creation of clothing and accessories. Most designers (whose number barely reaches a dozen) also make clothes for a small clientele, either copying or adapting what is portrayed in international fashion magazines. Others complement their income by making costumes for carnival parades. In brief, Cape Verdeans have low purchasing power and, we have seen, the local market is small. With such scarce resources, the consumption of clothing and accessories is a luxury that few can afford. In reality, not many value taste in dressing or recognize the differences among the fashion styles. There is indeed an undiversified supply of ready-to-wear clothing at relatively high prices in a mass market dominated by Chinese shops. A few boutiques serve the more affluent. Little space is left for the local producers of clothing and accessories. People’s appraisal of the conditions in which fashion production takes place adds to the pessimistic consensus. There is no textile industry in Cape Verde. The fabrics used in the production of clothing and accessories are imported.6 From Europe and China come silk, organza, linen and synthetic and mixed fabrics. From the African coast come waxed cotton fabrics printed in various colored patterns. Supply crises often affect the import of the small quantities of leather needed for the manufacture of footwear and handbags and of the materials for the production of buttons, zippers, buckles, et cetera. In addition to the problems related to the supply of raw material, the fashion industry suffers from the lack of people skilled in the art of cutting and sewing. Moreover, there are few dressmakers who know how to work with moulds and there are few training opportunities in this field. Occasions for modeling are also rare

6  The kind of cloth made with a narrow-strip-weaving technique called panu di terra is an exception. They were made in rustic looms in the island of Santiago and nowadays only a small group of artisans still produce it. In the last 20 years Cape Verdean designers have used this cloth in their creations. As it is expensive and quite heavy, designers used it either in the form of small strips trimming the edges of pockets, sleeves and collars or as a frill to embellish handbags, shoes, table covers and bath towels. See Carreira (1983).

340

Trajano Filho

and most people who engage in this activity have a very intuitive knowledge of catwalk techniques.7 Lack of creation also inhibits the emergence of a Cape Verdean fashion style. As pointed out by a young designer from Santiago, Cape Verde is an importing country; nothing of what is consumed there is locally produced. According to her, even that which is considered as traditional clothing comes from abroad; it is, in fact, an external influence. As an example, she mentioned the widespread use of white headscarves and blouses embroidered with abundant lace. These two ‘traditional’ features of dressing à la Cape Verde come from Portugal. Cape Verdean fashion designers, she continued, are influenced by renowned European and North American stylists. This makes local fashion look like a copy of the European one. Some African influence is also observable, but it is basically restricted to the use of African fabrics and rarely refers to the design of the outfits.8 According to one of the country’s few professional models, local designers are open to the outside world (Europe and Africa) and are ready to absorb what it has to offer in terms of trends and experiences. They incorporate these influences into what they create, but their creations suffer from a lack of consistency and personality. There are often beautiful and well-made pieces, but there is still a long way to go for what is produced locally to become distinct from what comes from abroad, especially from Africa and Europe.9 There is a clear creative effort to use materials identified with the country, such as the panu di terra. The colors, shapes and patterns typical of the islands are also common in the attempts to create pieces that could be branded as Cape Verdean. The attempts to create a distinctive fashion style are also exemplified by the t-shirts printed with images that refer to the characteristic blue of the sea, the beach landscapes, the Mindelo skyline with the ‘Mount Cara,’ and to the characteristic features of world-renowned people such as the singer Cesária Évora. Even more straightforwardly, some designers use the colors and patterns of the national flag. Local experts acknowledge, however, that despite these attempts excessive external influences act as an obstacle to the consolidation of a distinctive Cape Verdean fashion style. This viewpoint is illustrated by a comment 7  In 2014, a workshop for training models successfully brought the fashion topic out in the open by having its training sessions in a small square on the main beach of Praia city, called Quebra Canela. Every day in the late afternoon, people passing by could see pretty girls and boys practicing the techniques of the runaway show and learning practical tips for fashion shoots. 8  Interview with Cindy Monteiro, July 2014. 9  Interview with Vanny Reis, July 2014.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

341

written by a reader of the weekly paper A Semana, about the attempt made by a group of designers to create what the paper called “a new paradigm for Cape Verdean fashion.” This enthusiastic reader stated that he appreciated this effort because it was based “on the landscape of our beloved land, there being no imitation or copying of what is foreign.” And, he concluded, “this is what give authenticity to their clothing.”10 Influence in Cape Verdean Popular Music Music is the more promising product of the Cape Verdean creative industry. This domain of popular culture is the more likely to become a consolidated industry, reaching a global audience. For many years, Cape Verdean music has been known beyond the national boundaries. It is a successful case of winning an international audience and transforming its main practitioners into international musicians. For over 20 years performers like Lura, Tito Paris, Boy Gê Mendes, Neuza, Bana, Bulimundo and Finason have played to audiences in several countries. Their songs are popular among the creole diaspora on the African coast, the Americas and Europe. Above all, Mayra Andrade and Cesaria Évora are truly global stars. Their voices convey, on the one hand, a powerful feeling of belonging to a national community for people in the islands and in the diaspora, and, on the other, the recognition of this small country by foreigners. There are many musical genres associated with Cape Verdean identity. There is, however, no agreement on which styles represent the country’s musical tradition, for many of these genres are regarded as ‘national’ only in local discourses and representations. They are ‘claims’ that, so to speak, have not yet achieved the status of ‘truth.’ They illustrate a well-known case of wishful thinking: that of a local perspective aspiring to be national. Thus, it is not uncommon for the inhabitants of Santo Antão Island to see kolá music as a key genre in the national musical tradition, for people living in Fogo Island to see the talaia-baxu in the same way, and for peasants of the Santiago hinterland to think of rezas and ladainhas when listing the country’s musical genres. Notwithstanding these and other candidates to national status, there is some weak consensus that the hard core of the country’s musical tradition includes morna, coladera and funaná. At the same time, lacking such legitimacy, batuku is quickly heading to becoming part of a select set of styles that express and convey powerful feelings of identification.11 10   A Semana, July 21, 2013. 11  On the path taken by batuku style, from a neglected and undervalued genre to getting the status as intangible heritage, see Nogueira (2012).

342

Trajano Filho

Musical practice in Cape Verde is highly diversified, far beyond the genres mentioned above. In the past, mazurkas and waltzes were played on festive gatherings sponsored by the most affluent families. These European musical styles had been introduced in the islands by the regular flow of foreigners, who passed by or stayed there. Throughout the twentieth century, other musical styles, from the Caribbean and Latin America, became popular. For almost two decades, from 1940 to 1960, rumbas, cumbias and salsas were the rhythms most played by Cape Verdean musicians as they were incredibly popular among the local audience. Brazilian genres such as sambas and carnival marches also attracted the attention of local musicians and have strongly influenced the way in which Cape Verdean musicians play their instruments and compose their songs. The most well-known case pertains the way the composer B. Léza used some aspects of Brazilian music to create his famous mornas.12 For the past 30 years, a large variety of foreign musical styles has conquered the hearts of local musicians and their audiences. Since the 1980s, foreign singers and bands playing reggae, zouk, kuduro and hip-hop have become very popular, and local artists playing these musical styles have released numerous hits, which have been widely broadcast by the local radio stations. Over the years, foreign influence in music has been the subject of heated debates and controversies. Stylistic, formal and sonic innovations, mostly resulting from foreign influences, have long been topics of lively discussion. This is perhaps a consequence of the fact that there is a highly consolidated musical tradition in Cape Verde that is locally considered to be an important element of national identity. The fierce criticism expressed by the composer and colonial officer Jacinto Estrela in 1950 on the way the morna was being (mis)played is widely known among the experts in the field. According to Estrela (1950), inappropriate arpeggios and unacceptable musical frills were corrupting the creole musical heritage. Interestingly, B.Léza, the hero who had rescued the genre from stagnation, was among those accused of threatening the morna’s pristine purity and was, therefore, one of the main targets of Estrela’s criticism. Even more interesting was composer Manuel d’Novas’ caustic criticism of the way Bana (a popular singer in the country and abroad) interpreted B. Léza’s mornas. Bana, Novas argued, was “stabbing the soul of our late poet” (Novas 1968). Apparently, Novas’ disappointment was motivated by the fact that the band that accompanied the singer used electric instruments. Journalist and anthropologist Glaucia Nogueira (2013, 75) notes that at that time B. Léza, who 12  There is a growing literature on B.Léza’s (1905–1958) contribution to the renewal of morna and to Cape Verdean traditional music, in general. Among others, see Monteiro (1998), Braz Dias (2011a, 2011b), Nogueira (2005) and Gonçalves (2006).

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

343

had died 10 years earlier, already represented what was genuine and traditional, and that the reviewer and fierce defender of tradition was only 30 years old. Later, Manuel Novas continued to be wary about the danger of foreign influences, clearly referring to zouk, an Antillean music style that has been popular in Cape Verde since the end of the 1980. On March 11, 1995, in an article published in the Novo Jornal he stated: “most young people are moving away from tradition, which instead needs to be cultivated. When some people … write lyrics that are played with rhythms from Martinique and Antilles … they are impoverishing our music. We do not need other rhythms because ours is very rich” (Novas 1995). As a consequence of technological innovation, these symbolic struggles have become more acute. The advent of digital technology has led to a proliferation of home studios in the country’s major cities. In these rudimentary studios, often set up in the bedrooms of young music producers, a great deal of music that is stylistically distant from the local tradition has been recorded. Rap, hip-hop, kuduro and zouk are the favorite styles. Much appreciated by young audiences and widely broadcast by the local radio stations, they are negatively viewed by the established musicians, who regard them as disposable by-products of foreign influences. In 2012 the country’s artistic circles were shaken by a series of articles published in the paper A Nação. In these press reports, renowned musicians and music producers discussed the new wave of musical genres carrying undeniable foreign influences. Basically, this music was composed with the help of computers by young people with no musical training.13 Composers and producers associated with these new genres took a defensive stance and held that what they were doing was real Cape Verdean music, sung in Creole, about issues that were dear to the country’s youth. They argued that music in Cape Verde had always been subject to foreign influences, and what was now happening was nothing new. On the other hand, producers and composers of traditional genres were very critical of what was going on. The most thoughtful among them suggested that (real) musicians should teach young people the basics of authentic Cape Verdean music, so that they could incorporate elements of traditional music in their rap and hip-hop compositions. Others were more vehemently opposed, warning that singing in Creole did not make Cape Verdean what was sung (rap, hip-hop, zouk) and that it was not with these ‘disposable rhythms’ that the country’s music would have achieved its

13  See A Nação nº 257, August 2–8, 2012.

344

Trajano Filho

international reputation.14 Highly prestigious musicians alerted to the danger of digital technologies, which made possible for anyone to record an album. In this controversy, Kaká Barbosa’s was the most radical and provocative voice. According to this composer, the hip-hop, rap and zouk produced by the new generation were meaningless, purely commercial pieces with an easy appeal to cheap emotions. Their messages were repetitive, serving only to cheer up the dance floor. For Barbosa, the country was baffled by this foreign musical invasion; a kind of anti-music composed with no creativity whatsoever, to be consumed and thrown away. His lecturing in favor of tradition culminated with a bombastic statement saying that all these imported genres were nothing more than chuinga music.15 The creole neologism chuinga (from the English ‘chewing gum’) refers to something to be chewed and quickly spat out. Its use prompted numerous reactions, especially among rappers who, scornfully, sought to discredit the veteran composer by dedicating the awards they received at music festivals to “that old composer with a white beard and a beret.” Reactions on social networks were also intense and, according to the anthropologist Carmem Barros Furtado (2014), young people who produced hip-hop and zouk in their home studios blamed traditionalists for denying their work by disrespectfully qualifying what they were doing as ka musica (not music). In the domain of popular culture, the opposites tend to meet. Thus, in May 2013, 10 months after the start of this controversy, composer Kaká Barbosa and rapper Batchart came together in a much awaited ‘duet of reconciliation,’ thereby concluding the dispute with no fatalities or serious injuries. At the root of it all is the negative value ascribed by musicians to the category ‘influence.’ Carmem Barros Furtado (2014, 135) argues that in Cape Verdean language the phrase ‘to be influenced’ carries a sense of inauthenticity. A person who is influenced is mentally and spiritually weak. To be influenced is to be prey to witchcraft and the evil eye; it is to be the victim of the envy and greed of others. So, a song resulting from foreign influences is not authentic and does not have artistic and cultural value. It is an easily disposable item. For this reason, the local production of foreign music styles is radically harassed and denied as anti-music, ka musika. It is noteworthy, however, that in music as in fashion ‘influence’ takes this negative connotation only when it comes from 14  This was not the first time the experts argued that Creole language on its own is not enough to turn a song Cape Verdean. The same point was advanced 30 years earlier by composer and politician Renato Cardoso. See Nogueira (2013, 78). 15  Juliana Braz Dias told me that the phrase música chuinga was not new. In 2002, she had heard it uttered by a music producer in Lisbon.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

345

the outside. Internal influences and mixtures are welcome and encouraged, as for example in the case of the fusion between the batuko, funaná, ladainha and tabanka music styles of the Santiago Island, which have become known by the acronym BAFULATA. Tradition in Convivial Events in Guinea-Bissau A markedly different perspective on ‘influence’ leads me to the notion of ‘tradition,’ intended as the domain of things that are regarded as inherent and essential, the sphere of culture where purity and authenticity prevail. On this note, I now turn to my last ethnographic example, the case of Guinean manjuandadis. In the creole world of Guinea-Bissau, the manjuandadi is a kind of mutualaid association that is supposed to bring together people of the same age and neighborhood. It is locally seen as an association of women, although it also includes some male members. Its main goals are the development of conviviality among its members and the promotion of mutual aid in the life crisis (illness, death, birth and marriage) experienced by the members and their relatives (Trajano Filho 1998, 2010b). This is mainly achieved through gatherings called baju di tina. On these occasions, members come together to eat, dance and sing with the accompaniment of rhythm played on wood blocks and large gourds struck in water-filled tubs (tina). Through singing, dancing and eating they celebrate their sociability. It is as if they were saying to themselves that life can be good, cheerful and orderly, despite poverty, insecurity and little or no future prospects. Over the past 20 years the music played in these gatherings has eclipsed the institutional aspect as the distinctive feature of the association. Thus, many new manjuandadis that have emerged on the outskirts of Bissau are actually music and dance groups that are always eagerly in search of invitations to perform in events sponsored by large corporations and cultural NGOs – among others, the inaugurations of office buildings, store openings and the celebrations that mark important social events (Trajano Filho 2012). When, during my last stay in Bissau in 2007, I informed my acquaintances that I was interested in these creole associations, they advised me to go to the hinterland, to the indigenous tabancas (villages) because, they said, it was there that I would find the most authentic manjuandadis, where tradition was still in full force despite the lack of state support for Guinean cultural traditions. According to them, Bissau’s music and dance groups were a mere semblance of the resilient tradition found in the African villages of the hinterland. Lately, this view of the manjuandadis is becoming increasingly common in creole circles and is dominant among the members of tina music groups, as the new manjuandadis are called. Thus, in 2007 I found a situation different from that which I had recorded in 1987, when the manjuandadis were primarily

346

Trajano Filho

mutual aid associations and music was only one of their many aspects; then, as I have mentioned, it was basically played on wood blocks (palmas) and on the calabash in the water-filled tub (tina). Now there were many manjuandadis geared primarily for music performances and dancing. Instead of the modest women’s dresses and the regular pants and shirts worn by the men, their members now wore lopes (cloths tied in the form of shorts, skirts or codpieces), a kind of clothing associated with the indigenous way of life in the tabancas. And, instead of palmas and tina, the new groups played the sikó and djembe drums. Some even stopped using the tina, after which this musical style is named. The dance styles have also changed. In 2007, instead of the traditional graceful and sensuous performances made by old ladies, I found displays of great athletic force made by young male dancers, who mimicked a curious mixture of imaginary scenes of everyday rural life, such as hunting and the initiation rituals; they performed movements, forms and gestures that have become widely disseminated by several groups of African dance, and steps and mannerisms borrowed from globalized pop culture, the most notable being the moon walk and the break dance. The jocose attitudes of manjuandadis members towards their queens and kings, mixing respect, closeness and playfulness, have been replaced by attitudes of great reverence and social distance modeled on the attitudes that Africans are supposed to have towards their elders and rulers. All this is evident in the performances of the new manjuandadis, where young male dancers bow reverently to their queens and kings and keep physical distance from them as if they were living in some indigenous African village and faced traditional rulers or heads of kinship groups.

Making Sense

The ethnographic cases that I have discussed highlight a contrast that raises important questions. How to explain these contrasting attitudes towards influence and borrowing in two historically related creole societies, such as those of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde? Why a creole society which is recognized as such, which has developed a myth of foundation based on the encounter of cultures and on the erasure of differences, whose constitutive traits come from other places and where everything is mixed now abhors foreign influences, especially in areas of popular culture such as fashion and in music? On the other hand, why, when it comes to music style, a neighboring creole society which projects itself as a nation-state looks outside its borders for the

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

347

source of its most authentic tradition? Why, in Cape Verde, influence is related to weakness, what comes from abroad is charged with inauthenticity and foreign music styles are seen as anti-music or ka musika (not music)? Why, in Guinea-Bissau, the more vigorous and resilient tradition is found outside the creole settlements, in the hinterland tabancas? Why creole manjuandadis are believed to be rooted in the indigenous world, away from creole towns? Before attempting to answer these questions, we need to consider that the creole word fora (outside) is more indexical than referential. It is heavily dependent on context and on who speaks with whom. Whenever the expression badiu di fora is uttered by someone in Praia city, the word fora means inside; that is, the Santiago hinterland. It stands for interior because those who use it want to point out that the person they are talking about is a badiu (a Santiagoan) who comes from places located outside the capital, which in that context means the hinterland. In other contexts, the word means outside, foreign, external. Influencia di fora (influence from outside) is negatively regarded when referring to music styles imported from abroad, especially from the United States, such as rap and hip-hop. Time, however, plays an extremely important role here. Note that, from a present-day perspective, an imported music style that entered Cape Verdean popular culture in the past – say, in the 1930s from Brazil – no longer carries the same negative evaluation. Instead, it is regarded positively, as I have noted in the case of Brazilian influence in the mornas composed by B. Léza. The indexical nature of the creole word fora helps us understand in part the ambivalence associated with foreign influences in Cape Verde, but it does not exhaust the broad issue of influence in the archipelago and it does not clarify why Guineans shamelessly seek creole tradition in the coastal villages of indigenous people, outside the fortified creole settlements along the rivers of Guinea. To understand this entanglement fully, we must consider the social and cultural reasons that explain why the Cape Verdean word fora is indexical, meaning ‘outside’ in some cases and ‘inside’ in others. To put it differently, we must look at how the boundaries of the Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau societies are drawn. In the remainder of this chapter I will suggest an explanation for these contrasting attitudes towards influence and borrowing from abroad in these two different but related societies using a single argument drawn from the creolization package. This, I believe, is more analytically productive than trying to explain these attitudes separately and allows us to make generalizations that also help to explain new cases. Furthermore, as this approach is based on a single analytical tool, it helps to explain both cases with greater economy of means.

348

Trajano Filho

The Creolization Package In a pioneering opus in the field of creole studies, Dell Hymes maintains that the distinctive features of the sociolinguistic change called creolization are complication of linguistic structure, expansion of psychic processes and extension in use (1971, 84).16 He is referring to a process that involves sociohistorical (complication of the outer form), psychological (expansion of the internal form) and social (the extent of use associated with nativization) changes. The product of creolization – the Creole language – is not merely a discrete linguistic unit with clear boundaries holding distinctive features that define it synchronically and differentiate it from other languages, the so-called natural languages. In a field where there is not much room even for a minimally comprehensive consensus (Fasold 1990, 221; Thomason 2008, 243; Kouwenberg and Singler 2008, 12), there appears to be an agreement that it is not possible to differentiate Creole (and pidgin) languages from ‘normal’ languages only through structural or linguistic criteria. As sociolinguistic phenomena, they must be understood in historical terms.17 Thus, instead of looking for typological characteristics, we should focus on process. Inspired by the processual nature of the sociolinguistic approach, I take a broad view of creolization. Pushing the limits of Hymes’s inference, I argue that creolization is more than just a phenomenon of language contact; in multilingual settings, it is triggered by complex intersocietal encounters. These encounters involve processes of social, cultural and linguistic change that lead to the emergence of a new language, culture and society; that is, a ‘third entity,’ a linguistic and societal synthesis resulting from different cultural traditions. Here, I treat as a single conceptual package creolization and other related processes, such as pidginization, decreolization and re-creolization.18 This way of approaching the issue implicitly presupposes that the package is analogous to a life cycle (Hall 1962). Sociolinguists have devised a model of three routes – 16  There are also other features that creolists consider distinctive of creolization. Nativization is one of them, according to Hall (1966), Bickerton (1984) and Todd (1990), although Sebba (1997, 134–67) discusses cases of Creole languages that do not fit the nativization model. Knörr (2010) argues that indigenization (which I think is equivalent to nativization) and ethnicization would be the criteria that define creolization. 17  This view was proposed by DeCamp (1971a, 25) and has been adopted, among others, by Kihm (1984), Mufwene (1986a, 1986b), Muysken (1988), Calvet (1992), Chaudenson (2001), Thomason (2008) and Singler (2008). On the opposite side, McWhorter (2005) supports the view that creoles are a synchronically identifiable typological class. 18  In this, I am following DeCamp, who considers pidgins and creoles “as two phases, perhaps even as only two aspects of the same linguistic process” (1971a, 13). See also Thomason (2008, 257–58).

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

349

pidginization, creolization, decreolization – to deal with this life cycle as a continuum. When the interaction between dominated languages (substrate) and a dominant language produces a pidgin-like linguistic compromise, we see the beginning of a life cycle that generates a process of pidginization. Then, depending on the demographic, linguistic, social and political conditions that prevail in the multilingual setting where the intersocietal encounter takes place, a new process of sociolinguistic change related to the appearance of a Creole language is triggered. When creolization is well advanced, and the existing Creole is in continuing contact with its lexifier language, we observe the workings of a process of decreolization whereby a Creole language becomes increasingly similar to the European dominant (lexifier) language. The concept of a post-creole continuum unveils the linguistic variation existing in Creole-speaking communities and suggests that after the emergence of a Creole language the forces behind creolization continue to be alive, particularly those that regulate relations between the Creole language and the languages that were part of this new formation.19 Thus, the post-creole continuum occurs mostly in contexts of decreolization (Patrick 2008, 472). We know, however, that the life-cycle model rarely occurs in real situations (Couto 1996, 19–20). There are frequent deviations from supposedly ‘normal’ paths, when, for example, a decreolized language triggers processes of recreolization. Usually these processes are linked to issues of political identity, and popular culture (in music, video making, sports, fashion, etc.) has been an important sphere for their development. Other more or less unusual routes are the processes of de-pidginization, consisting in the pidgin reabsorption by its dominant language, and creole pidginization, when the Creole language is used as a contact language, as happens in the indigenous villages of Guinea-Bissau.20 In any case, we know from Hymes (1971, 78) that a linear model containing two discrete units – a pidgin and a creole – over-simplifies the complexity of historical situations. He suggests that more than one stage of the pidgin/creole life cycle may coexist in a single context and all these processes of sociolinguistic change may take place simultaneously. We will see that my third ethnographic case can be understood along these lines. 19  Since DeCamp (1971b) proposed the notion of post-creole continuum, a great deal of criticism has been raised questioning the notion’s analytical productivity. Biskerton’s implicational scales were criticized by Romaine (1988, 186–87). See also Rickford (1987, 2002) on this subject. The unidimensionality of the continuum was seen as too simplistic by Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985), who supported a multidimensional model of variation. 20  On pidginization of creoles, see Knörr (2010).

350

Trajano Filho

Back to Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau The way creolists have dealt with linguistic creolization has provided anthropologists and historians not so much with a set of precise analytical tools to understand intersocietal relationships as with a promising metaphor with which they can build analogies to understand social and historical situations characterized by extreme variability. In these circumstances, social groups appropriate and remodel cultural elements of various origin in such a way that they are creatively transmuted into a new social unit; that is, a creole society. The creolization analogy in the analysis of social and cultural change in postcolonial societies has been very useful to anthropologists studying transnational and globalized flows of people, goods, values and symbols in sociocultural settings that are characterized by porous boundaries and infinitesimal variability (Hannerz 1987). I argue that the context in which creolization occurs is a key factor in differentiating the pathways taken by any particular Creole language, culture or society. Most Creole languages arise in situations of relative isolation. This is what happened in Cape Verde. Once the initial stages of development of the Cape Verdean Creole were over, creolization lost momentum and the islands stopped being a setting for language and culture contact. With the abolition of the slave trade in the mid-nineteenth century, the influx of speakers of African languages decreased substantially. Since then, only two languages have been spoken in the archipelago, Creole and Portuguese. Today, the substrate languages that contributed to the emergence of Cape Verde Creole are virtually non-existent and other vernacular foreign languages are also rarely spoken. In the islands, a post-creole continuum is part of a clear and advanced process of decreolization. On the African coast the situation is slightly different. The Guinean case is closer to the language situation in Papua New Guinea (Couto 1996, 69). The process that gave birth to Guinean Creole was similar to what occurred in Cape Verde, although the pace was different. Guinean Creole took longer to acquire local speakers than its counterpart in the archipelago. This was probably due to a more complex interplay among substrate languages, the dominant language and the emergent continental Creole. Unlike the Cape Verdean case, Guinean Creole is currently in regular contact with a large number of languages. Among them, two European languages (Portuguese and French) and some 20 African languages. In such a context, variation is multidimensional and much more complex than that in Cape Verde. The Creole spoken in the capital is also going through a process of decreolization, becoming more Portuguese-like. On the other hand, it has been pidginized elsewhere in the country. To people speaking the indigenous languages in the hinterland of Guinea-Bissau, this Creole

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

351

variety is a kind of contact language similar to a stable pidgin. In each region of Guinea-Bissau, depending on indigenous languages’ phonological and morphological features, this pidginized Creole acquires its own particular characteristics. My understanding of the situations where opposing values are given to influence and borrowing from abroad results from an analogy that I draw between language, culture and society; more precisely, between linguistic and cultural creolization. Like a Creole language that undergoes decreolization, Cape Verde culture and society have undergone significant changes, losing the distinctive features that have historically distinguished creole milieus. Socially, creole societies resort to the incorporation of people, ideas and goods from other societies as a strategy for social and cultural reproduction (Trajano Filho 1998; Knörr 2010). Culturally, they need to develop mechanisms for incorporating foreign symbols, values and social practices. They swallow and digest, so to speak, what is foreign in such a way that by the end of the process what is incorporated seems to be legitimately and naturally creole (Trajano Filho 2010a, 157). This is what happened with Cape Verdean music up to the 1980s. The conventionally called mornas, coladeras and funanás are music styles whose constitutive elements, taken individually, come from elsewhere. However, taken as a whole, they represent the authentic Cape Verdean musical tradition. What has caused such a sheer change in orientation? Why the basic elements of rap and hip-hop styles have not been appropriated and transformed locally into something that is genuinely part of the Cape Verdean musical tradition? I think that the answers to these questions are linked to decreolization. Cultural and social decreolization is so advanced in Cape Verde that the openness regarding the incorporation of what is considered other – people, symbols or values – has decreased dramatically. From a synchronic perspective, Cape Verde is currently a national society like any other. Its social and cultural boundaries are not as open and porous as they used to be in precolonial and colonial times. For this reason, in musical circles and in fashion, influence from abroad is negatively perceived. In parallel, we observe the biased and negative perception that part of the population has been developing towards the growing presence of immigrants from the African coast in the Islands. As decreolization advances and creolization reaches its last stages, we witness a change in the ideology of culture, leading to a focused attitude. On this matter, I borrow the distinction proposed by LePage and Tabouret-Keller (1985) between the focused and diffuse linguistic norms that are associated with the degree of tolerance that speech communities have regarding variation. According to them, a language is focused when its speakers set strict limits on variation, and when clear notions of spelling and grammar accuracy are

352

Trajano Filho

formally established in dictionaries and grammars. In societies where there are diffuse linguistic norms, we find the opposite; there, language norms are more relaxed and discourses are judged in terms of their communicative efficacy rather than in terms of compliance with a normative grammar. I propose to extend the distinction between focusing and diffusion to the ideology of culture. Thus, a focused culture has low tolerance of variation and heterogeneity. Cultural foreign influences that are not subjected to local appropriation are either negatively perceived or simply denied. Once more, I evoke the radicalism of evaluative expressions used by Cape Verdean musicians when discussing issues of foreign music styles: they are anti-music or they are ka musika. A focused ideology tends to prevail in societies in which the nation-building process is well advanced and the national cultural and social boundaries are well established, as it is the case of present-day Cape Verde. The Guinea-Bissau case is different and far more complex because this is a country where a creole society claiming to be national coexists in a dynamic relationship with a dozen indigenous societies. A cultural decreolization is clearly occurring in Guinea-Bissau, but this is not the only prevailing process. As I have pointed out, in several social contexts the register that we call Guinean Creole is highly pidginized, functioning as a contact language and showing huge phonological, syntactic and semantic variations (Couto 1994, 55). In my fieldwork, I identified special niches in which small groups of people who shared a focused language ideology sought to rescue what they called kriol fundu (deep Creole) – a register with many influences from substrate African languages – by means of semi-ritualized practices, such as cultural gatherings. The analogy with cultural and societal issues is almost immediate. Alongside such a deep variety of Creole, these groups were in search of what they consider the most authentic forms of creole culture. As a rule, they found them outside Bissau, in the ‘old’ creole settlements, such as Cacheu, Farim, Geba and Bolama. Sometimes, their imagination led them to find these authentic creole forms in the indigenous villages, which had either flimsy or no connection with the creole world. Social and cultural recreolization would be an appropriate description for the first case; social and cultural pidginization, for the second. The creole society of Guinea-Bissau incorporates cultural elements from the outside, transforming them into something creole. This is in line with a diffuse linguistic and cultural ideology. Most of its members see no contradiction in finding the most authentic forms of creole culture in the bush or in bringing sikó and djembe drums to tina or manjuandadi groups, most of them having no tinas to play.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

353

This chapter has been based on the assumption that we can draw an analogy between language, culture and society, particularly when dealing with processes of social and cultural change in postcolonial societies. As Hannerz (1987) once observed, the use of creolization as a metaphor to analyze sociological facts releases anthropological description from the totalizing conjecture that cultural systems are necessarily integrated. It makes room for considering the agency of individuals, highlights the workings of the fusion of cultural horizons and reveals how interdependent local and global spheres are. According to another influential author, creolization is a powerful metaphor that has been variously used “to eliminate the idea of cultures as discrete, bounded and mutually incommensurable, and to foster instead the view of a cultural continuum linking peoples and regions to each other … so undermining sharp us/ them distinctions” (Parkin 1993, 83–84).21 I should note, however, that the creole metaphor has its limitations.22 Creolization is a concept originally developed do deal with sociolinguistic change – a domain analogous but not homologous to culture and society. Language, culture, and society are three different realms of reality, and theories and analytical tools that are good to make sense of one may not be appropriate to explain the others. Thus we must be careful not to overstretch this analogy. Here, I have taken a broad view of creolization and have borrowed from sociolinguistics the idea of a post-creole continuum to deal with sociocultural situations characterized by porous boundaries and infinitesimal variability. With a single conceptual tool – that is, with an economy of means – I could make sense of opposing representations of influence and borrowing in two historically related creole societies. Creolization as a conceptual model, particularly the idea of a post-creole continuum, provides anthropologists and historians with a useful analytical kit that helps us to grasp the winding paths through which social processes develop. It allows us to understand unexpected, sometimes contradictory trends and the sudden change of directions that 21  In a thought-provoking article, Drummond (1980), inspired by sociolinguists working with the notion of a post-creole continuum, argued that there are no distinct cultures in pluriethnic societies such as Guyana, but a continuum or a set of inter-systems that form a creolized culture. 22  See Parkin (1993, 85‒86), Caplan (1995, 744‒45) and Mintz (1996, 301‒302) for critical comments on the limitations of creolization as a metaphor for culture. Also adopting a critical viewpoint on the creolization metaphor, Khan (2007) and Harris and Rampton (2002) share an interest in issues of agency and its role in creolization.

354

Trajano Filho

occur as social processes unfold (Trajano Filho 2008). I hope that the analysis that I have offered has convincingly shown that creolization fares better than other rivaling models (syncretism, hybridization, transnationalism, etc.) in explaining change, mixture and complex flows of ideas because it addresses intersystem variation in a way that takes us much further than a simple recognition of mixtures, interpenetrations, flows and change. References Adorno, T. 1982. “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening.” In The Frankfurt School Reader, edited by A. Arato and E. Gebhardt, 444‒51. New York: Continuum. Allman, J. ed. 2004. Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Arantes, A.A. 1986. O que é cultura popular? São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense. Baller, S. 2014. “Urban Football Performances: Playing for the Neighbourhood in Senegal, 1950s‒2000s.” Africa 84(1): 17‒35. Barber, K. 1997. “Introduction.” In Readings in African Popular Culture, edited by K. Barber, 1‒12. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barber, K. et al. 1997. West African Popular Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bosi, E. 1972. Cultura de massa e cultura popular: leituras de operarias. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes. Bourdieu, P. 1974. Economia das trocas simbólicas. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Braz Dias, J.B. 2004. “Mornas e coladeiras de Cabo Verde: versoes musicais de uma nação.” PhD diss., Universidade de Brasilia. Braz Dias, J.B. 2011a. “Cape Verde and Brasil: Musical Connections.” Vibrant 8(1): 95‒116. Braz Dias, J.B. 2011b. “B. Léza.” In Dictionary of African Biography, edited by E. Akyeampong and H.L. Gates, 458‒59. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brenan, T. 1997. At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bickerton, D. 1984. “The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis.” The Brain and Behavioral Sciences 7(2): 173‒221. Calvet, J.-L. 1992. “Ce que la linguistique doit aux études creoles.” Études Créoles 15(2): 9‒44. Caplan, L. 1995. “Creole World, Purist Rhetoric: Anglo-Indian Cultural Debates in Colonial and Contemporary Madras.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1(4): 742‒62.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

355

Carreira, A. 1983. Panaria Cabo-Verdeano-Guineense. Praia: Instituto Caboverdeano do Livro. Caves, R. 2000. Creative Industries. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Chaudenson, R. 2001. Creolization of Language and Culture. London: Routledge. Chauí, M. 1980. “Notas sobre Cultura Popular.” Arte em Revista 3: 15‒21. Couto, H.H. 1994. O Crioulo Português da Guiné-Bissau. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Couto, H.H. 1996. Introdução ao estudo das línguas crioulas e pidgins. Brasília: Editora UnB. DeCamp, D. 1971a. “Introduction: The Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages.” In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 13‒39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeCamp, D. 1971b. “Toward a Generative Analysis of a Post-Creole Continuum.” In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 349–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Denning, M. 2004. Culture in the Age of Three Worlds. London: Verso. Domingos, N. 2012. Futebol e capitalismo: corpo e cultura popular em Moçambique. Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Drummond, L. 1980. “The Cultural Continuum: A Theory of Inter-Systems.” Man (NS) 15: 352‒74. During, S. 2005. Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Eco, U. 1987. Apocalípticos e integrados. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Estrela, J. 1950. “A música de todos os tempos e a morna ultrajada.” Notícias de Cabo Verde, June 15, 1950. Fabian, J. 1971. Jamaa: A Charismatic Movement in Katanga. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. Fabian, J. 1978. “Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures.” Africa 48(4): 315‒31. Fabian, J. 1990. Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theatre in Shaba, Zaire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Fabian, J. 1998a. Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Fabian, J. 1998b. Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fair, L. 1997. “Kickin’ It: Leisure, Politics and Football in Colonial Zanzibar, 1900s‒ 1950s.” Africa 67(2): 224‒51. Fair, L. 2001. Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890‒1945. Athens: Ohio University Press. Fasold, R. 1990. The Sociolinguistics of Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Ferreira, I. 2015. Cabo Verde economia criativas: que benefícios para o país? Praia: Editura.

356

Trajano Filho

Fiske, J. 2006. “The Popular Economy.” In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 3rd edn, edited by J. Storey, 504‒21. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Fiske, J. 2006. 2010. 2nd edn. Understanding Popular Culture. London: Routledge. Frith, S. 2006. “The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Defending Popular Culture from the Populists.” In J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 3rd edn, 586‒601. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Fry, P. 1977. “Feijoada e soul food.” Ensaios de Opinião 4: 44‒47. Furtado, C.B. 2014. “‘Múzikas’ e ‘Ka Múzikas’. A música nas economias criativas e na produção musical local em Cabo Verde.” PhD diss., Universidade de Cabo Verde. Gandoulou, J.-D. 1989. Dandies a Bacongo. Le culte d’élégance dans la société congolaise contemporaine. Paris: L’Harmattan. Gonçalves, C.F. 2006. Kab Verd Band. Praia: Instituto do Arquivo Histórico Nacional. Gondola, C. 1997. Villes mirois: migrations et identités urbaines à Kinshasa et Brazzaville, 1930‒1970. Paris: L’Harmattan. Gondola, C. 1999. “Dream and Drama: The Search for Elegance among Congolese Youth.” African Studies Review 42(1): 23‒48. Gullar, F. 1980. “Cultura popular em questão.” Arte em Revista 3: 83‒87. Hall, R. 1962. “The Life-Cycle of Pidgin Languages.” Lingua 78: 151‒56. Hall, R. 1966. Pidgin and Creole Languages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hall, S. 2006. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular.’” In J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 3rd edn, edited by J. Storey, 477‒87. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolization.” Africa 57(4): 546‒59. Hannerz, U. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Harris, R., and B. Rampton. 2002. “Creole Metaphors in Cultural Analysis.” Critique of Anthropology 22(1): 31‒51. Hartley, J. 2005. Creative Industries. London: Blackwell. Hendrikson, H. 1996. “Body and Flags: The Representation of Herero Identity in Colonial Namibia.” In H. Hendrikson (ed.), Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa, edited by H. Hendrikson, 213‒43. Durham: Duke University Press. Horkheimer, M., and T. Adorno. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Seabury Press. Howkins, J. 2001. The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas. London: Allen Lane. Howkins, J. 2005. “The Mayor’s Commission on the Creative Industries.” In Creative Industries, edited by J. Hartley, 117‒25. London: Blackwell. Hymes, D. 1971. “Introduction to Part III.” In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, edited by D. Hymes, 65‒90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

357

Jeffcutt, P. 2000. “Management and the Creative Industries.” Studies in Culture, Organizations and Society 6(2): 123‒27. Jeffcutt, P., and A.C. Pratt. 2002. “Managing Creativity in the Cultural Industries.” Creativity & Innovation Management 11(4): 225‒33. Khan, A. 2007. “Good to Think?: Creolization, Optimism, and Agency.” Current Anthropology 48(5): 653‒73. Kihm, A. 1984. “Is There Anything Like Decreolization? Some Ongoing Changes in Bissau Creole.” In York Papers in Linguistics, vol. 11, edited by M. Sebba and L. Todd, 203‒14. York: University of York Press. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness, or the World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51(6): 731‒59. Kouwenberg, S., and J. Singler. 2008. “Introduction.” In The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, edited by S. Kouwenberg and J.V. Singler, 1‒16. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Kringelbach, H.N. 2013. Dance Circles: Movement, Morality and Self-Fashioning in Urban Senegal. New York: Berghahn. Larkin, B. 1997. “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities.” Africa 67(3): 406‒40. LePage, R., and A. Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lowenthal, L. 1957. “Historical Perspectives of Popular Culture.” In Mass Culture, edited by B. Rosenberg and D. White, 46‒58. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. MacDonald, M. 1957. “A Theory of Mass Culture.” In Mass Culture, edited by B. Rosenberg and D. White, 59‒73. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. McGuinan, J. 1992. Cultural Populism. London: Routledge. McRobbie, A. 1999. In the Culture Society: Art, Fashion and Popular Music. London: Routledge. McWhorter, J.H. 2005. Defining Creole. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magnani, J.G. 1982. “Cultura popular: controvérsias e perspectivas.” Boletim Informativo e Bibliográfico de Ciências Sociais (BIB) 12: 23‒39. Martin, P. 1995. Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martins, J.S. 1975. “Música Sertaneja: a dissimulação na linguagem dos humilhados.” In Capitalismo e Tradicionalismo. São Paulo: Pioneira de Ciências Sociais. Martins, C.E. 1980. “História do CPC.” Arte em Revista 3: 77‒82. Mintz, S. 1996. “Enduring Substances, Trying Theories.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2(2): 289‒311. Monteiro, V. 1998. Les musiques du Cap-Vert. Paris: Éditions Chandeigne. Mufwene, S. 1986a. “Les langues créoles peuvent-elles être définies sans allusions à leur histoire?” Études Créoles 9(1): 135‒50.

358

Trajano Filho

Mufwene, S. 1986b. “The Universalist and Substrate Hypothesis Complement One Another.” In Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis, edited by P. Muysken and S. Norval, 130‒62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Muysken, P. 1988. “Are Creoles a Special Type of Languages?” In Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, vol. II: Linguistic Theory: Extensions and Implications, edited by F.J. Newmeyer, 285‒301. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nogueira, G. 2005. O Tempo de B-Léza: Documentos e Memórias. Praia: Instituto da Biblioteca nacional e do Livro. Nogueira, G. 2012. “Percurso do batuku: do menosprezo a patrimônio immaterial.” Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Canção 2: 328‒349. Nogueira, G. 2013. “Tradição versus inovação na música em Cabo Verde: luta de gerações, espaços ou ideias?” Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Canção 3: 69‒93. Novas, M. 1968. “Ê prôp um sodade.” O Arquipélago, June 6, 1968. Novas, M. 1995. “Não precisamos de ritmos alheios”. Novo Jornal, March 11, 1995. Parkin, D. 1993. “Nemi in the Modern World: Return of the Exotic.” Man 28(1): 79‒99. Patrick, P.L. 2008. “Pidgins, Creoles and Variation.” In The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, edited by S. Kouwenberg and J.V. Singler, 461‒87. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Rickford, J. 1987. Dimensions of a Creole Continuum: History, Texts and Linguistic Analysis of Guyanese Creole. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rickford, J. 2002. “Implicational Scales.” In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, edited by J.K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes, 142‒67. Oxford: Blackwell. Romaine, S. 1988. Pidgin and Creole Languages. London: Longman. Sapir, E. 1924. “Culture, Genuine and Spurious.” American Journal of Sociology 29(4): 401‒29. Sebba, M. 1997. Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Singler, J.V. 2008. “The Sociohistorical Context of Creole Genesis.” In The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, edited by S. Kouwenberg and J.V. Singler, 332‒58. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Storey, J. 2006. “Introduction: The Study of Popular Culture and Cultural Studies.” In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 3rd edn, edited by J. Storey, xv‒xxii. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Strinati, D. 2005. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Thomason, S.G. 2008. “Pidgins/Creoles and Historical Linguistics.” In The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, edited by S. Kouwenberg and J.V. Singler, 242‒62. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Tinhorão, J. 1966. Música popular: um tema em debate. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Saga.

Reflections on Decreolization and Pidginization of Cultures

359

Todd, L. 1990. Pidgins and Creoles, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Trajano Filho, W. 1998. “Polymorphic Creoledom: The ‘Creole Society’ of GuineaBissau.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. Trajano Filho, W. 2008. “O trabalho da crioulização: as práticas de nomeação na Guiné colonial.” Etnográfica 12(1): 95‒128. Trajano Filho, W. 2010a. “The Creole Idea of Nation and Its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau.” In The Powerful Presence of the Past, edited by J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho, 157‒83. Leiden: Brill Publishers. Trajano Filho, W. 2010b. “Território e idade: ancoradouros do pertencimento nas manjuandadis da Guiné-Bissau”. In Lugares, pessoas e grupos: as lógicas do pertencimento em perspectiva internacional, edited by W. Trajano Filho. Brasília: Atalaia/ABA Publicações. Trajano Filho, W. 2012. “Patrimonialização dos artefatos culturais e a redução dos sentidos.” In Memórias da África: patromônios, museus e políticas das identidades, edited by L. Sansone. Salvador: EDUFBA/ABA Publicações. Trajano Filho, W. 2016. “Travelling Terms: Analysis of Semantic Fluctuations in the Atlantic World.” In The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective, edited by J. Knörr and C. Kohl, 157‒73. New York: Berghahn Books.

Chapter 18

Cameroon Pidgin as Index of Speakers’ Social Statuses and Roles: Evidence from Literary Texts Eric A. Anchimbe Introduction In Cameroon, Pidgin is often the target of various forms of negative attitudes and accusations. It has been accused of destroying children’s performance in English and of engendering the (supposed) falling standards of education in the country. This is because the language is identified with non-literates, under-achievers and the lower tiers of society. Several studies have reported on these negative attitudes and accusations, among them, Alobwede (1998), Kouega (2001), Schröder (2003), Ngefac (2011), Atechi (2011), Anchimbe (2013), et cetera. Based on these negative attitudes, Pidgin has also often been used to (negatively) index various groups of speakers, their social status, level of education, jobs and ethnicity. This study investigates how Cameroon Pidgin is used to (negatively) index the social status and social roles of those who speak it as their main language. These speakers are generally treated as non-literates, as belonging to certain ethnic groups especially the nomadic Fulani group, as unskilled, less educated non-white collar workers, and as coming from the lower classes of society. These statuses and roles incidentally correspond with the stereotypes about, and attitudes towards, Pidgin in the society, for example, as a degenerate, inferior, debased, non-educational and low-class code. To illustrate how social status indexing works through Cameroon Pidgin, literary texts, particularly plays, written in English by Cameroonian authors, were consulted for their use of Pidgin. I chose plays for two reasons: 1) plays use dialogue, which makes them resemble natural real life interaction, and 2) no complete Cameroon Pidgin text exists in the other literary genres as does in drama (cf., Menget 1980). Five playwrights, covering over five decades, 1960s– 2000s, were selected based on the extent to which they use Pidgin in their plays. These authors include Sankie Maimo (1966, 1978, 1986), John T. Menget (1980), Bole Butake (1986, 1999, 2005), Bate Besong (1991) and John Ngong Kum Ngong (2006). In all, nine plays were consulted from which the examples used below were culled (Table 18.1).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_019

361

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses Table 18.1 Plays consulted for use of Pidgin: 1960s–2000s No

Author

Year

Play

1

Sankie Maimo

1966

The Mask

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Sankie Maimo Sankie Maimo John T. Menget Bole Butake Bole Butake Bole Butake Bate Besong John Ngong Kum Ngong

1978 1986 1980 1986 1999 2005 1991 2006

Publisher

Cowrie Publications Sov-Mbang the Soothsayer Editions CLE Succession in Sarkov SOPECAM Mimbo Hos SOPECAM Lake God Bet Shoes and Four Men in Arms Editions CLE Betrothal without Libation Editions CLE Beasts of no Nation Editions CLE Battle of Survival Editions CLE

It would be interesting to see if Pidgin is used in the same manner in all these decades to index speaker statuses and roles. In 1982, Loreto Todd found a similar pattern in the way Sankie Maimo used Pidgin in his play Sov-Mbang, the Soothsayer (1978): Sankie Maimo is the first Cameroonian writer to use Pidgin purposefully in his works of literature. In this play [Sov-Mbang], for example, he uses verse when depicting the speech of his aristocratic characters and Pidgin when depicting the speech of servants and the lower orders. Todd 1982, 71

As the analysis below show, in these plays, each time Pidgin is used, the speaker statuses and functions identified above (also by Todd 1982) are targeted. Similarly, Asheri Kilo (2002, 205), in a study of the language of anglophone Cameroon drama observes that “through the use of Pidgin, characters speak a language that is appropriate to their status in life.” In the nine plays listed above, only non-literate characters use Pidgin as their sole language of interaction. Pidgin, therefore, implicitly indexes these speakers’ illiteracy or lack of education. On the contrary, literate characters, i.e., Todd’s ‘aristocratic characters,’ can code-switch between English and Pidgin perfectly without calling into question their literacy or education. Interestingly, when these educated characters speak to the uneducated Pidgin-speaking characters, the latter understand them without any difficulties but still respond only in Pidgin.

362

Anchimbe

The postcolonial structure of the Cameroonian society – typified by multilingualism, the functional stratification and categorization of languages (cf., official vs. home vs. informal languages), multiethnicity, multiglossia, et cetera as well as the historical origins of Cameroon Pidgin – could be used to account for the negative trends in attitudes towards Pidgin. This chapter is part of a larger project on describing the expanding use of Pidgin in institutional contexts in Cameroon. In the last decade, in spite of negative attitudes towards it, the use of Pidgin was attested in more institutional and formal contexts than before. These contexts include the radio and television (Anchimbe 2013), government administration and Bible translation (Mühleisen and Anchimbe 2012; Anchimbe 2016), and community development projects (Neba et al. 2006). Overall, this chapter seeks to establish whether the renewed interest in the use of Pidgin beyond informal and interpersonal contexts is also traceable in literary creations, especially drama. The rest of this chapter is structured thus: section 2 offers a brief overview of the status of Pidgin in Cameroon, attitudes towards it and the impact of these attitudes on the way Pidgin speakers are conceptualized, especially in relation to education and employment. Section 3 reviews the use of Pidgin in literary genres, i.e., poetry, prose (novels and short stories) and drama while section 4 focuses precisely on drama. As the core of the chapter, section 4 exemplifies the social statuses and roles indexed through Pidgin in the nine plays. Section 5 is the Conclusion.

Status of Pidgin in Cameroon: Impact of Social Attitudes

The life history of Pidgin and Creole languages around the world has been marked by negative attitudes, repudiation and denigration, both of these languages and their speakers. From the official to the unofficial domains and from institutional to non-institutional (private, home) contexts, these languages have often been subjected to prohibition and exclusion. Their origins have been presented as low, and the languages themselves have been treated as the ‘illegitimate offspring’ of their lexifier (European) languages simply because they “are spoken primarily by populations that have not fully descended from Europeans” (Mufwene 2001, 108). The emergence of Gullah, the Creole spoken on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, for instance, as Gonzales (1922, 17–18) captures in the following quote, was no exception. Slovenly and careless of speech, these Gullahs seized upon the peasant English used by some of the early settlers and by the white servants of

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

363

the wealthier colonists, wrapped their clumsy tongues about it as well as they could, and, enriched with certain expressive African words, it issued through their flat noses and thick lips as so workable a form of speech that it was gradually adopted by the other slaves and became in time the accepted Negro speech of the lower districts of South Carolina and Georgia. Here, the Gullah speakers’ race, physical appearance and social status are drawn into the description of the type or variety of language they spoke. Social stereotypes about them, for example, carelessness, clumsiness and slovenliness, and stereotypical racial physical traits, for example, ‘flat noses and thick lips,’ are invoked to further denigrate this variety and its speakers. While the variety of English spoken by early settlers and white servants is described humbly as ‘peasant English,’ that spoken by African slaves is described rather pejoratively as ‘Negro speech’ and not even ‘Negro English’ although the only difference is that theirs is ‘enriched with certain expressive African words.’ Similar trends in the denigration, delegitimation and disownership of Pidgin and Creole languages are described in this volume by Christine Jourdan on Solomon Islands Pijin and Thomas Hylland Eriksen on Kreol in Mauritius. Like in other postcolonial contexts, in Solomon Islands, Jourdan (this volume) explains, the “delegitimation of Pijin is associated with the unequal linguistic conditions typical of the European colonial era, and … its legitimation is associated with the mobility of speakers on the cultural scale.” Although Cameroon, unlike America, was not a slave destination, the Pidgin English spoken there has also witnessed certain negative social attitudes and has often been used to index and stigmatize speakers. Interviews conducted by Anne Schröder (2003) illustrate how Pidgin is used to index non-literates. In excerpt (1) below taken from Schröder’s (2003, CD: 26) interviews, the respondent – an anglophone Cameroonian teacher resident in Yaounde – says he uses Pidgin mostly with “illiterate” people. (1) Answer: Yeah I speak Pidgin English as well. I’m fluent in it. Yeah. Question: Do you still use it? You said you learnt it as a child and it was the first language you used. Answer: Yeah, I still use it. In fact, I use it mostly in, when I go where you, like in the villages or in towns, out of the school environment where you meet some of the illiterate who don’t understand English. So, I speak Pidgin English with them because with that they understand and we discuss with them. And then, we have some of these meeting groups, groupings that we go. At times

364

Anchimbe

we don’t come from one area and so the language that we use there to communicate is Pidgin English. And when we go to markets, too. At times in the market we speak Pidgin English. The negative attitudes have engendered calls for Pidgin to be banned from public domains. For instance, Bonny Kfua wrote in a letter to the editor of The Herald newspaper (Cameroon) in 1996, that Pidgin should be banned because it destroys and jeopardizes children’s and students’ acquisition of correct English: Anyone reading through an essay or letter written by a class seven pupil will admit that the cry of fallen standards in our schools is a reality. Whatever might have pushed the British and Catholic Church to use pidgin as a vehicle of communication, it is high time someone courageously put an end to the widespread use of pidgin English in Cameroon. Again, like in (1), education is also identified as a defining factor and the line that separates the accepted speakers of English from the (undesired) speakers of Pidgin. Evident in the discussion above is that, Pidgin and literacy or education go in opposite directions. The more of one means the less of the other. As Figure 18.1 indicates, the higher a person’s knowledge or competence in Pidgin, the lower their level of education. Conversely, the higher the level of education, the lower the knowledge of Pidgin. Again, these are based on lay

Figure 18.1

Juxtaposing level of education and knowledge of Pidgin E. Anchimbe

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

365

conceptualizations that Pidgin hampers the acquisition and use of correct English. Proof of this can be found in the examples analyzed below, where educated characters in the plays switch perfectly well between English and Pidgin according to the demands of context and interlocutors. Their knowledge of Pidgin does not interfere with their competence in English. The above illustrations clearly prove that the status often attributed to Pidgin has been generally negative. In public domains, the falling standards of education (see Kfua 1996) have been blamed on Pidgin. At home, parents consider the use of Pidgin destructive to their children’s status identity achieved through their use of English as mother tongue, for example, what Alobwede (1998) calls ‘status mother tongue’ or what Anchimbe (2004) terms ‘pride foreign tongues.’ These bans, at various levels of the society, pushed Kouega (2001) to declare that Pidgin is facing death in Cameroon. Recently, a number of studies have emerged which try to redeem the negative social status of Pidgin by illustrating that it is neither dying nor facing death but rather flourishing and gaining more ground and more speakers (Ayafor 2006; Atechi 2011). Others have demonstrated that its internal grammatical system has stabilized significantly that we could consider it a Creole (Mühleisen and Anchimbe 2012; Atindogbé and Chibaka 2012). For some scholars, Pidgin is so functionally widespread that if empowered could become ‘a pedagogical language in cities and other urban centers in Cameroon’ (Neba, Chibaka and Atindogbé 2006), thereby serving effectively as the ultimate unifying language for Cameroon (Ayafor 2000).

Pidgin in Creative Writing in Cameroon

As far back as the 1960s, the use of Pidgin has been conspicuous in literary texts in Cameroon irrespective of the genre. It is attested in poetry, drama and prose, even though this may involve only a few sentences or single word switches. While there are a few collections of poems and plays entirely in Pidgin, there is at the moment no complete short story or novel written in Pidgin. In these texts, Pidgin is used for various literary effects, for example, humor, irony, contrast or to mirror society and sociolinguistic structure, for example, speaker statuses, social class, level of education and profession. As far as poetry is concerned, there is, to my knowledge, only one published collection of poems in Cameroon Pidgin: Peter Vakunta’s (2008) Majunga Tok: Poems in Pidgin English (Bamenda: Langaa). However, there are isolated poems in Pidgin in some poetry anthologies. In a study of Aig-Imoukhuede’s (1982) poetry collection in (Nigerian) Pidgin, Pidgin Stew and Sufferhead, Jesse (2001, 45) encourages the use of Pidgin in poetry because pidgin has poetic

366

Anchimbe

resources capable of expressing a wide range of mentalities, tastes, customs, and even fashion itself. Because of this flexibility, pidgin reveals a high degree of closeness to the original speech patterns, notably in an attempt to preserve syntactical equivalents. Thus, if pidgin is adopted as a lingua franca throughout the sub-Saharan African region, it will enable Africans to take new pride in their artistic traditions and non-Africans to share in the joy and excitement of Africa’s art. Here, Jesse (2001) raises the possibility of Pidgin becoming a lingua franca, not only of one African country but of the entire sub-Saharan African region. Such a positive appraisal of the role of Pidgin in poetry and in the larger society accentuates the extent of its spread and the interpersonal and inter-group functions it plays in these societies. The following excerpt (2) from Vakunta (2008, 16) mirrors the “poetic resources” (Jesse 2001, 16) Cameroon Pidgin possesses. (2) “Man pass man” (Vakunta 2008, 16) I de wanda whai some pipo I wonder why some people Dem di soso knack chess for nating. Keep boasting over nothing. You no fit get all ting for this grong. You can’t get everything on this earth. You pass me for moni; You are better than in riches (money) I pass you for poor! I am better than you in poverty! You no fit pass me for all ting for this grong. you pass me for ndoss; I pass you for moumou!

…

You can’t be better than me in everything on this earth. You are a better playboy than me I am a better idiot than you.

(My translation)

As mentioned already, no entire novel or short story has so far been written in Pidgin. The use of Pidgin in prose consists mostly of word-level and sentencelevel switches for various literary effects. Many songs, proverbs, teasers and insults are rather rendered in Pidgin because they create a more dramatic effect. In the following excerpt (3) from Priscillia Manjoh’s novel, Snare (2013, 88), Pidgin is used by Nji’s friend to tease him about his recent marriage and the fact that his wife prepares lunch for him to take to work. (3) Snare (Manjoh 2013, 88) The other boy was eating a chunk of roast pork and Pommes frites with ketchup, drinking 100% apple juice. The boy looked at Nji’s homeprepared meal and exclaimed, “wao! Nji the boy. Ei fine for people dem

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

367

way dem get wife oh.” [Good for those who have a wife!] “I’ve told you to get married, what are you waiting for?” Nji teased him. Emphasis in original (My translation)

Pidgin is employed in this excerpt for dramatic effect. It is not a status codeswitch but rather a switch that moves the discussion to a less serious but affectionately closer, jocular context. In Cameroon, Pidgin often takes care of such intimate interpersonal social interactions that may be serious but which when conducted in Pidgin have little impact on interlocutors’ faces. In the short story “Thunder no di lie” (Thunder does not lie) by Francis Nyamnjoh (2007), the witchdoctor is made to speak only Pidgin. This, somehow, matches his job and social status in the Cameroonian society where witchdoctors are generally considered to be uneducated, non-literate, and hence can only speak an indigenous language or, at the best, Pidgin. We see this in the last sentence in the excerpt below where Nyamnjoh’s character, John Tsi, reassesses the witchdoctor’s competence in English and Pidgin. (4) “Thunder no di lie” (Nyamnjoh 2007, 56, 59) “Yes John Tsi, enter.” The witchdoctor called him by name. The old man had told no one his name…. The witchdoctor was so frightful in his long grey beard that his visitor almost retreated. Only a sense of overweighing purpose forced John Tsi to stay calm. He buried his face and greeted his host. “He pass you say I sabi you name?” [Are you surprised that I know your name?] The witchdoctor asked instead of answering the greetings. Without waiting for a reply that wasn’t forthcoming, he continued, “I sabi say you di work lek bigman for court for all beebu for Abakwa. You be Abakwa man. You marat with six pikin, and you don shetay for work for twenty year. I lie?” [I know that you work as a head in the high court in Abakwa. You are an Abakwa man. You are married and have six children, and you have been working for twenty years. Am I lying?] He raised his horrifying eyes towards his baffled guest … “I want it. The thunder should destroy him. He is bad.” John Tsi was insistent, and had temporarily forgotten that his host barely spoke Pidgin, let alone the English Language itself.” (My translation)

Like in poetry, Pidgin occurs very frequently in Cameroonian drama texts. However, only one author, John T. Menget, has written complete plays in Pidgin. Whereas the dialogues in his play, Mimbo Hos (1980), are in Pidgin, stage directions are in English, while some characters code-switch to English

368

Anchimbe

from time to time. Apart from John T. Menget’s plays, no other plays have been written entirely in Pidgin. In a myriad of other plays published since the 1960s, Pidgin is conspicuously used in various ways: i) as the only means of expression for some characters, ii) as a tool for humor and multimodal communication, for example, songs as in (15), iii) as a marker of intimacy, cf., example (3) above, and iv) as the code in which secretive and unauthorized activities are performed, for example, corruption or insulting as in (5) below. In the excerpt (5) from John Nkemngong Nkengasong’s (2013) play, Njogobi Festival, the character Mantrobu uses Pidgin to insult the corrupt Policeman he has just given a bribe to. The Policeman had stopped Mantrobu for illegally transporting game from the forest for sale in town. The animals are protected species, but are still illegally hunted for food. Mantrobu has to offer a bribe if he does not want his booty impounded. The act of bribing is co-constructed in Pidgin by both characters in the first two exchanges, although the interaction had all along been in English. (5) Njogobi Festival, Act 1: Scene 1 (Nkengasong 2013, 19) Policeman: Chop I chop. You eat, I eat. Mantrobu: Country waka, patron. The country moves on, sir. Policeman: Okay, safe journey. Mantrobu: (Offstage as he steams the engine of his lorry, his voice is also heard saying) Safe journey your mama pima. Na awuf go kill wuna! [Safe journey your mother’s clitoris. You will all die of greed!]. (My translation)

So, from these examples, Pidgin plays both a literary and a social role in these creative texts and moderates their interpretation by readers. The next section tackles the various speaker statuses that are indexed through the choice of Pidgin in the nine plays listed in Table 18.1.

Pidgin as Index of Speakers’ Statuses: Illustrations from Cameroonian Plays

Drama tries to replicate life; it seeks to mirror society as it were using dialogue as its major tool. Choosing drama for illustration here builds on this attempt at creating societal reality as it were. In the examples below, we hear characters’ voices directly from their mouths and we imagine how they go about their

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

369

daily lives. Switching to Pidgin belongs to the daily adaptations they make to suit specific contexts of interaction, to match interlocutor statuses and to be treated as competent members of the society. Four major speaker statuses and roles are indexed in the use of Pidgin in the nine plays consulted for this paper. These include: 1) education: illiteracy, level or lack of education; 2) employment: type of employment or rank or position in the job; 3) ethnicity: ethnic background or origin, and 4) social class protest through multimodal expression, for example, using songs. All these statuses represent mostly people from the lower tiers of society. I will now describe each of them with the help of examples drawn from the plays. Education and Illiteracy In Cameroon, Pidgin is neither taught as a subject nor used as a medium of instruction in schools. Its use is generally prohibited in educational settings, even at the university. The University of Buea, for example, has over fifteen signposts strategically mounted on campus advising students not to use Pidgin. The messages on most of these placards insinuate that Pidgin destroys competence in English: for example,

• • • • • •



Pidgin is taking a heavy toll on your English; shun it. The better you speak Pidgin, the worse you will write English. If you speak Pidgin, you will write Pidgin. Succeed at UB [University of Buea] by avoiding Pidgin on campus. The medium of studies at UB is English, not Pidgin. Speak less Pidgin and more English

With such messages, it becomes understandable why Pidgin is directly linked to non-literates and uneducated people. By implication, if Pidgin has to be kept out of educational institutions, those who learn or speak it are, therefore, those who do not attend these institutions; hence non-literates. In the plays studied here, only uneducated characters speak Pidgin permanently. They are not given the right to switch to English as the educated, high status characters are. In example (6) taken from Maimo’s (1966) The Mask, the educational level of three of the characters is clearly stated in the dramatis personae: Angeline is a worker in the ministry of foreign affairs – hence, highly educated, while Baye and Binla are final year university students of law and philosophy respectively. Madam Suilaka, the character who speaks only Pidgin, is simply described as “a lady neighbour” and later as “an attractive middle age woman” (Maimo 1966, 2, 18). Because, perhaps, she is not educated, her level of education is not

370

Anchimbe

relevant here. She is hence qualified to speak only Pidgin while the others, for example, Binla, switch between Pidgin and English. (6) The Mask, Act 1 (Maimo 1966, 18–19) Angeline: Not a bad idea though; but I can’t. (smiling) … There is a knock at the door. (Both turn round) Baye: Who may this be, I wonder! (knock). Come in, please. (Walking towards the door). Oh! It is you madam. You’re welcome. (Madam Suilaka enters – an attractive middle age woman) Madam Suilaka: Your combin lef this leta for you. (Gives him a note). [Your friend left this letter for you.] Baye: Tenki, madam! [Thank you, madam] (addressing her). You go drink something we hi cold? [Would you drink something cold?] Binla: (Offering her seat). Na ples dis madam. [Here is a seat, madam] Baye: An orange drink – perhaps? Madam S: Cool orange squash! (Angeline serves her). San hot plenty pass mark. [The sun is too hot.] Binla: One’s outer skin may dissolve. Madam S: No be lai dat. [That’s not a lie.] (My translation)

Since the above scene takes place in Baye’s house, he immediately switches to Pidgin when he opens the door and sees his neighbor Madam Suilaka. This is certainly because he knows her and the language she is capable of speaking. By not selecting English, he shuts her out of the social class that speaks English acquired mostly through education. Interestingly, although she is placed in the Pidgin-speaking social stratum, she, however, still understands English. Her last turn in (6), “No be lai dat” (That’s not a lie), is in response to Binla’s complaint about the heat: “One’s outer skin may dissolve.” For a typical uneducated person, this statement would normally be difficult to understand. The lack of education is sometimes indexed through the type of jobs Pidginspeaking characters do in these plays. These are jobs for which no formal educational training is needed, for instance, selling in a bar. In excerpt (7) from Menget’s Mimbo Hoos, Service, i.e., the barmaid, speaks only Pidgin. Her last turn “Payment before service” is indeed a slogan or a hackneyed expression known in the bar context. Again, like above, she understands St. Bottle when he accuses her in English of not remembering his choice of drink.

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

371

(7) Mimbo Hos, Scene II: In Bluemoon Bar (Menget 1980, 6) Service: (reluctantly to the new comers) I bring weti? [What should I bring?] St. Bottle: Are you a new person to our taste? Service: But you soso chenge-chenge. [But you keep changing.] St. Bottle: Yes, na me new name, Mista Chenge-chenge. OK give mister change-change Becks … [Yes, that’s my new name, Mr Change-Change.] Service: Payment before service. (My translation)

In Cameroon English, the common name used to address bar tenders, especially females, is ‘Service.’ In this play, the barmaid is not referred to by her real name but rather by the address form ‘Service.’ Using her real name would perhaps have granted her another status than that of an uneducated, Pidginspeaking, non-white-collar employee in a bar. With her real name, she would perhaps also have been qualified to switch to another language. St. Bottle is a teacher and so can code-switch between English and Pidgin. Employment Status and Type of Job Certain jobs in the plays analyzed here are performed only in Pidgin. These are mostly casual, informal and non-white collar jobs. The use of Pidgin in this manner indexes workers such as park boys, barmaids and servants as having little or no education, or as being non-literate, and as belonging to the lower tiers of society. Some of the characters that perform these jobs are made to speak Pidgin first even if they can speak English (cf., 8 below). Five different types of casual jobs and employment statuses are exemplified below: car park workers, market vendors, servants in homes and palaces, barkeepers or barmaids and low rank soldiers in the army. Firstly, it is generally understood that the default language in car parks, especially in anglophone Cameroon, is Pidgin. It, therefore, becomes normal for car park workers to use Pidgin in literary texts. However, certain educated characters in some of the plays still use English in this context rather than Pidgin. This proves that, although Pidgin might be the near-default language, its use also generally indexes a lower social status for those working there. In the following example from Butake’s (2005) Betrothal without Libation, car park collectors – they look for passengers – speak only Pidgin but when announcing a destination in the francophone part of the country, they attempt to speak French, as 1st Collector does in (8).

372

Anchimbe

(8) Betrothal without Libation. Scene 5: At Motor park in Mankon (Butake 2005, 34) 1st Collector: Bafoussam, Bafoussam … one man for Foussam, one man … un personne, un personne. One man for B‘foussam. [One more person needed to fill the car going to Bafoussam.] 2nd Collector: Banso, Banso …Only one man for Banso here … one man, one man only, one man for here! 4th Collector: Njinikom …Kom line here. Three man for Kom line. Hei, Simbong, lef da people. [Hey, Simbong, leave those people alone.] Simbong: I leffam say na you one get motor? [I should leave them alone because you are the only one here with a car!] (to Fointam). Are you going home with Nawain? (to Elisa) Nawain come this way and sit down. (My translation)

In order to properly index their job using Pidgin, the personal names of these car park workers are also not used. Simbong – described in the dramatis personae only as ‘park tout’ – is named perhaps because in the ensuing dialogues, he switches to English. The other unnamed car park workers rather stick to Pidgin all through the scene. Simbong also uses words from the Kom native language, for example, Nawain: wife or woman, to create a closer relationship to these travellers who are going to Kom. He invokes an ethnic identity through the choice of the ethnic language thereby moving interaction to the ethnic level where people feel more closely related – almost like kin. Illiteracy is further linked to the car park through the use of French. The brief switches to French by 1st Collector are grammatically wrong; a masculine pronoun is used with a feminine noun: ‘un personne’ instead of ‘une personne.’ Implicitly, wrong French or by extension, ungrammatical language, is equated with Pidgin. Secondly, vendors in markets in anglophone Cameroon also tend to use mostly Pidgin. This is also replicated in drama where market vendors advertise their goods and sell only in Pidgin. In (9), also from Butake (2005), the Salesman – who is also not named – sticks to Pidgin, while Elisa (a High School student) and Fointam (a high school teacher trainee) switch between Pidgin and English. (9) Betrothal without Libation. Scene 4: In a market in Mankon (Butake 2005, 30) Salesman: Good morning, Madam. You want something?

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

Elisa: Salesman:

Elisa: Fointam: Salesman:

Fointam:

373

How much for this wrapper? [How much does this loin cloth cost?] You want the wrapper? Na very good material. Imported. No be Cicam-oh. Dat na real wax print. Straight from Holland country. Only six thousand for six yards. [Do you want the loin cloth? It’s good material. Imported. It’s not Cicam. It’s real wax print; straight from Holland. It costs only six thousand francs for six yards.] Say Fointam, won’t this be good for your mother? It looks beautiful; only it is rather expensive. How much is it dear? Madam, de wrapper no dear at all. You no fit get wax print for de whole Mankon market for dat price. Na morning time market I di makam with wuna. Six thousand na very good price. [Madam, the loin cloth is not at all expensive. It’s early bird price I am giving you at. You won’t find wax print for that price in the whole Mankon Market.] If you think it’s good you can take it for her …

(My translation)

That the Salesman sticks to Pidgin all through shows that Pidgin is the default language in this market context and also of those working there. Otherwise, hearing the others speak English to one another, the Salesman – if he knew English – would certainly have switched to it in order to integrate their language in-group thereby increasing the chances of them buying from him. Thirdly, in these plays, servants in homes and palaces are made to speak only Pidgin. Their job is socially low and to match this low status, they are attributed Pidgin – also considered a low class language. In the two excerpts below (10 and 11), age is not a factor or an indicator of literacy or language use. This is because while the servant in (10) is a young man (i.e., Bernsah), the servant in (11) is an old man (i.e., Tantan) who is twice as old as his current master. So, Pidgin indexes their low level employment placing them in the lower tiers of society. In the opening scene of Maimo’s (1978) Sov-Mbang, the Soothsayer, between Fon Balon, the ruler of Bamfem and his principal servant, Bernsah, the servant is addressed in English but responds in Pidgin. Throughout the play, Bernsah speaks only Pidgin even though the rest of the characters speak English, sometimes using very complex grammatical structures. He understands them but is not allowed – by the constraints of his lowly employment status – to speak English. Doing this would make him rise above his status and employment

374

Anchimbe

rank. So, making Pidgin his language is simply a way of representing his societal tier and his job rather than his competence in English. (10) Sov-Mbang the Soothsayer. Scene 1: In the Palace courtyard (Maimo 1978, 11) Fon Balon: This is surely not the first cock crow. So I must get up at once. “Tis the early bird that catches the worm.” It’s a sane proverb of the white-man. The first human face to meet ours, Must be that of my faithful servant Bernsah. (Calls out) Bernsah! Bernsah! At this hour, What force still keeps this youth in bed? (A young man rushes into the court-yard. He greets the Fon’s throne in the traditional manner, though the Fon is still within. Then he moves towards the door as the Fon comes out. Bernsah: Me no sabi sey Fon don wekop. Mfor! A salut. [I was not aware that the Fon was already up. My Lord! Greetings.] Fon Balon: Is all the palace still sleeping? Bernsah: Na so, Mfor! Hunter man dem jos kom back. [Exactly so, my Lord. Hunters have just returned.] Playwright’s translation

More than a decade after The Mask (1966) and Sov-Mbang, the Soothsayer (1978) were written, it is noteworthy to see if the same social status indexing through Pidgin was still recreated in Maimo’s later play Succession in Sarkov (1986). In this play, just like in the earlier ones, Pidgin is the language of household servants especially in royal contexts like the palace. Tantan is the servant of Old Fai Tah-lah, the late traditional ruler. After the death of Tah-lah, he continues to serve the new Fai, Kubena – the son of Fai Tah-lah – as a servant. His life is tied to serving as a servant in the palace. To this status is added the use of Pidgin. The new Fai is well-educated and so speaks only English. In spite of this, Tantan still understands him but only responds in Pidgin. This is visible in excerpt (11) below. (11) Succession in Sarkov. Act II, Scene 1: In the Fon’s palace (Maimo 1986, 63) Fai (Kubena): That’s good news. Tantan! Tantan! (Tantan approaches). Get my brief case for me.

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

375

With such proper action, I feel bound To make some contribution. See also about the children, Tantan. Saghen: It would be of great help, my Lord. Tantan: A dong give all pikin dem groundnut weti banana. I have given peanuts and banana to all the children. Hear hawe dem de dance mbaya for outside. You can hear them dancing mbaya outside. Na wan thing don pass me. But there is one problem. Pikin dem deh vex say dem noba chop bif for sacrifas. The children are angry because they have not eaten the sacrificial meat. Bif for sacrifas – leki say na me, Tantan, a de trong hand. Sacrificial meat – as if, it is me, Tantan, who is selfish to them. Saghen: We know you Tantan. Anyway keep them happy. Tantan: A don hear. Meki a go (Exit Tantan). [I have heard you. Let me go.] (My translation)

Fourthly, like household servants, barkeepers or barmaids are attributed a similarly low social status and made to speak only Pidgin. In example (12), Paulina, described in the dramatis personae as the “proprietress of a native liquor bar,” (Butake 2005, 7) belongs to this low employment social class. Each time she is addressed, Pidgin is used. But the educated speakers switch back to English when addressing each other. (12) Betrothal without Libation. Act 1, Scene 3: In Paulina’s Native Liquor Bar (Butake 2005, 23) Tita: Pass me two bottles for here. Paulina: Two bottro? [Two bottles?] Tita: Yes, two. And bringam quick. This sun fit kill man. [And bring them quickly. This sun can kill someone.] Fointam: Sama do you want another bottle? Sama: Sure, Fointam, sure. The wine is first class. When I taste this kind of wine I never want to stop. Fointam: Paulina? Paulina: Sah? [Sir?] Paulina: Four bottles-eh? Paulina: Yes Sah. [Yes Sir.]

376

Anchimbe

Her low status and also illiteracy can be seen in the way she pronounces the word ‘bottro’ (bottle) even though the word is pronounced in English in the immediate previous turn. It could also be argued that the variant ‘bottro’ is from one of the many varieties of Pidgin spoken in Cameroon. However, this pronunciation is generally typical of non-educated speakers. Fifthly, Pidgin could also index lower positions in the hierarchy of the army. For instance, low rank soldiers or officers are often made to speak Pidgin because, to attain their rank, not much education is needed. Example (13) is from John Ngong Kum Ngong’s (2006) Battle of Survival. In the play, Wujwab, described as the chief clerk in the Ministry of Propaganda, is arrested and tortured for his rebellious ideas by Wokikoh, a captain in the army and the General’s orderly. As a lower ranked officer, Wokikoh is made to speak a variety Pidgin that is highly mixed with English. His variety shows signs of education since it tries to approximate English in various ways. The suggestion here is that he has some minimal level of education. His variety cannot be compared to the variety spoken, for instance, by Dewa in (14) or Tantan in (11), which is highly non-literate. (13) Battle of Survival. Scene 3: In a prison cell (Ngong Kum Ngong 2006, 31) Wujwab (Still begging): Get these chains off my hands and feet And give me something to eat please. I have not eaten since morning. Wokikoh: Shut up dat your very big dirty mouth. You see me like your woman or houseboy? Shut up that big dirty mouth of yours. Do you take me for your wife or houseboy? Wujwab: Please captain, have mercy on me. Don’t torture an old man like me. Wokikoh: Me? Torture you? Torture a whole docta? Dat mean I can kill but I cannot sah. Only gofment get the full right to kill And bring criminal like you to the order. Me? Torture you? Torture a whole doctor? That would mean I can kill, but I cannot, Sir. Only the government has the full right to kill. And to bring criminals like you to order. Wujwab: I am not a criminal sir And I don’t deserve to be here Like a murderer behind bars.

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

377

Wokikoh: Not my business docta mista chief clerk … That’s not my business doctor mister chief clerk … (My translation)

So, while with servants, barmaids and car park workers Pidgin is the language that marks their employment status, with Wokikoh, Pidgin rather marks his employment rank and level of education relative to the General’s. It creates a senior-junior relationship which is characterized by position and competence in English. Ethnicity and Place of Origin Ethnic belonging in Cameroon is a crucial and sensitive topic. Through it, identities are built around ethnic groups and ethnic group languages thereby facilitating the exclusion of non-group members. Language choice, as seen in excerpt (8) is essential to constructing ethnic in-group identities, adapting to such identities and accommodating members of other ethnic groups. Pidgin often plays the role of an inter-ethnic lingua franca in inter-ethnic interactions since it is not the in-group language of any particular ethnic group. However, in certain situations it could also be used to index an ethnic group for lack of education, lack of access to high level white-collar jobs, low social status, et cetera. Certain ethnic groups, especially the nomadic Fulani and Bororo ethnic groups, tend to be identified with the above factors in plays. To match these factors, Pidgin is selected as their medium of expression, since in the society, Pidgin is generally treated as a non-educational language used mostly by people from the low echelons of society. As example (14) from Butake’s Lake God (1986) illustrates, members of this ethnic group do not only speak Pidgin in the plays but are also talked to only in Pidgin. The Fon’s exchange with Dewa is exclusively in Pidgin until when he addresses the guards. There, he switches to English in the same turn. (14) Lake God. Fragments: In the Fon‘s palace (Butake 1986, 18–19) Fon: Enough! Are you accusing me? Your Fon? Did you expect me, a Christian Fon, to sit back and watch a handful of senile fanatics perpetuating the barbaric and heathen custom of human sacrifice? Chorus: Ai-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye! Fishang! No! Fon: (to Dewa) You bin talk dat foolush talk? [Did you say these foolish things?] Dewa: Kai! Me no talkam no noting, Mbe. Allah! Me no talkam no noting.

378

Anchimbe

[Kai! (interjection). I said nothing of that sort, Mbe (Your Highness).] Fon: Na weti happen? [What happened?] Dewa: Cow dong go drinki water for Ngangba sai wey na kontri for Bororo. [Cows went to drink water in Ngangba which is in the land of the Bororo.] … Fon: You go pay all da chop wey you cow don choppam. [You will pay for the food eaten by your cows.] Dewa: No bi na ma nyun, Mbe! Na you nyun don choppam corn. [They were not mine (cows), Mbe. It is rather your cows that ate the corn.] Fon: Shurrup you mup, bloody fool! (to guards) If he opens his mouth again …! [Shut up your mouth, bloody fool!] That the Fulanis or Bororos are tagged for the use of Pidgin is not triggered by racial or ethnic discrimination as such but rather by the fact that they are not identified with formal education which is transmitted through English. They live a nomadic life and so do not stay in one area long enough for their children to attend school.

Social Class Protest through Multimodal Expression: Songs as Social Expression In the plays, Pidgin is also often used for multimodal expression especially through songs. These songs are a form of social expression, especially protest, by people of lower social status and others against political authority. In Bate Besong’s (1991) Beasts of no Nation, the educated, English-speaking narrator suddenly switches to Pidgin when he sings the following song. The song is a mockery of the corrupt nature of the government and how corrupt officials are protected by high ranking politicians in the capital. (15) Beasts of no Nation. The Parabasis (Besong 1991, 17–18) Narrator: (voice dripping with cynicism) When Comrade Dealsham Aadingingin will be talking to God. (They sing). Goat di chop A goat eats For place weh Where Dey be tie him. It was tethered

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

If I die I go come back If I quench I go come back. ----Solo: I fit tief One hundred million I fit tief Five thousand million sef. Chorus: Because my umbrella Dey for capital city Because my umbrella Dey for Ednuoay city. My translation

379

If I happen to die I will come back If I die I will come back. I could steal One hundred million (CFA frs) I could steal Even five thousand million (CFA frs). Because my umbrella (protector) Is in the capital city Because my umbrella (protector) Is in Ednuoay city.

In except (16) below from Butake’s (1999) Shoes and Four Men in Arms, the soldiers switch to Pidgin at the end of the play when they criticize the General – a metonymy of the political and military dictatorship that has made them brutalize the people in the past, depriving them of their human and basic rights. Now that they are on the people’s side, they adopt Pidgin as the language through which to enact their protest against the General. (16) Shoes and Four Men in Arms. Butake (1999: 142) First: Alright, alright. However, before I humour you, let me warn that out there, with the people, we must abandon the wanton violence against others that was our way of life in the army. From this moment we must demonstrate a deep respect for human life and the basic rights of each and every individual. Third/Fourth: We are ready, Commandant. We promise that we are with you. First: Good. Troops, attention! Present your arms! At ease! Now listen carefully to the words of this song. People di sofa General di chop money! [The people are suffering while the general is embezzling the money!] Soja di sofa General di chop money! [The soldiers are suffering while the general is embezzling the money!]

380

Anchimbe

People and soja di sofa, General di chop money! Ok? [The people and the soldiers are suffering while the general is embezzling the money!] Troops, attention! To the right, turn! Mark time! Left, right! Left right! Left right! Forward march! Left right! Left right! Left! Left! Left! In a way, in the two excerpts above (15–16), Pidgin is understood as the language of the masses, of the powerless grassroots people at the mercy of the powerful political and military force that rules them. Like in the other examples, it also indexes people from the lower echelons of society. The characters in (15–16) do not use Pidgin as their default language, but only switch to it when the fate of low social status people is invoked. It is like switching to a language identified with them in order to represent them or to talk on their behalf. The examples discussed in this section trace a consistent pattern in the way Pidgin is employed in drama in Cameroon. As Todd (1982, 71) remarks, it is purposefully used to separate “the speech of aristocratic characters” from “the speech of servants and the lower orders.” Factors that mark this separation are education, type of employment or job, ethnic origin and rank or position in the job. Because these factors all reflect the lower classes of society, it can be said here that the choice of Pidgin simply mirrors the social structure of society along with the negative attitudes attached to Pidgin and the social statuses of its speakers. Figure 18.2 illustrates the prominence of Pidgin in the nine plays according to the five decades. The percentages are approximations based on the number of characters that use Pidgin and the number of times it is used in the plays. The peak is in the 1980s because John T. Menget wrote his plays in Pidgin.

Figure 18.2

Occurrences of Pidgin in the nine plays according to the five decades E. Anchimbe

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

381

The 1990s record a relatively low presence of Pidgin. A probable reason for this is that during this period, relatively few plays (i.e., literary works, in general) were published due perhaps to “the drastic salary cuts that civil servants went through in Cameroon beginning 1993” (Butake 1999, 3) which made it difficult for playwrights to cover the publication costs of their plays. The 2000s saw a surge in literary publications in Cameroon, many of them subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and other national and international cultural agencies. One of the major publishing houses, Editions CLE, was reinvigorated and so became open to small scale publications like plays. However, not all plays published in the 2000s make use of Pidgin. Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to illustrate how Pidgin is used in Cameroonian plays to index speakers’ social status and societal roles. As the analysis above shows, Pidgin is used along the lines of societal conceptualizations of it and its normative speakers as non-literate, uneducated and low class. The way it is employed in these drama texts only confirms existing societal stereotypes about the language in the society. Only little deconstruction of these stereotypes takes place in these plays; for instance, 1) only few high class or highly educated characters use it, and when they do, they do so only with low class characters; 2) low class characters hardly switch to English, even if they can (8), and only do so if they have to reveal a high status they possess, e.g. education; and 3) Pidgin indexes casual jobs done mostly by the lower classes, the non-literate and the poor of the society. All these simply reflect the society’s conceptualization of Pidgin as a non-literate, low class language. These conceptualizations run counter to the expanding use of Pidgin in institutional domains in recent years. So, as far as the ‘pidgin goes public’ experience, that is, the renewed interest in using Pidgin in public, formal and institutional domains, mentioned above is concerned, drama or literature seems partially excluded from it. Although the plays were written at different times over five decades (1960–2010), their portrayal of Pidgin in relation to the social status, roles and functions of its speakers is similar and systematic. In these plays, Pidgin is neither attributed a higher social status nor granted access to new institutional domains in the public sphere. The palaces in which its use is attested are generally traditional and are located in villages. It is true that more literary texts have been published in the last decade than before, but still no new plays, novels, short stories have been published entirely in Pidgin since Menget’s plays in the 1980s. Again, since the 1960s, it has

382

Anchimbe

been customary to integrate Pidgin or Pidgin-speaking characters or lines into literary texts in Cameroon. The 2000s seem to have followed that trend and not marked a new direction in the use of Pidgin. The playwrights have simply continued the social indexing through Pidgin started in the 1960s by Sankie Maimo. Does it mean writers have no interest in writing in Pidgin? Of course not, they simply consistently use splinters of Pidgin in all literary genres. References Aig-Imoukhuede, F. 1982. Pidgin Stew and Sufferhead. Ibadan: Heinemann. Alobwede, D’Epie C. 1998. “Banning Pidgin English in Cameroon?” English Today 14(1): 54–60. Anchimbe, E.A. 2004. “Lexical Markers of Social (Youth) Group Communication in Cameroon.” Proceedings of 4th Postgraduate Forum on Linguistics. Hong Kong University Press. www.hku.hk/linguist/conf/prf/4prf-proceedings.pdf. Anchimbe, E.A. 2013. Language Policy and Identity Construction: The Dynamics of Cameroon’s Multilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Anchimbe, E.A. 2016. “Pidgin Goes Public: Urban Institutional Space in Cameroon.” In Re-Inventing the Postcolonial (in the) Metropolis, edited by C. Sandten and A. Bauer, 379–99. Leiden: Brill. Atechi, S. 2011. “Is Cameroon Pidgin Flourishing or Dying?” English Today 27(3): 30–34. Atindogbé, G.G., and E.F. Chibaka. 2012. “Pronouns in Cameroon Pidgin English.” In Language Contact in a Postcolonial Setting, edited by E.A. Anchimbe, 215–44. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Ayafor, M. 2000. “Kamtok: The Ultimate Unifying Language for Cameroon.” The Carrier Pidgin 28(1–3): 4–6. Ayafor, M. 2006. “Kamtok (Pidgin) Is Gaining Ground in Cameroon.” In African Linguistics and the Development of African Communities, edited by E.N. Chia, 191–99. Senegal: CODESEIA. Besong, B. 1991. Beasts of no Nation. Editions CLE. Butake, B. 1986. Lake God. Yaounde: Bet & Co. Butake, B. 1999. “Shoes and Four Men in Arms.” In B. Butake Lake God and Other Plays. Yaounde: Editions CLE. Butake, B. 2005. Betrothal without Libation. Editions CLE. Gonzalez, A. 1922. The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast. Columbia, SC: State Company. Jesse, M. 2001. “Cook Stew of Pidgin.” English Today 17(3): 45–51. Kfua, B. 1996. “Time Is Up for Pidgin English.” The Herald no. 359, September 20–22.

cameroon pidgin as index of speakers ’ social statuses

383

Kilo, A. 2002. “The Language of Anglophone Cameroon Drama.” In The Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader, edited by F. Harding, 198–207. London: Routledge. Kouega, J.P. 2001. “Pidgin English Facing Death in Cameroon.” Langscape 21. (Terralingua Newsletter) www.terralingua.org/lit/langscape, accessed June 20, 2008. Maimo, S. 1966. The Mask. Yaounde: Cowrie Publications. Maimo, S. 1978. Sov-Mbang the Soothsayer. Yaounde. Editions CLE. Maimo, S. 1986. Succession in Sarkov. Yaounde: SOPECAM. Manjoh, P.M. 2013. Snare. Kansas City: Miraclaire Publishing. Menget, J.T. 1980. Mimbo Hos. A play in Pidgin English. Yaounde: SOPECAM. Mühleisen, S., and E.A. Anchimbe. 2012. “Gud Nyus fo Pidgin? Bible translation as language elaboration in Cameroon Pidgin English.” In Language Contact in a Postcolonial Setting, edited by E.A. Anchimbe, 245–68. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Mufwene, S.S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neba Ayu’nwi N., E.F. Chibaka and G.G. Atindogbé. 2006. “Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) as a Tool for Empowerment and National Development.” African Study Monographs 27(2): 39–61. Ngefac, A. 2011. “Globalising a Local Language and Localising a Global Language: The Case of Kamtok and English in Cameroon.” English Today 27(1): 16–21. Ngong, John Nong Kum. 2006. Battle for Survival. Yaounde: Editions CLE. Nkengasong, John Nkemngong. 2013. Njogobi Festival. Kansas City: Miraclaire Publishing. Nyamnjoh, F. 2007. Stories from Abakwa. Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG. Schröder, A. 2003. Status, Functions, and Prospects of Pidgin English. An Empirical Approach to Language Dynamics in Cameroon. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Todd, L. 1982. Cameroon. Varieties of English around the World T1. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Vakunta, P.W. 2008. Majunga Tok: Poems in Pidgin English. Bamenda: Langaa.

Chapter 19

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization Kristian Van Haesendonck1

The CvP Model

Can the concept of cultural pidginization be extended to literature? In other words, can we theorize literary pidginization, and, if so, how do we proceed? Moreover, can this concept be applied to non-(post)colonial contexts as well? Jacqueline Knörr’s CvP model (Creolization versus Pidginization) defines processes of cultural mixing in terms of pidginization as opposed to creolization (Knörr 2014, 30–32). She proposes to shift our focus from cultural creolization to the concept of cultural pidginization as a tool for comparative cultural analysis. The CvP model states that, while in colonial and slave societies cultural creolization was dominant, in postcolonial societies it is cultural pidginization that has taken center stage, as a result of increased globalization. While Knörr applies the notion of pidginization to the field of anthropology, I believe it could also be useful to literary studies (as well as other fields). In both anthropology and literary studies we are dealing with respectively ethnic groups or cultural and literary systems (instead of creoles or pidgins), which remain more or less autonomous, in the sense that these groups and systems do not result in a creolized ethnic or literary identity (creoleness). The point I will make here is that literary pidginization, which I will attempt to define in this article, is an accurate concept to describe the specific process that leads to the emergence of a regional literary polysystem. In order to understand why the CvP model deserves our attention in the fields of literary and broader cultural studies, we should first clarify the difference between linguistic and cultural creolization before defining the concept of pidginization as it can be used to re-think literary and cultural systems.2 1  This article was written in the framework of the “Actie terugkeermandaten 2014” research program of the Belgian Federal Science Policy (BELSPO). 2  Even though we use the term ‘cultural system’ here, we should not forget that, as linguist Robert Chaudenson (2001, 194) warns us, it is vague and debatable: he defines it, however “loosely and provisionally,” as “a presumably structured ensemble of traits characterizing a cultural domain in a given society.” Moreover, a cultural system can apply to “a number of ensembles of very diverse sizes and characteristics, such as language, music, cuisine, folk

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363397_020

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

385

Pidginization in a linguistic sense presupposes the need for a strategy to enable communication in a multilingual environment, what John McWhorther describes as a “communication strategy typically used between groups speaking different languages but seeking transitory, perfunctory exchange” (McWhorther 2005, 11). More specifically, linguistic pidginization is the process whereby a new common language (pidgin) emerges among a group of speakers as a result of the mixing of (ethnically) different languages; however this process is not linked to the replacement of the ethnic languages a pidgin language stems from. Linguistic creolization, on the contrary, implies that a new common language (creole) emerges, made out of the features of different languages (Knörr 2014, 31), but this new common language eventually replaces the ethnic languages it stems from. However, can cultures, and literatures by extension, be approached in the same ways as languages? The participants in the processes of cultural mixing concerned in the CvP model indeed also create and ‘speak’ a new kind of ‘language’: they create new cultural representations in the sense of cultural forms and features (lifestyle, music, religion, etc.), and they are collectively subject of a process of ethnicization. In cultural pidginization, however, new cultural representations and objects are created without the need for replacing old cultural forms. Cultural pidginization implies that a new common culture emerges even though the ‘original’ or source cultures are kept intact. Cultural pidginization, according to Knörr can be defined as: A process over the course of which common culture and identity are developed in specific contexts of ethnic and cultural diversity as well – yet, in contrast to creolization, this process does not involve ethnicization. No new ethnic group is formed, and original identities based on heritages of their protagonists remain in existence. Knörr 2014, 31

The CvP model is thus defined as particularly apt for studying a range of processes taking place in the interaction between one creole group or identity and a plurality of other ethnic groups or identities, processes that in many postcolonial societies significantly influence the integration and differentiation of ethnic, local and national identities in particular. Ibid., 30

medicine, and oral literature, (…) as well as to social representations, folk knowledge, kinship, technology, etc.”

386

Van Haesendonck

The Creolization versus Pidginization model does, as its very name implies, not do away with creolization, but approaches it as a different process from – yet intimately linked to – pidginization: whereas cultural creolization involves ethnicization, cultural pidginization typically involves the development of a trans-ethnic culture in a context of cultural diversity. One should note that the name ‘Creolization versus Pidginization model’ does imply that we are dealing here with two completely opposed processes, but in fact these processes are very close to one another. The ‘versus’ insists on the importance of making that difference clear for the sake of analytic and scientific precision. Moreover, pidginization does not exclude that a process of creolization can take place in a later stage, as the former can eventually evolve into the latter. Up to a certain point both processes do resemble each other closely, with the difference that it will generally take more time for a creole identity to take shape than to create common trans-ethnic (and transnational by extension) identifications and common cultural representations (Knörr 2014, 32). In this article, I am interested in linking Jacqueline Knörr’s CvP model, based on the concept of cultural pidginization, to a whole different theory, coming from the field of comparative literature, known as ‘Polysystem Theory’ (PS), by Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar (1990). In no way do I pretend here to provide an ideal model for studying the complex phenomenon of literary mixing; rather it is my aim to explore the potential of the CvP model for the field of literary studies, where it has not received any attention so far, in order to come up with the concept of literary pidginization. “Why specifically these two theories?” one may ask. The two models I will focus on (CvP and PS) have, in spite of the differences between them, a few things in common that are worth exploring further, such as their borrowing and adaptation of specifically linguistic concepts, as well as their emphasis on relationality, which opens up the possibility of new cultural and literary cartographies. Moreover, they both imply an approach to culture and literature as flexible, heterogeneous systems, and offer useful instruments to innovate the way we study a wide arrange of cultural and literary objects today. In addition, both theories offer a useful tool for trans-national and even trans-areal research, even though they are based on a very different architecture, aside from their linguistic foundations.3 In what follows I will also point to what in my view are some of the strengths and shortcomings of the concept of pidginization for literary use.

3  In simplified terms the polysystem is a functional-structural model of center versus periphery while CvP (Creolization versus pidginization) is based on social rather than structural processes.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

387

It goes without saying that I subscribe to the idea that a new cartography of literatures is needed, for, as others have said, the “traditional approach to languages, literatures, countries and nations appears to be far too static in our media age” (Lambert 2006, 129). Furthermore, this combined approach to literatures, through the lens of specific concepts of literary mixing, is part of my broader attempt to promote comparative, trans-national and transareal research on emerging literatures (such as the Caribbean and European literatures, but one could think of other regions as well), in a way similar to anthropology, where these concepts have contributed to foster comparative analysis. To introduce pidginization into literary studies requires some adaptations, and might serve to test or adjust some of the adaptations made to use it as a conceptual tool in the anthropological field. Given the unexplored character of such an enterprise for literary studies, it is my aim not to provide, at this stage, an exhaustive theory of processes of literary mixing but to sketch a rough framework, which obviously will need further development. Any attempt to theorize on emerging literatures bumps against easy criticism of remaining non-specific, and this article does not pretend to transcend that issue. However, in order to move forward, I argue that opening the (rather conservative) gates of the field of literary studies to a discipline such as anthropology is definitely a step into the right direction. Furthermore, it is my conviction that, vice versa, anthropologists and scholars from other disciplines can learn something from literary studies. I am aware, however, of the risks involved in any interdisciplinary enterprise. There is, obviously, always a risk of watering down concepts as they travel from one discipline to another. It suffices to recall here anthropologist Stephan Palmié’s (2007) hilarious (but nonetheless relevant) reference to the concept of creolization as the ‘C-word,’ due to its current status as theoretical passe-partout. It is neither my intention to push pidginization into a theoretical dead-end street, nor to convert it in, say, ‘the P-word.’ On the contrary, I strongly hope my contribution hopes to foster more reflection on the concept, in both theoretically productive and accurate ways, in line with Jacqueline Knörr’s view of the CvP model. Above all, I hope to find a common base of interest to share ideas about cultural and literary pidginization across the disciplines.

Pidginization as Simplification

Many doubts remain among linguists when it comes to describe the complex processes of language contact, hence also when attempting to define creoles and pidgins. Perhaps a key lesson to be learned is to simplify the very way we

388

Van Haesendonck

communicate about languages and cultures. As Claire Lefebvre puts it: “Pidgins and creoles are created in order to provide speakers of different lexicons with a common vocabulary so as to facilitate communication. Is it not ironic that the vocabulary developed to talk about these languages and the processes at work in their formation has the effect of hindering communication between scholars?” (Lefebvre 2004, 134). We should specify the idea of simplification that pidgins and the derived process of linguistic pidginization represent: in its basic sense, linguistic pidginization implies that communication becomes possible in a simplified form between speakers of different languages. The speakers agree to use a lingua franca or ‘pidgin’ (also often called ‘foreign talk’ [FT] or ‘baby talk’): pidgin languages are thus the result of mutual linguistic accommodation among speakers of different languages, with the exclusive aim to communicate during an extended period of contact (see for instance Thomason and Kaufman 1988; McWhorther 2005; Siegel 2008; Lefebvre 2004). In order to satisfy their need for communication, the speakers consciously simplify the structures of their native (source) languages in order to be understood by their interlocutors. As a result, pidgins have grammars which are simplified in comparison with the grammars of their input languages.4 Simplifying communication depends largely (but not necessarily) on the sharing of elements: specific kinds of texts (such as translations), but also, more abstractly, the basic rules that govern literatures, what Even-Zohar (1990, 6) calls “repertoires” between groups or systems.5 Simplified communication obviously does not imply that such communication is cleared of misunderstandings, on the contrary: the price to be paid by the sender and receiver of the message usually implies a downgrading in linguistic complexity and nuances, and often also a downgrading in communicative quality and social prestige: speaking in pidgin, one cannot – or does not want (because of specific circumstances) – to identify solely with the dominant (or official) language, 4  The dominant language in contact situations, constitutes the superstrate (i.e., the language with the highest social prestige, usually the lexifier or European language of the colonizer), while the substrate was regarded as socially inferior to the dominant language, because it lacked socio-political power. 5  Even-Zohar replaces Jakobson’s ‘code’ by ‘repertoire,’ which he defines as the set of rules, features and materials which govern a literary system: “‘Repertoire’ designates the aggregate of rules and materials which govern both the making and handling, or production and consumption, of any given product. The communicational term adopted by Jakobson, CODE, could have served the same purpose were it not for existing traditions for which a “code” applies to “rules” only, not to “materials” (“elements,” “items,” i.e., “stock,” or “lexicon”).” (EvenZohar 1990, 39).

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

389

often the speaker’s mother tongue.6 Instead, a middle ground is sought on which the success or failure of the established communication rests. Anyways, while to most linguists simplification is a key feature of pidgins, we should not refrain from asking if this also applies, and if so, in what ways, to processes of literary mixing. In Polysystem Theory, as in linguistic pidginization, simplification is indeed seen as a core feature of literary interaction.

Polysystem Theory and the Concept of Literary Pidginization

Polysystem theory is a dynamic functional model in the field of comparative literature, inspired on linguist Roman Jakobson’s communication scheme (1960). I would like to argue here that, in broad terms, the concept of literary pidginization can be used for describing conditions whereby literary identities and repertoires remain largely intact; literary identities and repertoires bear the potential for a supranational identification with a common literary identity and a common repertoire which pertains to an overarching system, such as, as I will endeavor to explain further, ‘European literature.’ I define literary pidginization here, then, as the emergence of a common literature (i.e., a literature with a similar, identifiable repertoire and set of features, such as generic and stylistic ones) out of a diversity of literatures, however one which does not imply the disappearance of the literatures it is made of. This new literature’s backbone consists, as in language, of a simplified ‘vocabulary’ which is taken from the different literatures it stems from: this ‘vocabulary’ consists of repertoires, styles, genres, themes, et cetera which can be found across the different literatures, yet the latter are not being replaced in the process of literary mixing. Literary pidginization occurs indeed at the points of entanglement where literatures meet and interact, resulting in the identification, by the receivers (readers) of the texts, with a common literature that is perceived as either trans-local, trans-ethnic or trans-national. However, as the CvP model shows us, this process of identification does not imply the disappearance of identities; nor does it imply the replacement of regional or national literatures by this new literature which is willingly embraced by a community of readers.

6  This does not imply that pidgin languages are necessarily less complex in its working than their lexifier. In order to do justice to the complexity and variety of pidgins as linguistic systems, Jeff Siegel (2008, 11) prefers to speak of “simplicity” instead of simplification, for the former describes a state, while the latter implies a process involving the reduction of complexity.

390

Van Haesendonck

Nevertheless, some preliminary observations must be made on the use of pidginization in a cultural and literary sense. While I am among those who favor the productive move of expanding the theoretical scope of linguistic concepts to other fields such as literature and anthropology (thus agreeing with Hannerz 1987; Hall 2010; Knörr 2014; Eriksen 2007; Glissant 1997; among others), I do believe, nonetheless, that their specificity lies, besides simplification, in another, more complex factor which is not exclusively part of cultural pidginization as defined in the CvP model, but which is arguably present whenever we speak of pidginization and creolization: power. When speaking of pidginization and creolization we are reminded of the power relations and hierarchies that were common currency in slave societies. Both pidgins and creoles were born out of the unavoidable tensions between the master and the slave, tensions which I would like to (re)introduce in the concept of cultural and literary pidginization, for conflictive power relations and colonization characterize how literatures and cultures interact with one another. Both creolization and pidginization, we should remember, imply the emergence of a new language (with its own grammar), as the result of mixing of two or more ‘dominant’ languages (superstrata) and lower prestige languages (substrata); both influence each other in the process of linguistic mixing. As Hall (2010, 29) reminds us, “Creolization always entails inequality, hierarchization, issues of domination and subalternity, mastery and servitude, control and resistance. Questions of power, as well as issues of entanglement, are always at stake. It is essential to keep these contradictory tendencies together, rather than singling out their celebratory aspects.” The intrusion of power also accounts, in my view, for pidginization. Power is one of the key features that I see at work in both creolization and pidginization, which never result in a smooth process of blending (whether ethnic, cultural, linguistic or literary). Many scholars (e.g., Hall 2010; Crichlow 2009; Lionnet and Shih 2011; Sheller 2003; Palmié 2007) insist on the colonial heritage and context of slavery out of which the concept of creolization was born. Cultural as well as literary creolization – as well as its twin sister pidginization – take place in situations of inequality, whether between a dominant culture/literature and the one(s) it dominates. Historically, this was the case in colonial societies, but, as Knörr and others have shown, postcolonial cultures are equally subject to similar processes, thus pointing to the continuity between the colonial and postcolonial periods. However, as she rightly points out: … it should be noted that creolization does not necessarily require a social context shaped by the marked relations of domination characteristic of slave and colonial societies. Nevertheless, it was in these social contexts that the conditions that (can) lead to creolization were particularly

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

391

pronounced – such as the distance from place and group of origin, the necessity of interethnic communication and the need for social solidarity and shared identity and language. Knörr 2014, 21

Since power inequality and hierarchization are at the heart of both concepts, I believe it would be a good thing to apply these features to the idea of “world in pidginization” as well (Knörr 2010), to which I will come back later, in order to take account of the very way literatures mix (authors, genres, styles, languages etc.) in the formation of a common literature, in an analogous way to the formation of a common pidgin language, or, as described by Knörr, of a common transnational ethnicity.

The Role of Translation

How does literary pidginization occur? While power relations are constitutive elements of creolization and pidginization, translation can be said to play a key role in the specific process of mixing we here have called literary pidginization: according to Polysystem Theory translational activities have been key in the appropriation, creation, but, from a historical perspective, and perhaps more surprisingly, also in the ‘domination’ of other literatures.7 Translation has a key role in configuring a (new) polysystem through procedures such as selection with or without the explicit intention of innovation of the target literature: Through the [translation of] foreign works, features (both principles and elements) are introduced into the home literature which did not exist there before. These include possibly not only new models of reality to replace the old and established ones that are no longer effective, but a whole range of other features as well, such as a new (poetic) language, or compositional patterns and techniques. It is clear that the very principles of selecting the works to be translated are determined by the situation governing the (home) polysystem: the texts are chosen according to their compatibility with the new approaches and the supposedly innovatory role they may assume within the target literature. Even-Zohar 1990, 47

7  José Lambert elaborated on this argument even speaks of translational “colonization.” For centuries translation has been historically connected to politics (Lambert 2006, 87), and up to today the latter plays a key role in the appropriation and rejection of repertoires.

392

Van Haesendonck

The focus of the Israeli scholar is specifically on the role of translation as innovatory process in the emergence of young and peripheral (‘weaker’) literatures, but one could easily add to the list broader regional literatures that emerge as a result of specific processes of cultural and literary mixing, i.e., what we have referred to as pidginization and creolization. While these processes are still badly known in the field of literature, I argue that translation also makes it possible for a common trans-national literature to develop: a literature with its own identity, but which does not replace the literary identities of local or national literatures. Moreover, translation is able to fill the void left by weakening or vanishing literatures, or it can have an invigorating effect to the point that a peripheral literature replaces the center. The same goes for young – what I prefer to call here emerging – literatures: “since a young literature cannot immediately create texts in all types known to its producers, it benefits from the experience of other literatures, and translated literature becomes in this way one of its most important systems” (Even-Zohar 1990, 47) is certainly valid not only in the case of ‘younger’ European literatures. A young, transnational European literature is likely to emerge out of ‘older’ national literatures, without doing away with the repertoires of each national literature. The CvP model thus applies in a similar fashion as to ethnic groups to a diversity of literary systems: the emergence of a new trans-ethnic or trans-national identity does not automatically lead to the extinction of older, more established identities (contrary to creolization, where older identities are substituted (due to specific societal and historical contexts). Simultaneously, peripheral or minority literatures are striving, or are forced, to move to the center, thanks to translation: “translated literature is not only a major channel through which fashionable repertoire is brought home, but also a source of reshuffling and supplying alternatives” (Even-Zohar 1990, 48). In short, I argue it is mainly at the level of translational activity that literary pidginization takes place as a way of simplified interaction between literary systems.

Centre and Periphery: An Outdated Model?

In Hannerz’ (1987, 1996) views of cultural interaction, strife for the center is what most characterizes literary dynamics; the periphery will always look at the center, whether the periphery is a modest rural village looking at a capital, such as Stockholm, or the Swedish capital looking from its own periphery in Northern Europe at the World’s megacities such as London or New York:

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

393

“an understanding of where a place like Stockholm fits into world cultural process today can revolve around a conception of a set of center–periphery relationships, where centers and peripheries engage in a spatial pattern for the socially ordered production and flow of meaning and meaningful form” (Hannerz 1996, 153). The Swede insists on the dynamics between centreperiphery in the mixing of cultures taking place in “the world system and its centre-periphery relations” (Hannerz 1987, 557). This model by now turns out to be at first blush too rigid for the interpretation of what he called “cultural complexity” (Hannerz 1992), for it reflects the traditional Eurocentric categorization of the ‘West’ and the ‘rest,’ leaving little space for nuances: as Knörr puts it, departing from a centre-periphery model implies that “alledgedly modern features are categorized as European and centre culture, while allegedly traditional features are categorized as indigenous and centre culture” (Knörr 2014, 28). Nowadays, a world city like São Paolo, for instance, is not just a megacidade but has arguably become a major player in geo-political and intercultural interaction. A similar issue is at stake in Polysystem Theory. One could easily criticize Even-Zohar’s model for its implicit superiority assigned to European languages and literatures (occupying the center), while the periphery is habited by ‘weaker’ languages and literatures. In this aspect, Hannerz and Even-Zohar’s theories are quite similar. However, a centreperiphery model offers some valuable insights about cultural interaction, as the very boundaries and interpretations of both ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ constantly challenge one another in a tensional field. Moreover, it implies that processes of cultural and literary mixing operate in a power field with changing vectors. According to Polysystem Theory, any literary system has a drive for survival: it is coded to preserve its viability through an “internal, dynamic reshuffling of its central and peripheral elements” (Codde 2003, 114), so as to renew the center via new additions (such as translations, or semi-literary texts) from the periphery. While according to this view every literary system also has a centre and periphery, the opposition European (central/[post]modern/ cosmopolitan) vs indigenous (peripheral/pre-modern/provincial) does not hold here. Rather, what is at stake is a matter of power: the center of the system is seen as strong, while the periphery holds weaker elements. Within the European polysystem, for example, we see a recycling or recognition, by the center, of postcolonial and migrant literatures, especially in an urban setting as they gradually become part of the common repertoire. For instance, the attention paid to Francophone Caribbean literature over the past few decades can be interpreted as a renewal of French overseas cultural connections in order to revive the French language; such a re-appropriation can

394

Van Haesendonck

also be seen from a broader European and ‘archipelagic’ perspective as a way of renewing the European literary polysystem and its repertoire.8 However, we should ask ourselves why it makes sense to use pidginization to describe cultural and literary dynamics in both postcolonial and, what especially interests us here, in non-postcolonial contexts.

Pidginization in Non-Postcolonial Contexts

Can the concept of pidginization be used in a non-postcolonial, and more specifically, European context? If so, how do we proceed? One might think of a process of linguistic pidginization, as Derek Bickerton does in his essay “Creoles, Capitalism and Colonialism”; pidginization took initially place, as stated earlier, in a colonial context, whereby pidgins enabled a basic form of communication between (generally black) slaves and their (usually white, European) masters. Interestingly, at the end of his essay, Bickerton evokes the hypothetical collapse of Western civilization, due to the African conquest of Europe: … if in the future Western civilization collapses (not all that unlikely an event) and Europe is colonized by, say, Nigerians, [then] speakers of English, French, German, and Swedish will pidginize just as readily as did speakers of Bambara, Twi, Yoruba, and Kikongo in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if their conquerors subject them to similar sociolinguistic conditions. Bickerton 2006, 150

Beyond his somewhat dramatic view on the ‘collapse’ of Western civilization, Bickerton evokes the possibility of an inverted process of linguistic mixing: a process happening not in Africa but across Europe – the former imperial power – at some point in the future, in what we might call a situation of ‘reverse colonization,’ whereby Africans conquer the Old continent, leading to the reconfiguration of its linguistic map. Instead of doing away with Bickerton’s imaginary projection, albeit not so probable a scenario as he suggests, I would like to take it as a point of departure to argue that the process of pidginization is already happening in contemporary Europe, not only in a linguistic

8  This is an especially interesting (and controversial) case given the ambiguous place of writers such as Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau within the context of Francophone literatures, which are still perceived as a side-product of French literature.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

395

but foremost in a cultural and – what concerns me here – in a literary sense.9 Bickerton’s specific mention of Nigerians recalls in uncanny ways Ulf Hannerz’ (1987) article “The World in Creolization” where the anthropologist posited the idea of creolization in Nigeria as a cultural phenomenon with a global impact: “Creole cultures are not necessarily only colonial and post-colonial cultures,” he said, for “… in the end, it seems, we are all being creolised” (Hannerz 1987, 386). The concept quickly became popular, and it remains speculation if some postcolonial intellectuals, such as the Martinican Edouard Glissant, a fierce promoter of créolisation on a global scale, had read the Swedish anthropologist’s essay, which deals with the impact of globalization on Nigerian culture. Both Glissant and Hannerz do have a very similar view on global cultural interaction. One of the more engaging and creative responses to Hannerz is Knörr’s article “Contemporary Creoleness; or, The World in Pidginization?” (2010). As the title makes clear, Knörr subscribes to his idea of cultural mixing on a global scale but proposes an important change: the substitution of creolization by pidginization. The change was made following a comment that was made by Charles Stewart: In response to some of my ideas on this subject, Stewart (2006) holds that “we might recast Hannerz’ world in creolization as a world in pidginization since Nigerians retain their indigenous culture and do not forget or lose it as they engage with global flows” (118). Hannerz’s Creoles increase their identifications and language competencies without necessarily leaving home, without abandoning much, without giving up their ethnic identities – hence, they pidginize rather than creolize. Knörr 2010, 739; my emphasis

9  I should briefly mention here the problem, related to the emergence of a common literature, about the emergence of a ‘lingua franca’ in Europe amidst the current defense of multilingualism. There is a debate in Europe on the existence, and need, of a ‘lingua franca,’ which logically would be English (sometimes called Euro-English as a kind of ‘pidgin-English’). However, scholarly reflection on the emergence of a European ‘literatura franca,’ and overall on emerging literatures, is still unexistent. Some interesting publications have appeared on the subject of ‘lingua franca’ in Europe, including one study commanded by the European Commission (“Lingua Franca: Chimera or Reality?”). Although analyzing the linguistic aspects exceeds the aim of this article, I should mention that there is already a substantial amount of studies that reflect on the idea of a European lingua franca (by sociolinguists, philosophers, etc.; think of Van Parijs’ book “Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the world”). Whether a European lingua franca, or perhaps ‘pidgin-English,’ will crystalize depends closely on (among many factors) the impact new communication and translation technologies will have and, related to this, trans-nationalism in both a European and global context.

396

Van Haesendonck

Creolization results in a new ethnic (hence cultural) identity, whereby creoles give up their old identities in the process, while, according to the CvP model, this is not the case of pidginization. Specifying her argument why pidginization is a useful concept, Knörr emphasizes that, while the process of creolization dominated in colonial times and in conditions of slavery, pidginization, in turn, happens mostly in “processes of identity formation in contemporary postcolonial societies” (Knörr 2010, 739). What is new is that both processes are becoming common beyond (post)colonial spaces.10 Contrary to the views of other anthropologists (e.g., Hannerz) and linguists (e.g., Chaudenson), her focus is on identitary aspects of cultural mixing instead of cultural and material differences. Knörr distances herself from Caribbean intellectuals’ claims such as the one made by the Créolité movement from Martinique, whose founders proposed creoleness as a model for Caribbean identity, rejecting their claim as a “kind of identitarian nirvana” (Knörr 2008, 10) and “postcolonial wishful thinking.” There are indeed a number of problems with the way the movement defined creoleness as an attempt to glorify the creolized nature of Caribbean people (see for this debate, among others, Price and Price 1997). Historical hot-spots of linguistic and cultural creolization, such as the Caribbean, are not exclusive sites where cultural and linguistic mixing took place. Due to globalization, historically localized processes such as creolization and pidginization now mostly happen elsewhere. Arguably, Europe is being subject to the latter process, while the former is not excluded to happen in the long run. Pidginization is in my view more accurate than creolization to be used in a range of postcolonial and non-postcolonial cultural contexts. It is also more accurate than the term ‘hybridization’ (which is often wrongly used as a synonym of creolization), for the various European literatures (‘subsystems’) remain largely autonomous. Hybridization is a biological term that suggests a juxtaposition of cultural identities, and as such does not reflect the inequalities and hierarchization that is reflected in pidginization and creolization. Archipelago Europe The general consensus among scholars in a number of fields, is that various forms of cultural mixing are taking place around the globe, and creolization 10  “… such processes not only are becoming increasingly common in our ever more complexly globalized world but they also are becoming more differentiated.” (Knörr 2010, 734)

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

397

is arguably one of them: if not at a global level (world-in-creolization), at least it is happening at the regional and/or local level (creolization-in-theworld).11 However, the controversies surrounding the term, to which pidginization is closely linked, have grown proportionally to its success. One of the misunderstandings stems from the belief that all Caribbean intellectuals and Caribbeanists alike seek to limit the use of the concept to ‘their’ region. In fact, among some of the best known Caribbean intellectuals the opposite is true. Take the example of Edouard Glissant or Stuart Hall. Glissant popularized concepts such as archipelago, creolization, opacity and tout-monde which he uses to refer, precisely, to a world-in-creolization (Glissant 1997); Hall, in turn, left all options open when addressing the potential of creolization: “Whether creolization also provides the theoretical model for wider processes of cultural mixing in the contemporary, postglobal world remains to be considered” (Hall 2010, 37). Edouard Glissant, who is often mistaken for being the inventor of créolisation, especially among French and francophone scholars and intellectuals, was one of the more visible proponents of a non-Caribbean use of the term. The idea to apply creolization (and pidginization) to non-postcolonial spaces, such as Europe, was indeed expressed in an interview with the Martinican philosopher and writer: What is good now is that Europe is turning into an archipelago. That is to say that beyond national barriers, we see many islands taking shape in relation to one another … to unify Europe means to develop these islands, perhaps to the detriment of the notion of the nation and, beyond that, of national borders. Schwieger-Hiepko 2011, 256–57

Glissant does obviously not refer to physical islands, although we should keep in mind that the Caribbean is his primary frame of reference: the ‘islands’ he thinks of and which give shape to the European archipelago are, among other regions of Europe, Alsace, Catalonia, Scotland, Corsica, the Bask country, et cetera which by analogy can be compared to the Caribbean islands and the way they are culturally interconnected. Instead of referring to nation-states – a nineteenth century European concept – Glissant refers to island-identities and 11  Sociologist Michaeline Crichlow (2009, 181–82) contends that: “while it may be wrong to proclaim ‘the-world-in-creolization’ (since that effaces the crucibles of power in the world), it seems impossible to deny a process of “creolization-in-the-world,” one that is always on the move shaping post-Creole imaginations and the related physical and psychic itineraries for place, giving the pervasive condition of unhomeliness.”

398

Van Haesendonck

island-groups – archipelagoes – which are culturally linked to one another.12 As ‘islands,’ these territories and regions do not form discrete nation-states but are seen as part of an ecumene, much in the way Sidney Mintz sees the Caribbean: composite cultures which maintain flexible links to trans-ethnic and trans-lingual (France, UK, Spain) or trans-national (Europe) entities. The Greek-Roman cultural heritage is often invoked as the foundation of a common European identity, even though its ‘Europeanness’ never became known as such. While Glissant applauds the emergence of ‘islands’ of cultural identities in Europe, he also warns for the downsides, namely the return of fierce nationalisms and cultural atavisms, but leaves out of the equation other problems such as migration, the status of the EU’s outermost regions (including his mother-island Martinique), or the role of the muslim in Europe, whom in the public arena is often assigned the role of Europe’s radically non-assimilable other. Yet it is unclear in Glissant’s vision of the tout-monde how the process of cultural creolization precisely works. What is clear, however, is that Glissant uses créolisation mainly in a poetic sense, although pidginization, I argue, is more appropriate and accurate a concept to be used to refer to the specific dynamics of interaction not only between cultures, but also between literatures, in a European context.13 Because of the fact that neither ethnicization nor indigenization is taking place in Europe, even though a new common identity emerges (Europeanness), this process can be identified as one of pidginization.14 12  Ottmar Ette (2009, 155) emphasizes the importance of Caribbean theory to theorize cultures from a ‘trans-areal’ perspective, including Europe’s archipelagic region: “It is high time that we highlight the pluri-lingual European archipelago in a trans-areal perspective from the Caribbean standpoint. The theoretical architectures arising from this highly productive literary island-world and world of islands are extremely relevant in this context.” See Domínguez (2006) and D’hulst (2008) for a tentative approach to European literature as an emerging polysystem. 13  Theorists such as Benitez Rojo and Glissant, in spite of their innovative efforts to integrate complex theoretical insights (drawn from chaos theory), and thus to re-envision Caribbean cultural complexity, have moved away from the valuable empirical findings of anthropologists and linguists, as witnessed by the processes of pidginization and creolization. 14  It should be noted that the concept of cultural pidginization of Europe bears some similarity to Chakrabarty’s concept of “provincializing Europe” (Chakrabarty 2009), even though there are also important differences, which deserve to be studied separately. While pidginization implies an active, dynamic process of cultural interaction between different agents (e.g., nation-states), the notion of provincialization suggests a withdrawal of interaction, the extinction of power conflicts between European cultures.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization



399

The European Archipelago as Polysystem

In spite of the many theoretical problems, if applied to literature, Glissant’s poetic view of an archipelizing Europe is definitely more dynamic than the classic idea of European literature as a horizontal network or as a juxtaposition of national literatures; the predominant idea of national literatures, usually ordered by national language (as in the German expression Sprachliteraturen) where each literature has its own corpus and where authors are neatly confined to national borders is, in an era of accelerated globalization, at least questionable; and the same accounts, as Françoise Meltzer (2009) points out, for national language departments where these literatures are studied. Glissant’s views of the archipelago, also gives a more open view on Caribbean identity than the proponents of Créolité (Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant 1990) who, besides their essentialist view on Caribbean identity (Price and Price 1997) cherish the idea that creoleness is per definition usable as a universal model. Such a presupposition is indeed wishful thinking, as Knörr puts it.15 While the concept of archipelago does not bear any direct relationship neither to pidginization nor to creolization, we should keep in mind that archipelagoes have drawn the attention of other major Caribbean thinkers, such as Cuban born Antonio Benitez Rojo, as well as scholars from a number of disciplines, including a few in literary studies (Ette and Müller 2012). Glissant’s metaphorical use of the archipelago in a specific European context is attractive, but questionable given Europe’s constitution as a continent; when being applied to European literature, the archipelago has an inclusive connotation, for it recalls the importance of Europe’s postcolonial (i.e., non-continental) relations in giving shape to European narratives as such. An inclusive view of emerging literatures such as European and Caribbean literatures thus does away with the classical, rather limited, geographical, national and linguistic definitions of literary Europe, whereby postcolonial literatures occupy a peripheral position with a major influence on (former) literary capitals of Europe such as Paris, Amsterdam and London. Unfortunately, the archipelago is usually being approached by scholars as the exact opposite of islands and insularity, respectively as connectivity versus

15  Knörr rightly points out that “Although parts of the Caribbean population have developed a Caribbean identity that transcends their ethnic and national identities, it [créolité] by no means replaces the various identifications associated with certain islands, nations and ethnic categories, but at most complements them” (Knörr 2008, 11).

400

Van Haesendonck

isolation.16 What is at stake in an archipelagic, polysystemic view of literatures is, besides increased connectivity and inter-literary relations, the idea of connection of ‘parts’ (in this case literatures) which hitherto were seen as disconnected, or at best juxtaposed in a kind of network of national literatures. A network suggests that, say, literature A equally influences literature B, and viceversa; literary pidginization, on the contrary, is much less smooth and predictable a process than what the notion of network suggests: a common literature emerges as a result of the mobility and reshuffling of repertoires and changing relations between literary agents (i.e., writers, readers, publishers, distribution channels, critics, etc.) through a number of influent factors (e.g., through translation, media attention, book festivals, but also newer phenomena such as blogs and social networking). It is not often being acknowledged that inter-literary relations are also hierarchical, making changes in literary repertoires difficult and unpredictable. While the polysystem is divided in three types of relations (inter- and intrasystemic relations as well as relations between these two types of relations), PS Theory is, like Hannerz’s perspectives on cultural systems, best known for its architecture as a centre-periphery model, whereby peripheral literatures move to the center of the system and where central literatures can become peripheral. It does not come as a surprise that Even-Zohar himself emphasized the importance of taking into account power relations and the processes of selection, inclusion and exclusion when studying European literatures: … within a group of relatable national literatures, such as the literatures of Europe, hierarchical relations have been established since the very beginnings of these literatures (…) the process of opening the system gradually [to innovation] brings certain literatures closer and in the longer run enables a situation where the postulates of (translational) adequacy and the realities of equivalence may overlap to a relatively high degree. This is the case of the European literatures, though in some of them the mechanism of rejection has been so strong that the changes I am talking about have occurred on a rather limited scale. Even Zohar 1990, 51; my emphasis

With globalization, however, relations tend to become less vertical and more open, also in the case of European literatures. Literary pidginization is this 16  As Eriksen (1993) argues, islands have in surprising ways been culturally connected to other continents, thus the argument of insularity as synonymous of isolation does not hold.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

401

‘bringing closer’ or approaching of more or less closed subsystems into a more open system. Nevertheless, there is never a guarantee for literary pidginization to result in the emergence of a new literature: translational activity indeed leads to ‘overlap to a relatively high degree,’ however, without resulting in a new creolized literature. Europe’s atavistic impulses (or “tribalism,” as Caryl Phillips [1987] once put it) time and again keep innovation at bay: rejection of repertoires by the receiving literature also acts as a counterforce, thus of depidginization.17 However, Even-Zohar’s focus on “relatable national literatures” (1990, 48) seems to privilege the nation-state as organizing criterion, whereas one of the main innovative aspects of PS theory is precisely its capacity to transcend national borders, enabling a new look at European and other (regional) literatures as transnational polysystems; the European literary polysystem, for instance, should be approached with consideration of its – usually ignored – postcolonial connections overseas (Van Haesendonck 2009, 2012).

Towards a New European Literature?

How do the notions of creolization and pidginization help our understanding of European literature as an emerging common body of literatures? Emerging literatures, I have argued here, should be approached not as a simple network of national literatures, authors or texts, but rather as a pidginized archipelagic polysystems. It makes sense to look at Europe as such a system given that the process of cultural and literary pidginization is taking place in the region. By combining the CvP model and PS theory, I have defined literary pidginization as the approaching of literary subsystems in specific ways, whereby translation occupies a key role in the reshuffling of repertoires. As a result, a new common European literature emerges without implying that different national or ethnically discrete literatures disappear. Europe’s ‘postcolonial’ and ‘peripheral’ connections (e.g., francophone Caribbean writers from Martinique, or performers from Curaçao) play an important role in the process of challenging existing 17  Interliterary relations happen either through multilingual or translational communication. They give shape to national literatures, but they go beyond the national spheres. As Lieven D’hulst, one of the scholars favoring polysystem theory to approach both Caribbean and European literatures, argues, translations help “to regulate power relations between literary communities, to dominate literatures and emancipate others. All in all, the extent to which they have been able to ‘construct’ Europe is far from clear at this moment; but at least they show we should ‘re-think’ Europe from a set of relational viewpoints” (D’hulst 2008, 90).

402

Van Haesendonck

power relations.18 If Europe is viewed as an archipelago of literatures, then more important than the particular national literatures are the connections (the joints) or relations between the different parts; in other words the focus shifts to the way these parts interact to create a common literature. Indeed, this new ‘whole’ (the European polysystem as archipelagic structure), has little or no meaning without the ‘parts,’ and the links between them, on which the system’s ‘body’ depends. One of the leading scholars in the field of literary studies, Pascale Casanova, reminds that “one of the most difficult areas of research offered the historian of literature today is the attempt to define ‘European literature’ as a corpus and an object of literary and/or historical analysis” (Casanova 2009, 13). However, as with most literary scholars, Casanova’s view is based on the traditional nation-state model, which is seen as fixed and immutable: it does not account for multilingual or diglossic spaces, nor for the emerging “island identities” Glissant refers to (Schwieger-Hiepko 2011, 256–57); what happens, for instance, in the case of Belgium, Spain, or Switzerland, all multilingual spaces where, because of a cohabitation of various literatures the application of the concept of ‘national literature’ as a unified, monolingual corpus simply does not hold?19 According to Casanova, national literatures and identities in a European context must be seen as largely autonomous, and it is only in the institutional form of the European Union that politics, literature and culture tend to be conflated. In her essay “European literature. Simply a higher degree of Universality,” she argues: … unlike many currently emerging literary spaces, each national space within the overall European space enjoys a great deal of autonomy, and that each small world of literature in Europe, confined within its national borders, is free – at least relatively – from political dependencies and imperatives. Casanova 2009, 19

However, Casanova is right to point out that there have always been tensions and “battles” in the literary field of European literatures, but she is pessimistic about the idea of an emerging European literature. Her pessimism stems from a somewhat Manichean view of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War as a map where “battles, resistances, uprisings and revolutions” are constantly played out, in a global context “formed and shaped by and through 18  See for instance Starink-Martha (2014). 19  See Resina (2013) for an engaging relational approach to Iberian literatures and cultures.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

403

constant violence.”20 Casanova’s point of view, while acknowledging the many rivalries and tensions in the emergence of a common literature, remains somewhat contradictory: on the one hand a European literature with a common identity seems simply impossible and will not emerge anytime soon; on the other she downplays official policies dictated by national or supranational bodies (such as the EU), for she sees literatures as unbounded, free to travel and mingle, independent from any political constraints. Literary pidginization thus implies more than just an increased amount of influence or domination of certain literatures over other literatures, in such a manner that is in no way smooth or equal: while literatures grow or die, their sphere of influence and interaction changes accordingly, and, like the stock market (by lack of a better metaphor), their ‘value’ changes in often ‘unpredictable’ ways. I put value and unpredictable between quotation marks here, because, literary value is a highly subjective matter; unlike financial market forces, the publishing market is most often determined by cultural politics where publishing and translation are factors that, to an important degree, can be steered. Literary value and the way a particular literature gains visibility are thus partially predictable. Guyanese literatures, for instance, have been ignored by mainstream scholarship not because Guyanese writers lack in literary talent; as Richard and Sally Price (2013, 285) are right to remind us, they were ignored quite simply because of the lack of translation of existing works and scholarship, such as is the case with Surinamese literature. If an important work like Michiel Van Kempen’s Een Geschiedenis van de Surinaamse Literatuur [A History of Surinamese Literature] (2003) would have been translated into English, then the Guyanese literatures would already be receiving the attention they deserve. Within the panorama of Caribbean literatures, Guyanese literatures can thus be seen as a peripheral subsystem that is valued insofar as more translations of both literary works and scholarship become available. In other words, it is a matter of resources and institutional support not only when it comes to publishing locally, but also to funding translations of critical studies about these literatures. While the case of European literature is somewhat different, like the Carib­ bean it is made out of competing linguistic subsystems, such as is the case of 20  European literatures have, according to Casanova, since their very beginnings, been a “battlefield” with numerous players: “The hypothesis of a European literary space implies in effect that this is an unequal world, formed and shaped by and through constant violence (in a soft form, to be sure, but relentless nevertheless), characterized by brutal impositions, denied but nonetheless powerful ascendancies, constitutive relations of domination, which imply battles, resistances, uprisings and revolutions” (Casanova 2009, 22). 

404

Van Haesendonck

literatures in Dutch, which encompass both Dutch and Flemish authors. EvenZohar, however, is scarce in his description on how exactly inter-literary relations in polysystems take place and give shape to literary innovation, for it is not clear how exactly new literatures emerge; especially in a situation of complex cultural and literary mixing. Nevertheless, in combination with Knörr’s CvP model, PS Theory offers a useful framework for further elaboration (even though the terms ‘cultural system’ and ‘literary system,’ as we have pointed out from the outset, remain problematic). Finally, one of the side-concepts of Jacqueline Knörr’s CvP model is also important to understand the process of literary pidginization: “pidgin potential” (Knörr 2014, 32). She argues that in pidginization interconnectedness is the binding factor of it all: even though she does not use the term archipelago, the Indonesian ethnic group (Betawi) she focuses on owes its raison d’être to what she calls their “pidgin potential,” which I understand as the capacity to connect to other ethnicities with whom an ethnic group’s identity overlaps: “All these [ethnic] categories are closely interrelated and overlapping in ascriptions and boundaries. Their [Betawi] social, cultural, and political dynamics can only be understood if studied in their interrelatedness” (Knörr 2010, 740). Likewise, regional and transnational literary dynamics require us to focus on the interconnectedness of literatures, as well as on how literatures interact and are affected. As Knörr argues, determinant in cultural pidginization is the role of “today’s communication and transportation facilities, which facilitate social contacts and ties over long distances and periods of time” (Knörr 2014, 31). Literature is also being increasingly affected by such changes, resulting in the mobility of authors and their (translated) work both in print and its availability on new digital media and networks. Likewise, literary scholarship is increasingly visible in a wide arrange of cultural and literary journals and on social media. Creoles are known for being mediators between various ethnic groups (Knörr 2010; Eriksen 2007), but also as groups that often live on the edge of being socially marginalized by dominant groups. Besides translational contact, trans-lingualism has the potential of connecting literatures written in different (national or local) languages: writers such as Jorge Semprún, Amin Maalouf, Gerda Lerner, Yoko Tawada, Julien Green and José Francisco Agüera Oliver, among many others, have a similar status to the one of creoles: they have a higher potential for connectedness, hence a higher ‘pidgin potential.’21 Such trans-lingual authors are often (but not always) migrant writers: not only do they identify with both their own cultural background and the host culture, but they also move fluently in between local, national and supranational 21  For an engaging analysis of trans-lingual writing in Europe, see Ette (2009).

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

405

levels of identification. Many migrant writers in Europe, for instance from the Caribbean, La Réunion, Mauritius, San Tomé and Príncipe, or Cape Verde have creolized identities and, as diasporic members of creole groups, they maintain transnational links with their home communities; torn between two (or more) cultures, they thus also, like creoles, “tend to be ambivalent because they emerged in colonial contexts and are therefore associated with the colonial heritage” (Knörr 2010, 747). Can trans-lingual writers therefore give new meaning to the – by now old – European Union’s slogan ‘United in Diversity,’ with its connotation of selfproclaimed cosmopolitanism? The European Union, one of the quickly aging institutional agents when it comes to official cultural policies22 in Europe, does officially embrace linguistic diversity, albeit in very limited ways, for it does not take advantage of the huge pidgin potential present in its ‘Union,’ endlessly trapped between processes of integration, disintegration and reintegration (Zielonka 2014). Cultural and literary pidginization, instead, take mostly place ‘from below,’ outside of the field of action of official public institutions. In spite of the fresh waves of euro-skepticism blowing over Europe in recent years, a minimum sense of community, of being ‘united in diversity,’ persists on the continent, from north to south and from east to west. Hence I do believe it would not be a stretch to make a comparison between creole minorities such as the Betawi (as described by Knörr 2010, 741) who stand for such ‘unity in diversity’ in Indonesia, and the literary community of trans-lingual writers in the European context I am referring to here: because of their in betweenness trans/multi-lingual and migrant writers have the potential to “represent and communicate different dimensions of identity at the same time” (ibid.) through their work, even without doing so explicitly: local (think about dialects), national, trans- and supranational dimensions. In both cases (ethnic and literary), pidginization has a socially inclusive effect.23 22  For Even-Zohar in order for the literary “product” (such as a fictional text) to be generated, a common REPERTOIRE must exist, whose usability is determined by some INSTITUTION (Even-Zohar 1990, 34; capitals in the original). This can aptly be illustrated by the way official policies can either foster, or contain, cultural and literary mixing. The institutional agent of the polysystem does not only include cultural policies regarding translation or the programming of curricula for the educational system, but also other initiatives regarding multilingualism. 23  A good example of institutional involvement is the EU’s nomination in 2008 of Amin Maalouf, a French-Lebanese writer, as president of a think tank, the “Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue set up at the initiative of the European Commission,” which included, among others, Tahar Ben Jelloun, to reflect on the challenge of multilingualism in Europe. In his conclusion, Maalouf advocated the idea of personal adoptive language

406

Van Haesendonck

Conclusion To conclude, if an emerging literature can be understood as a polysystemic archipelago, it will be understood in function of the entanglements between the different literary subsystems, in function of how the different literary ‘parts’ are interconnected. Translation, I have said, is one of the forces which drive literary pidginization. Translation implies modification or domination/‘colonization’ of repertoires, but also helps in the process of identification of a trans-national readership with a common literature. Literary pidginization can lead to creolization, but the opposite (creolization > pidginization) is unlikely to happen, at least in a European context. Literary creolization can, eventually, be the endgame of literary mixing, whereby the different literatures are eventually replaced by a creolized literature which is perceived as common; in the case of Europe this is unlikely to happen, insofar no real cultural integration is happening ‘from below’ whereby individual national and local identities are being replaced by a common one. Official integration policies ‘from above’ can however influence cultural and literary pidginization, and its procedures and impact should receive our attention in a future study. Inversely, the literary ‘parts’ can be better understood, in Europe as in the Caribbean, as components of an “interconnected whole” (Price and Price 1997, 4), which he have defined – albeit on an abstract-theoretical level – as a polysystem. This, as I have attempted to demonstrate, albeit in rough lines, is literary pidginization at work. Translingual writing, as well as translation should be the focal points for further research on literary pidginization. As with open source cultures and sharing economies, the CvP model, in combination with polysstem theory, has proven to be a useful and productive conceptual tool to ‘do’ cultural and literary analysis: it helps to describe those complex cultural and literary contexts which cannot be grasped with classical theories, without therefore contradicting or downplaying the more poetic views borrowed from Caribbean theorists. In times where the “creolization of theory” (Lionnet and Shih 2011) is a reality, the study of literatures and cultures can only benefit from the insights offered by anthropology and linguistics. And vice-versa.

as a way to foster minor languages besides knowledge of the more emblematic ones; this initiative implies taking action at the grassroots levels, i.e., in primary education. See “A Rewarding Challenge how the Multiplicity of Languages Could Strengthen Europe.” Proposals from the Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue set up at the initiative of the European Commission, Brussels 2008.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

407

References Bernabé, J., P. Chamoiseau and R. Confiant. 1990. “In Praise of Creoleness.” Tr. Mohamed B. Taleb Khyar. Callaloo 13(4): 886–909. Bickerton, D. 2006. “Creoles, Capitalism, and Colonialism.” In History, Society and Variation: In Honor of Albert Valdman, edited by J.C. Clements, T.A. Klingler, D. Piston-Hatlen, and K.J. Rottet, 137–50. Amsteram, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Casanova, P. 2009. “European Literature: Simply a Higher Degree of Universality?” In Literature for Europe?, edited by T. D’haen and I. Goerlandt, 13–25. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi. Chakrabarty, D. 2009. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chaudenson, R. 2001. Creolization of Language and Culture. Translated by Salikoko S. Mufwene. London, New York: Routledge. Codde, P. 2003. “Polysystem Theory Revisited: A New Comparative Introduction.” Poetics Today 120(1): 91–125. Crichlow, M.A., and P. Northover. 2009. Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation. Durham: Duke University Press. D’hulst, L. 2008. “Translation and Its Role in European Literatures: Some Questions and Answers.” In Re-Thinking Europe Literature and (Trans)National Identity, edited by N. Bemong, M. Truwant and P. Vermeulen, 82–91. Amsterdam. New York: Brill. Domínguez, C. 2006. “Literary Emergence as a Case Study of Theory in Comparative Literature.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 8(2). http://dx.doi.org/ 10.7771/1481-4374.1304. Ette, O. 2009. “European Literature(s) in the Global Context: Literatures for Europe.” In Literature for Europe?, edited by T. D’haen and I. Goerlandt. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi. 123–60. Ette, O., and G. Müller. 2012. Worldwide: Archipels de la mondialisation, archipiélagos de la globalización. Frankfurt-Madrid: Iberoamericana. European Commission. 2011. Lingua Franca: Chimera or Reality? Studies on Translation and Multilingualism no. 1. Brussels: Directorate General for Translation. European Commission. 2008. “A rewarding Challenge How the Multiplicity of Languages Could Strengthen Europe.” In Multilingualism. Proposals from the Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue set up at the initiative of the European Commission. Brussels: Directorate General for Education and Culture. Eriksen, T.H. 1993. “In Which Sense Do Cultural Islands Exist?” Social Anthropology 1(1): 133–47. Eriksen, T.H. 2007. “Creolization in Anthropological Theory and in Mauritius.” Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 153–77. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

408

Van Haesendonck

Even-Zohar, I. 1990. Polysystem Studies. Durham: Duke University Press. Glissant, E. 1997. Traîté du tout-monde (Poétique IV). Paris: Gallimard. Hall, S. 2010. “Créolité and the Process of Creolization.” In The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures, edited by R. Cohen and P. Toninato. New York: Routledge. Hannerz, U. 1987. “The World in Creolization.” Africa 57(4): 546–59. Hannerz, U. 1992. Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning. New York: Columbia University Press. Hannerz, U. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London and New York: Routledge. Jakobson, R. 1960. “Linguistics and Poetics.” In Linguistics and Style, edited by T.A. Sebeok, 350–77. Cambridge: MIT Press. Knörr, J. 2008. “Towards Conceptualizing Creolization and Creoleness.” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers no. 100. Halle (Saale): Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Knörr, J. 2010. “Contemporary Creoleness; or, the World in Pidginization?” Current Anthropology 51 (6): 731–59. Knörr, J. 2014. Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. New York, Oxford: Berghahn. Lambert, J. 2006[1995]. “Literatures, Translation and (De)Colonization.” In Functional Approaches to Culture and Translation. Selected Papers by José Lambert, edited by D. Delabatista, L. D’hulst and R. Meylaerts, 87–104. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Lefebvre, C. 2004. Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages, vol. 70. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Lionnet, F., and S. Shu-mei, eds. 2011. The Creolization of Theory. Durham: Duke University Press. McWhorter, J.H. 2005. Defining Creole. Oxford University Press. Meltzer, F. 2009. “What is Wrong with National Literature Departments?” European Review 17(1): 161–75. Palmié, S. 2007. “The ‘C-Word’ Again: From Colonial to Postcolonial Semantics.” In Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, edited by C. Stewart, 66–83. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Phillips, C. 1987. The European Tribe. London: Faber & Faber. Price, R., and S. Price. 1997. “Shadowboxing in the Mangrove.” Cultural Anthropology 12(1): 3–36. Price, R., and S. Price. 2013. “Suriname Literary Geography: The Changing Same.” In Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio, edited by M.C. Fumagalli et al., 285–312. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Resina, J.R. 2013. Iberian Modalities: A Relational Approach to the Study of Culture in the Iberian Peninsula. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

From Cultural to Literary Pidginization

409

Schwieger-Hiepko, A. 2011. “Europe and the Antilles. Interview with Edouard Glissant.” In The Creolization of Theory, edited by F. Lionnet and S.-M. Shih, 255–61. Durham: Duke University Press. Sheller, M. 2003. “Creolization in Discourses of Global Culture.” In Uprootings/ Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, edited by A.-M.Fortier, S. Ahmed, C. Castañeda, and M. Sheller, 273–94. Oxford: Berg. Siegel, J. 2008. The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Starink-Martha, G. 2014. “The Real Yu Di Korsou: Migrant Construction of Curaçaoan Cultural Identity through Performance.” In: Caribbeing. Comparing Caribbean Literatures and Cultures, edited by K. Van Haesendonck and T. D’haen, 281–93. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi. Thomason, S.G., and T. Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Van Haesendonck, K. 2009. “From Atavism to Creolization: ‘Europeanness’ in Contemporary Caribbean Discourse.” In Literature for Europe?, edited by T. D’haen and I. Goerlandt, 101–22. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi. Van Haesendonck, K. 2012. “Creolising Europe?” In Shifting Borders: European Perspectives on Creolization, edited by S. Jacoviello and T. Sbriccoli, 15–34. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars. Van Kempen, M. 2003. Een Geschiedenis van de Surinaamse Literatuur. Band I en II. Breda: Uitgeverij De Geus. Van Parijs, P. 2011. Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zielonka, J. 2014. Is the EU Doomed? New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Index abductors 242 acrolect 293 Africa 5–7, 10–11, 23, 46, 98, 100–102, 114, 116–121, 124–129, 133, 138, 142, 151, 181, 186, 190 n. 10, 192, 194, 202, 210, 234 n. 4, 248 n. 21 255–257, 261, 273, 305, 340, 366, 394 African 5–7, 11, 22, 40, 45, 59–60, 64, 68, 70, 72, 96–103, 108, 116–119, 121–129, 132–135, 139, 145, 148 n. 36, 149–153, 159–160, 164–165, 167, 169, 185–186, 192, 200–201, 210–212, 214, 219, 221, 234, 239–241, 253, 254 n. 2, 256–258, 273, 275, 291, 305, 310–311, 316–317, 320–322, 324–328, 330, 334, 337, 339–341, 345–346, 350–352, 363, 366, 394 Afrikaans dialects 10, 117, 132, 140–142, 254 n. 2 history 7–8, 65, 70, 79, 81–82, 84, 86, 90, 93, 111–112, 117, 132–133, 138, 145, 147, 150 n. 40, 154, 158, 187 n. 7, 191, 201, 210, 216, 225–226, 264, 310–312, 317, 320–322, 326, 330 monument 150, 317 official language of South Africa 133, 148 standardization 140–141, 145 status as a creole 140, 315 Afrikaner Broederbond 148, 152 Afrikaner nationalism 133, 135, 145–149, 151, 320 anglicization 145–147 alienation 127, 129, 145, 232, 247, 321, 337 amputation amputated hands 245 apartheid 7, 10, 132–135 n. 6, 141 n. 18, 144, 148–154, 310 n. 2, 315–316, 318, 320–321, 324, 326–327 Arabic 40, 59, 63, 70, 117–119, 142–143, 317 Arabic-Afrikaans writing tradition 143 archipelago 7, 10, 24, 68, 78, 81, 91, 158, 272–274, 277, 285, 291–292, 296, 347, 350, 397, 398 n. 12, 399, 402, 404, 406 architecture 159, 386, 398 n. 12, 400 art 10, 109–113, 126, 135 n. 6, 163 n. 4, 234, 329, 337–339, 366

ascription, see also achievement 79, 223–224, 227, 404 Australia 161, 194, 330 Austria 161 backward 170, 146, 283 Bafatá 170 Balanta 166, 170 Barth, Fredrik 3, 21 basilect 293 Bastien, Daniella 66 belonging 3, 5, 8, 20, 43–44, 48, 50, 72, 126, 134, 147, 162, 184, 187, 198, 209, 212–214, 219, 241–242, 247–248, 253–254, 259, 261, 263, 266–269, 273, 276, 282, 296, 299, 341, 360, 371, 377 Bérenger, Paul 61 big man 247 bilingualism 46, 195, 274, 291 Black 210, 325 Bo 243, 294, 301 Boa Vista 277, 279–281 Bolama 163, 352 Boodhoo, Harish 62 books 111, 143, 167 borrowing 8, 10, 103, 127, 143, 272, 313, 334, 346–347, 351, 353, 386 boy soldier 244–246 British colonization of the Cape of Good Hope 71, 146 broken English 81, 240 Bryceson, Deborah Fahy 117 bush wife 244 Cabral, Amílcar 166, 170, 173, 305–306 Cacheu 162–163, 185, 352 Canada 78 n. 1, 161 Cape Verde 4–5, 10–11, 22, 24–25, 80, 83, 162, 165, 273–277, 280–285, 291–293 n. 2, 295–297, 299 n. 7, 303, 305, 307, 334, 338–340, 342–343, 346–347, 350–352, 405 capital 221 symbolic 236

412 Caribbean literatures 71, 387, 399, 401 n. 17, 403 Casamance 8–9, 24–25, 162, 181 n. 1, 182–186 n. 5, 188–189, 191–195, 198, 200–202 catholic 63, 67–68, 72, 74, 159, 364 census 96–97, 135, 158, 212 civil defense militias 230, 235 civil war 9, 26–27, 210, 230–234, 236–238, 241–244, 246–248 civilians 9, 230, 232–233, 236–237, 241–248 civilization 70, 74, 118, 211, 240, 253, 255–257, 261, 394 civilized versus uncivilized 239–240 clothes 98, 209, 216, 219–220, 253 n. 1, 277, 280, 285, 339 Cobiana Jazz 169 code-switching 8, 44, 62, 303–306, 317, 319 colonialism 19, 68, 119, 125, 129, 166, 173, 240, 253, 268, 305, 316, 318, 326–327 colonization 71, 79–80, 119, 164–165, 188–189, 195, 256, 313, 390, 391 n. 7, 394, 406 communicative collusive communication 42, 54, 56, 60, 63, 65–66, 84, 89, 96, 112, 126, 128, 132, 140, 144, 158, 164–165, 167, 171–172, 182, 202, 274, 292, 306, 320, 364, 368, 385, 388–389, 391, 394, 404 events 10, 44, 51, 101–103, 114, 268–269 means 7, 10, 22, 24, 26, 42–43, 46, 48, 56, 110, 112–113, 119, 125, 127–128, 134, 155, 162 n. 2, 164, 166–167, 172, 184 n. 4, 190, 191 n. 11, 192, 194, 200, 202–203, 231, 235, 256 n. 5, 257–258, 368 practices 9–10, 44, 49, 56, 63, 67, 80, 89, 102–104, 124, 182–185, 190–192, 194–195, 200, 203, 209, 212, 214, 226, 231–232, 234, 238, 268 Comunidade dos Países da Língua Portuguesa (CPLP) 22 context-contingent identity 3, 9, 19, 29, 60, 62–65, 68–70, 153, 160, 191, 193, 197, 209–210, 212–215, 217, 219–227, 233–235, 239–241, 248, 254, 266, 385 colored 11, 133–135 n. 6, 149–152, 310 n. 2, 311–312, 315–323, 327–330, 339 conviviality 6, 11, 42, 52, 54, 55 n. 3, 162, 338, 345

Index country 7–8, 23, 25, 44, 49, 64, 81, 83–84, 87–89, 91–93, 96–97, 104, 120, 128, 133, 149, 163, 165–166, 168–169, 171–173, 184, 213, 215 n. 8, 230, 237, 239, 242–243, 253–257, 259–269, 272, 274–276, 278, 281, 283, 285, 291–296, 306, 311, 317, 326, 330, 338, 340–344, 350, 352, 360, 366, 368, 371, 373, 397 creative industry 341 creole, see also Krio 62, 70, 209, 211 n. 4, 212, 227 culture and society 4, 99, 348, 351, 353 language and identity 11, 18, 21–22, 27, 63, 238–239, 248, 276 creoleness 15–18, 124–125, 231 n. 2, 309, 315, 384, 396, 399 creolization 15–19, 27–30, 273, 276, 282 cultural 3–5, 9–11, 15–20, 43, 56, 61–64, 67, 69, 72–73, 79–80, 84–85, 89, 91–93, 99, 101–102, 110, 117, 123–126, 128–129, 135, 159–161, 181–182, 186, 189, 192–194, 197–198, 212–214, 217–218, 227, 238, 248 n. 21, 255, 258, 268, 310, 312–314, 317–318, 330, 351, 384, 386, 392, 396, 398 decreolization 4, 71, 117, 334, 348–352 recreolization 349, 352 Crioulo 10, 24–25, 166 n. 7 cultural convergence 185, 192–193 cultural rooting 78, 80 culture 18, 20, 26–27, 29, 211–212, 214, 276, 278, 282 folk 187 n. 7, 265, 335–336 industry 63, 69, 127, 137, 335–336 mass 12, 141, 148, 335 popular 6–7, 10–12, 67, 69, 75, 85, 87, 93, 107, 109–110, 126–128, 169–170, 278, 334–338, 341, 344, 346–347, 349, 395 CvP model (creolization versus pidginization model) 10, 12, 30, 312 n. 3, 313–315, 317, 320, 326, 330, 384–387, 389–390, 392, 396, 401, 404, 406 Darwin, Charles 70–71 decision-making 264 Decker, Thomas 240–241 deconstructs 232 de-creolized 168 deligitimation/legitimation 6, 78–81, 84, 92–93, 198, 200, 211, 363

Index deportation 282–283 deportees 273, 282–285 diacritic 105, 230–232, 234–236 n. 10, 238, 245–246, 248 different intentions 230 differentiation 19, 28, 272, 278, 282 social 9, 15–19, 23, 28 n. 22, 42–44, 46, 54, 55 n. 3, 61, 63, 65–66, 79, 81–82, 85–87, 109, 169, 171, 209–227, 231, 239, 248, 253–254, 266–269, 274, 278, 280 diglossia 274 model 20, 43, 101, 147, 161–162, 165, 171, 173, 188, 193, 200 n. 14, 202, 247 n. 19, 266–267, 274 disloyalty 9, 230–48 divination 100, 102–103 domination 20, 122, 127, 235, 238, 247 n. 19, 311, 315, 390–391, 403, 406 dramaturgy 239 n. 16 Dutch colonization of the Cape of Good Hope­ 136 Dutch East India Company 136 n. 7 education 5, 22–24, 61, 82 n. 6, 86–87, 91–93, 110, 128, 146, 163–164, 166–167, 169–170, 172, 195, 201, 211, 214, 217–219, 222–225, 227, 256, 258, 268, 275, 293, 317–319, 328, 360–362, 364–365, 369–371, 376–378, 380–381, 406 n. 23 emblems 214, 216–221, 223, 225 emic 17, 186 n. 6, 253 essentialist 172, 183, 195, 197–198, 209, 310, 314, 399 ethnic 15 n. 2, 16, 18–29, 209–210, 212–213, 215, 217–218, 220–227 conversion 225–226, 256 group 19, 21, 23 n. 15, 25, 28–29, 41, 43, 45–46, 48, 50, 52, 55, 59–60, 62, 65, 67–72, 75, 84–87, 96, 100–101, 106–107, 109, 116, 118, 120–125, 127, 129, 134, 137, 138 n. 12, 141, 142 n. 21, 145, 147, 149, 152, 158–160, 165, 168–173, 183, 184 n. 3, 185–195, 197–198, 200–201, 210–211, 213–217, 221–222, 224 n. 13, 226–227, 232, 234, 240, 244, 255, 258–259, 268, 312, 377, 385, 404 heritage 29, 70, 75, 90, 99, 153, 217, 234, 237

413 identity 5, 7, 16, 21, 26–27, 60, 62–65, 68–70, 78, 88–89, 109, 119, 121–125, 134, 146–147, 149, 153, 160–161, 182, 209–210, 212–215, 217, 219–227, 231, 234, 242, 253, 312, 372, 384–385, 392, 396, 404 ethnicity 9, 21 n. 12, 62, 69, 74, 87, 109, 124, 147 n. 31, 183, 186, 188, 197, 209–210, 212, 222, 225–226, 231–232, 234, 241–242, 313, 360, 369, 391 ethnicization 18, 29, 160, 312–313, 315, 326, 348 n. 16, 385–386, 398 ethnography 236, 239 n. 16 Europe 43, 46, 65, 97, 136, 147 n. 31, 162, 238 n. 14, 276, 339–341, 392, 394, 395 n. 9, 396–402, 404 n. 21, 405–406 European 275 integration 120, 125, 129, 159, 161, 170–171, 191–192, 210, 221, 227, 263, 266, 405–406 literatures 71, 387, 392–393, 395 n. 9, 396, 398–403 n. 20 European Union 402, 405 Évora, Cesária 296, 299 n. 7, 304, 340–341 Facebook 64–66, 127, 171 fashion 10, 20, 182–183, 198 n. 13, 278, 336–341, 344, 346, 349, 351, 366, 392 Fernandes, Ney 301–302 Ferreira, Valdemiro 303, 338 finding fault 230, 266 France 60–61, 64, 70, 80, 105, 110,, 168, 232, 245 n. 18, 296, 398 Freetown 9, 23, 191, 211–213, 215, 217–220, 239 Freire, Gilberto 70 French Guiana 97, 105–107 French Huguenots 137 frontier society 141, 183, 186, 192, 194, 196, 198 n. 13, 200 n. 14, 202–203 Fula 23 n. 17, 24, 166, 168, 171–172 gatherings unofficial 164, 233 Geba 163, 352 Germany 27 n. 21, 39 n. 1, 161, 248, 312 n. 3 government army 230, 235 Guinea 168, 347 Guineense 158 Guinea-Bissau 5, 8, 11, 19, 22, 23 n. 14, 24–25, 158–172, 248 n. 21, 273, 305–306, 334, 338, 345–347, 349–352

414 Guinea-Conakry 22–24 Guyane 6–7, 96–97, 104, 108–111, 114 heritage 16, 29, 275 ethnic 19, 21, 29, 46, 59, 63, 68–70, 75, 85, 101, 123, 125, 147 n. 31, 161, 168–169, 173, 209–210, 212–213, 215, 217–218, 220–227, 231–232, 234, 237–247 hierarchy social 3, 6, 19, 52, 55–56, 61, 63, 65–66, 80, 128, 181, 184, 189, 192, 202, 209–227, 235, 257, 282 hip-hop 170–171, 342–344, 347, 351 Hookoomsing, Vinesh 67–68 hybridization 16, 316, 354, 396 iconicity logic of 149, 245 identity 15–22, 25–27, 29–30, 272–274, 276, 280, 286 building 47, 69, 92, 99–101, 139, 146, 161, 168, 248, 273 Cape Verdean 8, 10, 61, 71, 158–160, 163–164, 168, 274, 338–344 n. 14, 347, 350–352 ethnic 5, 7, 9, 21, 26–27, 59, 63, 68–70, 75, 89, 96–97, 149, 159–161, 182, 187–188, 190, 192, 195–197, 209–210, 212–213, 215, 217–218, 220–227, 231, 234, 242, 254 n. 3, 312–313, 316, 326, 372, 377, 384–385, 390, 395–396, 399 n. 15, 404 Krio 9, 27, 71, 73–74, 209–227, 231 n. 2, 239, 248 n. 21 Sherbro 9, 191, 213–227 social 3, 8–10, 42–44, 55, 61, 63, 65–66, 80–81, 85–89, 99, 121, 134, 146, 171, 182 n. 2, 209–227, 231, 234–237, 248, 268, 303, 320 ideology semiotic 183, 190, 209–210, 214, 219–220, 222–223, 225–226, 236 n. 10, 238, 245, 248, 254, 268 inclusion/exclusion 3, 6, 9, 21–22, 149, 209–27, 316, 400 independence 8, 24, 60, 67–68, 70, 74, 81, 83, 92, 96, 101, 120, 123, 125, 128, 158–159, 165, 167, 170, 173, 195, 241, 257, 296, 305 indexes 210, 212–216, 220–223, 225–226, 231, 235, 257, 260–261, 272, 361, 371, 373, 380–381

Index indexicality 8, 55–56, 235 n. 6 indigeneity 20, 26, 239, 310 indigenization 15–16, 116–117, 160, 313, 328, 348 n. 16, 398 indigenous 9, 11, 15 n. 1, 17 n. 7, 18, 22–23, 26, 29, 70, 97, 100, 109, 120, 125–126, 138 n. 13, 160, 164, 187–188, 192, 212, 214 n. 7, 217, 219, 227, 230–231, 235, 237–239, 241–242, 244 254, 256, 317, 334, 345–347, 349–352, 367, 393, 395 influence 11, 21, 62, 70, 87, 107–108, 124, 127, 142, 164–165, 169, 171, 214, 255, 272, 315, 320, 334, 338, 340, 342–347, 351–353, 385, 390, 399–400, 403, 406 interaction 5–8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19–20, 25–26, 40–44, 49–50, 52–55, 60, 72, 137, 139, 144, 170, 182, 185, 192–194, 197, 200–203, 214–216, 218, 233–235, 253–255, 258–259, 266–268, 272–273, 282, 285, 291, 312, 316, 320, 349, 360–361, 367–369, 372, 377, 385, 389, 392–393, 395, 398, 403 IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) 67 Islam 7, 70, 74, 118–119, 121–122, 124–125, 128, 143, 184, 191 n. 11 Kamajors 231, 243–244 Kamba 118 kasu bodi 284–285 Khoikhoi 7, 132, 137–139, 141–143 Kilwa 118, 121 Kisettla 119 Krio, see also creole 9, 62–64, 71, 211–212, 214 n. 7, 216, 219, 221–222, 225–227, 316 Kriol 8, 24–25, 65–67, 70–71, 191, 158–173 Kriston 25, 158–161, 163, 168–169, 171–172, 297 kwii 253–255, 257–264, 266–269 Lamu 118, 121, 124 language 15, 17–18, 20–30, 272–285 and violence 235, 237 ecology 72, 117, 182, 202 ideology 7–9, 11, 41, 83, 93, 117, 119, 149, 164–165, 173, 231, 236–237, 241–244, 293, 302, 306, 352 market 10, 12, 54, 63, 80, 110, 113–114, 137, 166, 168, 172, 196, 264, 364, 373

Index usage 6, 8–11, 42, 64–65, 70, 159, 63, 230–232, 234, 235 n. 9, 236, 238–241, 243–244 languages 16, 19–25, 27–30, 273, 276 Antwerp 5–6, 39–40, 45, 49 Arabic 40, 59, 63, 70, 117, 123–124 Bantu 116–117, 119, 122, 141–142, 149 Cameroon Pidgin 11, 360, 362, 365–366 Comorian 116 creole 4–9, 11, 17–20, 24, 27–29 n. 25, 45, 56, 63, 67, 69, 71, 74, 79–80, 82–85, 89, 96–97, 99, 109, 116–118, 124–125, 129, 132–133, 136, 140–143, 145–147, 158–166, 168–170, 172–173, 209, 211 n. 4, 212, 227, 230–232, 238–239, 248, 272–277, 279–281, 283–284, 291–296, 298–307, 311, 320, 334, 385 Dutch 6, 39–44, 46–56, 96–98, 103, 105–106, 136–141 n. 18, 143–146 n. 29, 255, 404 esoteric 100, 103 ethnic 7, 21–23 n. 15, 25–27, 29, 46, 59, 63, 69–70, 75, 159, 161–162, 168–173, 184, 187, 209–210, 212–213, 215, 217–218, 220–227, 232, 234, 237–239 n. 15, 241–247, 372, 377, 384–385, 405 French 6–7, 40–41, 49, 59–65, 67–68, 70–71, 73–74, 80, 96–97, 103, 105–111, 137, 150, 168, 189, 192, 195–196, 201, 255, 280, 285, 350, 371–372, 393–394, 397 Giriama 116, 123, 125 Khoisan languages 144 n. 27, 311 Krio 9, 26–27, 71, 209–227, 230, 231 n. 2, 235, 237–244 kɔntri 213–217, 220–226 lapa 219–220 lingua franca 6–8, 24, 26, 40–41, 46, 55–56, 60, 72, 79, 83, 88, 93, 97, 118–120, 125, 138, 158–159, 162, 164–167, 171, 184, 193–194, 212, 217–218, 230–231, 239–240, 242, 244, 317, 320, 366, 377, 388, 395 n. 9 lusocreole 159 Mandingo 23–24, 166, 168, 170, 172, 256 Mauritian Creole 59–62, 64, 66, 68 Mijikenda 116, 118, 125 official 7, 22–23, 59–60, 63–64, 67–68, 80, 97, 120, 125, 128–129, 133, 135, 136 n. 8, 138–139, 144, 146, 148, 158, 163, 165, 167–168, 173, 196, 233, 255–256, 259,

415 262–264, 266, 274, 292–293, 295, 317, 362, 388 Pidgin 11, 25, 28, 360–382 Pokomo 116, 123 Portuguese 22–24, 46–47, 80, 84, 96, 99, 103, 138 n. 13, 142, 158–160, 162–173, 184, 192–193, 255, 273–276, 285, 291–293, 298, 303, 306, 350 Sabaki 116 Solomon Islands Pijin 79, 86, 363 Swahili 6–7, 44, 116–118, 120–122, 124–129 Wolof 23, 25, 168, 184, 195–196, 198, 201 legitimacy 5, 7–8, 78, 80–81, 84, 92–93, 259, 268, 334, 341 liberation 8, 24, 165, 230 Liechtenstein 161 linguistic anthropology 8, 235 n. 9 linguistic appropriations 321, 337 linguistic ecology 117 linguistic funnel 87 literacy systems 42, 100, 166 181 n. 1, 384, 388, 389 n. 6, 392 loyalty 230–231, 236–237, 241, 243, 247 lusophone 168 macro-level versus micro-level 237 Malay 142–143, 315, 317, 324 Manel de Novas 278–279 Manjaco 168 manjuandadi 11, 25, 345–347, 352 Maroons 7, 96–98, 101, 103–106, 108–110, 112–113, 211 Mauritius 5–6, 59–64, 66–75, 82, 83 n. 7, 363, 405 Mazrui, Al-Amin 117–118, 123, 128 Mende 21, 231, 237, 239, 242–244, 341 metalinguistic critique 44, 154, 220, 242–243 discourse 4–5, 7, 9, 21, 41, 44, 49, 73, 78, 81, 109–111, 128, 154, 170–171, 182, 198, 202, 211, 214–215, 217, 219–220, 223, 225, 234–236, 241, 245–248, 259 evaluation 216, 219, 236, 238–240 logic 203, 223, 226, 235 n. 6, 236 metasemiotic 7, 235 n. 6, 245–246 micro-order 237, 248

416 migration 16, 18, 41, 43, 45, 86, 117, 119, 129, 141, 192, 200–201, 212, 215, 217–218, 221, 223, 225, 238, 253–254, 273, 276, 279, 296, 303, 398 military organization 68, 72, 148, 150, 152 n. 44, 168, 230, 232, 236, 241, 244, 246–247, 254, 260, 268 regimes 19, 21, 79, 232, 247 Military Conflict (1998–99) 168 mixing (processes of literary) 25, 70, 86, 98, 159, 193 n. 12, 195, 211, 218, 239, 310, 313–314, 316, 319–321, 323–324, 326, 330, 346, 384–387, 389–397, 404, 405 n. 22, 406 mobility 276, 282–283, 285 social 3–11, 61, 63, 65–66, 73, 133, 170–172, 209–227, 239, 244, 246–248 n. 21, 268, 285 modern 9, 22–23, 29, 65, 69, 98, 148, 159, 170, 210, 212–213, 237–238, 254 n. 3, 257, 264, 293, 299, 393 Mogadishu 118, 125 Mombasa 118, 122 morna 10, 295–302, 304–307, 341, 342 n. 12, 347, 351 Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) 61 multilingualism 4, 9, 41, 106, 108–109, 162, 181 n. 1, 182–185, 191, 193–194, 200 n. 14, 202–203, 248 n. 21, 253 small-scale multilingualism 183, 185 music 10–11, 18, 69, 75, 85, 87, 93, 107–108, 169–170, 295–297, 299, 302–305, 307, 309–310, 312, 315, 317, 320–325, 335–338, 341–347, 349, 351–352, 384 n. 2, 385 nation-building 4, 22, 65, 100, 146, 161, 293, 306, 310–312, 315, 317, 326, 330, 352 negative attitudes 11, 360, 362, 364, 380 Negerhollands 140 New South Africa 135, 310–311, 315–316, 321–322, 327, 329 New Zealand 162 newspapers 22, 51, 63, 66, 167, 240 Nyamwezi 118 outsiders 102, 110, 112–114, 151, 181, 183 n. 3, 187–188, 225, 283

Index parliament 148, 167, 195, 263, 310 Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) 165 Pate 118 patrimonialism patrimonial authority 187–188, 195, 200–201 patrimonial regimes 247 patronage, see also big man 248 n. 21 Peres, Rodrigo 300 performance 62, 69, 88, 215, 219–222, 226–227, 254, 266, 306 n. 8, 320, 325, 346, 360 performativity 239 plantation 60, 73, 79–82, 84, 97–101, 109–110, 112, 313 play languages 106 Pepel 168 Pidgin; see under languages 4, 7, 11, 15, 22, 24–25, 27–29, 45, 56, 61, 72, 79–80, 82, 116–118, 124–125, 129, 162, 273, 309, 312 n. 3, 326, 348–349, 351, 360–382, 385, 388, 391, 394, 404 pidginization 15, 27–30 culture 3–6, 10, 64, 70, 75, 78, 87, 89, 93, 99–100, 102–103, 109–110, 114, 116–118, 122, 124–126, 128, 146, 148, 150–153, 159–161, 169, 173, 181, 192, 198, 211–212, 214, 242, 255, 258, 385–386, 390 identity 3–4, 7, 60, 62–65, 68–70, 78, 99, 152, 159–161 n. 1, 169, 173, 209–210, 212–215, 217, 219–227, 238, 239 n. 16, 241, 246, 248, 258–259, 266, 269, 312, 396 language 3–7, 26, 40 n. 2, 41–42, 44–46, 48–49, 51–52, 54–56, 60–63, 66, 68, 70–71, 75, 80, 82–83, 87–90, 93, 97–99, 132–135, 137, 142, 144, 146–148 n. 32, 152–155, 158–173, 184, 193 n. 12, 194, 196, 209–210, 212–213, 216–218, 224–226, 230–248, 253, 254 n. 3, 257, 312 n. 3, 390–391 plural identities 233–234, 385 political economy 239, 319 political ideology 230, 235 polycentricity 46, 56 poly-normativity 55–56 polysystem theory (PS), 401 n. 17 Port Loko 244

Index Portugal 159, 164, 168–169, 171, 275–276, 296, 340 Portuguese Cultural Centre 168 postcolonial 15, 19–22, 27, 29 contexts (society) 3, 5, 7, 19–20, 44, 53–56, 60, 66–67, 70, 85, 102, 107, 160, 183, 188, 193, 201, 203, 209, 214, 218, 225–226, 231, 233, 253, 320, 363, 384, 394, 396, 405 post-creole continuum 63, 349–350, 353 punishment logic of 237–238, 241, 243, 245 n. 18, 247 purity 11, 311, 315, 319–321, 324, 329–330, 342, 345 race 18, 74, 79, 116, 123, 134, 142 n. 21, 146, 149, 195, 256, 327, 330, 363 radio stations 167, 329, 342–343 Rádio Libertação 165 rebel camps 244 semiotic register 6, 8–10, 214, 225–226, 253, 255, 261, 263, 266–269, 272 Rendall, Daniel 305 repertoire 3, 8–10, 44, 48, 51, 55 n. 3, 88, 182, 184, 190–191, 193, 200–203, 209, 215, 254, 272, 388–389, 391 n. 7, 392–394, 400–401, 406 reported speech 236, 248 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) 230–231 rhetoric 240, 266 Saamaka 7, 96–109, 113 Saamakatongo 6–7, 96–97, 100, 102–103, 105–107 San 137–138, 141–143, 301, 370, 405 Sankoh, Foday 237 secret society, secret societies 219–220, 222, 233 séga 69, 75 semiotic 272, 280, 282, 285 indexes 210, 212–216, 220–223, 225–226, 231, 235 processes 3–6, 9–11, 42–43, 56, 78, 84–85, 89, 102–103, 160, 171, 187, 190–192, 194, 197, 203, 210, 214, 221, 225–226, 236, 239 n. 15, 243, 248, 253, 255, 257, 263, 282 registers 6, 8, 10, 55 n. 3, 116, 126, 210, 214–215, 221–222, 224–226, 253–255, 259, 261, 263, 268, 282, 285

417 Senegal 5, 8, 22–24, 98, 168, 182, 184 n. 4, 192, 195–198, 273, 279 sense of proximity 277 sexual services 242 Seychelles 68, 70 Shaba 79 n. 3, 118–119, 125, 128 Shariff, Ibrahim Noor 117, 122–123 Sheng 117, 125–128 Sierra Leone 5, 8–9, 16 n. 3, 19–28, 191, 209–213 n. 6, 216, 219, 230, 231 n. 2, 237–243, 247, 248 n. 21, 316 Sierra Leone Weekly News 240 sign 280 linguistic 5–11, 17 n. 8, 43, 45, 48, 51, 55–56, 59, 62–63, 78–79, 82–84, 86–88, 90–91, 93, 97, 101, 107–108, 116–117, 120, 122–123, 127, 136–137, 143, 145–146, 154, 159, 162, 167–171, 181–185, 187–188, 191–193, 195–197, 200–203, 209, 215–217, 234–237, 239, 243, 246, 254, 258, 266–268, 272, 390 non-linguistic 109, 209, 235 n. 7, 246 of allegiance 230, 232–233, 241–242 of ethnicity 222, 231–232, 234, 242 slavery 20, 73, 96, 100, 109–110, 112, 117, 124, 129, 138 n. 13, 190, 211, 238, 255, 315, 321, 323, 390, 396 slaves 24, 25 n. 19, 60, 73, 97–100, 112, 118, 121, 123, 133–134, 138–139, 142–144, 159, 188–189, 193 n. 12, 210–211, 239, 255–256, 291, 317, 321, 363, 394 SMS 171 sociability 272, 279, 320, 345 social duality 117, 225 social ecology of civil war 236, 238 of sameness and difference 182, 202 social status 5–6, 10–11, 210, 213–214, 216, 218, 226, 254, 282, 360, 363, 365, 367, 371, 374–375, 377–378, 380–381 social transformation 194, 222–223, 225 social value 210, 212–214, 217–218, 226, 285 sociolinguistic 27, 273 normativity 78 solidarity 25, 279, 281 social 3–11, 52, 55, 61, 63, 65–66, 159, 166–167, 170–171, 209–227, 237, 246, 253–254, 310, 312 n. 3, 313–316, 319–322, 325 n. 4, 327–330, 391

418 Souchon, Henri 59 Sousa, Mario Lucio 297 South Africa 5, 10–11, 134–135, 141–142, 144–146, 148–149, 154, 309–312, 315–317, 321–322, 324–330 Soweto student uprising 133, 151 Spencer Brito, Daniel 296 Sranantongo, 96–97, 99, 109 standardization 80, 83, 91, 128, 145, 171 St. Pierre, Bernardin de 60 suffering 151, 170–171, 311, 379–380 superdiversity 6, 42, 44–45, 52, 202 Suriname 7, 96–100, 102, 104–106, 108–109, 113 symbolic language 63, 68, 74, 84, 89, 110–111, 113, 126, 183, 189–190, 197–198, 334 syncretization 16 Switzerland 161–162, 402 Tabanca 336, 345–347 Tavares, Eugénio 297–299 Taylor, Charles 237 tembe 110, 112–113 Temne 21, 212 n. 5, 215–216, 218, 222–223, 237, 241, 243–245 territory liberated territory 29, 242 Tina 345–346 trading posts (praças) 159–160, 162, 192 tradition 11, 42, 45, 73, 85, 101–102, 112, 114, 120, 124, 143, 147, 150 n. 40, 163, 192, 195, 200, 214, 253, 265 n. 14, 309, 334–335, 337–338, 341–345, 347–348, 351, 366, 388 n. 5 transethnic 7, 9, 18–20, 24, 26–27, 30, 125, 160–161, 168, 171, 212, 218, 221, 226, 248 n. 21, 309, 326

Index transethnicization 161–162, 172–173 translation 3, 7, 61, 152, 163–164, 265, 278 n. 1, 291, 295–296, 298 n. 6, 362, 366–368, 370–375, 377, 379, 388, 391–392, 395 n. 9, 401 n. 17, 405 n. 22 transnationalism 16, 354 Trinidad 63, 65 United Kingdom 161 United States 22 n. 13, 105, 106 n. 8, 161, 272, 276, 283–284, 296, 303, 325 n. 4, 330, 347 unity 10, 25, 92, 120, 147, 155, 161–162, 165, 167, 172–173, 197–198, 265, 294–296, 311, 314, 321, 326–327, 330, 405 urbanization 73, 85–86, 125, 129, 202, 213 victimization 170–171 violence 9, 69–70, 128, 213, 230, 232–238, 241, 243–244, 246–248, 254, 280, 283–285, 315, 321, 379, 403 Virahsawmy, Dev 61–62, 67–68, 73 war civil 26–27, 69, 163 n. 3, 210–211, 9, 230–234, 236–238, 241–244, 246–248, 254, 256, 262, 268 irregular wars 237 new wars 237 old wars 237 war of independence 24, 26–27, 29, 165 WhatsApp 171 White 84, 137 n. 9, 149, 315–316, 327, 329 woodcarving 110, 112 n. 12, 113–114 zouk 108, 342–344