This fascinating debate is all too familiar to me from both Jamaica
and Quebec.  During the 60's there was much argument about joual, the
Canadian French variety spoken by the non-middle class.  Many
middle and upper-class French-Canadians could switch to joual and were
actually bi-dialectical if not bi-lingual.  Former Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau was superb at this code switching.  But when an artist
such as the playwright Michel Tremblay started writing in joual, he
was both condemned and praised. Now he is regarded as one of the
greatest French-Canadian literary voices.  I'm not quite sure what
happened to the notion of teaching or using joual in the schools, but
Tremblay is on the syllabus.
 
A debate about Jamaican creole, or patois, has been raging for years.
The linguists at the University of the West Indies, as well as some
writers and artists, have been promoting the use of patois in the
schools and even in public life for some time.  They are mostly
condemned by a horrified bourgeoisie (can't really call them middle
class for they're certainly not in the middle).  Newspaper columnists
and others (such as, alas, my husband) argue that (believe it or not)
the Queen's English is the true standard, spiced up perhaps by the
Jamaican accent and a few cute expressions from Patois.  This is
similar to the argument in a New York Times article two weeks ago --
haven't got it here to cite the author but it was on p.3 of the Week
in Review Section -- arguing that American English hs been enriched by
Black English.  The implication seems to be that therefore Black
English does not have anything to worry about.  Actually, I couldn't
quite follow the argument.
 
The Bible has now been translated into Patois.  Much of the Reggae
music and dub poetry is in Patois.  As one writing teacher at the
university there explained to me, not only the schoolchildren but
also many of the teachers, especially in the government (i.e., non-
private schools) cannot speak Standard Jamaican English.  To pretend
to teach and teach in SJE, she and others feel, accounts for most of
the school failures.  Even the conservative grammarian Sir Randolph
Quirk, who is a great defender of the teaching of Standard English to
allow children more equitable social and economic opportunities, has
also argued that we should respect the dialects that the children
speak. He, of course, was thinking of the huge variety of dialects in
Great Britain.
 
But the powers that be are horrified at the thought of Patois
becoming an official language (as is Creole in neighbouring Haiti).
When I point out to my husband that when he switches to Patois to
speak with "the people", I cannot understand the conversation at all,
and so he is speaking a different language and in fact he is
bilingual, he just laughs (scornfully): that is not a language, that
is just how those people speak!  (they do say that opposites attract).
 
I think the Oakland Board of Education is very courageous (even if
they are only trying to get at funds for bilingual education).  The
speech of all communities should be respected.  This argument is
becoming more and more recognized world-wide.  Isn't linguistics
rights part of some if not the U.N. Charter on Human Rights?  I'll
have to check Robert Phillipson's "Linguistic Imperialism".  I
recommend this most provocative work to all who are interested in
the Ebonics debate, whose underlying principles are not confined to
the U.S.A.
 
Mieke
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In last Friday's NYT Sheldon Steele (?) describes Black English (the
term Afro-American English Variety is I notice usually avoided by
these writers) as "broken English".  But then he mixes in a critique
of the self-esteem movement (whose excesses certainly deserves
some criticism) with the