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Caribbean
Discourses
Stylistic and Critical Discourse
Approaches to Language Use in the
Caribbean
Edited by
Ryan Durgasingh ·
Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon
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Caribbean Discourses
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Ryan Durgasingh
Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon
Editors
Caribbean Discourses
Stylistic and Critical Discourse
Approaches to Language Use
in the Caribbean
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To Barbara Lalla and Valerie Youssef,
who showed us the way.
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Contents
1 Introduction 1
Ryan Durgasingh and Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon
Part I Tracing the Development of Discourses
in the Caribbean 17
2 Styles
and Stylistic Change in Creole Languages: Formal
Language in the Eastern Maroon Creole 19
Bettina Migge
3 Towards
a Discursive History of the Caribbean as a
History of Genres 49
Susanne Mühleisen
Part II Discourse and Public Policy in the Caribbean 77
4 Critical
Discourse Studies and Curriculum Development
in Trinidad and Tobago: Exploring Discursive Practices in
Education Policy 79
Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon
xi
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xii
Contents
Part III Discursive Constructions of the Caribbean Prime
Minister 107
5
Taking
Responsibility: Conceptual Metaphor and the
Accession Stage of Leadership in Eric Williams’ Inward
Hunger: The Making of a Prime Minister109
Karen Sanderson Cole
6
Masking
the Critic: A Critical Discourse Analysis of
Newspaper Editorials131
Rajendra Shepherd
7
“The
Most Honourable Brogad”: A Critical Discourse
Analysis of Jamaica’s Prime Minister as Hero,
Sex Symbol and Villain on Social Media177
Kadian Walters
Part IV Stylistic Appraisals of Caribbean Literary Discourse 213
8
“He
Was Oppressed by a Sense of Loss”: Stylistic
Constructions of the Tragic in A House for Mr Biswas215
Ryan Durgasingh
9
Selvon’s Stylistics: Self-Conscious Language Production
in An Island Is a World237
Karen Mah-Chamberlain
10
Storifying
Caribbean Cricket: Voice and Perspective
in Paul Keens-Douglas’s “Tanti at de Oval”259
Geraldine Skeete
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Contents
xiii
Part V Gender, Media, and Discourse in the Caribbean 285
11 Digital
Discourses on Gender-Based Violence in Trinidad
and Tobago287
Eleonora Esposito, Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon,
and Ryan Durgasingh
12 Media
Representation of Gender-Based Violence
in Two Cases and Related Examples: A Multimodal
Discursive Study323
Godfrey A. Steele
Index361
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Notes on Contributors
Ryan Durgasingh is a Research Fellow at Ruhr University, Bochum,
and PhD candidate at the University of Münster, Germany, where his
work focuses on morphosyntactic variation in Caribbean Englishes. His
research interests include stylistics, Critical Discourse Studies, variationist sociolinguistics, and corpus-­
based approaches to linguistic analysis. His MPhil thesis, undertaken at the University of the West Indies, St
Augustine, was a stylistic comparative analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s
and V.S. Naipaul’s protagonists and narrators.
Eleonora Esposito is a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society
(ICS) of the University of Navarra (Spain) and a Seconded National
Expert to the Directorate-General for Communications Networks,
Content and Technology (DG CNECT) of the European Commission.
A Marie Skłodowska-Curie Alumna (2019–2021), Eleonora has been
investigating complex intersections between language, identity, and the
digitalised society in a number of global contexts, encompassing the EU,
the Anglophone Caribbean, and the Middle East.
Karen Mah-Chamberlain originally from Colorado in the United
States, has also studied and taught in Hong Kong, Tajikistan, Trinidad
and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Liberia, and remotely to the United Arab
Emirates. In 2017, she received her PhD in Literature from the University
of the West Indies, St Augustine.
xv
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xvi
Notes on Contributors
Bettina Migge is Professor of Linguistics at University College Dublin,
Ireland, and attached to CNRS-SeDyL, France. She received her MA and
PhD from the Ohio State University, USA, in 1998 and studied at
Universität Hamburg, Germany; Université de Yaoundé, Cameroon; and
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her publications treat topics such as
sociolinguistics, language contact, language and migration, the lived experiences of migration, language documentation, language and education,
multilingualism, postcolonial studies, and computer-­medicated communication. Empirically, her research focuses on Suriname, French Guiana,
and Ireland.
Susanne Mühleisen is Professor of English Linguistics and a member of
the Excellence Cluster Africa Multiple at the University of Bayreuth,
Germany. Her work focuses on sociolinguistic and pragmatic issues in
English and contact varieties in Africa and the Caribbean with publications such as Creole Discourse. Exploring Prestige Formation and Change
across English-lexicon Creoles (2002) and Politeness and Face in Caribbean
Creoles (ed. with Bettina Migge, 2005). Recent research also includes
explorations of Text Type and Genre in World Englishes: Case Studies from
the Caribbean (2022) as well as of the speech activity of advice in African
multilingual contexts.
Karen Sanderson Cole is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern
Languages and Linguistics at the University of the West Indies, St
Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Her research emphases include the
Caribbean political autobiography, improving the post-graduate university experience, as well as teaching and learning at the tertiary level.
Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon is an Assistant Professor and General
Administrator at the Centre for Education Programmes, University of
Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago, where she teaches courses in
Linguistics, English Literature and Education. Her main areas of research
are in Language Arts curriculum development, second dialect pedagogy,
Critical Discourse Studies, and translanguaging pedagogy for migrant
children.
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Notes on Contributors
xvii
Rajendra Shepherd is a journalist, academic, and writer. He lectures
communication courses at The University of the West Indies, St
Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. His PhD dissertation examined the
Trinidad & Tobago newspaper editorial for the relationships between the
writer, media, genre, and coverage.
Geraldine Skeete lectures in the Faculty of Humanities and Education
at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus,
Trinidad and Tobago, where she obtained a BA and PhD in Literatures
in English. Among her journal publications are those in Short Fiction in
Theory & Practice and The Year’s Work in English Studies. She is the coeditor of The Child and the Caribbean Imagination (2012) and Tout
Moun: Caribbean Journal of Cultural Studies. Skeete teaches literary linguistics and literature courses, including one on the Caribbean short
story. She is currently working on a monograph about the written works
of Paul Keens-Douglas.
Godfrey A. Steele A UWI Premium Teaching Awardee (2000), he wrote
Health Communication in the Caribbean and Beyond: A Reader (2011);
60+ refereed journal articles, chapters, books, papers, and technical
reports; 80+ conference papers; Health Communication: Principles and
Practices (2019); Communication, Culture, and Conflict (2021); and
Human Communication Studies: Caribbean Research Knowledge and
Stories (2022) and produced the three-part documentary film,
Communication Connects (2022) featuring thematic interviews with
communication graduates and experienced academic researchers.
Kadian Walters lectures discourse studies in the Department of
Language, Linguistics, and Philosophy at the University of the West
Indies, Mona. Her research interests include language rights, linguistic discrimination, forensic linguistics, discourse analysis, and computermediated communication. Her dissertation examined the phenomenon
of linguistic discrimination in Jamaica’s government agencies and how
service representatives treat callers who used both Jamaican Creole and
English. Walters is an advocate for an expansion of the functional allocation of Jamaican Creole in public formal domains and official government business. She has devoted her research to improving the status of
her first language, Jamaican Creole.
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List of Figures
Fig. 6.1
Fig. 6.2
Fig. 6.3
Fig. 7.1
Fig. 7.2
Fig. 7.3
Fig. 7.4
Fig. 11.1
Fig. 12.1
Fig. 12.2
Fig. 12.3
Fig. 12.4
Fairclough’s model of domains essential to CDA
(2002, p. 59)
137
Pivoting illustrated
164
The ideological circle model
165
Holness changed his name to Brogad on Twitter
186
Holness addresses his social media followers
187
Holness depicted as saviour
200
Holness depicted as villain
201
Ashanti Riley’s picture shared by newspaper articles
covering her femicide case
300
Protest actions against gender-based violence
339
Online image accompanying printed news report
(Braxton-­Benjamin 2021)
341
The Bystander Moment343
Public advocacy and protest
345
xix
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List of Tables
Table 6.1
Table 6.2
Table 6.3a
Table 6.3b
Table 6.3c
Table 6.4
Table 6.5
Table 6.6
Table 7.1
Table 7.2
Table 7.3
Table 7.4
Table 7.5
Table 7.6
Table 12.1
Table 12.2
Methodological approach
Areas of analysis
Representations of the PM across the data field
Representations of Dr. Rowley across the data field
E6 ‘the arch critic,’ The Express newspaper’s first editorial
on the matter, written a few days after the firing
Dualism cases occurred throughout the data field—both
softening and hardening criticism
G5—Headline: “PM must explain Rowley dismissal”
Operation of the ideological circle
Five discursive strategies
Distribution of Holness’s social media followers in
comparison to his opposition counterparts
Holness as hero theme
Holness as sex symbol
Holness as villain, performance over popularity
Holness as hero, sex symbol and villain
Summary list of stories
Categories of stories
140
141
147
148
148
155
159
166
183
187
191
196
198
206
334
336
xxi
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1
Introduction
Ryan Durgasingh and Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon
Although the Anglophone Caribbean has had a large output in varied
and localised discourse/text-types in the post-independence era, there has
been little linguistic scrutiny of them. This has been the case even though
more recent linguistic work done on English in the Caribbean has clearly
shown a tendency towards endonormativity and more local forms within
several countries’ developing standards (Schneider 2009; Deuber 2014;
Hackert 2016). Language varieties which have histories of being minoritised or peripheral in many spheres of public life have also gained
R. Durgasingh (*)
Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany
Graduate School Empirical and Applied Linguistics, University of Münster,
Münster, Germany
e-mail: durgasin@uni-muenster.de
N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
Centre for Education Programmes, University of Trinidad and Tobago,
Pt. Lisas, Couva, Trinidad and Tobago
e-mail: nicha.s-ramkissoon@utt.edu.tt
1
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2
R. Durgasingh and N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
increasing acceptability—particularly the region’s Creoles (cf. Mühleisen
2002; Youssef 2011). This edited collection recognises the specific,
unique, and complex nature of the evolving Caribbean language milieu,
and the need for more rigorous descriptions of discourse types arising out
of this space. Based on work presented at the University of Trinidad and
Tobago’s “Stylistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Use in the
Caribbean” 2021 conference, the present volume draws together papers
from established Caribbeanists seeking to address the lacunae of research
focused on the region’s unique uses of linguistic structures in important
aspects of socio-political/cultural life. Much like Esposito (2021), we see
this book as bridging “an existing theoretical and analytical gap between
the more macro aspects of socio-political investigation and the more
micro aspects of linguistic analysis that has the potential to open up new
prospects in Caribbean Studies” (p. 175).
Historically, such Caribbean-based work has focused primarily on literary discourse/stylistic analyses, with the book-length Lalla et al. (2014)
being a notable edited collection. The socio-political implications of an
indigenous literature using local linguistic forms in the colonial/postcolonial nation-building project have been documented for the Caribbean
(cf. Mühleisen 2002; Lalla 2014a, b) and have continued to be the focus
of many discursive analyses in the region. This, however, argues Esposito
et al. (2019), has been to the detriment of other important social discourses such as media, political, and other forms of institutional discourse
(p. 13). While we agree that the rich Caribbean literary canon continues
to constitute an important site of linguistic variation appropriate to discursive study (cf. this book’s Part IV), we believe that broadening the
scope of discourse analysis beyond the literary in the Caribbean is past
due. Indeed, some attention to other discourse types has begun to come
since the turn of the century: there are works which have made discourse
analysis a part of their overall analyses within larger frames, such as
trauma and postcolonial theory, for instance (cf. Morgan & Youssef
2006), while other edited collections on discourse analysis have incorporated Caribbean sections (Esposito et al. (2019), as one prominent example, splits its focus between both Latin America and the Caribbean). To
date, however, there have been no edited collections which deal solely
with sustained discourse analyses within the Caribbean. Full
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1 Introduction
3
monograph-­length works, such as Esposito (2021), an exploration of
political discourse in Trinidad and Tobago, are rarer still.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the dominance of discourse analyses of
literature and the Caribbean’s socio-history, most other linguistic interest
in the region has focused largely on describing and advocating for Creoles
varieties. In the Anglophone Caribbean, the (post)colonial supremacy of
standards of English (often defined and reinforced via antipathy towards
Creoles) have had a long-lasting impact on the social structure of the
region, particularly as it pertains to educational concerns (cf. Robertson
1996; Craig 1999; Carpenter & Devonish 2013; Simmons-McDonald
2001; Migge et al. 2017). As a result of this, Caribbean linguistics has for
a time been almost synonymous with Creole Linguistics (Creolistics), to
the exclusion of other branches. A related turn towards describing the
standard varieties of the region has come within the twenty-first century,
with an emphasis on language attitudes, globalisation, and various cross-­
varietal influences (cf. Mair 2002; Sand 2017; Deuber & Leung 2013;
Deuber 2014; Westphal 2017; Meer & Deuber 2020; Hackert 2022).
We aim here not to trivialise these incredibly important aspects of social
and linguistic study, but rather to offer a complementary and complexifying take on understudied aspects of language use while concurrently
highlighting how Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) approaches can be
usefully applied in this context.
Both strands of research inquiry above—the analytical focus on literary texts and Creole Linguistics—have had long associations with postcolonial issues of identity and power. Indeed, as a discursive mode,
literature has been seen in the post-independence era as one site of political contestation and liberation, summed up succinctly by the seminal
Ashcroft et al.’s (1989) title, The Empire Writes Back. The shift from colonial hegemonies has played no less of a role in the ascendance of
Creolistics, with an interest in Creole linguistic forms coming out of a
perceived need to challenge the power of standard Englishes as part of a
wider process of decolonisation (cf. Devonish 2022). The interrogation
and negotiation of power, then, is a central concern of scholarly critique
in the postcolonial setting of the Caribbean, one that finds shared ground
with discourse studies: “one of the most meaningful commonalities
between CDS and postcolonialism is marked by a conceptualization of
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4
R. Durgasingh and N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
critique as deeply related to an emancipatory agenda and to an idea of
agency framed around narratives of dissent, opposition and resistance”
(Esposito 2021, p. 18). Because discourse is inherently contextualised,
that is it “addresses the way in which linguistic forms—‘text’—become
part of, get integrated in, or become constitutive of larger activities in the
social world” (Blommaert 2005, p. 39), its study in the as-yet-decolonising setting of the Caribbean can help to clarify and open new avenues of
thinking about the hierarchies of power inside and outside of the region.
As a sister discipline to pragmatics, discourse analysis is also invested in
the meaning-making potential of communicative purpose—seeking to
unearth the “why”, the “how”, and the “for whom” questions of interaction (cf. Schneider & Barron 2014). The linguistic outcomes of socio-­
cultural creolisation, the Caribbean’s vernacular Creoles, its standards,
and the varieties in-between provide rich translanguaging resources for
those capable of exploiting them. Thus, in the polyvocal, English-official
Caribbean, where linguistic structures may overlap between codes but
carry nuances of different meaning, “individual utterances may not only
be differently understood by Creole and non Creole speakers but may
even privilege plural meaning,” since “[t]he international and regional
currency of … discourse rests on an antipathy to boundaries” (Lalla
2014a, p. 60). This is one significant way in which power can be constructed and mediated, for instance, in ideologically charged discourses
such as campaign speeches, news editorials, state media, and advertising.
Discourse analysis, with its framework of understanding linguistic forms
and media within social context, can further explicate the shifting/mutable power dynamics of code choice and code representation in societies
that are marked by a high degree of variation and “leaking diglossia”
(Youssef 1996, p. 3). However, like all methodologies applied within the
Caribbean context, but especially those which originate from the dominant West, some justification is necessary for CDS’s application and use
(cf. Ali et al. 2023).
Although CDS scholarship originated in Europe during the
1980s–1990s, its focus on critiquing power, ideology, and agency “seems
to find its natural fit in the investigation of how individual, national and
regional identities are discursively constructed and negotiated, in a context affected by post-and neo-colonial patterns of inequality,
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1 Introduction
5
discrimination and power abuse” (Esposito 2021, p. 8). The Caribbean
region was a major pawn in the European colonisation project from the
time representatives of the Spanish crown arrived in the fifteenth century.
Soon after, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and British colonists invaded the
region, decimating indigenous groups and repurposing their lands for a
plantation economy1 which would be sustained for centuries by the
labour of enslaved Africans and indentured workers, largely from India.
The effects of colonisation would permeate social institutions like the
family, religion, and education, as well as political and economic systems,
and also cultural markers like language and art. As a site of destruction
and reconstruction, the Caribbean, through its post-and-neo colonial
discourses, can (re)work ideas of power, ideology, and agency (cf. Moya
Pons 2007; Campbell 2005; Brereton & Yelvington 1999).
As a theoretical frame that analyses the “constructive effects of discourse” which encode ideologies, social structures, and relations of
power (Fairclough 1992, p. 64; cf. Fairclough & Wodak 1997), CDS
offers an entry point to Caribbean scholars interested in looking beyond
literary critiques and/or formal linguistic analyses of postcolonial discourses. Indeed its “critical dimension” in viewing discursive practices
“intends to reveal underlying class conflicts, power relations and ideologies through discourse analysis”, especially in the context of historical,
political, and other socio-cultural impacts on discourse (Van Dijk 1985,
p. 58). CDS also allows for critiques of multimodal texts, examining
their handling of colour, images, designs, spatial manipulations, and
other visuals. In this way, “critical discourse analysis has moved towards
more explicit dialogue between social theory and practice, richer contextualization, greater interdisciplinarity and greater attention to the multimodality of discourse” (van Leeuwen 2006, p. 292). In the postcolonial
context, CDS is a useful frame for problematizing colonial social constructs that reside (too) comfortably alongside discourses of deconstruction and change.
Criticisms of studies in CDS centre around its interpretive and subjective nature, the implication being that CDS scholars run the risk of
Creating unprecedented wealth for the new landowners and by extension exponentially propelling
the development of Europe, economic and otherwise.
1
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6
R. Durgasingh and N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
imposing preconceived notions and deeply entrenched ideologies onto
their data without any critical assessment of their own discursive practices. All of this, of course, calls into account the very rigour of CDS
research (cf. Schegloff 1997; Toolan 1997; Woolfitt 2005; Widdowson
1998; Pennycook 2001; Wodak & Chilton 2005). While acknowledging
these potential downfalls of CDS, Wodak (2012), Lewis-Fokum (2022),
and Esposito (2021), all attest to the importance of CDS’s problem-­
oriented, transdisciplinary approach in contemporary research, with
Lewis-Fokum positing that, for Caribbean researchers, “perhaps these
very ‘weaknesses’ of CDA, if explored from a postcolonial lens, might
actually be strengths” (p. 98). Wodak, for example, argues that the “critical” element in CDS includes “being self-reflective and self-critical. In
this sense, CDA does not only mean to criticize others. It also means to
criticize the ‘critical’ itself…” (p. 305). All scholars work within socio/
economic/political structures that come with their attendant ideologies
and relations of power, so CDS researchers have the opportunity to
unpack the effects of these on their own work, declaring any biases
upfront and outlining analytic procedures for managing them. Lewis-­
Fokum notes intersections between postcolonial and CDS concerns,
illustrating that they both “deconstruct knowledge and assumptions that
have been taken for granted, and which therefore have the potential to
sustain status quos that may disempower rather than empower various
groups of people” (p. 98), with CDS examining these power structures
through the interplay of language. She observes, too, the reconstructive
potential of CDS, i.e. its researchers have the ability to describe how
people continue to thrive in spite of oppressive systems and the mechanisms they create to do so. She then challenges the Caribbean CDS
researcher: “Even if we adopt a decolonizing discourse, we must also create, through participatory action-research, indigenous interventions that
are beneficial and sustainable for generations to come” (p. 99; cf. Ali et al.
2023). Esposito also points to connections between postcolonial and
CDS work, not the least of which is the interdisciplinary foundation that
undergirds them both. She demonstrates the commonalities in each of
their treatments of discourse, critique, power, ideology, and agency (i.e.
narratives of resistance and change), and notes that “we can identify a
common aspiration between the two fields, oriented towards seeking
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1 Introduction
7
knowledge in the name of emancipation, in order to help reverse the
domination and violence that mark past and present history” (2021, p. 18).
In this collection, contributors use either the original designation
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) or the later, Critical Discourse Studies
(CDS). Some pushback against the use of the traditional CDA comes
from scholars in the field, including a couple of the “original group”2 of
analysts. Their main contention is that CDA in itself is not a method of
discourse analysis, but rather a perspective within the field of discourse
studies. The use of the term CDS, therefore, is meant to refocus the attitudinal position of the researcher (i.e. to the “critical”) and redirect the
methodology to its transdisciplinary nature (i.e. methods in linguistics,
discourse studies, and other relevant approaches and methodologies in
the humanities and social sciences). Van Dijk (2013) explains that CDA
is not a method of analysis, as is often believed, but a social movement of
scholars using a wide variety of (usually, but not exclusively, qualitative)
methods of discourse analysis. These methods may include analysis of the
lexicon, syntax, local and global meaning (semantics), speech acts, and
other relations with the context (pragmatics), style, rhetoric, argumentation, narrative structures, or other conventional organization of discourse,
on the one hand, and quantitative corpus analysis, ethnography, participant observation, or psychological experiments, among other methods, on
the other hand. (p. 176)
The contributors to the collection all outline their theories, methods,
and analytical procedures in their discourse analyses. Their methodologies were often drawn from the disciplines within which they worked, for
example, from educational linguistics in the humanities to media studies
in the social sciences. To this end, the adoption of (a) label/s was theirs to
make—the editors accepted these stylistic choices.
Stylistics, defined as “the linguistic study of style in language” or “literary linguistics”, examines text meaning from a close reading of its language as well as from readers’ responses to the text and is one of the
foundational approaches of this collection (Jeffries & McIntyre 2010,
Teun Van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Gunter Kress, Theo Van Leeuwen and Ruth Wodak (Wodak
and Mayer 2016, p. 4)
2
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8
R. Durgasingh and N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
p. 1; Stockwell & Whiteley 2014, p. 1). Although the focus of stylistics
has traditionally been more linguistic than political, stylistic appraisals of
discourse have arguably been a precursor for critical evaluations of discourse. Fairclough (1995, p. 187) refers to “systematic and detailed textual analysis” as one of the pillars of CDA/CDS; this type of analysis is
also central to stylistics. He also refers to the hybrid nature of contemporary texts, a mixing of what is considered formal and informal language
use in literary, academic, political, and other traditionally formal spaces
(1995, p. 142). This hybridity could not be more epitomised than in the
Caribbean region given the development of its languages as Ali et al.
(2023, p. 92) explain:
The need for methodologies which cater to Caribbean language varieties is
underscored for those Caribbean linguistic varieties which are not easily
placed along an assumed developmental line, such as the metaphorical
parent-daughter relationship between (West) Germanic and English, or
Latin and French. Creole varieties are still the subject of heated debate as to
whether or not they constitute a singular typological class, or are developments of their European lexifiers.
Colloquialisms and other localised forms of Caribbean languages permeate almost all text types and have provided the basis for stylistic analyses for a few Caribbean scholars (for example, see Evans et al. 2011;
Durgasingh 2012; Lalla et al. 2014). The analytical frame of “Critical
Stylistics” is thus a natural progression of the integration of critical linguistics, functional linguistics, and critical discourse analysis. Critical
Stylistics (CS) study “combines the text analysis of stylistics with the
ideological awareness of CDA” (Jeffries & McIntyre 2010, p. 194). The
CS analyst is given “a clear set of analytical tools to follow in carrying out
critical analysis of texts, with the aim of uncovering or discovering the
underlying ideologies of the texts” (Jeffries 2010, p. 6). Analysis of literary texts has been undertaken in this way by Caribbean researchers (for
example, see Figuera 2010; Rampaul 2012; Selvon-Ramkissoon 2012),
and in this collection, we aim to bring more of these critiques to the fore.
Incorporating a section on stylistic analyses of Caribbean literary discourse (an important and defining type within the region’s scholarly
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1 Introduction
9
tradition), alongside others on the development/evolution of discourse
types in the region, analyses of public policy, gender and media discourse
representation, and an entire section on the formative figure of the
Caribbean prime minister, this book shows the importance of expanding
the scope of linguistic analysis in the region beyond the post-­independence
dominance of Creole Linguistics. The multi-disciplinary and multi-­
methodological nature of the discursive approaches in this collection,
stemming from the interest in “social phenomena which are necessarily
complex” rather than just “linguistic units per se” (Wodak & Meyer
2016, p. 2), can allow us to account for the “supersyncretic” and “polyrhythmic” nature of Caribbean societies (Benítez Rojo & Maraniss
1996).3 We hope that this volume will form part of a still-nascent broadening in the Caribbean-focused academy of research in the social sciences, media-discourses, and decolonisation practices, thereby
contributing to the overall body of scholarship on language and society
in postcolonial, multi-ethnic contexts. Below, we detail the structure of
the book.
1Outline of the Book
This volume is divided into five parts which deal with diverse and relevant topics of Caribbean interest.
Part I, Tracing the Development of Discourses in the Caribbean, is a suitable commencement to the collection, the two chapters therein providing
an historical context for academic examinations of Caribbean discourses.
In “Styles and Stylistic Change in Creole Languages,” Migge argues for a
holistic approach to style in research on Creole languages as she herself
notes stylistic changes among the Eastern Maroon Creoles where speakers recognise and adapt communicative styles in various pragmatic situational contexts and as identity markers. The second chapter, “Towards a
Discursive History of the Caribbean as a History of Genres,” Mühleisen
considers how Caribbean peoples are able to adapt and create local versions of highly conventionalized text formats. She does so by analysing
3
We are grateful to Eleonora Esposito for guiding us to these important summative arguments.
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10
R. Durgasingh and N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
data from advice columns in the Jamaican newspaper The Star as well as
corpus data from a Trinidadian diaspora internet forum.
In Part II, Discourse and Public Policy in the Caribbean, Selvon-­
Ramkissoon adopts a Critical Discourse Studies approach in looking at
Language Arts curriculum development for use in secondary schools in
Trinidad and Tobago. She draws from Fairclough’s three-part model for
analysing a communicative event or interaction (the text, the discourse
practice, the socio-cultural practice), Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, and Genette’s transtextuality model as analytical procedures.
Discursive practices within the curriculum to persuade teachers of the
curriculum’s efficacy, intertextual links to other educational and national
documents, and institutional power dynamics which perpetuate arguments about “appropriateness” when it comes to the use of students’ first
language in the classroom are all explored in this chapter.
Part III, Discursive Constructions of the Caribbean Prime Minister, is an
important section in its illustration of discourse and power dynamics in
the political arena. Sanderson Cole’s “Taking Responsibility: Conceptual
Metaphor and the Accession Stage of Leadership in Eric Williams’ Inward
Hunger: The Making of a Prime Minister” considers the conceptual metaphor “A leader is a teacher” and its ideological influence on Trinidad and
Tobago’s first prime minister. The autobiographical text provides
Sanderson Cole a record of “social action” that the prime minister undertakes as he attempts to bring a newly independent Trinidad and Tobago
to political and economic prosperity. The second chapter in this section,
“Masking the Critic: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper
Editorials” identifies “pivoting” as a discursive practice in newspaper editorials that comment on a feud between Trinidad and Tobago’s then
prime minister, Patrick Manning, and a member of his cabinet, Keith
Rowley. Shepherd uses Critical Discourse Analysis lenses to examine
seven editorials in two daily newspapers to discuss the ideological implication of pivoting. The final chapter in this section moves the reader to
another Caribbean island in “‘The Most Honourable BroGad’: A Critical
Discourse Analysis of Jamaica’s Prime Minister as Hero, Sex Symbol and
Villain on Social Media.” Here Walters examines texts of five hundred
comments under social media posts created by, or pertaining to, Jamaica’s
current Prime Minister Andrew Holness, as she seeks to answer the
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1
Introduction
11
question: “How does the common man, by way of social media, function
as social actor to create and perpetuate the image of political
representatives?”
In Part IV, Stylistic Appraisals of Caribbean Literary Discourse, our contributors add to the established legacy of literary analyses rooted in linguistic criticism in the Caribbean canon. This section further establishes
the connection between the region’s literary output and social critique by
addressing issues of discursive form, identity, and (post)coloniality. In the
first chapter, “‘He Was Oppressed by a Sense of Loss’: Stylistic
Constructions of the Tragic in A House for Mr Biswas”, Durgasingh analyses perspective and agency in V.S. Naipaul’s masterwork, showing how
the eponymous protagonist’s life is shaped through tragic circumstances
which mirror the colonial condition. Second, Mah-Chamberlain’s
“Selvon’s Stylistics: Self-Conscious Language Production in An Island Is a
World” analyses the various modes of speech and thought representation
in the semi-autobiographical novel, tracing how the linguistic features of
psychological perspective impinge on the novel’s discursive exploration of
self-consciousness. Lastly, in “Storifying Caribbean Cricket: Voice and
Perspective in Paul Keens-Douglas’s ‘Tanti at de Oval,’” Skeete examines
the various discourse features—many of them related to local oral traditions—which help to craft Keens-Douglas’s most famous work within
the socio-political context of cricket.
Finally, Part V, Gender, Media, and Discourse in the Caribbean, grapples
with the issue of gender-based violence in Trinidad and Tobago from two
complementary, media-focused positions. In “Digital Discourses on
Gender-Based Violence in Trinidad and Tobago,” Esposito, Selvon-­
Ramkissoon, and Durgasingh analyse social media comments posted
under news articles dealing with femicides. This chapter takes a three-­
pronged approach to the topic, looking at the public’s discursive construction of the victims, the state, and the suspected criminals in the
emotionally loaded context of Caribbean Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
The section’s second paper, “Media Representation of Gender-Based
Violence,” by Steele interrogates various media portrayals of GBV in
Trinidad and Tobago, first via a close look at two recent and highly publicised cases of GBV in the country, and then through other related representations in the media. The analysis here is multimodal, analysing text
and pictorial portrayals of GBV.
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12
R. Durgasingh and N. Selvon-Ramkissoon
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Part I
Tracing the Development of
Discourses in the Caribbean
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