Marc Torres

Professor Garley

English 470

13 March 2018

Creole Languages in Short Stories

Both “Joebell and America,” by Earl Lovelace and “The Waiting Room,” by Zoila Ellis are stories that feature written representation of creole languages. Earl Lovelace’s story includes Trinidadian Creole while Zolia Ellis’ story includes Belizean Creole. The reason I chose these stories was because both stories show the complexities of Creole languages. They also both show the types of people who use Creole languages and they both do interesting things to show how languages are connected to social status. Therefore, both stories show how Creole languages are just as valid and rule governed as English, and that they should be represented and used as much as English; both authors also use their stories to reject the negative connotations associated with creole languages.

In “Joebell and America” by Earl Lovelace, there are many examples that show how the Trinidadian Creole language is a complex language with many rules and standards that it must follow, like with standard English. For example, in the story the narrator says: “He make up his mind to leave and go away,” (2). Lovelace is using repetition to show that within the system of Trinidadian Creole, repetition is used for emphasis of something. Here, Lovelace shows how Joe Bell has really made his decision to leave. The fact that the story is also narrated in Trinidadian Creole, shows that Lovelace wants to show how rich the language is. So, right from the beginning we are given a narrator who speaks close to the Mesolect, since it isn’t far from the basilect but is very far from the acrolect (or the language closest to the standard language, which is English). Sebba says that a copula is: “the verb to be, or its equivalent,” (1). In Trinidadian Creole, this verb “to be” is dropped a lot of the times since it is unnecessary to communicate what is meant in the language. For example, the narrator in the story says: “Joebell find that he seeing too much hell in Trinidad,” (2). Here, the sentence should be “Joebell finds that he is seeing too much hell in Trinidad,” however the “s” from finds is dropped and the copula is dropped as well. These two simple actions of dropping the “s” and the copula show how the language does not need the verb “to be,” because the language still gets the overall message across without overcomplicating the sentence. This makes it much easier to learn the language, and still help people who don’t understand the language, understand the overall message because it is a simpler sentence without the copula. This happens again in the story when the narrator says: “He don’t look at Joebell, but everybody know is Joebell he talking to,” (4). Here, the word “is” means something else. This is a case of pronoun dropping. So, “is” in that part of story does not mean “to be,” and instead becomes a representation of “it’s” or “it is.” So while the sentence should be “he doesn’t look at Joebell, but everybody knows it’s Joebell he is talking to,” the sentence cuts the copulas once again and changes the meaning of “is” to the contraction “it’s.” This all shows how complex the Trinidadian Creole language is because of its rules which exist to make the language simple and easy to learn. The narrator in the first part of the story is someone from the same region as Joe Bell and they share the same kind of speech (Trinidadian Creole), that is the mesolect. The author also shows how this type of Creole is spoken by people who don’t have much money by adding in small details about the types of people who gamble with Joe Bell in order to make extra money. For example, the narrator says: “ Was a Friday night. Waterworks get pay, County Council get pay. It had men from Forestry. It had fellars from the Housing Project. Money high high on the table. Joebell favourite card is Jack,” (4). The author shows with reduplication that there was much money and that this money came from a collective of different people who were in different kinds of professions. This shows that the area where they are all from is poor, and that they themselves are poor since they have to gamble to make extra money. The narrator’s voice also does not adhere to the standardized English writing system. Although the author does create a narrative voice that is true to the Trinidadian Creole language. The language the narrator uses contributes to the characterization of Joe Bell and others because it shows how Joe Bell and the people around Joe Bell communicate with one another. By using reduplication with phrases like “high high,” and dropping copulas at times to follow the rules of the Trinidadian Creole language system, the author shows the language in action and how simple but complex it really is. The author’s relationship with the non-standardized language of Trinidadian Creole, is a close one. The author shows that while it is not a completely standardized language, there are things that make it special and stand out. While there are no rules which are written or standardized, there are certain things that people who speak Trinidadian Creole do when communicating via the language. The author is an obvious fan of the language and used his platform of storytelling to show how the language is complex and fairly simple to use at the same time. With this story, the author justifies how using a Trinidadian Creole can be just as hard and as sophisticated as using a language as standardized English. The story also rejects negative connotations associated with the Trinidadian Creole language because the author makes the characters hardworking, smart, and humorous even though they are poor. The story helps authenticate the author’s heritage and connects him with readers from his homeland.

“The Waiting Room,” by Zolia Ellis is written mostly in standard english with some of the dialogue being written in Belizean Creole. For example, one of the characters says: “Dat is not the word for it,” (419). Here, “Dat” means “that,” but is spelled with a “D” to show pronunciation. The “D” in “Dat” makes “that” appear differently because it is spelled differently, however it means the same thing. The author does this to make sure that the pronunciation of “dat” comes through in the story. The author gives very lengthy and detailed descriptions of the characters in order to show their class. In the story reduplication is also used. In the story one of the character say: “pon sale cheap, cheap, cheap,” (420). Here, the author uses what Mark Sebba calls Reduplication. Sebba says Reduplication is: “repetition of a morpheme of syllable, normally to fulfill grammati-cal function,” (3). This is reduplication because the character says “cheap” three times, when they could just say “really cheap” or “extremely cheap.” The “cheap, cheap, cheap,” serves to replace “really” and adds emphasis at the same time. The author shows how nuanced and complex bielizian creole is. Just like Earl Lovelace, Zolia Ellis uses her story to reject the negative connotations associated with creole languages. She makes her characters intelligent, and humble. They’re good people. Sebba says: “The idea that the races of human beings can be, and should be, ‘pure’, has caused a great deal of turmoil and suffering in the twentieth century. Almost as obstinate and damaging an idea is the notion that languages can be,” (4). Ellis shows that even though her native tongue isn’t what people consider “pure,” that it is still a language that deserves to be treated like a “pure” language (much like Standard English). She rejects the negative connotations associated with the creole language by proving there are rules that need to be followed to speak it, and that the people who use it are good people who are intelligent. The story serves to show that the author who is a native speaker can navigate between the mesolect and acrolect. It lets her connect with readers around the world, and with those in her homeland.

Both authors do a great job of handling their creole languages and showing the complexities of them. They also do an amazing job of characterizing the people who use their languages. While they do these things, they also empower themselves as authors and the creole languages by showing that the people who use the languages aren’t bad people, just poor people (most of the time). Both stories make strong cases for why creoles should be used as much as standard english. The stories are both artistic and political.

Works Cited

Ellis, Zolia. “The Waiting Room.” The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. Edited by Stewart Brown and John Wickham, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Lovelace, Earl. “Earl Lovelace’s Joebell and America.” Caribbean Beat Magazine, 23 Feb. 2018, www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-10/earl-lovelaces-joebell-and-ameica#axzz59yqMyMLy.

Sebba, Mark. Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.