Digital Humanities Symposium

Using cyber folk metalanguage to explore language variation and indexicality in non standard languages: The case of Trinidadian Creole English in soca music

In sociolinguistics, language variation may be investigated through various analytical frames. For instance, variation can be analyzed with respect to social correlates such as gender, socio-economic class, age, ethnicity, or geographical region. In contrast, how language variation is used to construct social meaning may also be examined, particularly in highly contextualized scenarios in which language variants are employed to perform stylistic work. Social meaning is the ideological stance conveyed and interpreted in the deployment of a particular linguistic variant. Indexicality is an approach which interrogates relationships between linguistic variation and multiple layers of social meaning, by appealing to orders of indexicality (Silverstein, 2003). For instance, mapping linguistic variation to social categories (e.g. geographical region, ethnicity, etc.) is an example of first-order indexicality, whereas more nuanced associations of a linguistic variant to local or context-specific ideologies are considered second- or third-order indexicality, and so forth. Folk metalanguage—conscious, overt commentary about language by non-linguists (Niedzielski & Preston, 2000)—is one resource which lends insight into ideologies associated with additive orders of indexicality (i.e. second-, third-, etc.). Considering folk metalanguage is particularly useful in the case of non-standard, oftentimes stigmatized, language varieties such as creoles. However, non-elicited folk metalanguage is challenging to source, especially if the language variety does not have a standardized orthography. Growing accessibility to the participatory Web (Web 2.0) has resulted in social media technologies being instrumental in generating communities. The broad-based participation that social media facilitates makes posting or publishing on the internet a social act, giving speakers of non-standardized languages social agency. This paper examines the indexical orders associated with the Trinidadian Creole English (TCE) vowel variant /ɒ/ which occurs in words belonging to the NURSE lexical set (Wells, 1982), such as work, dirty, worth, and thirst. In this analysis, Youtube comments are used as a source of cyber folk metalanguage to explore third-order indexicality associated with TCE vowel /ɒ/ in soca music, a musical genre indigenous to Trinidad which pervades the Trinidadian soundscape during the preLenten carnival season. Carnival practices and the carnivalesque have long been associated with subversion and inversion (Bakhtin, 1968). Hence, this research is concerned with the ideological opposition and resistance to respectability as manifest in carnival, and by extension, soca music. Data is taken from Youtube commentary on four songs: “Wotless” worthless /ˈwɒtˌlɛs/ by Kes (2011), “Hard Wuk” hard work /haːd wɒk/ by Machel Montano (2011), and “Dutty” dirty /ˈdɒˌti/ and “Tusty” thirsty /ˈtɒsˌti/ by Blaxx (2007, 2009). In these songs, the TCE vowel /ɒ/ occurs in the hook, “that part of a song’s musical and lyrical material through which the song remains in popular memory and is instantly recognizable in popular consciousness” (Shepherd & Horn, 2003). Because of the saliency of the language variant in the hook, rich folk metalanguage is found in Youtube comments. The hook also has the call-response function (Smitherman, 1977) of inviting the listener to identify ideologically with a certain type of vagabondage that is licensed during carnival, and to embody a response through louche, improvisational dance. Discography Blaxx. (2007). Dutty. On Soca gold 2007 [CD]. Jamaica, NY: VP Records. Blaxx. (2009). Tusty. On Soca gold 2009 [CD]. Jamaica, NY: VP Records. Kes the Band. (2011). Wotless. On Wotless: The carnival album [CD]. Trinidad: Kes the Band. Montano, Machel. (2011). Hard wuk. On The return [CD]. Trinidad: Ruf Rex Records / Xtatik Ltd. References Bakhtin, M. (1968). Rabelais and his world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Niedzielski, N., & Preston, D. (2000). Folk linguistics. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. Shepherd, J., & Horn, D. (Eds.). (2003). Continuum encyclopedia of popular music of the world: Performance and Production (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Continuum. Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication, 23(3), 193-229. Smitherman, G. (1977). Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge University Press.