Term paper- Waiting in the Twilight

Description.

 Professor said a good piece of literature to perform this paper on would be “Waiting in the Twilight”. because: Jamaica – London movement of family, daugther becomes more and more valued in society. Loses her “Patois” jamaican London English, more and more Standard English. (all needs to be  From the book directly!!!) important keywords for paper. Indicator, marker, stereotype (orig. Labov). Both Labov and Trudgill take as their focus the speech community as a whole and aimed to describe how forms were salient (or not) both within a community . (in-group) as well as to out-group members and how this, then, could be linked with language change.

According to Labov and Trudgill, features of which  English speakers are aware are salient variants. These can be classed as either markers or stereotypes. Variables which are non-salient in the speech community or to the individual speaker are called indicators. The difference between indicators and the other classifications is that indicators only display variation on the social level. (i.e., among the different social classes) but not stylistic variation. Their status, however, can change over time. Markers, on the other hand, are salient but only to in-group members and display variation on both the social and stylistic levels (Labov calls this “consistent stylistic and social stratification,” 1994, p. 78).

Jamaican English

 Markers are subject to change due to their salience (assuming that when a feature is salient it can be controlled. which gives the speaker a choice when constructing utterances). Lastly, stereotypes are salient to both in-group and out-group members and often have an extra high level of awareness attached to them. However, due to their status as stereotype, they often function as a basis for negative comments and are often misrepresentations of vernacular speech. Stereotyped features, though, might enjoy widespread prestige among in-group speakers. This dual status of stereotyped features means that they not only are subject to correction and hypercorrection (Labov, 1994, p. 78) but also that they may not necessarily be likely to change.

Due to their ultra-salient status as this “may inhibit accommodation.” (Trudgill, 1986, p. 125). – linguistic features of e.g. Jamaicain English in London (or other Multicultural London Variants) – dialect, grammar, logics, phonologoly – levels of language use, why does the language change (e.g. through social class change) – literary work does not 1:1 portray E.g. Jamaicain English (Jamaican Pertois) but includes stereotypes thereof in the text – no dialect? – code switching in text, playing with language in text – theoretical background that needs to be layed out and approached: Koch/Österreiches models Language of Distancy, Immediacy and fictional orality ! Form and Language in Sam Sevlons … is a reference work of a similar (not same!) approach of another literary work.

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