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Classification and counter-classification of language on Saint Barthélemy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Jon F. Pressman
Jon F. Pressman
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010, jpressma@brynmawr.edu
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Abstract

This article analyzes the use of metapragmatic description in the ethnoclassification of language by native speakers on the Franco-Antillean island of Saint Barthélemy. A prevalent technique for metapragmatic description is facilitated by the differential formation of honorific registers in the island's indigenous languages, so that speakers essentialize honorific pronouns as tropes of whole languages and classify the languages in such terms. This process reflects the varied geolinguistic and generational attributes of these speakers, whose register or social-dialectal calculations are all based ultimately on folk ideologies of honorification. (Classification, language ideology, French Creole, metapragmatics, Caribbean sociolinguistics)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 459 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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