Vendredi 6 mars 2015
Programme Pidgins et Créoles en contact
Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques
9h30 accueil
10h00 Eeva Sippola (University of Bremen) Language Ideologies in Chabacano-speaking communities
12h00 déjeuner sur place
14h00 Clancy Clements (Indiana University) Urbanization, development, and the changes in Korlai
village and its language
Campus CNRS Paris-Villejuif, Salle 511, Bâtiment D, accès http://www.vjf.cnrs.fr/sedyl/venir.php?langue=fr
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Eeva Sippola (University of Bremen)
Language Ideologies in Chabacano-speaking communities
This presentation discusses Chabacano language ideologies. The aim is to shed light on the complex
processes of negotiation of linguistic practices and linguistic and cultural identities in hybrid, multilingual
settings in the creole communities of the Philippines.
The first case study presents the first account of the perceptual dialectology of the Chabacano creoles,
focusing on the varieties spoken in Cavite, Ternate, and Zamboanga (Lesho & Sippola 2014). Chabacano
speakers’ metalinguistic awareness and attitudes about each other’s varieties were studied based on
qualitative analysis of sociolinguistic interviews, interviews from a perceptual map task, and an online
survey. The results show that the speakers consider the three varieties to be separate but mutually
intelligible languages, differing mainly in terms of lexical and phonological differences. These linguistic
differences are attributed to each variety’s perceived closeness to Spanish or the adstrate Philippine
languages. The responses also show that local and traditional identities are important in shaping
perceptions about language use.
The second case study is about Chabacano in rap music and its connections to local identity building
(Sippola in press). Based on a corpus of rap lyrics, sociolinguistic interviews, and participant observation,
the study shows how Chabacano can be used in rap music as a means of empowerment in a language
endangerment situation. Rap empowers young Chabacano speakers as competent users of the creole
variety and it is also widely accepted as a new domain in the community, adding to the traditional
discourses of language promotion and preservation.
These findings contribute to research on language attitudes and ideologies in the Chabacano-speaking
communities, and more generally, demonstrate the potential of using language ideologies (Irvine & Gal
2001, Makihara & Schieffelin 2007) and perceptual dialectology (Preston 1999, Preston 2002) to explore
the social dynamics of creole and other contact situations.
Clancy Clements (Indiana University)
Urbanization, development, and the changes in Korlai village and its language
In the developing world, for example in India, development for the greater good can be measured in many
ways, and these can be captured, admittedly somewhat simplistically, with the notion of ACCESS: access to
health care, to education, to infrastructure (e.g. roads, transportation). With access to infrastructure such
as roads and transportation (a key bridge opening up the area was finished in 1986), the urbanization
process of the village of Korlai on the west coast of India was accelerated significantly, but this
development started much earlier. (Korlai has 800 inhabitants whose native language is Korlai IndoPortuguese [KIP], a creole language.) In 1916, a four-year parochial primary school was built in Korlai that
in 1980 became an elementary and high school, with Marathi, the regional language, and the second
language of the KIP speakers) as the language of education
The inhabitants of Korlai are Roman Catholic. Up until the early 1962, the language of liturgy was
Latin and the parish priests, speakers of Portuguese, delivered sermons and communicated with the
villagers in a restructured variety of Portuguese (foreigner talk). After 1962, Marathi was introduced as the
church language. This was the point at which Marathi became an integral part of Korlai village life outside
of education. Korlai children and adults now pray and learn Catholic doctrine in Marathi.
The improved infrastructure in the area, including the bridge that spanned the wide river just north
of Korlai, opened up the area to developers and industry. This improvement in roads and transportation led
to other changes, as well. From the foundation of Korlai at the end of the 16th century till the middle of the
20th century, its inhabitants were, with rare exceptions, always agriculturalists. With the increased access
to the area, the companies that have located there employ more Korlai inhabitants. And as the Korlai
villagers have begun to take salaried jobs in factories, some have started to sell off their agricultural lands
to developers.
Access to health care and doctors has also improved in the last 40 years. Roman Catholic nuns
opened a medical dispensary in 1976 to serve the Korlai and surrounding population. With their arrival,
there has been regular access to medical doctors and medical procedures that before were inaccessible.
One consequence of this series of developments in education, health care, and infrastructure is that
the FAMILY STRUCTURE of the Korlai inhabitants has begun to change. As agriculturalists, the parents of the
children spent and still spend the days in the fields, while the children stay in the village with the
grandparents. In this system, the speech of the grandparents, a more conservative variety, had a chance to
influence the speech of the children in significant ways, and this family structure still exists today in many
households. However, in the households with factory workers, the mothers who speak a relatively
innovative KIP variety interact significantly more with the children, thereby reducing the impact of the
grandparents’ speech. With the increase in the number of Korlai inhabitants abandoning the traditional
agriculturalist life style to seek factory jobs, this access to more diversity in employment has impacted
transmission of their native language, and in some cases has also influenced how the children learn
Marathi. That is, whereas in the agriculturalist family structure language transmission happens from
grandparents to grandchildren as much as from parents to children, in the blue-collar family structure,
children have more input from their parents, and less from their grandparents. Moreover, many Korlai
mothers of the current generation have completed a significant amount of secondary education and
therefore have a better command of Marathi than people Korlai inhabitants of earlier generations, and are
also more involved in the education of their children.
This access to the many aspects urbanization has had a significant impact on KIP. Over the last
century, it has undergone a typological change due to contact with Marathi. The most salient structural
change is that it has gone from a head-initial to a head-final language in the span of three generations. The
KIP lexicon has also been impacted in a major way. The sampling spans four generations is discussed in this
paper: 1st: two speakers between 60-70 years old, recorded in 1988 who left Korlai as teenagers in 1940
and 1950 respectively; 2nd three speaker between 60-70 years old in 1988 who had lived in Korlai all their
lives; 3rd: three speakers between 11-13 years old in 1988 who had lived in Korlai all their lives; 4th: four
speakers between 10-12 years old recorded in 2011.
In this particular study, the focus is on the extent of borrowing of nouns and verbs from Marathi
into KIP. For example, the data in Tables 1 and 2 below show that borrowing is overwhelmingly found
among nouns, as is predicted (Thomason and Kaufman 1988). For nouns, the largest changes are from
between the 1st and 2nd generations and 3rd and 4th generations, which follows, it will be argued, from the
changes in societal behavior of the Korlai informants. For verbs, the increase in borrowing has been more
gradual, which, it will be argued, is a function of the slow pace at which the borrowing of verbs generally
takes place.
NOUNS
Portuguese Marathi/English
1st: 69% (170/246) 31% (76/246)
2nd: 57% (222/390) 43% (168/390)
3rd: 54% (150/278) 46% (128/278)
4th: 36% (123/345) 64% (222/345)
Table 1. Noun borrowing in KIP
VERBS
Portuguese
Marathi/English
1st: 96% (133/139) 4% (6/139)
2nd: 92% (258/281) 8% (23/281)
3rd: 93% (179/192) 7% (14/192)
4th: 89% (194/219) 11% (25/219)
Table 2. Verb borrowing in KIP
I discuss in detail the nature of the borrowings, which domains of the lexicon are most affected and
which less so, and what the predictions might be for the future development of KIP given the current level
of development of the Korlai área in terms of accessibility to health care, education, and employment
opportunities.