Brainwash from English

Barunga Kriol Speakers' Views on Their Own Language

Bibliographic Data

ID5010469
AuthorsMaïa Ponsonnet (0000-0002-8879-9798, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume52
Issue2
Pages160-183
Publication date2010-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5483 • E-ISSN: 1944-6527
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anl.2010.0010
OpenAlexW2018512610
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited8

This article deals with the sociolinguistics of Kriol, an English-lexifier creole widely used among Aboriginal people in the north of the Northern Territory in Australia. Some views and ideologies about their own language expressed by four first-language Barunga Kriol speakers in a series of speech interactions are presented, and possible interpretations are suggested, based on understanding of speakers' local and personal backgrounds as well as sociolinguistic and historical clues. While the youngest speaker was somewhat critical of Kriol, older and middle-aged speakers expressed affection and pride for it, even though their depiction of Kriol as "in between" English and traditional Aboriginal languages was in line with the youngest speaker's views. One must be cautious about drawing general conclusions from such a small number of cases, but two possible factors triggering the discrepant evaluations may be the older speakers' greater awareness of the history of Kriol and of its recognition as a respectable language and their mastery of ancestral Aboriginal languages

British English · Creole language · Depiction · Ideology · Linguistics · Pride · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access