Cultivating Ambiguity: Notes on Issues of Complexity in Creole Discourse

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Keywords:

Creole discourse, Ambiguity, Simplicity and complexity

Abstract

This paper is a rejoinder to the dialogue concerning complexity and simplicity in pidgin and creole grammars. My position takes a chronotopic and unfinalized view of grammar, Bakhtinian notions that give crucial importance to temporal and spatial contexts in discussions about linguistic development-expansion and historicity of language use. I take a modular perspective and focus on a pragmatic component of grammar: ambiguity in discourse. Linguistic utterances that contain the phrasal verbs rip off and hot up are analyzed in the present study for their ambiguous[1], double-voicing features. My aim is to underscore the importance of recognizing double-voicing as a complex discursive strategy in Afro-Caribbean creole grammar. This feature and other non-salient, zero-marked constructions remain difficult to account for using current metrics of complexity versus simplicity. I invoke insights from Bakhtin and his theory of dialogism in the hope that it can aid our analysis of plurilingualism and the cultivation of ambiguity in creole discourse.


[1] Cultivating ambiguity is a term borrowed from Faraclas and The Working Group on the Agency of Marginalized Peoples in the Emergence of the Afro-Atlantic Creoles (2016).

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Author Biography

Micah Corum, Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, San Germán

Micah Corum is assistant professor of English and linguistics at Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, San Germán. He has two PhDs in English studies. His linguistics doctorate is from University of Hamburg, and his English and Caribbean studies doctorate is from University of Puerto Rico. His research has been published in peer-reviewed linguistics journals, edited volumes on Caribbean studies, and TESOL newsletters.

Published

2018-05-13

How to Cite

Corum, M. (2018). Cultivating Ambiguity: Notes on Issues of Complexity in Creole Discourse. Bakhtiniana. Revista De Estudos Do Discurso, 13(2), Port. 6–31 / Eng. 7. Retrieved from https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/bakhtiniana/article/view/33628

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Articles