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SOME SOCIOLINGUISTIC FACTORS IN THE PRODUCTION OF STANDARD LANGUAGE IN GUYANA AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE LANGUAGE TEACHER
Author(s) -
Cave George N.
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1970.tb00481.x
Subject(s) - linguistics , psychology , pronunciation , standard english , standard language , population , pronoun , indigenous , noun , sociolinguistics , temptation , sociology , social psychology , ecology , philosophy , demography , biology
Problems in the production of Standard English in Guyana have their roots deep in the historical development of the people. The great admixture within the population—comprised largely of the descendants of former African slaves, former indentured Indian immigrants, citizens of the major European colonizing powers, and the indigenous Amerindians—has led to the incorporation into the Guyanese dialect of many non‐English loans and pronunciation variants, with social‐class and education contributing towards an extensive linguistic continuum. Additional problems derive from the fact that Guyanese Creole has a smaller range of possible consonant clusters than Standard English, uses as a verb any important word in the sentence, and has over two dozen forms of the personal pronoun; and all these factors militate against children of certain social‐class backgrounds in the educational system. Teachers of these children should resist the temptation to ridicule the children's language. They should make systematic analyses of the children's language, and compile accurate statistics of major variant speech forms, which should then be taken up one by one in the classroom to help the children gain mastery.