Open AccessInformal orthographies, informal ideologies spelling and code switching in British Creole
Author(s) -
Mark Sebba
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
cadernos de linguagem e sociedade
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 2179-4790
pISSN - 0104-9712
DOI - 10.26512/les.v2i1.2952
Subject(s) - creole language , orthography , spelling , ideology , linguistics , norm (philosophy) , english based creole languages , representation (politics) , writing system , subversion , variety (cybernetics) , history , reading (process) , computer science , political science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , modern language , law , language education , politics
This paper is concemed with the written representation of British Creole (a local British variety of Jamaican Creole) which has no standard orthography. Original writing is published from time to time (and we can assume that much unpublished writing goes on as well) using modified Standard English orthographies made up by the original writers. The paper examines what writers actually do when they write Creole and links this to an implicit ideology of "subversion" of the Standard Orthography rather than subservience to it. Some proposals are made up for moving toward a norm for spelling British Creole.