INTRODUCTION
Although it is well accepted that a name for a language (or people) is
never neutral but always “exists in a dialectical relationship with
social cognition and social behavior” (Smitherman
1991:117), the potential of names for shedding light on the social
and linguistic reality of a particular linguistic situation has not yet
been fully explored. Naming conventions are rarely investigated in much
detail. They are generally discussed only briefly in the introductory
sections of studies dealing with specific (socio)linguistic topics about
the language so named (but see Smitherman 1991,
Baugh 1991, Tabouret-Keller
1997).
Most of the research on conventions for naming language varieties
deals with situations in which several different names are employed to
designate what appears to be, from a linguist's perspective, a single
language. Based on an analysis focusing on the etymology of the terms in
question and details about the social, political, and historical
circumstances of their emergence and their users, several different kinds
of patterns have been identified. The different terms may either
correspond to different varieties of what a linguist would call “the
same language” (cf. Goodman's [1971] discussion on Ma'a/Mbugu as two
stylistic variants of the same language, or Mous
2003 on Ma'a/Mbugu as the making of a mixed language), or
they may reflect a conflict between native and non-native naming
practices, as in the case of the terms “Eskimo” vs.
“Inuit.” There are, however, also situations in which some of
the coexisting names refer to different social varieties of the same
language, others are self-designations, and yet others are official or
colonial designations (cf. Mufwene 1997 on
Kikongo/Kituba). For example, Pierre Alexandre raises some of these
traditional questions for Africa when he asks:
Are Akuapen Twi and Asante Twi two dialects of the same
language or two different languages? Are Laadi, Sundi, Mbembe, etc.
dialects of a single kiKongo language, and, if not, is there such a thing
as kiKongo? The Native speakers' opinion on such points can differ
markedly from that of the linguists. My own tendency is to give more
weight to the former, that is to use an anthropological rather than a
purely linguistic approach. The rule ‘one language name = one
language’ is generally useful, although far from absolute. (Alexandre 1971:655)
Another well-documented case is that of “Serbo-Croatian.”
Depending on political and identity-related issues, it is either said to
consist of one, two, three, or four different languages – Serbian,
Croatian, Bosniac, and Montenegrin (see Thomas 1994, 2004; Calvet 1999; Bugarski
2004).
In the case of languages with a written tradition, the so-called
nonstandard varieties are traditionally held in low esteem by social
actors and public institutions, at least overtly, and are carefully
distinguished from the so-called standard variety. In Francophone
countries, for instance, nonstandard varieties, including French-lexified
creoles, are viewed as “collateral languages” – that is,
varieties that are related to standard French but that are not considered
to be part of it. Both native speakers and outsiders refer to them using
terms such as “patois” or “bad French,” which have
overtly negative connotations. Researchers generally take this to mean
that the native speakers have to a certain degree internalized negative
attitudes about their native language (cf. Eloy
2004 for French nonstandard varieties, and Bavoux 2002 for French creoles). However, language
attitude studies in anglophone Caribbean creole communities call into
question such an interpretation. They show that even though people tend to
use such terms to designate their language, they usually still attach a
positive covert value to them, especially in in-group settings (cf. Mühleisen 2001 on Trinidad). Sidnell's
(1998:94) discussion of language terms used in
an Indo-Guyanese village (e.g., “broken down language,”
“mix-up talk,” “brawlin' talk,”
“patwa”) suggests not only that these allegedly derogatory
terms do not carry negative connotations for their users but also that
they do not refer to the same object, the creole. They designate
different locally recognized social, ethnic, functional, and stylistic
varieties of the creole. This is so partially because native speakers,
unlike linguists, are not committed to a structural analysis and are free
to name varieties on the basis of genre associations and social, identity,
communicative, and other functions.1
This was
pointed out by an anonymous reviewer.
Although these investigations have provided valuable information about
the sociohistorical development of the community, their insights into the
linguistic and social realities of an area are relatively limited. There
seem to be two main reasons for this. First, scholars have not fully
explored the socially constitutive nature of naming conventions. Second,
researchers have tended to rely on a limited range of perspectives: their
own, those of other linguists, and possibly that of the native speaker.
They generally have not considered in detail how these names are employed
in discourse by the various social actors in the local linguistic market
(Bourdieu 1982). The native speaker's
approach which determines linguistic status on the basis of political,
social, historical, and other factors “is in most cases of little
relevance for the ‘pure’ linguist” (Alexandre 1971:655), whose decisions are based on
structural resemblances or differences in phonology, morphology, lexicon,
and other formal systems.
A few studies also deal with situations in which a single term is used
to refer to more than one language or variety. In these cases, researchers
generally have focused on demonstrating the term's ambiguity and
sometimes have argued in favor of abandoning it or have proposed the
creation of new terms. Consider, for instance, the case of Arabic.
Researchers generally highlight the designation's ambiguity and
propose strategies to adapt it to the sociolinguistic reality of the
linguistic practices in Arabic and the norms that govern them. For
instance, Ferguson 1959 describes the reality of
Arabic practices as a koiné and proposes the term “Arabic
koiné.” Kaye 1994 proposes the term
“Arabic multiglossia,” while Calvet
1999 prefers “Arabic schizoglossia.” More recently,
Caubet 2001 proposes using modifiers, such as
“Maghrebine” vs. “dialectal” Arabic, to
distinguish the different varieties.
In Guyane (called “French Guiana” in English), the term
“Takitaki” has in recent years come to be widely used as a
cover term to designate the languages associated with the populations of
African descent who originate from Suriname. The term derives from the
creoles of Suriname (Sranan, Aluku, Ndyuka, and Pamaka), in which it
generally means ‘to chatter’ (Shanks
2000:189).2
Takitaki is the
reduplicated form of the verb taki ‘to speak, to
say’. In the creoles of Suriname reduplication expresses a range of
functions, among them intensification of an activity (cf. Huttar & Huttar 1994). Similar terms have been
used to designate other creoles. Talkee-Talkee, for example, is
an obsolete term for Jamaican and for Krio (Norval Smith, p.c., October
2005).
There seems to be a tradition among linguists and
anthropologists to argue in favor of abandoning the term
“Takitaki” because it is felt to have pejorative connotations
and to be linguistically inadequate. Any careful observer of the local
context will, however, quickly notice that the term conveys quite
different things to different sections of Guyanese society. And while some
groups of people (such as linguists) are fiercely opposed to this term
because of its allegedly negative connotations, other sections of the
society consider it to be socially neutral.
The aim of this article is twofold. First, we investigate the
sociolinguistic complex commonly referred to as “the creoles of
Suriname in Guyane.” Second, we propose a multi-perspective approach
to the description of languages. We explore the conflicting uses of the
term “Takitaki” in order to determine, by means of a discourse
analytic method, what they suggest about the local social and linguistic
setting. In particular, we investigate the following issues:
(i) What do the local linguistic terminology and the term
“Takitaki” in particular suggest about how the different
social actors conceptualize the social and linguistic
reality?
(ii) What is the sociolinguistic status of
“Takitaki” – from a sociolinguistic point of view, what
is referred to by the term? How is the term evaluated and valued, and by
whom?
(iii) What is the linguistic status of productions referred
to by the name “Takitaki” – from a linguistic point of
view, is it a language or a social, stylistic, or other kind of language
variety?
The study considers the points of view of three kinds of social
actors:
(a) The “native” perspective, generally the
perspective of the Eastern Maroon (EM) population, who are speakers of the
creoles Aluku, Ndyuka, Pamaka (but see below);
(b) the perspective(s) of linguists working in the region;
and
(c) the non-native, non-linguist's perspective(s), the
point of view of the other “ethnic” groups (e.g., Amerindian
and metropolitan French populations and the creole populations of French
Guiana and Suriname).
The investigation shows that the different local social actors do not
only project different social evaluations onto the linguistic productions
referred to as “Takitaki,” but they also have different views
about the internal structure of the populations who use the variety.
Moreover, they also assign different linguistic structures to these
linguistic productions and conceptualize in very different ways the
relations among the different varieties covered by the same term. Overall,
the name “Takitaki” appears to cover a range of linguistic
practices. They are similar in that they predominantly involve linguistic
material from the creoles of Suriname, but their actual linguistic makeup
and sociolinguistic status vary significantly. This investigation suggests
that only an analytical framework that equally takes account of the social
and linguistic perceptions, attitudes and ideologies of all social actors
and also investigates the linguistic makeup of actual linguistic practices
can provide comprehensive insight into the sociolinguistic makeup of such
a multilingual area.
The article is organized as follows. The second part briefly presents
the social context of the French overseas department of Guyane. The third
part discusses the terminology used to refer to the English-lexified
creoles of Suriname in order to provide a first insight into this complex
linguistic situation and the different perspectives on it that exist. The
fourth part investigates what we called above the sociolinguistic status
of the term “Takitaki,” based on an analysis of its uses in
different kinds of discourse and on the results of a survey that aimed to
elicit attitudes toward Takitaki and other local languages. The fifth part
is a brief description of the linguistic practices in two types of
interactions in which speakers say they used Takitaki. Finally, we
summarize the findings and discuss their implications.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF GUYANE
The French overseas department of Guyane in general and the coastal
region in the west in particular are highly multiethnic and multilingual.
Apart from the Amerindian population, of which six ethnic groups are still
present, various other ethnic groups have come to reside in Guyane as a
result of various sociopolitical factors, such as the slave trade,
colonialism, administrative departmentalization (1946), and recent
migratory movements since the 1960s. They include the population of
metropolitan French origin, which is constantly being renewed and makes up
roughly 10% of the entire population; persons of French Antillean origin;
the Guyanese Creole population, which until recently constituted the
largest ethnic group; and four Surinamese maroon communities
(“maroons” are descendants of escaped African slaves). Recent
migratory movements have also led to the establishment of a small Hmong
community and groups whose members originate from Suriname, Brazil, and
Haiti.
None of these communities is monolingual or is associated with only
one language. The linguistic repertoires of the members of one and the
same community may vary greatly depending on social factors such as
education, occupation, and residence. At this point, it is difficult to
determine the linguistic background of the members of each of these
communities because the French census does not record people's ethnic
and linguistic background.
Table 1 gives a rough idea of the
macrolinguistic situation in Guyane. It presents a breakdown of
Guyane's languages and language varieties, along with some data on
the numbers of speakers. The latter should be considered only an
approximation because the figures represent an attempt to combine
different estimates (Queixalós 2000,
Price 2002, Collectif
2003) with the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted in
Guyane over the past five years (Léglise 2004, 2005, in press).
Overview of the main languages spoken in Guyane.
Regarding the “maroons of Suriname,” the Aluku community
has been established in the interior of Guyane since 1860, while the
traditional villages of the other maroon communities remain in Suriname.
However, Saamaka as well as Ndyuka and Pamaka men have been coming to
Guyane since about the 1860s for short or longer periods in search of cash
labor opportunities (Price & Price 2003).
The presence of these three maroon groups has, however, greatly increased
since the civil war in Suriname in the late 1980s. The maroons have now
become a permanent part of the Guyanese society.
OVERVIEW OF NAMING CONVENTIONS FOR THE
CREOLES OF SURINAME
A number of different terms currently are used to refer to the
linguistic complex generally called “the creoles of Suriname.”
The various terms are hardly synonymous; they refer either to distinct
sociolinguistic entities or to different social conceptualizations and
evaluations of the same linguistic space. Table
2 gives an overview of the most common terms and matches them with
the groups of people who typically employ them.
Naming the creoles of Suriname spoken in Guyane. (A, B, and C
designate distinct languages.)
Table 2 reveals quite strikingly that the
three broad groups of social actors identified above not only use
partially different terms to refer to the forms of speech that belong to
this linguistic complex; they also conceptualize it in quite different
ways.
The most striking difference exists between the Eastern Maroon (EM)
perspective and that of non-natives in Guyane. EMs distinguish among three
different languages (which for the purposes of this article we call
Languages A, B, and C), five distinct native ethnic varieties for Language
A, and at least one social variety of Language A and one of Language C.
Moreover, they also recognize the existence of non-native varieties of
their native language.
In contrast to the EM perspective, non-EMs in Guyane essentially do
not make or perceive any of these distinctions. The fact that they employ
the same term to refer to all the speech forms distinguished by EMs
suggests that they consider them to be one and the same thing –
Takitaki. The perspective of non-natives in Suriname also differs from
that of EMs and non-natives in Guyane. The Surinamese perspective
recognizes the existence of two or three different languages –
Languages A and C, and possibly also B – but it does not acknowledge
the existence of social and ethnic varieties of Language A.
Foreign linguists working in the region, like EMs, recognize that
several different languages are present and also that Language A has
several ethnic varieties. In fact, they generally work more or less
exclusively on one or another ethnic variety. However, most of them are
little concerned with the existence of social varieties, particularly
non-native varieties.
SOCIAL MEANINGS AND EVALUATION OF
TAKITAKI
This section investigates the social meanings that are locally
associated with the term “Takitaki” by examining the use of
the term in different discourses. It focuses both on the social meanings
and the linguistic structure that members of the local communities assign
to the linguistic productions they refer to by the name
“Takitaki,” and on their implicit and explicit social
evaluations of these linguistic entities. The investigation is based on
three kinds of data. The first is an analysis of individual interviews
with adults living in Guyane who come from various ethnic backgrounds and
from a wide range of professional backgrounds (e.g., the building
industry, agriculture, the post office, teaching, medicine; see also Léglise 2005, in press). Interviewees were
asked to discuss their own linguistic background and the linguistic
situation in Guyane. The second data set is the result of a school survey
that elicited schoolchildren's perceptions of the local linguistic
situation and their attitudes toward the various linguistic varieties
(Léglise 2004). Because 60% of the
Guyanese population is under 20 years of age, it was important to have
quantitative and qualitative data concerning this section of the
population, which seems also to be implicated importantly in the naming
practices discussed here. The third data set is an analysis of selected
writings on the linguistic situation of Guyane by linguists working in the
region. These three kinds of data were analyzed employing a French
critical discourse analytical framework (Foucault
1972, Maingueneau 1995). The
interpretation of the maroon discourses is based on consultations with
local informants and about ten years of participation and observation in
the community, employing a linguistic anthropological approach.
Takitaki and non-natives
The analysis of uses of Takitaki by non-natives (in Guyane), notably
persons with a metropolitan French background or a local Guyanese Creole
background, in interviews carried out in French dealing with their
language attitudes and patterns of language use, shows clearly that the
term carries negative connotations for them. It is considered to be not a
local language but the language of recent immigrants:
Takitaki is generally assumed to consist of only one variety that is
employed in the same way by all maroons (see ex. 2). It is not considered
to have the status of a language but is felt to be a derivative of
something more concrete and prestigious:
This variety is also considered to be quite simple. Non-native
speakers of Takitaki varieties generally maintain that it is easily
learned and constitutes an easy and natural way of communicating with
people who do not speak European languages (see exx. 3, 4). This is a
common stereotype about creoles in general:
Takitaki is viewed as a lingua franca which, however, carries a strong
ethnic association (5) and appears to be the only viable means of
communication in certain parts of Guyane (6):
In terms of its linguistic status, linguistic productions called
“Takitaki” are typically categorized as a kind of bad
English:
Moreover, Takitaki is generally assumed to be a simple speech variety
which, compared with French, is easy to learn because it does not have
“abstract categories” or “a grammar” and
“lacks beauty”:
Takitaki and young EMs
The analysis of the uses of Takitaki by young EMs living in Guyane and
attending primary or secondary school there suggests that it is employed
mainly in interactions carried out in French with non-EMs (e.g.,
metropolitan French or Creole teachers, classmates from other ethnic
groups, or European researchers; see ex. 12). However, it was also
occasionally employed by them during conversations with one of the authors
in one of the Eastern Maroon Creole (EMC) varieties (13) when they did not
know the researcher. In relation to outsiders, the term has several
distinct uses. It may be used to refer to the variety spoken by outsiders
or non-EMs, such as people of metropolitan French, other European,
Haitian, or Guyanese Creole ethnic origin (12, 13). In this context, the
term appears to designate a variety that is not considered to be
“real Nenge” but a kind of learner's or L2 variety
– what is traditionally covered by the term “Basaa
Nenge”:
Takitaki can also be employed as an out-group designation of the
mother tongue. When it is used in this sense, the assumption is that the
interlocutor (e.g., a metropolitan French person) does not understand the
local social and linguistic diversity, such as the fact that there are
different maroon groups who speak different linguistic varieties. The name
of their ethnic group and/or that of their ethnic variety of EMC is
supplied only if the interlocutor indicates that he or she has some
understanding of the linguistic structure of the community, as with
further or repeated questioning:
In addition to being used as an out-group designation for one's
mother tongue, “Takitaki” is also used by young EMs to refer
to the language common to all EMs, the EMC. This makes it possible to
convey to an outsider that all EMs constitute a common social or ethnic
group that speaks one common language. In this sense,
“Takitaki” is similar to the natively used term
“Nenge” (ex. 16). Currently, “Takitaki” used in
this sense competes with the term “Businenge (Tongo)”
‘the language of the people of the interior’. The terms seem
to be used interchangeably, but “Businenge Tongo,” which was
introduced some years ago by a group of young Alukus at the Regional
Council (Conseil Régional) of Guyane (Price
& Price 2003), is now also frequently used by official bodies.
As illustrated in the exchange in (16), “Businenge” is usually
used only if the person being addressed appears to have some understanding
of the local situation – for example, if she has rejected the term
“Takitaki” or demanded further explanation.
There are several possible reasons for this last use of
“Takitaki.” Some of the children employ this term to refer to
their mother tongue because they claim not to know the actual name of
“their” ethnic group/L1, as appears to be the case in
(16). Such children are generally not in close contact with the members of
a particular maroon community. They may, for instance, come from a mixed
marriage where the family associates more closely with the family of the
non-EM parent, or they may have grown up in a setting where members of
different maroon groups live side by side, as in the urban centers, as in
(15). However, this does not appear to be very common because very few
children claimed to be ignorant about their linguistic background.
There are additional reasons why EMs choose to use the term
“Takitaki” instead of the name of an ethnic variety. In a
number of cases, by using this term the respondents were signaling their
disinclination to reveal their ethnic background. The most common reason
for this seems to be that the youngsters want to assert, in front of
outsiders, the existence of many similarities among all EMs that
essentially make them part of a common social entity. This usage is
particularly prominent among members of the smaller maroon groups (Aluku,
Pamaka), who, rather than being counted as Ndyuka, prefer to highlight the
similarities among all three EM groups.
Despite close cultural similarities among the different EM groups,
relations between them have not always been amicable. The Ndyuka, who are
by far the largest EM group and who were formally recognized by the Dutch
colonizers in 1760, strategically used their relatively exceptional status
to dominate the Aluku and the Pamaka and functioned as intermediaries
between these groups and the colonizers (Hoogbergen
1990). To this day, therefore, most Aluku and to a lesser extent
Pamaka do not generally appreciate being referred to as Ndyuka. Moreover,
in the context of large-scale migration, the differences among the maroon
groups are increasingly being leveled. In the new context they largely
face the same issues, such as finding jobs and housing.3
Price & Price (2003:93ff.) argue
that the Aluku are currently not subject to the same conditions in coastal
Guyane as the other maroons because they are French nationals by
birth.
Increasingly, women and men from different maroon groups
join forces to meet these challenges, thereby creating networks that are
not primarily based on ethnic group, clan, and family affiliation, as is
the case in their traditional villages. Children growing up in the urban
context therefore tend to be acculturated to a different social reality
and consequently develop a relatively different sense of
“ethnic” membership. They identify with all those whose
background is very similar – other maroons. Evidence in favor of the
emergence of a pan-maroon identity among school-age children can also be
seen in the fact that a relatively large number of youngsters in St.
Laurent responded on further questioning with “Businenge
Tongo,” a term that clearly alludes to a pan-maroon reality, and
provided the name of an ethnic variety/group only upon repeated
questioning.
4 See also Price & Price
(2003:93ff.), who argue that a pan-maroon
identity is in the process of emerging among urban maroon adults but is
partially being undermined by current French naturalization
politics.
Another, related reason for avoiding reference to one's ethnic
background seems to be a desire to highlight intergenerational or
ideological differences in the community (cf. Vernon
1985). By using the more general terms, the youngsters essentially
highlight the fact that they identify with an urban European lifestyle and
world view and distance themselves from the traditional and rural context.
As shown in (17), the rural and traditional tends to be attributed to
previous generations:
Finally, in some cases we can hypothesize that young maroons employ
the term “Takitaki” to “hide” their ethnic
background because it is more difficult for them to assume a specific
ethnic identity. For instance, several authors (Jolivet
1990, Price & Price 2003, Léglise 2004) have remarked on the fact that in
the urban context, a Saamaka ethnic identity carries strongly negative
connotations. It is associated with backwardness and is widely used as an
insult. For young Saamaka, using the term “Takitaki” is a
convenient way to disguise the fact that they are Saamaka, as in (18). It
allows them to assert their maroon origin without having to specify their
“shameful” specific origin. In their view, it does not really
make a difference because most metropolitan French people and French
Creoles will not be able to tell the difference between Eastern Maroons
and Saamaka anyway:
Takitaki and local Amerindians
The interviews with schoolchildren of Amerindian origin revealed that
there are at least two groups of people who could be called native
speakers of Takitaki. Besides people of EM descent, there are also many
young people of Amerindian origin who claim it as (one of) their mother
tongues. Arawak schoolchildren from villages near St. Laurent distinguish
between two types of Takitaki: the “Takitaki of the
Amerindians” (19), which they claim to speak themselves, and the
“Takitaki of the blacks,” the variety or varieties spoken
mainly by persons of Afro-Surinamese origin. When asked, speakers insist
that these are distinct:
Takitaki and linguists
In the literature, there are at least five different uses of Takitaki.
Robert Hall (1948, 1966), for instance, appears to employ
“Takitaki” to refer to Sranan Tongo, but it is possible that
he uses it as a cover term for both Sranan Tongo and the EMC varieties;
the latter used to be viewed as “rural varieties” of the
former.5
The linguistic description of
Takitaki in Hall 1948, which is based on
Herskovits & Herskovits (1936), resembles
modern Sranan Tongo. Later linguistic and anthropological publications
about Sranan Tongo employed “Negro-English” (Rens 1953) or the Dutch equivalent
“Neger-Engels/Negerengels” (Voorhoeve
1953). Starting in the late 1950s, the term “Sranan”
seems to gain prominence in the linguistic literature (Voorhoeve 1962). Current linguistic publications on
Guyane (e.g., Launey 1999, Collectif 2003, Goury & Migge
2003) and Suriname (Carlin & Arends
2002) generally avoid the term “Takitaki.”
Taki-Taki is the language of Paramaribo and other parts of
Dutch Guiana, called by its own speakers tàkitáki
or nèngeretóngo Negro language, in Dutch
Neger-Engels, and in German Neger-Englisch. It and the
closely related language of the Saramacca Bush-Negroes are creolized
languages developed out of the jargonized English used by the slaves of
English and Portuguese landholders who settled Dutch Guiana in the middle
of the seventeenth century. Taki-Taki is spoken in several dialects, of
which the chief is the Town-Negro speech of Paramaribo. (Hall 1948:92; footnote numbers deleted from
quotation)
Currently, in some contexts, “Takitaki” is carefully used
to refer to non-native designations of the three ethnic varieties of the
EMC (Ndyuka, Pamaka, Aluku) and to Saamaka (22), while in others it is
used to refer to these three or four varieties and Sranan Tongo,
and/or an interdialectal koïné or a variety of foreigner
talk spoken in St. Laurent:
[Aluku, Ndyuka, Paramaka, Saramaka, …] Sur
le Maroni est très présent le sranan tongo, créole
général du Surinam, de base anglaise et en cours de
relexification néerlandaise, servant de langue véhiculaire
sur cette frontière, de plus en plus sous une forme appelée
wakaman tongo. L'ensemble des créoles à base anglaise
mentionnés [note: Qu'en Guyane française on nomme
génériquement taki taki, terme dans lequel le mépris
côtoie l'ignorance] est assez homogène
linguistiquement, la seule déviance notable résidant dans le
lexique saramaka. (Queixalós
2000:302)
‘[Aluku, Ndyuka, Paramaka, Saramaka,
…] On the Maroni river, Sranan Tongo, the main creole of
Suriname, which is an English-lexified creole that is in the process of
being relexified with Dutch, serves on this border as a lingua franca in
the form of a variety increasingly referred to by the name of Wakaman
Tongo. All the English-lexified creoles mentioned (note: which in French
Guiana are collectively referred to by the name “Takitaki,” a
term which combines contempt and ignorance) are linguistically
sufficiently homogeneous. The only divergence is found in the lexicon of
Saramaka.’
Le terme taki-taki, très couramment utilisé,
est pourtant à éviter pour deux raisons: a) il est
dépréciatif et surtout b) il est ambigu, puisqu'il peut
désigner alternativement n'importe lequel des parlers
businenge, mais aussi le sranan tongo, ou une variante de “sranan
tongo étrangère” qui se développe à St
Laurent chez les populations non businenge. (Collectif
2003:293)
‘The term “Takitaki,” widely used in
Guyane, should be avoided for two reasons: a) it has negative
connotations, and in addition, b) it is ambiguous because it may designate
alternatively any of the languages of the maroons but also Sranan Tongo or
a variety of foreigner talk of Sranan Tongo that is emerging in St.
Laurent among the non-maroon populations.’
Il est ambigu, puisqu'il peut désigner
alternativement n' importe lequel des parlers businenge, mais aussi
le sranantongo, ou une sorte de koïnê interdialectale (dite
aussi ‘langue du fleuve’) en constitution sur le Maroni et
à St Laurent. (Collectif
2000:3)
‘It is ambiguous because it may designate alternatively
any of the languages of the maroons but also Sranan Tongo or a kind of
interdialectal koïnê (also called ‘the language of the
river’) that is emerging on the Marowijne river and in St
Laurent.’
For other linguists and anthropologists, “Takitaki” refers
to an emerging language spoken on the Maroni River. It is assumed to be
different from Sranan Tongo and from Nenge, and is called
“Takitaki” only by persons of European background and French
Creoles:
Accompagnant l'émergence d'une conscience de
groupe, se forge sur le Maroni une ‘langue du fleuve’ que
Blancs et Créoles confondent, sous l'appellation taki-taki,
soit avec le sranan tongo, créole du Surinam, soit avec l'une
des langues des Noirs Marrons qu'ils ne distinguent pas. (Grenand 2004:2)
‘Accompanied by the emergence of a group identity, a
separate “language of the river” is emerging on the Marowijne
river. Under the name of Takitaki, it is confused by Europeans and French
Creoles either with Sranan Tongo, the creole of Suriname, or with one of
the languages of the maroons which they do not distinguish from one
another.’
Comparing the different uses of “Takitaki”
and consequences for the linguistic situation
Analysis of uses of the term “Takitaki” by linguists and
by various social actors in Guyane showed clearly that the term is used to
refer to a number of different linguistic entities, including several
kinds of first-language varieties associated with specific local ethnic
groups (e.g., Amerindians and maroons), a newly emerging koiné, a
“simplified” code, and a second-language or learner's
variety. It may also be used to designate either one specific variety of
the EMC or all maroon varieties, including or excluding Saamaka. The
discussion also made it clear that different social actors seem to agree
neither on the number of varieties covered by the term
“Takitaki” nor on their sociolinguistic and linguistic status.
Table 3 summarizes the findings from the above
discussion.
Comparison of uses of “Takitaki” in discourse. (A: Eastern
Maroon Creole; B: Saamaka; C: Sranan Tongo.)
Some of the varieties mentioned by the local actors are relatively
well described, such as the L1 varieties of the three EM groups (cf. Huttar & Huttar 1994, Goury
& Migge 2003). However, a number of the other varieties –
for instance, the L1 varieties spoken by Amerindian groups and the
learner's variety, lingua franca, and social varieties – so far
have not received much attention from linguists. Overall, the analysis of
the usage of the term “Takitaki” suggests that the local
linguistic situation also involves the following kinds of varieties:
(i) Several L1 varieties of Sranan Tongo, such as the
language that Amerindian children call “Takitaki of the
Amerindians”;
(ii) Several L2 varieties of Sranan Tongo which are employed
by the members of the various non-maroon ethnic groups of Suriname and
Guyane;
(iii) Perhaps mixed and structurally “simplified”
varieties employed by non-natives and natives who approximate L1 and L2
varieties of Sranan Tongo when conversing with speakers of these varieties
to facilitate comprehension (i.e., foreigner talk); and
(iv) Bilingual or multilingual varieties (e.g., EMC combined
with elements from Dutch, French, Sranan Tongo) spoken mostly by young
maroons, such as Wakaman Tongo ‘travelers' language’ or
Yunkuman Fasi ‘young man's speech’, or mixed urban speech
varieties.
A BRIEF LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION OF TWO
VARIETIES OF TAKITAKI
This section provides a brief description and comparison of two of the
varieties that are called “Takitaki” by the people employing
them. The data are drawn from a corpus of recordings made in a range of
settings, such as institutional contexts, public areas, and private homes.
The recordings were made by the researchers, local field assistants, or
both. In this section we discuss the characteristics of varieties of
Takitaki used by non-EMs who do not claim this as their first language
(Guyanese Creoles and Europeans), and by non-EMs (Arawak Amerindians) who
claim Takitaki as their first language. The analysis of the salient
properties of these data sets reveals that the Takitaki practices of the
former do not conform closely to native EM speech but instead resemble
what can be called a learner's variety. In contrast, the practices of
Arawaks are strongly similar to native EM practices.
Examples (21–24) are utterances of different Guyanese Creole and
metropolitan French women in their thirties who work as nurses at the
hospital in St. Laurent. They were taken from interactions among the
medical team (nurses and doctors) and several EM patients and some of
their family members. These utterances differ in several ways from native
EM productions. Most important in this respect is the fact that the
constructions are structurally quite reduced. They contain only content
words that are semantically and morphologically salient and transparent,
such as verbs and nouns. Relatively nonsalient elements – such as
the imperfective marker e and the future marker o
– are not preserved, probably because the meanings they convey can
be deduced from the content morphemes and the context in which the
construction occurred.
More complex constructions such as the conditional construction in
(22) are realized as reduced paratactic constructions in which the main
function morphemes (efu, o, i) are omitted. The result resembles
“pidgin English” – ‘not know, no
tablets’:
Another strategy involves the regularization of variation. From among
the natively used variants, speakers of this L2 variety pick out the most
salient variant and use it as the only form in all contexts. Such an
element is either morphologically particularly robust or resembles a
similar form in their native language or another language that they know
well. For instance, in the EMC (and Sranan Tongo) there is variation in
the expression of the second person singular pronoun between i
(non-emphatic, occurs before consonants), y (non-emphatic, before
vowel) and yu (emphatic). However, in the L2 varieties only
yu is consistently used. Yu is probably the most salient
form for non-native speakers because it resembles the English second
person pronoun.
A fourth strategy involves the use of French elements in place of EM
elements that were most likely not acquired. In (23), the EM conditional
marker efu is replaced by its French counterpart si. And
in (24) the EM focus marker na is replaced by French
c'est in an example that could be an instance of
code-switching:
Finally, L2 speakers tend to select Sranan Tongo lexical items rather
than EM ones in those cases in which the two differ. The examples in (25)
illustrate this:
It is thus possible to conclude that public exchanges that are not
carried out in French by hospital personnel and are often referred to by
its practitioners with the term “Takitaki” involve a speech
form that is lexically based on Sranan Tongo rather than on EMC, and
structurally quite reduced. Moreover, it involves interference features
from the various languages the practitioners know. The fact that this
variety is lexically based largely on Sranan Tongo rather than on the EMC
is most likely due to the fact that EMs tend to shift to Sranan Tongo in
public out-group contexts (Migge 2002, forthcoming).
In contrast to the learner's variety discussed above, the
linguistic practices of Arawak Amerindians much more closely resemble
native EM practices. Consider the short exchange in (26), drawn from a
recording realized in the home of an Arawak family living in the village
of Ballaté6
The participants included
one of the researchers, an EM male friend, an Arawak couple, and their two
young children. The adults were all in their thirties. The two men knew
each other reasonably well from a work-training program. It was a relaxed
interaction.
:
The constructions employed by Arawak Amerindians are clearly not
structurally reduced compared with the native EM model. They employ the
function morphemes typical of the creoles of Suriname in the same way that
the Afro-Surinamese population does. For instance, Arawaks regularly
employ the imperfective marker e to indicate that an event takes
place habitually (lines 1–2), and the relative past marker
be(n) to convey that an event has occurred prior to the
point of speaking (line 11). Moreover, they use the demonstrative
modifiers in postnominal position (line 4), the copula na in
equative contexts (line 7), and the copula de in locational
contexts (line 5). Focus and presentative constructions regularly involve
the particle (n)a (lines 2, 4), and nominal constituents
are connected using the preposition anga ‘with’ (line
5). The pronominal forms also undergo phonological change when they are
followed by a vowel, as in EMC – for example, u
‘we’ (line 9) changes to w (lines 1–2), or
den ‘they’ (line 9) changes to de (line 1).
The same is true of the negation marker: no changes to
nei when followed by the imperfective marker, and to na
when followed by the verb a(bi) ‘to have’
(line 9). The main difference between native EM practices and those of
Arawaks seems to reside in the fact that the latter overwhelmingly select
Sranan Tongo-based lexical items rather than EMC-based ones in those cases
where they differ, such as the examples in (25).
This brief comparison of two varieties of what is referred to by its
practitioners as Takitaki strongly suggests that this term covers a range
of practices that are structurally quite distinct. However, they clearly
resemble one another in that they predominantly involve vocabulary from
Sranan Tongo.
CONCLUSION
Our investigation strongly supports Irvine & Gal's (2001:36)
tenet that “there is no view from nowhere” in representing
linguistic differences, and that “acts of speaking and acts of
describing both depend on and contribute to the work of
representations.” (79). Our analysis further suggests that this is
also true of naming practices: Acts of naming linguistic varieties are
never neutral but are always dependent on and contribute to their
representation and to the representation of the speakers involved. With
this essay, we hope to have shown that in order to understand the local
social and particularly the linguistic situation of a multiethnic contact
area, it is vital to assume an emic point of view. However, we
propose also that it is vital to broaden the current linguistic
anthropological notion of “emic” (Pike
1964, Mondada 2002) to include both the
native perspective and the perspectives of the different social actors
involved in the area and situation. Linguistic descriptions thus should
not rely merely on linguists' or natives' perspectives but also
need to consider the various other perspectives present in the local
linguistic market.
With this article we have devised a new methodology for the
documentation of languages with specific reference to multilingual areas.
We proposed a three-step procedure that we applied to Takitaki: first,
analysis of naming conventions; second, analysis of language attitudes
using a discursive method; and third, a linguistic analysis of language
varieties. In relation to step one, our analysis departs from previous
discussions of naming conventions in that we were not concerned with the
sociohistorical aspects of naming conventions and their political and
linguistic appropriateness. Instead, we gave equal attention to each
perspective, focusing on the insights that each view provides on the
current makeup of the linguistic space and the possible directions of its
development. The investigation of the naming conventions employed for the
creoles of Suriname strikingly showed that the different social actors
– EMs, Amerindians, members of other local ethnic groups, and
linguists – have quite different perspectives on the makeup of the
sociolinguistic space involving the creoles of Suriname in Guyane. They
have different views on the sociolinguistic structure of this group of
varieties, regarding such factors as the number of varieties involved,
their relationships to one another, and the population groups associated
with each of them.
With respect to the second step, we decided to take a closer look at
the term “Takitaki” because it seemed to be problematic.
Applying a discourse analytic approach, we showed that, contrary to
linguists' view of this term, it is invested with various positive
and negative social meanings by various groups of social actors. It is
also used to refer to a variety of speech forms that are currently not
practiced only by the maroons who are traditionally held to be the native
speakers of these. Moreover, it turned out that young urban maroons
strategically employ Takitaki in interactions with non-EMs to portray or
assert newly emerging social realities (e.g. pan-maroon identities) to
them.
In regard to step three, we provided a preliminary description of two
different practices commonly referred to as “Takitaki” by
their practitioners. One of them significantly differs from native EM
practices and appears to be a type of learner's variety that is
surprisingly based on Sranan Tongo rather than on EMC. The second variety
also appears to be a variety of Sranan Tongo that is spoken natively by
young Amerindians; it shows no reduction when compared with other L1
varieties. Other practices covered by the term “Takitaki” are
currently being described in order to realize a systematic linguistic
analysis of the different locally identified speech forms or varieties.
Based on such an investigation, we hope to gain comprehensive insight into
this dynamic linguistic space and to avoid the current practice of
linguistic documentation which focuses largely on monostylistic
productions (cf. Foley 2005).
