THE EDITOR, Sir:
I AM responding to a letter recently published in your newspaper and written by John Russell on the topic of 'Patois versus the English Language.'
As a Jamaican living overseas, an educator, a student and professor of linguistics, and an individual who is always open to new information, I must share with your general readership that some important research findings in language acquisition, language learning, and language development, during the last 40 years, have yielded some valuable discoveries about the nature of human language and, particularly, about the phenomenon we describe as 'grammar.'
Unfortunately, there remains much confusion and therefore controversy about what language is, how it works, and how it is represented in different linguistic communities.
Some of the more revealing discoveries shed light on the innate or internal representation of language prior to its growth and development in an external (qua 'subjective', hence 'prescriptive') linguistic environment.
On the basis of this new information many linguistic scholars can now distinguish two broad categories of language manifestation, namely, 'I-Language', or language innately represented in the brain and largely encapsulated from environmental stimuli, versus 'E-Language', that results from direct engagement with the environment and with all of the artefacts associated with the environment: school, government agencies, commerce and industry.
It is particularly in this latter aspect of language manifestation that 'prescriptive' rules of grammar are ordered, partially as a means of establishing a social hierarchy in society, and defining an etiquette or 'standard' for linguistic behaviour.
When Mr. Russell depicts 'Patois' as being tantamount to degenerative linguistic behaviour, he is unwittingly 'prescribing' how a language 'should' behave, rather than 'describing' how it is organised. Nor does he ever explain how language actually functions innately and independently of any human interventions or prescriptions for language.
Mr. Russell also finds it necessary to pit 'Patois' against 'English,' and therefore to encourage some nefarious linguistic warfare. By developing his arguments within an imperialistic colonial context, he finds it necessary to 'choose' one language over another the 'good' from the 'bad' or 'inferior'. He therefore fails to recognise that, like walking, or like the human circulatory system, language is a naturalistic, autonomous phenomenon, that humans 'inherit', not 'create'.
Perhaps Mr. Russell might care to inquire about the origin of the name 'Patois'. He might discover that it is an umbrella or 'generic' term employed in an imperialistic colonial context to marginalise an entire social, ethnic, linguistic community; and therefore to establish a 'rationale' for discriminating against that community. During the period of slavery that type of behaviour was commonplace. It is regrettable, however, when we still find individuals in a 'modern' post-colonial, independent society such as Jamaica still clinging to the trapping of language, class, and social discrimination by asserting one language over another.
The issue need not be, must not be, 'Patois' versus 'English.' Rather, the issue should be 'the embracing of Jamaican and English. Please, not 'Patois.' What's in a name? A whole lot! Let's change the linguistic paradigm in which we view our native Jamaica. Let's not say we 'love it, yet refuse to uplift it or to encourage literacy development in Jamaican. Let's cease from calling one language 'inferior' (that language which is closest to our soul and our heritage) and calling the other language 'superior' (that language that framed our colonial legacy of imperialism and inferiority). As we think about our native language so we think and feel about our cultural birthright. We may once have been 'British'. We are now 'Jamaican', as our national anthem occasionally reminds us.
I am, etc.,
KARL C. FOLKES, Ph.D.
Resource Specialist
Office of English Language Learners
Board of Education of the City
Of New York
