“Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community

In this report, I discuss the re-contextualization of a working-class Jamaican speaker’s discourse in the media and the new meanings his speech acquires in the process. The series of re-contextualizations starts out with an interview on Jamaican television, which is in turn remixed into an electroni...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bohmann, Axel
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2012-05-5687
id ndltd-UTEXAS-oai-repositories.lib.utexas.edu-2152-ETD-UT-2012-05-5687
record_format oai_dc
spelling ndltd-UTEXAS-oai-repositories.lib.utexas.edu-2152-ETD-UT-2012-05-56872015-09-20T17:08:44Z“Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech communityEntextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech communityBohmann, AxelJamaican CreolePerformanceEntextualizationLanguage ideologiesFrame analysisIn this report, I discuss the re-contextualization of a working-class Jamaican speaker’s discourse in the media and the new meanings his speech acquires in the process. The series of re-contextualizations starts out with an interview on Jamaican television, which is in turn remixed into an electronic dance song and accompanying music video. The song entextualizes individual stretches of the speaker’s original dis­course into readily identifiable quotes that turn into Jamaican slang items. In the process, linguistic disorderliness is foregrounded in the utterances in question while their propositional content is virtually erased. In a further instance of re-contextualization, the speaker encounters his by now entextualized utterances in an interview on Jamaican breakfast television and struggles to re-establish his originally intended framing of it. His success in the specific interaction is very limited, but viewers’ comments reveal that the interview does effect a change in the meta-linguistic discourse surrounding the incident. I analyze the data as a case in point of ‘speaky spoky,’ a Jamaican label for un­successful attempts to emulate foreign prestige accents, resulting in linguistic dis­orderliness. By considering aspects of performance, entextualization and the keying of different frames, I demonstrate the interactional work that goes into the construc­tion of speaky spoky as a label, as well as the ideological work that label is put to in turn and its political effects. Based on these observations, I argue that speaky spoky is best understood as a multivalent construct resource for sustaining and influencing lan­guage ideologies. Its interactional versatility renders its relationship to authenticity in the Jamaican speech community complicated and potentially ambiguous.text2012-08-14T15:01:27Z2012-08-14T15:01:27Z2012-052012-08-14May 20122012-08-14T15:01:35Zthesisapplication/pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2012-05-56872152/ETD-UT-2012-05-5687eng
collection NDLTD
language English
format Others
sources NDLTD
topic Jamaican Creole
Performance
Entextualization
Language ideologies
Frame analysis
spellingShingle Jamaican Creole
Performance
Entextualization
Language ideologies
Frame analysis
Bohmann, Axel
“Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community
description In this report, I discuss the re-contextualization of a working-class Jamaican speaker’s discourse in the media and the new meanings his speech acquires in the process. The series of re-contextualizations starts out with an interview on Jamaican television, which is in turn remixed into an electronic dance song and accompanying music video. The song entextualizes individual stretches of the speaker’s original dis­course into readily identifiable quotes that turn into Jamaican slang items. In the process, linguistic disorderliness is foregrounded in the utterances in question while their propositional content is virtually erased. In a further instance of re-contextualization, the speaker encounters his by now entextualized utterances in an interview on Jamaican breakfast television and struggles to re-establish his originally intended framing of it. His success in the specific interaction is very limited, but viewers’ comments reveal that the interview does effect a change in the meta-linguistic discourse surrounding the incident. I analyze the data as a case in point of ‘speaky spoky,’ a Jamaican label for un­successful attempts to emulate foreign prestige accents, resulting in linguistic dis­orderliness. By considering aspects of performance, entextualization and the keying of different frames, I demonstrate the interactional work that goes into the construc­tion of speaky spoky as a label, as well as the ideological work that label is put to in turn and its political effects. Based on these observations, I argue that speaky spoky is best understood as a multivalent construct resource for sustaining and influencing lan­guage ideologies. Its interactional versatility renders its relationship to authenticity in the Jamaican speech community complicated and potentially ambiguous. === text
author Bohmann, Axel
author_facet Bohmann, Axel
author_sort Bohmann, Axel
title “Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community
title_short “Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community
title_full “Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community
title_fullStr “Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community
title_full_unstemmed “Nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of Mock Registers in the Jamaican speech community
title_sort “nobody canna cross it” : entextualization, ideology, and the construction of mock registers in the jamaican speech community
publishDate 2012
url http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2012-05-5687
work_keys_str_mv AT bohmannaxel nobodycannacrossitentextualizationideologyandtheconstructionofmockregistersinthejamaicanspeechcommunity
AT bohmannaxel entextualizationideologyandtheconstructionofmockregistersinthejamaicanspeechcommunity
_version_ 1716822850646573056