Cultural Preservation and Language Reclamation: The St. Lucian Paradox

Abstract

Introduction The paradox referred to in title of this paper is more transparent in educational policies and cultural practices that obtain in St. Lucia than it is in actual wording of title. The paper attempts to explore policies and cultural practices that give rise to what one may refer to as lingua-cultural contradictions for want of a more apt term. An examination of historical circumstances that initiated particular language education policies and influenced their maintenance in contemporary times reveals existence of an inverse relationship between decline of one of St. Lucia's languages, Kweyol and promotion of selected African-influenced folk cultural practices in carefully orchestrated events of limited duration annually. Similarly, within context of language, an inverse relationship exists between decline of Kweyol as language of preferred use, for casual communication by majority of St. Lucians, especially in rural territories, and ascendancy of English from which former seems to derive. This situation is perpetuated by existing language policies that are asynchronous with commonly held perceptions as to what constitutes a St. Lucian cultural identity. The paper examines historical perspective that shaped current linguistic and cultural realities in St. Lucia, with some attention being given to a discussion of contradiction resulting from language policy and preservation of a Creole identity. The final section presents a framework for development and implementation of policy that will lead to synchrony with respect to reclamation of Kweyol and preservation of culture. The Cultural Heritage One of interesting facts about St. Lucia is that it had a turbulent, chequered past which involved a change of ownership from to British no less than fourteen times until it was finally ceded to British in 1803 and remained under their control from then. These battles occurred over a relatively brief period of one hundred and fifty years since establishment of island as a colony by West India Company in 1642. The change in ownership led to policy changes such as use of English as official language and language of instruction in education system. The rich cultural legacy deriving from interaction between and Africans during periods of occupation and now manifested in culture has, in past, been a strong drawing card for tourist industry. The agency for promotion of tourism has also capitalized on historical circumstances by drawing an analogy between battles fought by and British for possession of island, with those fought by Greeks and Trojans over Helen of Troy. St. Lucia is often referred to in promotional material as Helen of West Indies, thereby making explicit a perceived parallel between beauty of island and that of legendary Trojan princess, which drove armies to battle. The influence was manifested in several areas, such as place names: Kweyol, name given to which is spoken on island, music, and dances like the Quadrille, Lancers, Polka, Mazuka and Scottishe (Simmons)2. The Africans on island blended their own dance and musical styles with those of Europeans to create dances like Debotte, Piquant, Solo and Bele which, as Simmons pointed out, probably derived from Belle Aire. African and European influences were also probably manifested in street celebrations such as Christmas Masque or Boum-Boum. Although origin of Flower Festivals of La Woz and La Magwite (La Rose and La Marguerite) is not clear, Simmons observed that music bear(s) stamp of Afro-American music (while) some of tunes are definitely African ... songs (are) in (and) some of older ones (are) in French (p. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.