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On decreolization and language death in Gullah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Patricia Jones-Jackson
Patricia Jones-Jackson
Affiliation:
Department of English, Howard University
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Abstract

The sociolinguistic pressures now exerted on the Gullah-speaking communities match the general conditions that DeCamp (1971b) described for postcreole speech communities or communities in which the traditional language variety is decreolizing or dying. There is a correspondence between the dominant official language and the creole, and there is sufficient breakdown in the formerly rigid social stratification brought on by educational programs and other acculturative forces to cause social mobility and to motivate large numbers of Gullah speakers to modify their speech in the direction of standard English. Preliminary research of the processes involved in this modification activity reveals that certain features of the pronominal system are elaborating and dying while certain other features of this system are remaining static and unchanged. Elaboration is well underway in the nominative case, for example, while in the objective case elaboration has barely begun. (Sociolinguistic pressures, postcreole, decreolizing or dying, social mobility, certain features, elaborating, static)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 351 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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