Input and diffusion

Linguistic variation among receiving communities in Britain, especially on the phonological level, is responsible for considerable diffuseness, so much so that it is incorrect to describe BrC as comprising a single accent. Indeed, BrC is found both north and south of England’s principal dialect boundaries, and in all major dialect areas of the South of England. BrC speakers in Ipswich or Reading, with strong Barbadian input, or Dominican-ancestry speakers in Bradford, may differ systematically from London Jamaicans, whose speech contrasts with Dudley’s Jamaican-derived population due to the West Midlands input in Dudley. Since Afro-Caribbeans, over time, moved beyond the initial entry points of migration to a range of urban areas (including Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield), and their children and descendants have become well-integrated into these speech communities (whose English dialect is their primary vernacular), such diffuseness in phonology may have increased rather than abated. Some authors (e.g. Sutcliffe and Figueroa 1992) describe BrC as a stable variety, meaning that it shows considerable continuity with Jamaican Creole (JamC). Indeed it does, but it is not known how far into the future this can be projected. Linguists can hardly focus only on how thoroughly Caribbean characteristics are retained, given the primacy of BrE for most UK-born speakers; investigation of a possibly-emerging, ethnically-distinctive dialect is an important research target.

With respect to ancestral Island Creoles (IslCs), i.e., source varieties of English-lexicon Creole spoken natively in the West Indies, and by Caribbean-born migrants overseas, BrC may be called a post-native variety. For its canonical speakers today it is a second or later variety, and their (other) first variety is not an Island Creole. It may occasionally be spoken indistinguishably from an Island Creole: Sutcliffe (1982: 132) notes that some British-born speakers in Bedford had essentially full native command of Jamaican Creole (JamC), while Tate (1984) describes Rastafarians of Dominican descent in Bradford whose accent passed for Jamaican among Jamaicans. BrC may also be acquired in childhood within the critical period: Sebba (1993: 37–40) reports that the age of acquisition varies (though studies of Afro-Caribbean child language socialization into BrC are needed). Yet it seems clear that most speakers of BrC do not acquire it as a primary vernacular, and do not use it in preference to EngE, in a sustained fashion, across a wide range of domains. It is thus characteristic of BrC that, in any given community of speakers, a range of competence exists from token to full.

However, IslC input persists, via both earlier and current immigrants and family visits, as well as mass media (again largely Jamaica-focused). The presence of IslC speakers in British Afro-Caribbean communities ensures that adaptation, accommodation and acquisition remain a two-way street, with IslC speakers targeting EngE (and perhaps BrC) norms while BrC speakers are influenced by IslC norms. Although local British icons and exemplars have also arisen, BrC thus cannot be called normatively autonomous. As BrC serves different social purposes, Island JamC (Patrick, other volume) cannot reasonably be the touchstone for full competence. Given this, and the present focus on phonology (which shows perhaps greater assimilation to BrE norms than grammar), the description below attempts to avoid idealizing BrC at its Creole extremity: not to police the distance between it and EngE, but to explore the linguistic space between that Creole pole and the possibly-now-emerging new dialect of BrE spoken by Caribbean-origin Britons.

BrC arose via the development of a generalized ‘Black British’ identity, partly externally imposed, as Caribbean people of many colors, ethnicities and class backgrounds found themselves viewed in Britain as black, West Indian and working-class (Gilroy 1987). Caribbean English (Island) Creoles are uniformly languages of ethnic and/or national identification; not so, BrC. Elements of BrC are used both between whites and blacks, as well as among white working-class (Rosen and Burgess 1980; Hewitt 1986) and Asian youth (Rampton 1995). Such ‘crossing’ indexes complex social meanings (like outgroup use of AAVE in the US), but appears both socially limited and grammatically restricted by comparison to British Afro-Caribbean community speech.

Little research exists on BrC; no sociolinguistic speech community survey has been performed in twenty years. The summary below, which follows earlier work by Sutcliffe (1982 in Bedford, 1992 in Dudley), Edwards (1986 in Dudley), and Sebba (1993 in London), must be considered tentative pending further investigation. However, it is not only lack of research that makes the picture more complex than most immigrant varieties. The principal causes can be identified, if their workings are not fully understood: (1) the structural relation between input varieties (CarECs and vernacular EngE), which is closer than for most genetically unrelated languages, yet further apart than that of many dialects; (2) the tangled history of language subordination, ideology and attitudes held by Caribbean peoples towards British English, and all it represents, as well as vice versa (Mühleisen 2002); and (3) the social and demographic factors relating to acquisition.