Cover not available

Article published In: Approaches to Variation in Creole Studies
Edited by Isabelle Léglise, Bettina Migge and Nicolas Quint
[Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 36:1] 2021
► pp. 12–45

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Creole prestige beyond modernism and methodological nationalism

Multiplex patterns, simultaneity and non-closure in the sociolinguistic economy of a Belizean village

 | Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany
Published online: 25 March 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00068.sch
Abstract
In this article, I develop an ethnographic view on social discourses associated with language use in a Belizean village in order to access the setting’s complex and not always easy to grasp patterns of linguistic prestige. Analyzing interview and observational data on language ideologies, I show that relationships of prestige are not necessarily neatly ordered and binary but that different language ideologies, in some cases relating to the same linguistic resources, may exist side-by-side. Therefore, linguistic resources may have several indexical, social-semiotic meanings at the same time. In these, the national and educational elite is not always a central point of orientation. Other cultural values, linking to colonial histories, African imaginaries, resistance towards standardization, transnational ties or the ability to keep codes apart, may have an influence on local language ideologies and thus also the language uses in this cultural context. Binary linguistic models like the diglossia or the continuum model, which map language variation in binary or linear fashions, are characteristic of epistemological traditions of Western linguistics that impact on but may also conceal complex language ideological realities in a postcolonial setting like Belize.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language prestige, Belizean complexities and the ethnographic study of social indexicalities
  • 3.The simultaneous and multiplex constructions of linguistic prestige in a Belizean village
    • 3.1Transnational colonial histories – The prestige of English as an exogamous language
    • 3.2The multiple constructions of Kriol prestige
    • 3.3Keeping codes apart – code-switching as prestige
  • 4.Beyond methodological nationalism – Creole settings as global avant-garde
  • Notes
  • References
References (92)
References
Abtahian, Maya Ravindranath. 2017. Language shift, endangerment and prestige. Kriol and Garifuna in Hopkins, Belize. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 321. 339–364. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Abtahian, Maya Ravindranath & Conor McDonough Quinn. 2017. Language shift and linguistic insecurity. Language Documentation & Conservation 131. 137–151.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amandala. 23.01.2016. Belize received 1.3 million tourists in 2015.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1985. Imagined communities. London: Verso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bailey, Carol A. 2007. A guide to qualitative field research. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Balam, Osmer. 2013. Overt language attitudes and linguistic identities among multilingual speakers in northern Belize. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 61. 247–277. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Balam, Osmer, and Ana de Prada Pérez. 2017. Attitudes toward Spanish and code-switching in Belize: stigmatization and innovation in the Spanish classroom. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 161. 17–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs. 2003. Voices of modernity. Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich, Wolfgang Bonss, and Christoph Lau. 2003. The theory of reflexive modernization. Problematic hypotheses and research programme. Theory, Culture & Society 201. 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Belize Tourism Board. 2013. Travel & tourism statistics digest, [URL] (accessed 12 Sept 2016)
Blommaert, Jan. 2006. Language ideology. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, 510–522. Oxford: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018a. Durkheim and the Internet. Sociolinguistics and the sociological imagination. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018b. Lingua Franca onset in a superdiverse neighbourhood: oecumenical Dutch in Antwerp. In Jacqueline Knörr & Wilson Trajano Filho (eds.), Creolization and pidginization in contexts of postcolonial diversity, 37–58. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, James Collins, and Stef Slembrouck. 2005. Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication 251. 197–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Dong Jie. 2010. Ethnographic fieldwork: a beginner’s guide. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Ben Rampton. 2011. Language and superdiversity. Diversities 131. 1–21.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bonner, Donna M. 2001. Garifuna children’s language shame: ethnic stereotypes, national affiliation and transnational immigration as factors in language choice in southern Belize. Language in Society 301. 81–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bulmer-Thomas, Victor. 2012. The economic history of the Caribbean since the Napoleonic Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clifford, James & George E. Marcus. 1986. Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DeCamp, David. 1971. Towards a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, 349–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Decker, Ken. 2013. The song of Kriol. A grammar of the Kriol language of Belize. Belize City: Belize Kriol Projekt. [URL], archived at [URL] (accessed 12 Sept 2016).
Deuber, Dagmar & Glenda A. Leung. 2013. Investigating attitudes towards an emerging standard of English: Evaluations of newscasters’ accents in Trinidad. Multilingua 321. 289–319. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 121. 453–476. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Escure, Geneviève. 1982. Contrastive patterns of intragroup and intergroup interaction in the creole continuum of Belize. Language in Society 111. 239–264. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Belizean Creole structure dataset. In Susanne Maria Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), Atlas of Pidgin and Creole language structures online. (Available online at [URL], Accessed 10 October 2019). Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Ferguson, Charles. 1959. Diglossia. Word 151. 325–340. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
French, R. & K. T. Kernan. 1981. art and artifice in Belizean Creole. American Ethnologist 81. 238–258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2016. Sociolinguistic differentiation. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics. Theoretical debates, 113–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gal, Susan & Judith T. Irvine. 2019. Signs of difference. Language and ideology in social life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gal, Susan & Kathryn A. Woolard. 2001. Constructing languages and publics: authority and representation. In Susan Gal & Kathryn A. Woolard (eds.) Languages and publics. The making of authority, 1–12. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glaser, Barney G. & Anselm L. Strauss. 2005. Grounded Theory. Strategien qualitativer Forschung. 2nd ed. Bern: Huber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glock, Naomi, Paul Crosbie & Cynthia Crosbie. 2001. You can read and write Kriol. Belize City: The Belize Kriol Project. [URL], accessed May 26 2020.
Gobo, Giampietro. 2008. Doing ethnography. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gómez Menjívar, Jennifer Carolina & William Noel Salmon. 2018. Tropical tongues: language ideologies, endangerment, and minority languages in Belize. Chapel Hill: Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gomoll, Mati. 2003. Caye to success. A biography of Antonio Lorenzo Vega, Sr.: Xlibris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hackert, Stephanie. 2016. Standards of English in the Caribbean. History, attitudes, functions, features. In Elena Seoane & Cristina Suárez Gómez (eds.), World Englishes: new theoretical and methodological considerations, 85–111. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf. 1987. The world in creolisation. Africa 571. 546–559. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heller, Monica. 2007. The future of ‘bilingualism’. In Monica Heller (ed.), Bilingualism: a social approach, 340–345. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellinger, Marlis. 1998. The creole continuum of linguistic variation. Sociolinguistica 121. 72–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Herrera, Yvette & Paul Crosbie et al. 2009. Kriol-Inglish dikshineri. English-Kriol dictionary. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heyd, Theresa & Britta Schneider. 2019. The sociolinguistics of late modern publics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 231. 435–449. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language. Ideologies, polities and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra. 2016. Indexicality, stance and fields in sociolinguistics. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics. Theoretical Debates, 86–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kelle, Udo. 2005. ‘Emergence’ vs. ‘forcing’ of empirical cata? A crucial problem of ‘Grounded Theory’ reconsidered. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Forum Qualitative Social Research 61: Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1986. Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In John Baugh & Joel Sherzer (eds.), Language in use. Readings in sociolinguistics, 28–53. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lacoste, Véronique & Christian Mair. 2012. Authenticity in creole-speaking contexts: An introduction. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 601. 211–215. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambert, Wallace E. et al. 1960. Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 11. 44–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Le Page, R. B. & Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of identity. Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mackey, William F. 1989. Determining the status and function of languages in multinational societies. In Ulrich Ammon (ed.), Status and function of languages and language varieties, 3–20. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mair, Christian & Andrea Sand. 1998. Caribbean English: structure and status of an emerging variety. In Raimund Borgmeier (ed.), Anglistentag 1997. Gießen – Proceedings, 187–198. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCarty, Teresa, Mary Eunice Romero & Ofelia Zepeda. 2006. Reclaiming the gift: Indigenous youth counter-narratives on native language loss and revitalization. American Indian Quarterly 301. 28–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2011. Introducing sociolinguistics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Guatemala. 2010. Situación del diferendo territorial existente entre Guatemala y Belice y las perspectivas de solución al mismo, [URL] (accessed 12 Sept 2016). Guatemala.
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mühleisen, Susanne. 2001. Is ‘bad English’ dying out? A comparative diachronic study on attitudes towards Creole versus Standard English in Trinidad. Philologie im Netz 151. 43–78.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993. Duelling languages: grammatical structure in codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Näslund-Hadley, Emma, Haydée Alonzo & Dougal Martin. 2013. Challenges and opportunities in the Belize education sector. Inter-American Development Bank. Education Division (SCL/EDU). TECHNICAL NOTE IDB-TN-538: [URL]. (accessed 26 May 2020).
Poplack, Shana. 1980. Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish Y TERMINO EN ENSPANOL: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 181. 581–618. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 2013. Language with an attitude. In J. K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change (2nd ed.), 157–182. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pries, Ludger. 2008. Die Transnationalisierung der sozialen Welt. Sozialräume jenseits von Nationalgesellschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ravindranath, Maya. 2009. Language shift and the speech community: Sociolinguistic change in a Garifuna community in Belize. Publicly accessible Penn Dissertations 331. [URL]
Reisman, Karl. 1970. Cultural and linguistic ambiguity in a West Indian village. In N. F. Whitten Jr. & J. F. Szwed (eds.), Afro-American anthropology, 129–144. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. & Elizabeth Traugott. 1985. Symbol of powerlessness and degeneracy, or symbol of solidarity and truth? Paradoxical attitudes toward pidgin and creoles. In Sidney Greenbaum (ed.), The English language today, 252–261. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salmon, William. 2015. Language ideology, gender, and varieties of Belizean Kriol. Journal of Black Studies 461. 605–625. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salmon, William & Jennifer Caroline Gómez Menjívar. 2014. Whose Kriol is moa beta? Prestige and dialects of Kriol in Belize. Berkeley Linguistics Society 401.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salmon, William & Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar. 2016. Language variation and dimensions of prestige in Belizean Kriol. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 311. 316–360. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Setting and language attitudes in a creole context. Applied Linguistics 401. 248–264. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saraceni, Mario. 2015. World Englishes. A critical analysis. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Britta. 2014. ‘Oh boy, ¿hablas español?’ – Salsa and the multiple value of authenticity in late capitalism. In Véronique Lacoste, Thiemo Breyer & Jakob Leimgruber (eds.), Indexing authenticity. sociolinguistic perspectives, 113–135. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Haciendo y deshaciendo la lengua – Funciones simbólicas del español en Belice: entre el predominio demográfico, la política nacional, el estatus de clase baja y el prestigio global. Estudios de Lingüística del Español (Special Issue: Las variedades olvidadas del español) 371. 87–110. [URL].
. 2017a. Kaleidoscopes of indexicality – multiplex symbolic functions of language and unfocused social categories. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 91. 8–24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. Lobster, tourism and other kinds of business. Economic opportunity and language choice in a multilingual village in Belize. Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication 181. 390–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Methodological nationalism in linguistics. Language Sciences 761: Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Liquid languages. Polymorphous acts of identity and the fluidity of language categories in linguistically complex Belize. (unpublished habilitation thesis at European University Viadrina).
Shoman, Assad. 2011. A history of Belize in 13 chapters. Belize City: Angelus Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2014. The race from place: Dialect eradication vs. the linguistic ‘authenticity’ of terroir. In Véronique Lacoste, Thiemo Breyer & Jakob Leimgruber (eds.), Indexing authenticity. sociolinguistic perspectives, 159–187. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Statistical Institute of Belize. 2010. Belize. Population and housing census. Country report 2010. Statistical Institute of Belize: [URL]
UNICEF. 2011. Tumul K’in Center of Learning. Intercultural bilinguals education (IBE) at Secondary Level. Belize City: Ideas Lab Studios. Belize Knowledge Lab Series.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vertovec, Stephen. 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 301. 1024–1054. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vorhees, Mara & Joshua Samuel Brown. 2013. Lonely Planet. Belize. Ebook. London: Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wassink, Alicia Beckford. 1999. Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Attitudes toward Jamaican Creole. Language in Society 281. 57–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weston, Daniel. 2015. The lesser of two evils: Atypical trajectories in English dialect evolution. Journal of Sociolinguistics 191. 671–687. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilk, Richard. 2006. Home cooking in the global village. Oxford: Berg. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Guyanne. 2017. Conflicting language ideologies in choral singing in Trinidad. Language & Communication 521. 19–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas & Nina Glick Schiller. 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 21. 301–334. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 1985. The concept of ‘diglossia’ in Caribbean creole situations. Language in Society 141. 345–356. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1991. The Caribbean. In Jenny Cheshire (ed.), English around the world. Sociolinguistic perspectives, 565–584. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wycliffe Bible Translators. 2012. Di Nyoo Testiment eena Bileez Kriol. Orlando: Wycliffe Bible Translators. [URL]
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Gooden, Shelome
2025. Jamaica and the Greater Antilles, English and Creoles in. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Bonomi, Milin
2024. Ideologías y prácticas lingüísticas en tiempos de crisis. Una reflexión sociolingüística sobre el mundo hispano desde una perspectiva posthumana. Boletín Hispánico Helvético 41 DOI logo
Hänsel, Eva Canan, Michael Westphal, Philipp Meer & Dagmar Deuber
2022. Context matters. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 37:1 ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Schneider, Britta
2022. Multilingualism and AI: The Regimentation of Language in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Signs and Society 10:3 ► pp. 362 ff. DOI logo
Schneider, Britta
2023. Posthumanism and the role of orality and literacy in language ideologies in Belize. World Englishes 42:1 ► pp. 150 ff. DOI logo
Schneider, Britta
2024. A Sociolinguist's Look at the “Language” in Large Language Models. Critical AI 2:1 DOI logo
Sippola, Eeva
2022. The macrosociolinguistics of language contact. Sociolinguistica 36:1-2 ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue