Oraliteracy and Textual Opacity: Resisting Metropolitan Consumption of Caribbean Creole

The incorporation of 'creole' vernacular languages into texts written in 'standard' languages is an especially fraught crossroads of intercultural communication. This article considers the difference between a kind of literary tourism in which non-Caribbean readers 'taste' the flavour of creole language within Caribbean literature versus an 'oraliteracy' that would recognise the full autonomy and complexity of creole languages. Rather than reading textual linguistic hybridity as an unproblematic form of intercultural communication, it is suggested that metropolitan consumption of literary representations of creole vernaculars can serve to naturalise cultural boundaries and reinforce racist stereotypes - especially in postcolonial situations.