The Jamaican language situation: a process, not a type

Jamaica is an island nation of approximately 2.9 million people in the Caribbean, some 120 miles to the west of Haiti, the country used by Ferguson (1959) as one of the exemplars of the concept of diglossia. Jamaica, like Haiti, has a predominantly creole-speaking population and is, second to Haiti, the largest single creole-speaking speech community in the world. Jamaican Creole (JC) is an English-lexicon creole language coexisting with English. JC, like nearly all the creole languages of the region, has been involved, from the 1960s onwards, in a process by which it is increasing in status and expanding in functions. Of the approximately 15 English-lexicon creole languages spoken in the Caribbean,JC has as many speakers as the others combined. It is, therefore, a good choice for studying how diglossic-type behaviour is implemented in an English and Englishlexicon Caribbean creole context. This matches the much better known case of Haiti, involving French and a French-lexicon creole. Hudson (2002), in his extensive and thorough review of the literature on diglossia, is inclined to exclude Haiti and, by extension, other Caribbean creole-type situations from the category of diglossia. Against this background, therefore, it becomes interesting to explore the relationship between the Jamaican language situation and the essential features of diglossia as identified by him. The essence of diglossia, Hudson (2002: 40) argues, is that the situations fitting this concept are unified by their havinga quite specific set of relationships between functional compartmentalization of codes, the lack of opportunity for the acquisition of H as a native variety, the resulting absence of native speakers of H, and the stability in the use of L for vernacular purposes.