Intersections of language rights and social justice in the Caribbean context

Clive Forrester  

Synopsis

This volume brings together the work of six authors who explore various dimensions of language rights and how they intersect with social justice in the Caribbean context. Language rights advocacy has been an ongoing issue in Caribbean linguistics since at least the 1970s when the Society for Caribbean Linguistics was established and linguists started to turn their attention to the marginalised status of Creole languages in the region. This continued into the 1990s when dismal scores in secondary school English resulted in governments singling out Creole languages as the culprit and linguists had to get involved in shaping language policy for territories across the region. By 2011 the role of linguists was cemented in the language rights debate with the creation of the Charter on Language Rights in the Creole-speaking Caribbean. Using examples from Jamaica and St. Lucia, the current study examines the challenges that still persist ten years after the Charter, specifically in the areas of language advocacy, linguistic discrimination, and communicative hurdles in the courtroom.

Chapters

  • #problematic
    Using English for social justice advocacy in Creole-speaking societies
    Clive Forrester
    Chapter 1
  • We want justice!
    Linguistic discrimination in Jamaica’s public formal domains and the people’s cry for justice
    Kadian Walters
    Chapter 2
  • Giving expert evidence in connection with Caribbean English vernacular languages
    Lessons from US v Kwame Richardson
    Celia Brown-Blake
    Chapter 3
  • Assessing language (-related) rights in the criminal justice system in St. Lucia
    R. Sandra Evans
    Chapter 4
  • Swearing-in
    Language, class, and access to justice in Jamaica
    Glenroy Murray, Suelle Anglin
    Chapter 5

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Intersections of language rights and social justice in the Caribbean context

Author Biography

Clive Forrester, University of Waterloo

Clive Forrester is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo where he teaches courses on academic writing, technical writing, linguistics, and Caribbean language and culture. His research interests are forensic linguistics, discourse analysis, Creole linguistics, and writing studies. Forrester is the current president of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.

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Published

December 7, 2023
LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Studies in Caribbean Languages
Cite as
Forrester, Clive. 2023. Intersections of language rights and social justice in the Caribbean context. (Studies in Caribbean Languages 5). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10052722
Copyright (c) 2023 Kadian Walters; Clive Forrester; Celia Brown-Blake, R. Sandra Evans, Glenroy Murray, Suelle Anglin

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about the available publication format: PDF

PDF

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-96110-425-3

doi

10.5281/zenodo.10052722

Details about the available publication format: Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-98554-083-9

Physical Dimensions

180mm x 245mm