General Linguistics

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Bush versus Stush: Linguistic Stereotypes in Trinidad
(2016-05-10) Thompson, Theron E.; Wright, Kristin
Perceptual Dialectology (PD) is the branch of folk linguistics that deals with the regional distribution from the point of view of non-specialists (the “folk”). This study, Bush versus Stush: Linguistic Stereotypes in Trinidad, aims to build upon this premise by juxtaposing these perceived dialectal boundaries and actual (linguist-defined) dialectal variation variables so as to analyse whether or not they correlate. To do so, how people describe language variation, the geolinguistic stereotypes that exist and the linguist-demarcated isoglosses of Trinidad must be understood so as to answer the questions of “What are the Perceptions of Language variation in Trinidad?”. As nothing of its kind has ever been performed in Trinidad, this study intends to pioneer the field of PD regionally, and hopefully to inspire other studies of its kind. The findings revealed intrinsic links between perceived language variation and geographical location, language attitudes and stereotypes, perceived socio-economic class and language variation and ethnicity and stereotypical language use.