An Investigation into the Attitudes towards Trinidadian French Creole in the Education System
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Date
2021-05-28
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Abstract
The various research projects done on Trinidadian French Creole (TFC) have focused mainly on areas such as sociolinguistics, sociohistorical linguistics and structural features of the language, but not on how language attitudes within the education system have impacted and can impact the revival of this endangered language variety. In order to efficiently evaluate this impact of language in education, the attitudes towards French Creole (FC) within The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine must be analyzed thoroughly. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the importance of language attitudes, and how they affect the language revitalization of TFC, by evaluating UWI, St. Augustine's French-lexicon Creole courses and their contribution towards the possible revival of the language.
This study's analysis has been achieved through the use of the grounded theory methodology because of its qualitative and systematic analysis. Purposive sampling was used as five past and present lecturers were interviewed and forty questionnaires were distributed through online platforms. These interviews were used as secondary data which produced concepts of language in education, language attitudes, language awareness, cultural teaching, cultural heritage, Creole events, field trips, and social identity, through the use of axial coding. These concepts were used in the analysis of the questionnaires which were analyzed as the primary data as it held the core phenomenon of the study. The phenomenon guided the study to produce the theoretical outcome.
The results produced from both the primary and secondary data showed that language awareness through the education of TFC contributed to the cognitive development of students' emotional perception and motivation towards the revitalization of TFC. Therefore, the cognitive element of the students' language attitudes played the most significant role in influencing the students' connection to TFC and their subsequent revitalization efforts.
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LING3099 Special Project in Linguistics
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Keywords
Trinidadian French Creole, Patois, Language Attitudes, Education, Language Revitalization