Forms of address and ambiguity in Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles: Strategic interactions in a postcolonial language setting

Abstract

Forms of address in the Caribbean are part of a complex politeness system which developed as a result of the socio-historical conditions of the plantation system, the transfer and continuities of socio-pragmatic rules from West African and European cultural and linguistic traditions, as well as new creolized or innovative practices. Terms of address are not only indicative of the social position and identity of a person in a community but are also often used strategically in situations of potential conflict. Many of the nominal terms of address and their adaptation to specific conversational situations may be explained in the light of the specific postcolonial cultural and linguistic ambiguity in the Anglophone Caribbean. Like numerous non-standard Englishes, Caribbean Englishes and Creoles also have second-person pronominal distinction. Since the plural form is neither used for obligatory plural marking nor as a honorific as in many European (T/V) languages, this distinction has so far been regarded as insignificant and little or no research has been devoted to systematically investigating the possible strategic meaning of second person plural forms like allyuh (Trinidad) or unu (Jamaica). Based on empirical research in Trinidad, I will argue in this paper that the plural form is used either to emphasize the existence of plural addressees or for face management in positive and negative face threatening situations. To either single or multiple addressees, the plural form can be used as a politeness strategy in specific situations, for instance to express vagueness or indirectness when a speech act could be otherwise interpreted as face-threatening.