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SUMMARY:Multiethnolects as contact languages: the case for the Jamaican in
 fluence in London - Paul Kerswill (University of York)
DTSTART:20210304T163000Z
DTEND:20210304T180000Z
UID:TALK157216@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tim Laméris
DESCRIPTION:"REGISTER HERE":https://forms.gle/1RUHXqvAEkBvTAps5\n\n*ABSTRA
 CT*\n\nIn North-west European cities\, new varieties of established langua
 ges have emerged in the past 40 years\, following rapid migration. Arrival
 s from other countries acquire local languages with varying levels of flue
 ncy\, while their children acquire something like ‘native’ proficiency
 . It is these (young) people’s speech that is in focus. To varying degre
 es\, these speakers’ varieties differ structurally from the established 
 varieties\, and the obvious question arises as to the mechanisms behind th
 ese changes (Cheshire\, Nortier & Adger 2015). A well-established term for
  these varieties is multiethnolect\, but some researchers prefer such term
 s as urban contact dialect (Wiese 2021).\n In London\, the first large-sca
 le migration after World War II was of people from the Caribbean\, notably
  Jamaica: my overarching question will be to ask whether this group\, who 
 mostly spoke English-lexifier creoles\, formed the basis for what is now k
 nown as Multicultural London English (MLE). I will take a broadly contact 
 linguistic approach to this question\, coupled with an evaluation of the r
 elevance of demography\, population history and culture (Kerswill & Torger
 sen 2020). I will consider the extent to which multiethnolects such as MLE
  are allied to creoles and to koines\, that is\, whether there are paralle
 l processes involved in multiethnolect formation and the formation of eith
 er of the latter language types. In terms of demography\, Trudgill’s (20
 04) deterministic theory of new-dialect formation is relevant\, assuming a
 s it does that frequency and intensity of contact between speakers overrid
 e social factors\, and that all we need to know is the language varieties 
 involved and the relative population sizes associated with them. Since a g
 ood deal is known about the linguistic input to current multiethnolects\, 
 it makes sense to apply the determinism model in accounting for the appear
 ance of certain features but not of others. Useful in combination with Tru
 dgill’s model is Mufwene’s earlier Founder Effect (Mufwene 1996)\, whi
 ch argues that a founding population of speakers has a strongly disproport
 ionate effect on the developing dialect compared to later arrivals. I argu
 e that\, despite the fact that no ethnolinguistic group dominates in Londo
 n (apart from the Anglophone one)\, the fact that Jamaicans arrived first 
 and ‘set the tone’ for youth language and culture enabled Jamaican Cre
 ole items – almost all in the lexical domain – to survive in contempor
 ary youth language. It is no coincidence that many of these items are acti
 vely used in grime and drill music\, even though a high proportion of perf
 ormers have West African\, not Creole\, language backgrounds.  \nOn the li
 nguistic side\, my conclusion is that multiethnolects share properties wit
 h other contact languages\, but because of their particular patterns of de
 velopment\, essentially involving rapid language shift and group second-la
 nguage acquisition (Winford 2017) followed immediately by a process akin t
 o koineisation\, they have unique properties. \n\n*References*\n\nCheshire
 \, J.\, Nortier\, J and Adger\, D. (2015) Emerging Multiethnolects in Euro
 pe. QMUL Occasional Papers in Linguistics. QMUL\, London.\n\nKerswill\, P.
  and H. Wiese (fc 2022). Introduction. In: P. Kerswill & H. Wiese (eds.) U
 rban contact dialects and language change: Insights from the global North 
 and South. London: Routledge.\n\nKerswill\, P. and E. Torgersen (2020). Tr
 acing the origins of an urban youth vernacular: founder effects\, frequenc
 y and culture in the emergence of Multicultural London English. In: K. Bea
 man\, I. Buchstaller\, S. Fox\, S. Levey and J.A. Walker (eds.) Socio-gram
 matical Variation and Change: In Honour of Jenny Cheshire. London: Routled
 ge\, pp. 249–276.\n\nMufwene\, S. (1996). The Founder Principle in creol
 e genesis. Diachronica 13:1\, 83‐134.\n\nTrudgill\, Peter (2004). New-di
 alect formation: the inevitability of colonial Englishes. Edinburgh Univer
 sity Press.\n\nWiese\, H. (fc 2021). Urban contact dialects. In: The Cambr
 idge Handbook of Language Contact.\n\nWinford\, D. (2017). The Ecology of 
 Language and the New Englishes: toward an integrative framework. In Filppu
 la et al.\, (eds.) Changing English: Global and Local Perspectives\, pp. 2
 5-56. Mouton De Gruyter.\n
LOCATION:Online
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