Language contact in St. Lucia: The features and origins of St. Lucia Creole English

Abstract

This thesis documents in detail St. Lucia Creole English (SLCE), St. Lucia’s third language variety, which is spoken alongside Kwéyòl, a French-based creole, and Standard English. With only brief descriptions of its features previously available, this work fills a significant gap in the literature by not only documenting the variety based on first-hand data collection, but also by determining how best to classify the language. I establish that its morphosyntactic features can be traced to influences from Kwéyòl, Standard English, various British English dialects, various Caribbean English dialects and Caribbean English Creoles, North American English dialects and second language acquisition effects based on comparisons of the features as well as demographic information. Examining current contact language literature, this thesis also aims to locate SLCE’s place in our current understanding of language contact and language formation. I argue that the variety is best considered a creole. Given, however, that one of its input languages is already a creole, I propose the term ‘creole-influenced creole vernacular’ to account for the fact that this variety represents the creolisation of a creole. I motivate the use of this term by further presenting case studies of two parallel varieties, Dominican Creole English (DCE) and Unserdeutsch. Implications for creole literature, as well as education and language planning in St. Lucia and beyond, are explored as this thesis not only begins to answer some longstanding questions but also opens up several new and promising avenues for research in these areas.