St. Helena English (Schreier)

St Helenian English is the oldest variety of English in the southern hemisphere. This book is research-based, reporting on hitherto unpublished findings and results of ethnographic/ sociolinguistic fieldwork conducted on St Helena. Based on an extensive database of 25 hours of tape-recorded speech and the assessment of historical research in the local archives, this book traces the origins and development of the variety since the foundation of the colony in 1659. Some of the principal questions addressed are: what varieties of English does St Helenian English (StHE) affiliate with and from what varieties does it derive historically? What was the contact scenario on the island - dialect contact or language contact, or both? Are there regional differences so that communities in distinct areas of the island have developed their own local vernaculars, and if so, how can one trace them? This book contains an up-to-date discussion of contact linguistics (contact dialectology and pidgin and creole linguistics; chapter 2) along with the social and sociodemographic background of the island (chapter 3). These two chapters serve as the background for the three data-based chapters (chapters 4-6). Chapter 4 provides a historical and sociolinguistic account of earlier St Helenian English, summarizing specimen and speech samples of StHE prior to 1900 (mostly verbatim reports of court cases, eyewitness reports, descriptions of travelers and visitors, letters, etc.), all of which are assessed in terms of their relevance for the formation and status of the variety. Chapter 5 provides a descriptive analysis of the segmental phonology, syntax and lexis of StHE (based on the evaluation of the data collected on the island); this allows readers to compare it with other varieties and also to place it in the context of earlier forms of British English, English-based creoles in the Caribbean (with which StHE has been affiliated, Hancock 1991) or with southern hemisphere Englishes in general. Chapter 6 extends the scope somewhat by analyzing selected data (consonant cluster reduction, short front vowels, copula absence, negation) from a variationist and quantitative perspective; a main question here is how speakers representative of distinct regions vary in their usage of variants and how these differences reflect local settlement histories and input scenarios. Chapter 7 concludes by summarizing the main results and by weighing their relevance for questions concerning regional variation, origins and development as well as the general status of StHE as a language variety: creole or extraterritorial mainly British-derived dialect? A main selling point concerns the exclusive status of the data and the empirical foundations of the conclusions. There has been little linguistic and sociolinguistic research on the variety so far (basically consisting of articles by Ian Hancock 1991, Sheila Wilson 2004, and a paper presented at a workshop, Laura Wright 2004), which is surprising given that StHE has such a special status among the post-colonial varieties of English. As such, the book at hand is thus of interest for everybody working on the diffusion of English around the world and on the history of English in the southern hemisphere. It reports on exclusive data and does not compete with other projects (there may be an edited volume of papers, edited by Laura Wright and Philip Baker (London: Westminster Press), but it is unclear when and whether this will see the light of day). Moreover, the contact-based framework will attract readers from all areas of contact linguistics and the empirically-based conclusions throw light on theoretical advances in this area as well, thus serving a more general purpose other than mere description. As for my motivation and particular qualifications, I have been interested in such a project ever since I started working on Tristan da Cunha English (TdCE), another variety of South Atlantic English, in 1997. Given the lack of data and descriptive analyses, the nature of the input of StHE to TdCE remained unclear and was subject to much speculation (it was interpreted as an indication that StHE had to some extent creolized). This book, consequently, fills a gap in my personal research on TdCE and complements my work on South Atlantic English. Moreover, it documents a hitherto little-known variety of English and discusses the theoretical implications of language evolution in distinct locales, a question I have pursued in my research on American and New Zealand English as well. 

Publication:

Schreier, Daniel. (2006). St Helenian English: Origins, Evolution and Variation (Series: Varieties of English Around the World). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Contact details:

Prof. Dr. Daniel Schreier, English Department, University of Zurich