Paul Andrew Bourne, 2006


INTRODUCTION



I know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the great secret of my life, the secret which for some years I have guarded far more carefully than any of my earthly possession; and it is a curious study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the unfound out criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is likely, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing (Johnson 1912, 9)


Johnson’s monograph encapsulates scholastic brevity, emotive, pluralism and culturalism that are embedded within words, phonology, syntax and it points to the essence of humanness (higher animals). When humans seek to (or not to) relate messages to each other, they do so by combining media, gestures, vernacular and other social defined symbols. It is through this continuum that people learn, appreciate, grasp and comprehend their physical and social milieu. People are not merely vessels, which accept instructions at the command of others (as computers) but are interfacing with a socially constructed world that ostracizes them if they are non-conformants, as a result, they are interfacing with plethora of settings within their environment. Hence, they are expected to be receptive to the norms of the general society in order to be considered ‘normal’, which is to accept the rules of engagement. It is this process of social interaction that man (plural higher animal – word) formulates his/her role within the wider social space. Johnson (1912) writing alludes to an intellectual tool (language) that is capable of exposing deep seeded realities, which are likely to construct, destroy or build social cohesion. Language, therefore, is merely the combination of words within a grammatical pattern but it is the art, science and technology of building societies in an effort to explain the natural world - through socialization, common sense, cultures, governance and abstract rationality, while fostering a harmonious relationship between the natural and social world. It is through language that we communicate our (and others) social behaviours. People like all animals are continuously interfacing with their natural world in an endeavour to understand it. This is not atypical. As our natural world includes our social world, which does not cease in creating plethora of challenges, experiences, and abstract truths. It is those natural experiences that people, in seeking to describe those events, are likely to create social complexities to justify as explanations. In an effort to explain what is, man ventures into series of social constructions among which is language. It is [language] a defined tool for social communication - of the natural setting; or, is it weaponry of social destruction? According to one intelligentsia, language is a human mode of communicating experiences and observations through the use of symbols, signs, gestures, and syllables to which are generally acceptable meaning standards, which fosters the flow of information between (and among) peoples (Macionis and Plummer 2002, 21).


EXPRESSIONS

My mother and I lived together in a little cottage which seemed to me to be fitted up almost luxuriously, there were horse-hair covered chairs in the parlour, and a little square piano; there was a stairway with red carpet on it leading to half second story; there were pictures on the walls, and a few books in a glass-doored case. (Johnson 1912, 11)


Speaking as how he does, Johnson not only paints the world in a succinctly descriptive manner but he labels those words in a fashion that allows the reader an opportunity to conceptualize his socio-economic background, some of his privileges, challenges and it also offers an incite into other areas of the man’s life. Language is not primarily superfluously constructed words, but they are ‘life’s’ - experiences, socialization, symbolisms, and socio-psychologic road map of man’s existence. Hence, Johnson’s monograph looks into the life of author, and does provide some guide to the evolution only of the speaker but of those that he encounters and how they help to mould an experience. With Macionis and Plummer’ stance, we interpret the life of existence through our acceptance of the standard meaning system. Sociologists identify this experience as culture.

Culture is dynamic. Despite the non-staticness of culture, the difficulties of present scholars, pundits and people to explain what seemingly appeared some time ago makes for misleading constructions. As if the interpreter does not understand the contextual meanings of the happening of the writings, he/she is highly unlikely to abstract the experiences as they occurred within the setting. With this background, how do we explain the rightness of histographing peoples’ cultures and how are we able to ascribe ‘betterness’ to one culture if we are to superimpose it on another?

Man capacity to create, recreates, and justify his/her actions is an importance made in the laying of a platform of truthness. Language is the tool that is used to explain man’s sociologic. Hence, the individual who controls language (means of ideology) dominates the other. It is this expression, using language, which fosters slavery, racism, apartheid, Christianity, culture, socialization, and others. Language is an institution that shapes perception, social construction, discourse, biases, and capacity to formulate more abstraction. One should not believe that language is fundamentally coined words (or phrases) to communicate but it is a capacity to manipulate human imagination for the purpose abstraction, cultural symbolisms, socialization, embodied experiences, the mastery of deception in an unedited form along with the supremacy to tranquilize those who have not come to understand its intricacies. From one intelligentsia’s monograph, he posits that language is the culture and the cultural experiences are live in the language (Young 1968).

One of concrete myth is some people cite is ‘I will not judge.’ In order to grapple with the intricacies of this double barreled word phrase, I will request my reader to engage me on this trajectory. The word judge implies a state of authority which is applied to a decision process. It does not inform or dictate a bias (or lack of one) but when use in conversation is a subtle medium that will weaken a discourse (or monologue). Despite the use of the term (judge), the user could blatantly disregard the informed man’s intellect to accept a position that he/she is unceasingly unbiased. But the choice of the word is to cripple a discourse, which of itself is an offer of flagrant violation of unbiasness. As human experience is tainted with biasness garnered through a certain culture, socialization and knowledge, which is asymmetric with the all social art forms. This reduces a possibility of abject impartiality. As ones culture pre-exposes the individual to biasness. With this constructed fact, man (either gender) is bias and so he/she will evaluate (judge) what he/she sees own with prior happenings. I will delve into the biases in the use of language, and how we intoxicate ourselves in judging another man (either gender) based on his/her language usage.


THE POLITIZATION OF LANGUAGE



Over the decades, the elitists among us have continued to "scuff" at Creole (Patois, ‘BROKEN’ language) as a language. This is because of its "mediocritic" origin and the social class associated with its usage. In order that finesse is brought to this discourse, a position must be provided on what constitutes a language. In addition, we must be able to comparatively analyze those factors in order to establish whether or not Creole is a language. We need to move this debate beyond social biases in order understand where Creole falls. Despite European "culturalization" of the Africans mindset in the world and moreso those who are scattered in the Caribbean, Westerners’ indoctrination is the hallmark used to adjudge good taste, quality and ‘class’ in the Jamaican experience. As such, many peoples in our society even among the lower class believe that Patois is the corruption of English. And so, it is not rightfully a language.

Although personal biases oftentimes are brought into the discourse, if we were to put those issues aside, would we have elevated Creole to the status of a language? Continuing, because Patois is primarily the mother tongue of the lower classes, social stratification is used to determine its non-validity as a language. However, what are the functions of a language, and if we were to apply those same definitions to Patois, would Creole be a language?

Lalla (1998, 11-15) in English for Academic Purposes posits there are five distinct functions of a language and they are as follows: "self expression", reflection, "complex communication", conveyance and interpretation of new ideas, characterization and identification of people in their communities. Moreover, language, she forwards is a complex process of different events. Consequently, Language is so dynamic and complex that while lower animals use it in its basic form, man’s usage of it shows its supremacy.

Continuing, language is a composite system of interrelated events in which the sender and receiver uses symbols, signals, expressions, spoken words, complex formulate, and the mode of communication must live long after the present users are gone. Hence, "Is Creole a language?" Furthermore, language allows us to recall, write and encapsulate feelings of events for future reference. In order, that any spoken words be classified as language, it must fulfill the condition of longevity. Hence, let us answer the following questions within the construct of what constitutes a language:
How long has the Jamaican Creole be in existence?
Does the Jamaican Creole fulfill the following functions of language as English:
Self expression
Reflection
Complex communication
conveyance and interpretation of new ideas
characterization and identification of people in their communities

Based on the functions of a language, it is difficult to fathom the reasons why Creole is yet to take its rightful place within the language arena. Unless social stratification is indeed more powerful that academic reasoning, Creole from Lalla (1998) writing is a language.

Language is the lived culture of a people, and according to Young (1968) it distinguishes us from the lower animals such as the chimpanzees. But this institution (language), is not fashioned the same for each grouping within society as the certain people are labeled (language) as the holders of knowledge, power and so are of greater statute (language) than another human. With this premise, the use of Creole in any culture is a clear distinguisher between the powered group and the working group. As the use of education (language) is used against particular sect of people as a measure of class, finesse and prestige that the working class is not able to afford. This is also another bias within the language formulation. Hence language is not merely the coined usage of words; it is a live embodiment of cultures which separates the groups. I will provide a number of examples here to illustrate the identification power of language:

o On a bus commuting from West Parade, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, to Montego Bay a black man in tattered garment speaks Standard English to a woman who had step on his worn shoe. The petite young lady remark, that "I thought you are insane." Embedded in this monologue is the defining power of language, and how we are able to ascribe labels to social experiences and at times natural happenings in an effort to comprehend what is seen, and
o People who use a particular accent (or ‘big’ words) are reverence as astute, and of a higher class than those who are unable to do the same.


‘F…k’ MAN, WHY ARE YOU SO ‘F…ing’ ILLMANERABLE

Each culture as particular ‘words’ that is generally accepted as ‘offensive’, ‘bad’, ‘illmanerable’ and low class when used. Those that are chosen above are a few that are readable available that emphasize the how society see the users. Despite the dialectic that exists in this regard, as many of those who even belittle others who partake in their usage are themselves quite consumers of these delicates, but do not see it fitting to promote other users as rational and sensible beings. One person remarks that ‘language’ is the medium used to advocate for language reform’. This speaks to the importance of language in understanding everything that exists (physical or social). To widen the discourse further, even to change language, language is required.





SOCIOLINGUISTIC

Language is the system, which synchronizes the society with the use of words, gestures and emotive as a medium of exposing man in his social milieu. One scholar forwards a summary of the importance of language, that:
Language is part of man’s nature, he did not create it. We are always inclined to imagine naively that there was some period in the beginning when fully evolved man discovered someone else like him, equally evolved, and between the two of them language gradually took shape. This is pure fiction. We can never reach man separated from language, and we can never see him inventing it. We can never reach man reduced to himself, and thinking up ways of conceptualizing the existence of someone else. What we find in the world are men endowed with speech, speaking to other men, and language gives the clue to the very definition of man (Benvenise 1971, 224)



Some persons may not grasp the intricacies of language, and how its subtleties are materialized, used to identify, define and measure the worth of an individual, a group, a community, a society, a parish (or province), a nation, a region or the world. Benvenise emphasizes the value of language in social construction. He offers a theorizing that language is synonymous with man, implying that it is powered over the comprehension of the lower animals. This is not only simplistic but naive a thought, as language is beyond the formation of words. But what I agree with (in Benevise’s statement) is the social fact that man is defined by language and that language embodies man’s existence. One scientist argues that "language as it is used in everyday life by members of the social order, that vehicle of communication in which they argue with their wives, joke with their friends, and deceive their enemies" (Labov 1972, xiii). Despite Labov’s simplicity in expounding on language, it is a social building map in the understanding of man’s imagination of what he/she conceptualizes of the where he/she is within the general scheme of things.


SEPARATISM, RACISM, SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND INTIMIDATION

Some writers have sought to critique and explore the social realities of language as a structure of in the institutionalization of separatism, racism, social exclusion and intimidation. Johnson uses happenings within his life to explain the depth (or craft) of using language a power tool. He says that:

The other black boys and girls were still more looked down upon. Some of the boys often spoke of them as ‘niggers’. Sometimes on the way home from school a crowd would walk behind them repeating: "Nigger, nigger, never die Black face and shiny eye" (Johnson 1912, 16).


One of the lessons that is underlying in Johnson’s monograph his is use of certain words as means of establishing a clear state of demarcation in man existence - separatism and social exclusion. But the irony to this setting is not the wholesale usage of words in the particular case but how language (liquid substance) is able to create a new set of social happenings. Within the purviews of Johnson’s writing is the issue of labeling; a construct that is contextualized to destroy the cognition of a group. It is evident that language stains the social cognition of the individual. Language is a make for deep social strife, and last as long as scars for physical conflicts. Johnson highlights the likelihood of language usage when he says that "On one such afternoon one of the black boys turned suddenly on his tormentors and hurled a slate; it struck one of the white boys in the mouth, cutting a slight gash in his lip" (Johnson 1912, 16). We may argue that words are wind, but wind has physical characteristic that is possible to destroy places, lifes, cities, nations, and continents. As such language, in the form of words, carries the same physiological properties as those in the natural form - like (1) sexual abuse, (2) civil war, (3) corporal punishment, and (4) so on.

One day near the end of my second term at school the principal came into our room and, after talking to the teacher, for some reason said: "I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment." I rose with the others. The teacher looked at me and, calling my name, said: "You sit down for the present, and rise with the others." I did not quite understand her, and questioned: "Ma’m?" She repeated, with a softer tone in her voice: "You sit down now, and rise with the others." I sat in dazed. I saw and heard nothing. When the others were asked to rise, I did not know it. When school was dismissed, I went out in a kind of stupor. A few of the white boys jeered me, saying: "Oh, you’re a nigger too." I heard some black children say: "We knew he was coloured" ((Johnson 1912, 17)


Some of the potent issues within Johnson’s monograph are not (1) colouredness, (2) hypocrisy, (3) insensitivity, or (4) the lack bitterness in ignorance but the (i) separatism, (ii) social exclusion, (iii) language cultivation, (iv) the role of the mega-structure in labeling phenomena within a contextual perspective that someone may be scared because of the choice of language in explaining setting, or social experiences. Johnson’s social setting reveals the importance of knowledge of self. This should have been done prior to venturing into the wider society, which has its own definition of what is. The passage emphasizes how the use of label can be symbol of social exclusion – ‘nigger’. In retrospect, I was told that ‘words are mightier than the sword’, an issue that deludes me for years while in my childhood. But it is a set of social construction that is aptly crafted by cultures to highlight the value, essence, and destructiveness of words. The comparative approach of ‘words’ to ‘sword’ is not limited to the same consonants and vowels but high devastation of each social construction. This was evident in the Johnson’s experiences, as the reality of his culture differs and contradicts that of others that reside in close proximity to his. Within this contradiction and dialectic of cultures stand the use of language to intimidate, describe, classify and contextualize social happenings. Some may argue that language is synonymous with fluid nothingness, but what occurs in Johnson’s life must have fashioned his existence thereafter. In order to establish this powered phenomenon, language, let us see what Johnson says, "Since I have grown older I have often gone back and tried to analyse the change that came into my life after that fateful day in school. There did come a radical change, and young as I was, I felt fully conscious of it, though I did not fully comprehend it" (Johnson 1912, 20).

The intricacies of language is not easily recognized by some people, as lingo (words, monologue, tongue, and idiom, language) embodies cultures, socialization, biases, perception, abstraction and every natural and social that man’s (either gender) cognition seeks to imagine (explain). Johnson emphasizes this when he says that:
And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week, in which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I did indeed pass into another world. From that time I looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were coloured, my words dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea which constantly increased in force and weight until I finally realized in it a great, tangible fact (Johnson 1912, 20)






CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES


I am sure that at this time the majority of my white school-mates did not understand or appreciate any differences between me and themselves, but there were a few who had evidently received instructions at home on the matter, and more than once they displayed their knowledge in word and action. As the years passed, I noticed that the most innocent and ignorant among the others grew in wisdom (Johnson 1912, 21)


One the lingering ironies of 21st century societies is the similarities that they hold to previous centuries’ settings despite the evolution of knowledge, technology, education, language, experience and science along with the arts in the refutation of may myths, and truths. In an article that captures my cognition titled ‘’Redefining progress’,



ABOUT THE AUTHOR




The author, Paul Andrew Bourne, holds a Masters of Science degree in Demography, a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Demography from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. He belong an elongated career in teaching (formerly taught mathematics at- Kingston College, Vauxhall, St. Mary’s College, Oberlin High school; an educator who work in business education – Gaynstead High, Wolmer’s Boys, Pentab Evening Institute, and ACRM). On completion of his B.Sc. degree (in 2004) Bourne resigned from Vauxhall High (2004) where he was the Head of the Mathematics department and began working in the department of Sociology as a Tutor in statistics, and a research assistant (RA). His duties as a tutor was short lived as he was transferred to the position of a graduate assistant (GA) in the same department, only after four months. Mr. Bourne occupied the position of GA for approximately two-year, after which he was employed by the department (Sept. 1, 2006) as a Teaching Assistant (TA) in Research Methodology and Methods. Despite the demands of this position, he still is able to tutor statistics and Introduction to Population Studies in the department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work.













REFERENCE



Johnson, James W. 1912. The autobiography of An Ex-coloured Man. USA: The new American Library of World Literature.

Maciones, John.


Douglas, Jack D. 1973. Introduction to sociology: Situations and Structures. US: MacMillan Publisher.

Young, Mack. 1968. Sociology: Social Life, 4th. Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Haralambos, and Holborn. 2000. Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 5th. London: Harper Collins Publishers.