Liquid Languages : Constructing Languages in Late Modern Cultures of Diffusion

Focusing on the multilingual Caribbean, this book examines ethnographic data and local performances of English to explore how language is constructed in discourse and via media practices. It is ideal reading for scholars of language contact, the sociolinguistics of globalisation, language ideology research, and African and Caribbean Studies.

Which ideas about language are prevalent in cultures that are not framed in Western nationalist and literate traditions? How do people conceptualise language if speakers of the same community are multilingual, have access to different language resources and only partially share ideas about what is right and wrong in language? This book explores the ''liquid'' properties of language, highlighting how languages, as discursive-material assemblages, can differ in their degree of fixity. It provides a linguistic anthropological study of the language ideologies in Belize, where ethnic belonging and language practice do not necessarily match and where stable language norms are not always considered a value. Scrutinising ethnographic data and examinations of local performances of English, it shows that languages emerge in relation to belonging, prestige and material culture. Bringing to the fore liquid language cultures, it provides important additions to our understanding of late modern language assemblages in a globalising world.