15

Linguistic Explorations of Gender & Sexuality

Gender in the Caribbean: History and Research Issues
W
hile Caribbean Creole languages have gured rather prominently
in linguistic research since the landmark Mona Conference in
1968, gender has generally been regarded as little more than a biological
attribute roughly equivalent to the possibly extra-linguistic variable sex of
informants that is often recorded in sociolinguistic studies. Likewise, in
the more than three decades of the development of the now vibrant eld
of language and gender, the Caribbean region has not received substantial
attention. In both cases, there are good explanations for this noticeable
neglect but, as we contend, there are not very compelling reasons for it.
For much of its history, research on language and gender concentrated
on groups that were largely represented as homogeneous in terms of
socioeconomic class, ethnic group, and shared cultural values in general,
these were North American middle-class women. Nevertheless, linguists
who established the eld as a legitimate and productive site of inquiry
during the second half of the twentieth century should be commended
for two important accomplishments: they successfully challenged standard
assumptions about how speakers use language in social situations, and they
established an area of sociolinguistic research that effectively combines
academic investigation and the desire for social change.
The Caribbean can probably be described as off the map for the
majority of scholars who worked early on in this area of study. An inherently
heterogeneous socio-cultural space, much of the geographical region shares
historical commonalities but it differs widely across linguistic, ethnic, and
racial lines, and may have seemed too complex a setting to focus on questions
of gender directly. Some recent work (e.g., Escure, 2001; Migge, 2001;
Language and Gender in the Caribbean:
An Overview
Susanne Mhleisen, University of Bayreuth
Don E. Walicek, University of Puerto Rico at Ro Piedras
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SARGASSO 2008-09, I
Susanne Mhleisen / Don E. Walicek
Sidnell, 2005) on Creole languages has shown, however, that community-
based approaches to language, gender, and gender roles can provide interesting
and compelling insights about the particular without losing sight of more
general, shared characteristics of the Caribbean. As this body of scholarship
demonstrates, speakers and speaker identities articulate gender differentially
both within and across a strikingly heterogeneous set of Caribbean speech
communities and socio-historical circumstances.
A second explanation for the lack of attention to gender in linguistic
studies of Caribbean Creoles concerns the question of power relations
always an implicit issue in gender studies. Due to the violence of colonization
and the Atlantic Slave Trade, the power relations within the region were
primarily researched in terms of hierarchies between European and African
or Amerindian population groups rather than between men and women.
Thus, in early sociological studies such as Patterson (1967), we nd the
assertion that slavery abolished any real social distribution between males
and females. Mintz and Price (1976, pp. 76-77), on the other hand, while
recognizing that the ultimate power of the masters over the slaves not
only over their lives, but also over their sexuality and its exercise probably
conditioned every aspect of the relationships between men and women,
suggest that the codes of the masters determined the connes but not the
content of the morality of slaves. However, inequality and domination have
not been squarely or thoroughly addressed by specialists who investigate the
socio-historical contexts in which speakers created Creoles. In their analysis
of the post-Emancipation male-female labor division of African American
cultural organization, Mintz and Price nd genuinely new Caribbean
elements, such as the emergence of the independent market woman and the
notion that a mans masculinity or status is not tied to his wifes dependence
or lack of it. They hold that these phenomena cannot be explained by a
reversion to an African past or by the conditions of plantation work, a
proposal that has been questioned by some creolists.
From the 1990s onwards, work in sociology (e.g., Senior, 1991; Ramrez
et al., 2002; Lewis, 2003, Reddock, 2004), history (e.g., Shepherd, Brereton &
Bailey 1995, Moitt 2001), cultural studies (e.g., Cooper 1995, Barnes 2006),
literature and critical theory (e.g., Shelton 1993, Chancy 1997, Mohammed
2002) and anthropology (e.g., Safa 1995, Yelvington 1995, Freeman 2000,
Kempadoo 2004) turned towards perspectives that consider the congurations
and workings of sex and gender in Caribbean life. In general, these offer
17
Linguistic Explorations of Gender & Sexuality
Language and Gender in the Caribbean
explanations of the ways in which congurations of gender are grounded
in matrices of social relations and socio-cultural practices. Many approach
gender as the performance of biological sex and investigate intersections
between gender and other sociolinguistically relevant factors, including race,
ethnicity, class, sexuality, and age. Thus, their perspectives problematize the
idea that gender can be accurately conceptualized as simply and/or solely
marking verbal practices.
Also signicant for understanding power relations, Caribbean Creoles
were formed in the context of European colonialism. The recognition that
science was instrumental in colonialism illuminates historical connections
among beliefs about language, biological sex, and socioeconomic and racial
hierarchies. At the same time, this acknowledgement allows recognition
of the fuller range of mechanisms through which colonialism operates: the
performance of identities, the persistence of socioeconomic hierarchies,
beliefs about freedom, and the roles of discourse in establishing sustainable
markets, consuming publics, labor forces, and educational institutions. The
investigation of gender can challenge traditional denitions of linguistics as
a science structured around empiricism and objectivity. The discussion of it
as such exposes talk, ideologies, and broader symbolic systems as constitutive
of truths and human experience.
While seminal work on gender and gender hierarchy was completed
in the last decade of the twentieth century, it appears to be less frequently
approached in linguistics than in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology,
and literary studies. In addition, as Mcelhinny and Mills (2006) observe,
when the number of published studies focused on gender is compared with
research in other elds of linguistics it becomes clear that language and
gender is substantially under-represented in sociolinguistic scholarship.
In Creole Studies, works concerned with linguistic expressions of gender,
gendered verbal behavior, and womens roles in language change (e.g. Escure
1991, 2001, Schnepel 1992, 2003, Hellinger 1998, Sidnell 1998, Migge
2001, Neumann-Holzschuh 2006) also began to emerge around the turn
of the twenty-rst century. However, the predominance of structural and
historical concerns in creolistics means that grammatical gender remained
a rather marginal issue after all, Creole languages are generally regarded
as gender-less regardless of whether the lexier utilizes it (e.g., Dutch,
French, Portuguese) or not (English). Therefore, structural analyses have
focused only on pronominal person and anaphoric reference and the
18
SARGASSO 2008-09, I
possible absence of gender distinction here nominal person reference and
kinship terms. An additional explanation for the rather subdued prominence
of gender issues in Caribbean linguistic studies can be attributed to yet
another gap in the eld: the area of linguistics in which gendered linguistic
behavior is most abundantly researched, pragmatics, has also been glaringly
neglected in Creole language studies. Thus, with just a few exceptions (e.g.
Shields, 1992; Youssef, 1993; Shields-Brodber, 1998; Sidnell, 2004; Migge,
this volume) there exists a signicantly small number of discourse-based
analyses on language, gender and power by linguists who specialize in Creole
languages.
Of i(m) and shii: Gendered Differentiation
in Caribbean Creole Structures
Another area of discussion of Caribbean Creole structures in the literature
concerns the question of gender differentiation in pronominal systems (e.g.,
Hellinger, 1985; Escure 1991, 2001; Neumann-Holzschuh, 2006). Typically,
Caribbean Creoles have only a single third person singular pronoun in the
basilectal form that contrasts with the gendered patterns in their lexiers,
for instance, English he/she/it. Hellinger (1985, 1998), one of the rst to
explore the interpretation of basilectal i(m) in English-lexier Creoles, asks
how the change from basilectal (gender-less) systems to more elaborated
(gendered) mesolectal systems might be explained (1998, p. 89). She
investigates whether the basilectal single pronoun is used and understood
generically (1998, p. 90).
While grammatical gender is generally represented as absent in
Caribbean Creole languages, various forms of biological gender marking have
been mentioned in the literature. Neumann-Holzschuh (2006) for instance,
discusses the expression of gender by sufxation, which most French Creoles
have preserved more or less systematically and also productively, to mark
biological gender. Thus, we may nd lexicalized forms (e.g., dansr-dansz
male dancer-female dancer, LouCr) and also newly derived forms (e.g.
kmsz business woman, HaiCr) in most varieties. Compounds consisting
of gender-neutral personal nouns and a gender-marked lexical item are also
a possibility for marking the sex of an animate referent in some Caribbean
Creoles. In cases of human reference, it is usually the feminine form that
is marked, as for instance in the Antillean French Creole example profs-
Susanne Mhleisen / Don E. Walicek
19
Linguistic Explorations of Gender & Sexuality
fanm a woman professor or in Caribbean English Creole uman/lady dakta
a woman doctor, whereas the masculine form goes mostly unmarked (but:
man-child/boy-child and girl-child). In reference to the sex of an animal, both
masculine and feminine gender marked lexical items are used in some French
Creoles, for instance, mal bourik-feml bourik, male donkey-female donkey
(HaiCr, in Neumann-Holzschuh 2006, p. 257), whereas in English Creole
expressions masculine marking seems to be dominant, e.g. in man rat, with
lady rat as a merely jocular corresponding form. In her discussion of gender
in Eastern Maroon Creole, Migge (2001, p. 92) cites gendered personal
noun compounds formed by adding man or uman to a general noun, verb, or
adjective, e.g. koloku n. luck kolokuman-kolokuuman lucky person, gongosa
v. to gossip gongosaman, gongosauman person who likes to gossip, faansi
adj. French faansiman, faansiuman French citizen.
Kinship terms are usually specied for referential gender (bra brother
sis sister, etc.). Migge (2001, p. 95) also cites some gender-neutral kinship
terms in Eastern Maroon Creole such as (avo)tototo (great) grand parents or
swagi spouses sibling, siblings spouse. Kinship terms may be used as well
as terms of address (cf. Mhleisen, 2005), as are gendered titles of respect
and name (e.g. Miss Lucy, Auntie Jan). Further forms of address include
gal (gyal) girl and bway boy which are not necessarily restricted to young
addressees (cf. Escure 2001, p. 63 on Belizean Creole) and may also be used as
exclamatory terms along with man man, i hot today, man, its hot today. In
this discursive function, the gender reference is seen as largely bleached. Not
altogether, however: while man or bway can also be used by women, a use of
gal as exclamatory term, e.g. gal, i hot today, would not be uttered among men
(ibid). Concerning the use of abusive terms of address in Caribbean Creoles,
there is no question that socio-cultural values have led to the development
of gender-specic rules for lexical items and other elements of language. As
Farquharson (2005) argues in his study on homophobic dancehall lyrics in
Jamaica, it is difcult to miss the glaring gender bias (2005, p. 105). In his list
of lexical terms denoting homosexuality in Jamaican based on lexicographic
sources about twenty-ve terms, among them bati-bwai, botomologist, chi-chi
man or mod-pusha, are concerned with male homosexuality, whereas only one
lexical item, lezi, denotes female homosexuality. The links between sexual
identity and language in Caribbean Spanish have been addressed by La
Fountain-Stokes, both in terms of bilingualism/code switching, and lexicon
(2006, 2007, respectively).
Language and Gender in the Caribbean
20
SARGASSO 2008-09, I
Variation, Change, and Language Ideology
Gender-specic language use is one area that is intrinsically tied to questions
of language socialization, access to certain language domains of language
usage, as well as to questions of language attitudes and language ideology. In
discussions of whether women and men use different codes, an interesting
early Caribbean case of an alleged clear distinction between male speech
and female speech among Carib Indians is often cited (cf. Schnepel 2003,
p. 217).
1

In studies on Caribbean Creole usage, gender-specic features are almost
always linked to questions of basilectal versus mesolectal/acrolectal variation
and consequent developments of language change. In many sociolinguistic
studies, women are seen as the more status conscious speakers who tend to
make up for their lack of social power by using low prestige forms of language
less frequently than men do (cf. Trudgill, 1998). Applied to Caribbean
situations, female speakers of Caribbean Creoles would consequently
function as promoters of language change in the direction towards the
standard/acrolectal forms. One of the problems with such a uni-directional
expectation of change is, however, that the question of language prestige in
Caribbean Creoles is also more complex than a simple High/Low dichotomy
can capture. Language attitude studies toward English-lexicon Caribbean
Creoles have shown not only that distinctions have to be made between
overt and covert prestige (Rickford, 1983), but that the overt prestige itself
is also subject to change (Mhleisen, 2001). In Schnepels (2003) account
of the interplay between language attitudes and gendered language usage
in the francophone Caribbean, the connection between gendered language
socialization and code-choice is described as rather clear-cut. Based on a
survey conducted in the early 1980s in Guadeloupe, she observes that among
young children in creolophone households, it is not uncommon to nd little
boys who know no French; and in francophone households, little girls who
Susanne Mhleisen / Don E. Walicek
1
This notion was based on observation and reports by early missionaries and chroniclers
in the 17th and 18th centuries. The cause of the linguistic differentiation is attributed to a
Carib conquest of Arawak men and women, in which Arawak men were killed and Arawak
women married Carib men. It is subject of debate, however, to what extent both linguistic
groups retained their language and passed it on to their sons and daughters respectively, or
whether this is merely a case of variation due to social and economic stratication in a culture
where men and women live separately with little overlap in tasks (Schnepel 2003, p. 217).
21
Linguistic Explorations of Gender & Sexuality
are unfamiliar with Creole (Schnepel 2003, p. 210). She concludes that in
order to understand this solidarity of language-and-gender, one must grasp
the particular complicity which ties Creole to the sexual []. In a general
way, Creole is connoted with being common (vulgaire), dirty (malpropre),
or badly brought up (malliv).
Some detailed studies on the use of particular basilectal or mesolectal/
acrolectal features also focus on the sex of speakers. Sidnell (1998) shows that
the distribution of the gender-less third person basilectal pronoun am and
the gendered mesolectal/acrolectal forms hii/shii/it in Guyana is not equal
between male and female speakers, with men using the basilectal form more
frequently than women. Rather than attributing this discrepancy simply to
the often alleged tendency of female speakers to use more prestigious forms,
Sidnell demonstrates that context also matters here, as Guyanese women
seem to prefer mesolectal marking for feminine referents and basilectal
marking for neuter/inanimate referents.
For Belizean Creole, Escure (2001) examines the choice of copular
variants (basilectal de, intermediate zero and acrolectal be) and of past tense
realizations (basilectal me, intermediate zero, acrolectal standard past). She
comes to the conclusion that there is no clear movement toward the standard
on the female speakers part, even though women used less basilectal features
and more neutral zero markers. Rather, Escure (2001, pp. 78-79) holds that
both copular and past cases of unmarking suggest a diplomatic attempt at
bridging the gap between two (or more) linguistic codes, two cultures, and
two identities. [] What clearly emerges is the picture of women dening
their gender roles in the community as mediators.
Agency, Power, and Respect: a
Gendered Perspective on Politeness Strategies
Caribbean notions of respect and respectability are concepts that have
raised anthropological interest for a number of decades now (cf. Wilson
1969, 1973; Abrahams & Baumann, 1971; Price & Price, 1972). Wilsons
(1969) focus on respect and masculinity versus femininity also includes some
aspects of verbal strategies associated with assertions of and/or threats to ones
manhood, such as boasts of a mans promiscuous behavior on the one hand
and stylized insults focusing on a mans wifes indelity on the other. Wilson
(1973) argues that reputation is largely specic to men, while respectability
Language and Gender in the Caribbean
22
SARGASSO 2008-09, I
qualies as particular to women and concerns only certain males at specic
times in their lives. Williams (1996) provides a persuasive critique of these
ideas and a more praxis-based perspective, asserting that both concepts are
simultaneously relevant throughout the lives of both males and females.
In another recent study, Yelvington (1996) looks at the construction of
gendered roles in irting in a Trinidad factory. Here, hierarchies of ethnicity,
class, and gender play an important role in the (public) organization of
irting and the various goals that are achieved with it. The signicance to
gendered strategies and gendered evaluation of behavior is rather obvious in
speech acts such as (ritual) insults (e.g. also Edwards 1979 on tantalizing
in Guyana, Farquharson 2005 on homophobic insults/threats in Jamaica)
and heterosexual irting (Yelvington, 1996). In Edwards (1979) a number of
speech acts in Guyanese social life are described, most of which seem to be
performed predominantly by men. Suuring, for example, a type of attering
talk which is performed to impress the female sufciently to start up an
amorous relationship, or, in some cases, to immediately gain intimate favors
(Edwards 1979, p. 84) is described to depend on the dyadic interaction
between the sexes and the appreciation of a (male) audience: a male who
can suur well has a skill which is envied by his peers. Women do not usually
suur (ibid). It would be interesting to see whether any changes in this type
of gendered interaction have taken place in the course of the last thirty years.
But also acts of verbal performance which are not as overtly gendered, e.g.
apologies or requests, would also deserve attention with regard to language
and gender patterns in the Caribbean. Escure (2001, p. 54) summarizes the
connection between gender and pragmatics as follows:
Since gender is solidly anchored in behavior, it seems to be best observed
from a pragmatic perspective that will take into account the discourse patterns
representing how men and women use language, through the medium
of potentially genderized strategies used to accomplish goals (directives,
mitigators, disclaimers, interruptions, repetitions, minimal responses, apologies,
insults, inter alia, which project paralinguistic phenomena such as solidarity,
competitiveness, emotion, hesitation, subservience, insecurity, or dominance.
As noted above, the gap in language and gender studies in the Caribbean
may well be connected with the striking neglect of pragmatic and discourse-
oriented research since the study of language and gender has increasingly
become the study of discourse and gender (Bucholtz 2004, p. 43).
Susanne Mhleisen / Don E. Walicek
23
Linguistic Explorations of Gender & Sexuality
Discourse-based gender research in the Caribbean has so far concentrated
on topics such as agency, power, and gender in Jamaican phone-in radio
shows (Shields, 1992; Shields-Brodber, 1998), the use of discourse markers
to indicate solidarity in medical discourse in Trinidad (Youssef, 1993), as
well as on the construction of male exclusivity (or male gossip) in Guyanese
rum shops (Sidnell 2004). Shields-Brodbers (1998) analysis of female
participation in phone-ins in Jamaica, for example, examines how women
establish and maintain a voice of authority on air by trying to hold the
performance oor. In Jamaican public discourse, interruptions can serve as
a means to hold the oor for both men and women and are not evaluated
negatively (1998, p. 197). Shields-Brodbers study also establishes female
speakers role as innovators in their pragmatic switches between standard
Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. She concludes that
As far as the sound of public/formal discussion in Jamaica is concerned, there
can be no doubt that many female participants display language choices and
conversational attributes regarded as typically male in much of the literature,
and therefore contributing to my characterization of them as crowing hens.
Many explanations for the manifest capacity of women such as these to crow
suggest themselves not least the possibility that, in perceiving and asserting
the power and authority which they wield in their community, such women
have indeed mastered what may well constitute an abomination for females in
other cultures: the art of crowing. (1998, p. 203)
Performing Gender in the Caribbean
Abrahams (1983) study on the man-of-words in the West Indies has
contributed signicantly to our understanding of public verbal performances
in the Caribbean. As seen above, in ritualized forms of talk in the areas of
sweet talking (e.g. boasting) or broad talking (e.g. cursing, tantalizing, etc.)
the relevance of the participants gender is seen as important by speakers and
scholars alike. Public speech, as well as public places, have been frequently
marked as a male domain. However, as, for example, Shields-Brober (1998)
has demonstrated in her research, this is a notion which must be reviewed
very carefully in the Caribbean context.
Furthermore, it seems that the dichotomy between public places as any
regions in a community freely accessible to members of that community and
private places as soundproof regions where only members or invitees gather
Language and Gender in the Caribbean
24
SARGASSO 2008-09, I
(Goffman 1963, pp. 8-9) is not as clear-cut as it appears at rst sight. In her
analysis of the Caribbean oral gesture kiss-teeth (also known as suck-teeth,
chups, see Figueroa 2005, p. 75), Esther Figueroa reects on its functions
in the light of Erving Goffmans notion of the public sphere and concludes
that Kiss Teeths ambiguity in regards to the public sphere and moral social
order (being both monologic and dialogic, performed both in talking to
oneself and in talking to others, and performed both for social control and
resistance) [] makes problematic the public-private [] divides (Figueroa
2005, p. 74). While there is no structured investigation of kiss-teeth as a
gendered activity, it may be interesting to note that, like dropping remarks
(Fisher 1976) it provides the speaker with an indirect means of signaling his
or her ideological opinion and moral positioning. It would be interesting to
see whether indirectness, in other cultural environments often found to be
associated with female norms of behavior, also has a gendered signicance
in the Caribbean.
Sidnell (2004) also problematizes researchers preconceived ideas of a
setting or context as being gendered. He focuses on the construction of the
rum shop as a gendered space in Guyana and shows how members themselves
actively manage this space as a male-exclusive zone. Even though women
are often present within the space of the rumshop, they are excluded from
interaction:
The rule and the perceived respectability of the women involved are preserved,
in such cases, through various secondary accounting practices. In particular,
members work to maintain the sense in which women in such situations, while
physically present, can be seen to be excluded from the framework of ongoing,
exclusively male, activity. So, for example, if a woman works in the rumshop,
serving rum over the counter or perhaps cooking fried sh a short distance
away, she is routinely disattended by the men except in the course of those
activities where she must be engaged for example, in order to request the
rum, to pay for it, etc. (Sidnell 2004, p. 335)
The disattention strategy is then actively used for the preservation of the
exclusively male zone. Sidnells analyses of practices of talk-in-interaction
demonstrate that the all-male domain rum shop is not simply a physical
space but rather a social setting which is the product of concerted and
collaborative interactional work by both men and women (Sidnell 2004, p.
345).
Susanne Mhleisen / Don E. Walicek
25
Linguistic Explorations of Gender & Sexuality
The one space in Caribbean culture that has been explored most
extensively as a site of performances of gender and sexual identity is the
Jamaican Dancehall. Carolyn Coopers (1989, 1990, 1993) study on erotic
play in the Dance Hall as well as on metaphor and role play in Jamaican
Dance Hall culture (1994) spearheads a wealth of investigations of this
setting as a stage for acting out gender roles (see, for example, Hope 2006) and
for displaying heterosexual identities as an afrmation of what is perceived
as part of Jamaican cultural norms. That this goes along with ostentatious
homophobia was already established in Coopers early analysis of the lyrics
of Dancehall performers and continues to be a topos of investigation (see
Farquharson, 2005). More recently, studies which address gender, sexuality,
and music have examined the popularity of the related genre reggaeton in
Puerto Rico (see Rivera et al., 2009).
Outlook
In response to the question what issues related to the topic of language and
gender in the Caribbean they would like to see investigated by future scholars,
writers, or researchers, our interview partners (see interview this volume)
came up with rather diverse ideas: while one would like to see more work on
language and gender in music, in relation to contemporary discourses on
sexuality, and in relation to work (GH), the second interviewee sees a gap in
research on the discourse of ordinary narrative (LW), and the third interview
partner (AS) is interested in the phonetics of sexual identity display. This
wide range of perceived (and real) research lacuna shows that a lot of work
remains to be done, in those areas mentioned and in many others. To date,
there is not a single book-length volume that focuses exclusively on language
and gender in the Caribbean. It is hoped that the present issue of Sargasso can
provide a glimpse of stimulating current research in this area and encourage
further investigations on discourse and gender, language and style in music,
the linguistic construction of gendered domains, and many other themes in
the exciting cultural spaces of the Caribbean region and its diasporas.
Language and Gender in the Caribbean
26
SARGASSO 2008-09, I
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