Alienating Emotion: Literacy and Creolese in Grenada
Author(s)
Mentore, George
Abstract
Locating speech as the field of confrontation in Grenadian society, this paper proposes that while literacy events and inscriptives legitimize the dominant voice of social elites, emotional orality substantiates the subordinate creole voice. The schools and the state are here identified as nurturing grounds of alienation. From these sites, what literacy attacks and seeks to undermine is the vocal emotionalism supporting the creole moral order. In doing so, however, it subordinates itself to an on-going form of cultural imperialism.
