Attitudes toward Accents of Standard English in Jamaican Radio Newscasting

Abstract

In Jamaica, in the process of endonormative stabilization, new norms for Standard English speech emerge in a competition between local, British, and American influences. Language attitude research can provide an important perspective on this process from the users’ point of view. This study addresses the issue of competing English norms in Jamaican radio newscasting by studying both newscasters’ language use and the language attitudes of Jamaican university students as the audience. The analysis of language use demonstrates that Jamaican English is the strongest force in the three-way norm competition. The students’ language attitudes toward the linguistic diversity of Jamaican newscasts are multivalent: Jamaican Creole is disfavored in newscasts, and there is overt recognition and support for the national standard variety, while more covertly there is linguistic deference toward exonormative influences. A folk-linguistic assessment shows that the foreign influences have been integrated into the Jamaican students’ notion of Standard English in the context of newscasts. These results provide a Jamaican perspective on the complexity and context sensitivity of endonormative stabilization processes in today’s globalized world.