Linguistic Discrimination

Mi did get we mi waahn bot dem mek mi fiil bad!

Recommendations for future research

Implications

A possibility for future research is to study linguistic discrimination in service encounters operating in other Creole communities. Such research is necessary in the areas of

1) the service representative’s perspective of language choice in the service encounter

2) linguistic discrimination in telephone service encounters in the private sector and

3) linguistic discrimination in face-to-face service encounters in both the public and private sector.

Linguistic Discrimination against monolingual JC speakers and other creole speakers in the Caribbean

Linguistic Discrimination against monolingual speakers in Diglossic situations

Emotional punishment as SRs police, punish and train monolingual speakers of the L language

Linguistic Discrimination studies in Diglossic situations must take a Procedural Based approach

Thematic Analysis - Affective Reactions

"Some service representatives... were very mean and ridiculed me openly. I remember one woman shouting at me when I asked for directions and she went as far as putting me on speaker so that other workers could hear "the dunce talk". This ridicule that I faced sometimes tempted me to resort to the only power that they would respect — my use of English."

The male caller, when phoning in Jamaican, had this to say about his experience: "In Jamaican the exact same representative (as the one who had, on another occasion provided polite service when spoken to in English) began getting rude and interrogative; it's as if their function switched from being a representative to a person charged with discrediting, interrogating and dismissing a caller."

Conversation Analysis

Overall Unfavourable Themes

"I got what I wanted, but how did they make me feel?"

The Anatomy of Linguistic Discrimination in a Diglossic Situation

In Their Own Words: A Content Analysis of the Caller's Comments

Analysis

Findings

Methodology

Atlas.ti

Linguistic discrimination exists against JC dominant/monolingual speakers in Jamaica's Public Agencies

Where there was negative treatment, callers reported receiving more negative treatment when they spoke to the Service Representatives in Jamaican Creole than when they spoke to them in English.

160 telephone interactions were examined using two guises (JC and English) to communicate with Service Representatives (SR) in the Western, Central and Eastern areas of Jamaica.

Sixteen (16) agencies were targeted in this study selected from the then forty that have adopted a Citizens Charter.

The male and female callers used both a JC and English guise, on different occasions, to request information about the particular service offered by the agency.

Matched-Guise Technique

A Modified Matched Guise Technique was used involving two bilingual callers; one male and one female caller.

Each caller calls and interacts with the same SR once in JC and once in SJE.

Calls were made to SRs at 16 public agencies at each of the three entity locations in Jamaica, in the Eastern, Central and Western regions.

SCRIPTS

What are your opening hours / wa taim unu uopm?

May I have the directions please / yu kyan gi mi di direkshan pliiz?

A specific question is asked about that particular agency and its services.

• Call Assessment Sheets-completed during and after each call
• Callers' Comments- comments section

Methodology

Preparatory Work

• Preselected SRs
• Recruiting bilingual callers
• Training callers
• Instruments

Research Questions

1. Is there any direct linguistic discrimination within

Jamaica’s public agencies?

2. Which guise and gender report favourable treatment?

3. What are the conversational features used to manifest

this discrimination?

4. How is SR’s language choice of JC/SJE used to

manifest discrimination?

Rationale

Freedom from Linguistic Discrimination in the Charter of Rights in the Jamaican Constitution-2001

Linguistic Discrimination in six financial institutions - Linton, Philp & Ffrench - 2001

Public Sector Modernisation Vision and Strategy- 2002

Public Sector Reform - 2006

Kadian Walters

PhD. Oral Examination

Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy

July 8, 2016

Order of Presentation

Language Use in Jamaica's Public Formal Domains

Background and Rationale

Linguistic Profiling and Linguistic Discrimination

Research Questions

Methodology

Analysis

Findings

Recommendations

Nurtured Bilingual