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Detecting Bajan Phraseology: A Metalexicographic Analysis

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Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology (EUROPHRAS 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13528))

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Abstract

Within the broad spectrum of phraseology, this article focuses on the phrasemes typically used in Bajan, the English-based creole spoken in Barbados, and attempts to show how they work as harbingers of culture by highlighting the uniqueness of Bajan identity within (but also outside) the Anglophone Caribbean. By relying on the amateur lexicographic works on Bajan (and Barbadian English) produced over the past seven decades and on their comparison with the professional reference tools compiled by Richard Allsopp, namely the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage and the New Register of Caribbean English Usage, Bajan-proper phraseological items are quantified and commented on. In greater detail, this study aims at depicting the distinct worldview of Bajan speakers by looking at the images conveyed through specific idioms which employ local toponyms; although the colonial history of Barbados is hitherto evident in the Bajanisms selected, the jocular connotations attached to them convert such idioms into emblems of the Barbadian character. A further intent of this analysis is to confirm the hypothesis that, for linguists and laypeople alike, Bajan and Barbadian English, the variety of English spoken simultaneously on the island, are separated by a fine line, especially if lexical and phraseological parameters are set.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Various regional dictionaries have been compiled – by professional and non-professional lexicographers alike – on the Englishes and English-based creoles of the Anglophone Caribbean, such as Bahamian, Belizean, Bermudan, Dominican, Jamaican, Saban, Saint Lucian, Trinidadian and Tobagonian (see Allsopp 2003: xix–xx; Winer 2006: 204–205; Allsopp 2009: 354–376; Allsopp 2020: 300–305; Furiassi 2014: 92–94; Myrick 2019: 144–145 and Lambert 2020: 420–421 for a comprehensive overview).

  2. 2.

    On the overarching notion of phraseology, see, inter alia, Mel’čuk (1995: 167–232; 2012: 36–42), Cowie (1998: 1–20), Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen (2005 : 29–43) and Klein and Lamiroy (2016: 15–19).

  3. 3.

    The existence of this lacuna is corroborated by the surprisingly late addition of the entry Barbadian English – defined as “[t]he English language as spoken or written in Barbados or by Barbadians” – to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, which can only be found starting from the September 2021 update (see Salazar 2021).

  4. 4.

    Thanks are due to Giorgia Avino, a BA graduate at the University of Turin, Italy, for her precious contribution to the quantitative part of the analysis.

  5. 5.

    This percentage is obtained by adding the 65 entries, i.e. 3%, included in the DCEU or the NRCEU but marked as AF-Cr, to the 978 entries, i.e. 45%, excluded from the DCEU or the NRCEU.

  6. 6.

    Barbadian parishes are administrative subdivisions which approximately correspond to shires in the UK and counties in the USA.

  7. 7.

    The variant De Lazaretto dog die at de lighthouse appears in Blackman (1985: 2).

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  1. University of Turin, 10124, Turin, Italy

    Cristiano Furiassi

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  1. Cristiano Furiassi
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Correspondence to Cristiano Furiassi .

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  1. University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain

    Gloria Corpas Pastor

  2. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Ruslan Mitkov

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Furiassi, C. (2022). Detecting Bajan Phraseology: A Metalexicographic Analysis. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13528. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15925-1_7

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