Филологические науки/ 9. Этно-, социо- и психолингвистика

Samoilenko S.A.

Alfred Nobel University, Dnipropenrovsk, Ukraine

Code-mixing in the postcolonial literature language (on the basis of Giannina Braschi’s novel "Yo-yo boing!")

“… all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds.”

(Giannina Braschi)

Postcolonial literature (or Post-colonial literature, sometimes called New English literature(s)), is a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. It is also a literary critique to texts that carry racist or colonial undertones. [3]

One of the best known authours of that time is Puerto Rico's most influential contemporary poet and novelist who directly addresses the colonial situation of Puerto Rico in her experimental and politically-charged works is Giannina Braschi.

Giannina Braschi (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel “YO-YO BOING!” (1998), "United States of Banana" and the phantasmagorical trilogy “Empire of Dreams” (Yale, 1994), which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States.

In the 1990s, Giannina Braschi began writing dramatic dialogues in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Her bilingual experimental novel “YO-YO BOING!” (which heading contains the stage name of a well-known comedian, actor and television show host, who was also one of the pioneers of Puerto Rican television - Luis Antonio Rivera) is experimental in format and radical in its defiance of English-only laws, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and the corporate imposition of sameness. [4]

Critics observe this novel as the brightest sample of “linguistic nomadism” of the globalization epoch (Laura R. Lustro). [4]

"Giannina Braschi's novel YO-YO BOING! is the best demonstration yet of her extraordinary virtuosity, her command of many different registers, her dizzying ability to switch between English and Spanish. It is also a very funny novel, a novel of argumentative conversations that cover food, movies, literature, art, the academy, sex, memory, and everyday life. It is a book that should be performed as well as read"-Jean Franco. [4]

"For decades, Dominican and Puerto Rican authors have carried out a linguistic revolution," noted The Boston Globe, and "Giannina Braschi, especially in her novel YO-YO BOING!, testify to it." [11] Her work has been described as a "synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U. S. Hispanics."º[12] Written in three languages, English, Spanglish, and Spanish, Braschi's work captures the cultural experience of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans and also seeks to explore the three political options of Puerto Rico: Nation, Colony, or Statehood.

Spanglish refers to the blend (at different degrees) of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. Spanglish is not a pidgin language. It is totally informal; there are no hard-and-fast rules. There are thought two phenomena of Spanglish, which are borrowing and code-switching. [9]

Code-mixing (or code-switching) refers to the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech. Some scholars use the terms "code-mixing" and "code-switching" interchangeably, especially in studies of syntax, morphology, and other formal aspects of language. [5] Others assume more specific definitions of code-mixing, but these specific definitions may be different in different subfields of linguistics, education theory, communications etc.

Code-mixing is similar to the use or creation of pidgins; but while a pidgin is created across groups that do not share a common language, code-mixing may occur within a multilingual setting where speakers share more than one language.

Some linguists use the terms code-mixing and code-switching more or less interchangeably. Especially in formal studies of syntax, morphology, etc., both terms are used to refer to utterances that draw from elements of two or more grammatical systems. [5] These studies are often interested in the alignment of elements from distinct systems, or on constraints that limit switching.

While the term code-switching emphasizes a multilingual speaker's movement from one grammatical system to another, the term code-mixing suggests a hybrid form, drawing from distinct grammars. In other words, code-mixing emphasizes the formal aspects of language structures or linguistic competence, while code-switching emphasizes linguistic performance.

A mixed language or a fused lect is a relatively stable mixture of two or more languages. What some linguists have described as "code-switching as unmarked choice"º[6] or "frequent codswitching" [7] has more recently been described as "language mixing", or in the case of the most strictly grammaticalized forms as "fused lects". [1]

There are many names for specific mixed languages or fused lects. These names are often used facetiously or carry a pejorative sense. [8] Named varieties include the following Chinglish, Denglisch, Englog, Franglais, Greeklish, Hinglish, Porglish, Spanglish, Svorsk, Taglish and others.

Comparing with the situation in Ukraine we can observe a mixed language by existing of surzhyk (that refers to a range of russified sociolects of Ukrainian used in certain regions of Ukraine and adjacent lands). It does not possess any unifying set of characteristics; the term is used for "norm-breaking, non-obedience to or nonawareness of the rules of the Ukrainian and Russian standard languages". [10]

As in the case of Spanglish, surzhyk existing has also been caused by hystorical and political events.

The history of surzhyk usage in Ukrainian literature has started from the famous play “Nalaka-Poltavka” (1819) by Ivan Kotliarevski. In the literary works by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, M. Starytski, Ostap Vyshnia, S. Olijnyk, O. Chornoguz, P. Glazovyi as in the works of contemporary Ukrainian authours such as Bogdan Zholdak, Les Podervianski, surzhyk is often used for comical effect being a code-switching tool.

Code-switching is a discourse modality usually associated with Chicano writing. However, one of the most notable characteristics of Braschi’s novel is the agile and productive use of an interlingua poised between English and Spanish. By so doing, she breaks substantially with the practice of distinguishing clearly between a Puerto Rican writing in Spanish, with publication in San Juan, and Neo-Rican (or Nuyorican) writing in English, published in the U. S. (the latter may contain isolated words and phrases, but nothing approaching a third, interlingua). [5]

Here are the examples of the code mixture dialogues from the novel:

Example 1.

Ábrela tú.

¿Por qué yo? Tú tienes las keys. Yo te las entregué. Además, I left mine adentro.

¿Por qué las dejaste adentro?

Porque I knew you had yours.

¿Por qué dependes de mí?

Just open it, and make it fast. [2]

In English:

You open it.

Why me? You've got the keys. I gave them to you. Besides, I left mine inside.

Why did you leave them inside?

Because I knew you had yours.

Why do you always depend on me?

Just open it, and make it fast.

Example 2.

"Yo no estoy de acuerdo con eso. But,anyhow,I think I will try again to get it."

"I have lived in Miami for a long time, pero soy cubano." [2]

In English:

"I disagree with that. But, anyhow, I think I will try again to get it."

"I have lived in Miami for a long time, but I am Cuban."

These examples show us that code-mixing structures can contain from one word (of another so called mixing language) to half of a sentence.

Braschi, who has established herself as an important poet, makes good use of code-switching. Her novel is a superb exploration of the lived experiences of urban life for Hispanics, in this case in New York City, and her principal interest is in representing how individuals move in and out of different cultural coordinates, including one so crucial as language. Life for the urban Hispanic is not a parcelling up of the universe into realms that are Spanish and realms that are English, with neat divides separating the private (the idea that Spanish is what is spoken at home and in select intimate situations) from the public (the idea that English is what allows the individual to move in the “real world”). There are unquestionably those, both language purists (English-only champions vs. Spanish-only champions) and cultural nationalists (“you must decide if you want to live as a Puerto Rican or an Anglo-American”), who would wish to hold onto such distinctions. However, as Braschi’s novel so eloquently demonstrates, not only are the worlds of Spanish and English, the Hispanic and the Anglo, now so inextricably intertwined that such cultural and linguistic dichotomies no longer make any sense, but there is now the realm of the third, interlingua, a synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U. S. Hispanics. “Yo Yo Boing!” is a clever X-ray of that sociocultural fact. [4]

This groundbreaking novel, set in New York City during the 1990s, is guaranteed to be unlike any literary experience you have ever had. Acclaimed Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi has crafted this creative and insightful examination of the Hispanic-American experience, taking on the voices of a variety of characters—painters, poets, sculptors, singers, writers, filmmakers, actors, directors, set designers, editors, and philosophers — to draw on their various cultural, economic, and geopolitical backgrounds to engage in lively cultural dialogue. Braschi’s discourse winds throughout the city’s public, corporate, and domestic settings, offering an inside look at the cultural conflicts that can occur when Anglo Americans and Latin Americans live, work, and play together. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a literary liberation,” this energetic and comical novel celebrates the contradiction that makes contemporary American culture so wonderfully diverse.

References:

1. Auer, Peter. From code-switching via language mixing to fused lects: toward a dynamic typology of bilingual speech. International Journal of Bilingualism, 1999.

2. Giannina Braschi's. Yo-Yo Boing!, Doris Sommer, Harvard University, 1998.

3. Hart, Jonathan; Goldie, Terrie (1993). "Post-colonial theory". In Makaryk, Irene Rima; Hutcheon, Linda; Perron, Paul. Encyclopedia of contemporary literary theory: approaches, scholars, terms. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Retrieved 14 November 2011.

4. Introduction to Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing!, Doris Sommer, Harvard University, 1998.

5. Muysken, Pieter. Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

6. Myers-Scotton, Carol. Social Motivations of Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

7. Poplack, Shana. Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en espanol: toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 1979.

8. Romaine, Suzanne and Braj Kachru. "Code-mixing and code-switching." In T. McArthur (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press, 1992.

9. Spanish/English Codeswitching in a Written Corpus, by Laura Callahan, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004.

10. Surzhyk and national identity in Ukrainian nationalist language ideology (Niklas Bernsand in Berliner Osteuropa-Info, Vol. 17 page 41, Freie Universität, Berlin), 2002.

11. The Boston Globe, "Spanglish is everywhere now, which is no problema for some, but a pain in the cuello for purists," by Ilan Stavans, 9/14/2003.

12. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Review of Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing, by David William Foster, 1999.