Dr. Don Edward Walicek and Prof. Dr. Susanne Mühleisen on language practices of West African and the English on the Gold Coast during colonial times
Abstract
- Abstract
- In this episode, Cluster fellow Prof. Dr. Don Edward Walicek (University of Puerto Rico) talks with his host Prof. Dr. Susanne Mühleisen (University of Bayreuth) about Walicek's research project “Language Ideologies and Social Contact Involving West Africans and the English on the Gold Coast.” In this project, Walicek examines dynamics of linguistic contact among Europeans and West Africans who were involved in or otherwise impacted by the Atlantic slave trade. Focusing on language ideologies, it pays special attention to the English presence on the Gold Coast during the 16th and 17th centuries (1553-1700) given that the region was a major source of people sold into slavery as well as a point from which many departed for the Caribbean. The analyzed materials consist of documents that have not been fully examined by linguists, such as local correspondence of the Royal African Company of England.
Description
- Transcript
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Speaker 1: Cluster Conversations, a podcast by Africa Multiple.
Speaker 1: Okay, welcome to the latest episode of the podcast Cluster Conversations. My name is Susanne Mühleisen. I'm a professor of English linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, and I'm also a member and a PI at the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple. And I'm happy to be here with Dr. Don Walicek. And Don Walicek is a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico's Rio Piedras campus. And he has done a lot of research with regard to historical sociolinguistics, language contact, the African diaspora in the Caribbean. And that is also where we have a joint research interest. So we've already met occasionally at conferences. And I'm very happy that Don Walicek is now here a fellow at the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple and has been here for the last five months actually, right? So it's wonderful to also have this opportunity to talk to you in our conversations here, but we have had a lot of interaction in the last five months also over our joint research interests. So yeah, you have published widely on these issues, on language contact, creolization, the African diaspora in the Caribbean, and also social life issues and language ideology. And that is also something that concerns your current research project which is called Language Ideologies and Social Contact Involving West Africans and the English on the Gold Coast. Okay, I think before we come to the concrete project, maybe I could ask you what is interesting to you about language ideologies or how did you get to do research on that?
Speaker 2: Sure. I'm happy to talk about that. I come to linguistics from linguistic anthropology and from anthropology. And so I've always been interested in that social sphere and contextualizing language and ideas about language structure and, you know, language change in terms of social history and social life. And so language ideologies encourage us or push us, the concept, to think about beliefs, right? And I'm interested in working with archives as well, which often include some hints about the beliefs of specific groups of people. And so my project involved considering language ideologies as a theoretical concept in addition to dynamics of language contact and language change.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, your project is situated at a time a few centuries back, right? And you're also doing archival work. Maybe you can tell us first of all a little bit about the idea of the project, but and then also come to the question of how can we talk about language ideologies in the past? Is it something that you can get out of texts that are also limited? But maybe you can tell us a little bit about the overall project first of all and what interests you here.
Speaker 2: Sure. I'd be happy to do that. And the project, like you said, is looking back at the past. It's looking at the seventeenth century, at a slice of it actually, on the Gold Coast of West Africa, which is...
Speaker 1: Today, you know, Ghana, and I decided to focus on a specific period and specific groups of people who were interacting in order to, you know, document something in detail, right, rather than try to work with multiple populations at the same time because there are different groups of Europeans on the West African coast at this time. So I decided to focus on the English and the official arrival of the English on the West Coast of Africa. And I also decided to look at the archival material created by the Royal African Company, which was the official company responsible for trade when the English first arrived there. So this is between sixteen seventy two and sixteen ninety eight. And they set up about ten or so castles and forts and very small settlements on the coast. And the materials I'm looking at, most of them involve communication within this network of structures. For example, from someone in one fort writing to the main fort or someone in one castle writing to people on a ship that is, you know, at dock very nearby and this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, it's a very interesting historical project, but the communication aspect is then something that we linguists are interested in. And it's also significant that this is thought to be also the period when possibly creolization, I mean, there's a big debate about when creoles emerged and how they came into being. But one theory is also that it already happened at the West African coast in those exact forts where actually then the kidnapped people were thrown together from different language groups and it's a theory. I know it's actually, and I think you're not really, really, you won't agree with that, but it's one of the issues that have been raised in creole studies. And that's why your documentation and analysis of the historical texts is also potentially super interesting for creole language studies. That's sort of also a background here. Right?
Speaker 1: Yes. That's one reason I focused on this period. I'm especially interested in the English colonies established in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century, which happened, you know, right before the period that I'm looking at. So a lot of these colonies were established in the sixteen fifties, at least officially, sixteen forties, sixteen thirties. And Africans arrived early on, right, enslaved Africans. And I've looked at the early period in the Caribbean. And so one thing I wanted to do is to turn the clock back, we could say, and look at, you know, what was going on on the west coast of Africa where many of these people came from. And so there are about twenty seven letter books that I examined. And they include memos. Some of them are very short, some of them are two or three pages long. And there are about, I think about a thousand of them, of these letters. And I went through all of them and isolated examples of metalinguistic talk, right, talk about talk, right, or talk about writing or talk about language. Both very explicit references, for example, if the writer is commenting on how someone talks or their language ability or whether or not they're competent in English or competent in a West African language, but also implicit references where someone reports what someone has told them, for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to imagine what the communication situation was like, right? I mean, trade had been established much earlier also with the Portuguese, et cetera. But I would imagine that there were...
Speaker 1: Only few people who could translate or act as intermediators with the English then. So it's really interesting to see, but of course, one can also say that your material also gives a particular perspective, right? It does not give the perspective of the Africans, but only of the English who documented it. Or, I mean, not even documented it with the purpose of, you know, the outside world, but probably for their trade goods or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right. And the material is also, I remind myself of this because it's easy to forget, it's also an internal document for the company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So the writer is often, you know, trying to please their supervisor to some extent, at the same time that they present, you know, challenges or problems or report difficulties or report that the costs are going to be greater than the recipient, you know, wants. So there's a persuasive element to many of these documents. And, you know, you can see people getting frustrated as well, or at least that's what seems to be happening, right? Or challenging their supervisor occasionally. And the documents are central, like sort of centrally located in a contact situation obviously between the English and West Africa. So within this slice of social life on the Gold Coast, more people ended up being multilingual than I thought.
Speaker 1: Okay. That is... Well, multilingual, I guess, also in different African languages. I mean, in Ghana...
Speaker 2: Yes, in different African languages and there are more speakers of English than I anticipated. And I would say more speakers of English than the scholarship suggests there are. So I hope that's one of the topics that, you know, the scholarship that I produce explores, right?
Speaker 1: Mhm. Yeah, that sounds really fascinating and I think it's great material. You have already given several talks also in our research section and in various other contexts in our linguistics colloquium and it was always met with great interest and also produced a lot of comments. So I'm really glad that you're introducing us here to your research. Okay, so are you planning to write a book about that or... I was not originally meant to be a book project, right? But I think the material would actually be enough to do something larger. I think originally you had planned to write articles, right?
Speaker 2: Right, originally. Thanks for the encouragement. I'd like to do a book, I think. A short book. Perhaps the articles could be a stepping stone. And I think the first one that I will do, which I've already started, I have a draft of it, is going to look at the people who are identified as interpreters, linguists, and there's a third term that's used, 'linguisters', in the material. And so these people are clearly competent, very competent usually in English and one or more African languages, West African languages. And they're employees of the Royal African Company. And most of them are West African origin, the overwhelming majority. And so they're based in these forts and castles. And one thing I learned is that there are other people in the surrounding communities that are also multilingual. And they use their multilingualism to negotiate with the British, right? And sometimes they have the upper hand over the British, you know. So it's nice to see those dynamics because they challenge us to rethink some of our assumptions about this contact situation. But one thing that distinguishes the linguisters...
Speaker 1: And the linguists and the interpreters, they're experts at persuasion, right? So the company is not only relying on them to simply, you know, transmit a message, but to make something happen or to get something done. So that's really interesting. There's some meetings that the linguists would go to, for example, and the descriptions of the meetings show that they really understand the cultural context that the West African chiefs who they were meeting with were coming from. So for example, sometimes there would be an argument or a discrepancy, you know, a block in negotiations, an obstacle, and the way of dealing with that was to sit there, everyone, in silence, right? And so sometimes they would sit in for hours, right? And the linguist supervisor would say, what are you guys doing? Like, this is a waste of time. And the linguist would go back to the supervisor and say, you don't know what you're talking about. This silence is getting a lot done, right? So, you know, some anecdotes like that I think are quite revealing. It also points or encourages us to think about the role belief had, like, you know, these different epistemological backgrounds for the parties engaged in meetings like that. What you believe is effective as a negotiation strategy and how those come together in situations of contact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ultimately business talk, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: A few centuries back.
Speaker 1: A few centuries back, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe coming back to language ideology. As we already said that, okay, your research is also important for going back to the contact situations, language contact situation and potentially also the beginnings of the development of creole languages, languages that have been created out of this particular situation that there was no common language available and that people had to help each other with in this communicative situation. Why is creole so contested and why is it so interesting for language ideology studies? I mean, this is also the area where we both also work together and where we have a joint research interest here, right? But maybe you can just say a few more words about creoles in general and the whole background of this.
Speaker 1: Sure. I'm very interested in the history of creole languages and using archival material to enrich our understanding of that history and to contextualize existing theories of creolization, some of which didn't really engage the archival material that much, right? I'm not suggesting that the archival material can answer all the hardest questions, right? I know it's not that simple, right? But I do think there are clues there and hints and also some information about what we can't know, right? I think there has to be a place for not knowing in the material that we produce about these situations if we want to be honest. We can present plausible scenarios, for example, or try to improve a theory without necessarily aiming to create a theory that is watertight and perfect. Generally, the beliefs of Africans and Afro-Caribbean people haven't played much of a role in explanations of how creole languages formed, right? So one way of fleshing that out a bit and changing and perhaps enriching our understanding of language contact that led to creole languages is to pay more attention to the beliefs of these people, right? And that might help us understand why some speakers over time opted to not speak their native African language and shift to a new language, right? I don't mean that they woke up in the morning and said, I'm no longer going to speak Twi, right? But various factors converged to nevertheless produce a result like that, right? Maybe at the unconscious or semi-conscious level.
Speaker 1: level. Um, creole languages, the controversies, you know, in the field have been so divisive, right? At times, and the debates really intense. So, I'm interested in those debates, but I also think there's a lot of common ground when we look at the different theories that have been put forward. So, one thing that I don't think is the case is that there's this extraordinary process or a very different sort of process that took place that led to these languages emerging. By extraordinary process, I mean something cognitive that was distinct or different than what usually happens in, you know, purportedly normal instances of language change. I think we can use tools from general linguistics and, you know, theories that are applicable to, you know, what we call normal situations of change to explain the emergence of creole languages. Of course, I'm not the first person to say this, but this is the way I approach it, right? And at the same time, I'd like to enrich these explanations and enrich theory by turning to the archives. And reading against sometimes against the voice that's presenting the information and challenging them a bit, but nevertheless using the material that's there to arrive at a better understanding of what happened.
Speaker 2: Now, you've been working together with other fellows also for the last few months. They're also from different areas of the world, but mostly also from different African settings. How has that maybe also helped you to get a new perspective on your material or on your work?
Speaker 1: Yeah, those meetings have been really great. We've met once a week and in many of them, a fellow, you know, presented their work. And then after the presentation, we would have quite a bit of time for engagement, questions, comments. And I was so impressed with the comments and the engagement and the generosity, right, that everyone demonstrated. People would ask difficult questions, really difficult questions. Sometimes sort of elephant-in-the-room questions, like, do you not realize that religion is a European construct the way you're describing it, right, and using it to understand what happened in Africa? Or in my case, right, I was asked, you asked me a question kind of like this too, and then I was asked the same thing when I presented to the fellows. And that was sort of like, Don, but who was talking to who, right? So after going into all of these details about what was going on, I realized that my understanding, you know, of that wasn't as clear as it should be. Because that's a difficult question, you know, to answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a necessary question and a legitimate question, but it's also, yeah, it's, but I think, you know, this is exactly why I think it's wonderful to be in interaction with other scholars who are mostly not working on very similar topics, but who can, are in position to ask such questions and to make your research ideas clearer. And I think that's what I also love about, you know, work with colleagues, with fellows, et cetera, and sharing work, interacting and so on. That's very valuable. Okay, yeah, any other things you would want to add about your experience here?
Speaker 1: It's been a very enjoyable experience. I've learned a lot. You know, one of the things that happens, as you know, when you go to another country to work on a project is that more time opens up. And so I've been able to do reading that...
Speaker 1: Changes how I think about my topic and linguistics generally, and that's really a luxury. So I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be here as a fellow, and I am also grateful for the interactions I've had with the other fellows and people associated with the cluster, and the ways that we've engaged each other.
Speaker 2: Well, we have one more month to go, which is wonderful. It's not over yet. But yeah, and it's been wonderful having you in the fellowship program, and I think it's really also a great opportunity to interact on our joint projects. And yeah, thank you for also being here in that conversation, and thank you to the listeners for listening in. Thank you.
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Origins & context
- Title
- Dr. Don Edward Walicek and Prof. Dr. Susanne Mühleisen on language practices of West African and the English on the Gold Coast during colonial times
- Language
- English
- Podcast series
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Cluster Conversations
- Date
- March 15, 2024
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- Extent
- 24 minutes, 23 seconds
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- Episode number
- 16
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