The speech studied here is not the deepest creole found in the countryside and mountainous regions of Jamaica, nor is it the upper-class, British R.P.-influenced ``acrolect'' of Jamaican society, which is more understandable to outsiders. The speech data examined in this chapter comes from a corpus of more than 60 interviews made by Peter Patrick as part of a sociolinguistic study in of a neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica. This corpus forms the best available data on middle- and lower-class urban speech forms in Jamaican Creole. The speech studied here is quite far from the speech studied in laboratories or with word-lists and self-conscious examination of intuitions. This speech is natural, unmonitored, informal, and vernacular: that is, it is the normal form of language.
The primary speaker studied, Juba, is a 28-year-old, male, working-class, urban-oriented speaker of mesolectal Jamaican Creole. Juba's social background and speech are typical of a mesolectal Jamaican Creole speaker, partly of the country and partly of the city. He was born in the capital, Kingston, and like many children born in the city, was raised in the countryside until the age of 14, when he returned to Kingston to stay.
Juba works as a salesman and lives in Veeton, the mixed-class East Kingston neighborhood where Patrick did his work. A female friend was also present during the interview, which took place in a parked car on a quiet lane. As is also typical of younger, male, working-class speakers in the United States, Juba was interested in telling the fight stories that formed the data for this study.6.1 Fights are socially defining events, and stories about fights are very useful in learning about what is considered important to the speakers, as well as exciting stories in themselves. Juba was quite involved in telling the three narratives about childhood fights that constitute his data. Thus his speech was relatively un-self-conscious, and the speech studied here is in a relatively vernacular speech style.
The second speaker analysed, Roasta,6.2 is an upper-working class speaker. He was raised in Mandeville, one of the larger towns on the island (pop. 40,000) and attended a technical school there, completing 11 years of school. This puts Roasta in the top 10% of the Jamaican population in terms of educational achievement, according to the 1982 census.6.3 He lived on the edge of Veeton for nine years after school. Though recently, after getting married, he moved out to a better neighborhood, his primary friendship network is still in Veeton. Roasta is 29 years old, married, has a two-year-old daughter, and makes a good income as a tool-and-die man and roaster, relative to the unskilled workers, small shopkeepers, and clerks in the neighborhood Patrick studied. His urban, as opposed to rural, orientation is characteristic of young people in modern Jamaica, where urbanization is a powerful force behind the social changes sweeping the country. Roasta was interviewed at dinner with his best friend from school days, also a former Veeton resident; their discussion about their former girlfriends is relaxed, interesting, and occasionally quite animated; the presence of his friend, the food, and the topic of discussion all contribute to making this one of Patrick's best (least monitored) interviews.