The Man-Of-Words In The West Indies: Performance And The Emergence Of Creole Culture

This is a significant volume of essays-significant because they show one man's development and refinement of a folkloristic theory, significant because the theory is representative of the performance-centered school of folkloristics, and significant because through his analysis, Abrahams touches the very core of the British West Indian cultural system and places West Indian creativity within a cultural and historical framework. Abrahams brings not only the field of folkloristic theory to bear on his fieldwork, but those of sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, symbolic interactionism, and symbolic anthropology as well. The author's major focus is the "man-of-words" and his role of the verbal performer in the English-speaking Caribbean. As Abrahams tells us in his introduction, through these essays he "attempts to establish the presence and importance of a performance complex, a set of traits that articulate expressive relationships" (p. xv). His fieldwork was conducted in the 1960s and early 1970s on the islands of Nevis, St. Kitts, Tobago, and St. Vincent. Abrahams is careful to establish West Indian speech traditions as adaptations of African style to New World language. He points to "the continuity of African attitudes toward eloquence and the adaptation of selected European forms into this value and performance system" (p. 33). Abrahams also takes pains to develop the Afro-American term "play" as opposed to "work. " While work is defined as a cooperative activity, play is referred to as a performance or means of publicly asserting one's individuality. Play is given a negative connotation as being the means of acting out "behaviors regarded as bad," but also provides "a means of channeling the energies of all those in the performance environment" (p. 53). Abrahams distinguishes two different men-of-words: "good talkers" and "good arguers. " This distinction lies at the heart of the book, for the men-of-words function at different kinds of traditional performances. These different kinds of performances represent a basic point of conflict within the West Indian social structure: differences that are "spatial, temporal and social," and that "operate in virtually every facet of village life-and perhaps elsewhere in Afro-America" (p. xvii). On the one hand, there is the family and yard where people are supposed to "live nice" together. This is the realm of order, decorum, and respectability. The second is the world of the rum shop, the crossroads, and the town: the realm of license and gregarious camaraderie. It is the world that takes the men out of the home and yard. Here a man makes his reputation, a "reputation established by dramatic performance" (p. 146) by exhibiting his male prowess and masculinity. Here the friendship network rather than family ties hold sway; playing rather than working cooperatively is the major focus. The good talker or sweet talker is representative of the world of order, of family, yard, decorum, and respectability. He speaks eloquently, employing elevated diction, elaborate stylistic features, and an approximation of standard English speech patterns. This is the speech of community celebration. On the other hand, the good arguer employs invective, creole that emphasizes dialogue and punning, and generally wit through wordplay leading to talking nonsense and a language of license (p. 39). This is the primary means of both entertainment and communication in the world of the town and crossroads. Even festival performances underscore this dichotomy between the respectability of family, continuity, home, order, and tradition, and the reputation values of friendships, male meeting 472