Towards a Discursive History of the Caribbean as a History of Genres

The investigation of text formats beyond literary genres has so far been the exception in research literature on World Englishes and English-related contact varieties (cf. Bhatia, Genres and styles in World Englishes. In: Kachru BB et al. (eds) The handbook of world Englishes. Blackwell, Malden, pp 386–401, 2006; Görlach, Text types and the history of English [Trends in Linguistics 139]. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2004; Mühleisen, Genre in world Englishes. Case studies from the Caribbean. [Varieties of English around the World G 67]. Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2022a). In this chapter I will briefly outline the discursive formation and development of Caribbean Englishes/Creoles in particular written and spoken text formats. By exploring genres such as recipes, letters to the editor, advice columns, radio phone-in programmes or internet forums, I argue, we acknowledge Caribbean creative adaptations and localized versions of highly conventionalized genres. My particular focus in reviewing the discursive history of Caribbean Englishes/Creoles as a history of genres lies on the contribution of the postcolonial context as well as on the significance of oral culture in both written and spoken formats. After a brief exploration of genre theory and its application to the framework of Caribbean Englishes/Creoles, this chapter will highlight linguistic and cultural features in three case studies in a specific Caribbean context: (i) The recipe in Trinidad, (ii) the radio phone-in programme in Trinidad and (iii) the internet forum in Trinidad.