This paper is a rejoinder to the dialogue concerning complexity and simplicity in pidgin and creole grammars. My position takes a chronotopic and unfinalized view of grammar, Bakhtinian notions that give crucial importance to temporal and spatial contexts in discussions about linguistic development-expansion and historicity of language use. I take a modular perspective and focus on a pragmatic component of grammar: ambiguity in discourse. Linguistic utterances that contain the phrasal verbs rip offand hot up are analyzed in the present study for their ambiguous, double-voicing features. My aim is to underscore the importance of recognizing double-voicing as a complex discursive strategy in Afro-Caribbean creole grammar. This feature and other non-salient, zero-marked constructions remain difficult to account for using current metrics of complexity versus simplicity. I invoke insights from Bakhtin and his theory of dialogism in the hope that it can aid our analysis of plurilingualism and the cultivation of ambiguity in creole discourse.
CITATION STYLE
Corum, M. (2018). Cultivating ambiguity: Notes on issues of complexity in creole discourse. Bakhtiniana, 13(2), 6–31. https://doi.org/10.1590/2176-457333628
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