They do be anxious about their speech: Performance and Perceptions of Authenticity in Irish-Newfoundland English MICHAEL COLLINS University of Toronto [email protected] Introduction 'This failure to produce, on command, this relic of our dear culture . I’ve been accused (more than once) of failing on purpose. There’s a sense that if I grew up there, it’s obviously something I should be able to perform, and to fail to do so demonstrates some guardedness or falseness . to fail in this performative aspect of our culture automatically questions the legitimacy of one’s (in this case, my own) cultural attachment.' (Butler 2011) 'Krystin Pellerin is from Newfoundland. So why make her use an accent? Just talk like normal fucking human beings' (bluekaffee.com 2010). NEWFOUNDLAND ENGLISH PRESENTS MANY CURRENT SPEAKERS WITH A DILEMMA. After 1949, when Newfoundland became part of Canada, standard Canadian English has become an implicit and explicit standard. It is heard in broadcast media and from speakers who have moved to Newfoundland from other parts of Canada, often to fill positions of prominence and power. However, the dilemma is not of a unitary non-standard dialect struggling to be preserved or respected. Instead, Newfoundland demonstrates a variety of non-standard dialects of English, existing in a state of both tension and partial fusion. Sandra Clarke describes Newfoundland English’s 'considerable range of linguistic variation' as not merely a result of 'settlement history and ethnicity' but also reflecting 'such social factors as age or rural versus urban residence–not to mention gender and socio-economic background' (Clarke 2010, 16). As a result, associations exist between a variant’s perceived ethnic provenance and many other vectors, such as the speaker’s socio-economic background. The relationship is more complex than equating standard Canadian English with an educated Authenticity in Irish-Newfoundland English MICHAEL COLLINS 2 middle/upper class and all Newfoundland Englishes with a socio-economic and intellectual underclass. Diglossia, a speaker’s ability to switch between dialects as context requires, certainly exists. Among insiders, a Newfoundland dialect may carry a covert prestige, while a standard Canadian dialect carries an overt prestige. However, the situation is more complex. Newfoundland English is too full of internal variation and tension. It cannot form a stable pole within a binary standard/non-standard system. Diglossia then takes on numerous forms–a kind of polyglossia–and attempts by the Newfoundland English speech community to police endonormative standards become contradictory or incoherent. It is not only a question of how standard or non-standard a speech act is perceived to be. Instead, a multitude of independent qualities are judged simultaneously, and different hearers will place different values on those qualities. It may be impossible for a Newfoundlander to speak without some self-consciousness about his or her phonology, morphology, or vocabulary. This anxiety is not only that outsiders will detect hints of a non-prestigious dialect, or that insiders will not be able to distinguish one another by speech. It is that a speaker may be criticized, by insiders or outsiders, in any number ways–for having a dialect, for lacking a dialect, or for producing a dialect that is ‘wrong’ in one way or another. The way a Newfoundlander speaks places the speaker within Newfoundland society. It is used to determine the speaker’s coordinates within a multi-dimensional space of difference composed of many axes–Irish versus English, Catholic versus Protestant, Townie versus Bayman,1 educated versus uneducated, literate versus illiterate, upper class versus working class, Newfoundland nationalist versus Canadian assimilationist. While conscious awareness of this process of ‘placing’ is difficult to prove, the comments Newfoundlanders make about other Newfoundlanders’ speech demonstrates that it is real, easily rousing passionate responses. Why Newfoundland? No speech act is ideologically unmarked2–a person suggests a cultural, political, or class background simply by the way he or she speaks. However, the specifics of Newfoundland’s history and culture mean that the ideological cues coded within Newfoundland speech are perhaps easier to map than in populations that are larger, more cosmopolitan, and less isolated or (literally and figuratively) insular. Newfoundland demonstrated an extremely specific pattern of European settlement, occurring largely in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It 'displays a greater degree of homogeneity in its European founder population than perhaps anywhere else in English- speaking North America' (Clarke 2010, 7). However, this homogeneity was not drawn from a singular source, but from two sources, one Irish, the other English. This binary will prove fundamental. This dual settlement was followed by an extended period of little new immigration and 1 ‘Townie’ designates a Newfoundlander from St John’s; ‘Bayman’ designates a rural coastal inhabitant. 2 Indeed, theorists such as Lacan or Althusser would suggest that it is by language that we are inculcated within an ideological system, that our subjectivity is inherently linguistic and also inherently ideological. Authenticity in Irish-Newfoundland English MICHAEL COLLINS 3 relative isolation: 'by 1884, 97% of Newfoundland’s population was native-born . this portion has not changed dramatically' (Clarke 2010, 7). During this time of relative isolation, Newfoundland took steps toward nationhood similar to those taken by other Dominions of the British Empire (Canada, Australia, etc). However, it suffered an economic collapse in the 1930s. In 1948 it voted itself out of existence as an autonomous political entity by a narrow margin (roughly 52% of voters favouring annexation by Canada). The lines of Newfoundland’s past internal conflict remain as points of fracture in the present, and are manifested by insider attitudes toward Newfoundland’s various dialects. The scope of this paper does not allow me to explore all of these fracture points. As a case study, I will examine the perceived degree of ‘Irishness’ in Newfoundland English. It manifested first as a political project, drawing conceptual links between Ireland and Newfoundland. Later, during the Newfoundland ‘cultural renaissance,’ it became a supplement to compensate for the loss of dialect that followed confederation with Canada. Finally, it has recently emerged as a locus of criticism regarding ‘fake,’ ‘inauthentic,’ or ‘non-representative’ performances of Newfoundland speech within media. The context, history, and settlement of Newfoundland Newfoundland is a large, heavily peninsulated island (108,860 square kilometres, the sixteenth largest island in the world, larger than Ireland but smaller than Britain). Save Greenland, it is the most easterly part of geographic North America. Indeed, the capital city, St John’s, is as close to Dublin as it is to Winnipeg.3 It first entered into European awareness when it was briefly and unsuccessfully settled by the Norse around 1000 CE; after this it was largely forgotten by Europe until fifteenth and early sixteenth century explorers and seasonal fishermen began visiting again. Despite this early history of European contact, formal attempts at settlement did not begin until 1610, and these were minimal until well into the eighteenth century. By 1750, the permanent population was no more than 5,000; this almost quadrupled to 19,000 by 1803, and quintupled to 96,000 by 1845. At this point immigration to the island slowed to a trickle, and further population increase was largely due to birthrate (Clarke 2010, 7).4 3 On Canadian and North American maps, the curvature of the earth often makes Newfoundland appear much more northerly than it is. St John’s, for example, is near the 47th parallel, more southerly than Victoria or Vancouver BC. Its extreme easterly situation accounts for it being jammed into the northeast corner. 4 The main aboriginal nation on the island, the Beothuk, avoided contact with early settlers, and in the eighteenth century began to be squeezed from their ancestral hunting and fishing grounds. The last known Beothuk, Shawnadithit, died in captivity in St John’s in 1829; it is largely through her and her aunt, Demasduit, who had similarly been captured and taught some English, that we know anything at all about Beothuk culture and language. Only a few dozen words of the Beothuk language survive, recorded by well-meaning Europeans (who, sadly, did not have access to the IPA). Its influence on Newfoundland English is negligible to the point of near non-existence. Words from Mi’kmaq, Innu, and Inuit languages have found their way into the Englishes spoken in southwestern Newfoundland (Mi’kmaq) and Labrador (Innu, Inuit), but both of these areas are geographically remote from the regions that are the primary focus of this paper. Sandra Clarke notes a significant aboriginal influence Authenticity in Irish-Newfoundland English MICHAEL COLLINS 4 The development of the English language in Newfoundland represents a 'unique situation' (Hickey 2002, 284). Most of the European settlers who came to Newfoundland in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 'derive from two clear historical sources' (Hickey 2002, 284). The first of these is the southwest of England, primarily counties Dorset, Devon, and Somerset (Hickey 2002, 284). These immigrants settled throughout most of the island and comprise what G. M.