Linguistic Proposal
1.
Introduction
For decades, the characters of
television shows were composed of rich white straight males; however, in the
1990s, television viewers began to see more marginalized voices emerge on their
television screens. The dominant boys-club and their traditional norms started
to dismantle when television networks began introducing new faces and new
stories to the mix. Shows like Living
Single, Will and Grace, Sex and the City, the Golden Girls, and Roseanne were just a few shows of the era that were more
representative of race, sexuality, gender, age, and class. While this
celebration of different cultures started to gain more momentum, and the faces
on the sitcoms started to mirror more of the viewers that watched them, it
seemed to bypass an entire subcategory of television shows: those for children.
Multiculturalism was seen as too risky to introduce to a younger audience.
However, in 1994, the Nickelodeon network decided to take the risk and include
the new series Gullah Gullah Island,
a show centered around the language and culture of the Gullah people, into
their new series lineup. But, was the show worth the risk and did it do a fair
job representing the culture and language of the Gullah people?
In this paper, I will discuss the
characteristics of the Gullah people and the Geechee language, provide a
synopsis of the show, and conclude with research questions that I plan on
exploring further in my seminar paper.
2. Gullah
Culture and Language
Gullah refers to a
particular culture, language, and group of people. The Gullah are creole
speaking African Americans living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and
Georgia. It’s unclear where the word “Gullah” originated from. Many scholars
claim the name comes from the countries and tribes where Gullah’s ancestors
originated, such as Angola, the Gola, and the Dyula (pronounced “Gwullah”).
Gullah, also called Geechee, is a creole language containing a linguistic
mixture of African and European languages; although, it is distinctive from
English’s grammar and sentence structures (Wolfram and Estes 227). Gullah’s
Central and West African lineage is also found in Gullah culture and lifestyle,
including farming, fishing, creating crafts, and preparing their traditional
riced-based dishes. The reason the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia
plantations were able to produce the African rice in the region was because of
the Gullah’s Western African ancestors who came from rice-growing provinces and
had the knowledge and skills to grow and to produce the crop (Hendry).
Diseases such as malaria
and yellow fever were brought over to the colonies in the slave ships, as well.
These diseases were spread to the European settlers through mosquitos. To try
to prevent catching the disease, many plantation owners left the subtropical
climate of the Lowcountry during the spring and summer. African slaves were
left to work on the plantations since they were more immune and resistant to
the diseases than their owners (“Gullah”). This isolation, however, gave room
for their Gullah culture to flourish. As demonstrated in Gullah/Geechee speech,
geography can impact dialect. Those who lived on the Sea Islands didn’t
interact much with those on the mainland, and the geographical distance between
the Gullah and African American English speakers on the mainland reinforced the
divergence of the languages. (Wolfram and Estes 31). It wasn’t until the 20th century
when the Sea Island became a tourist attraction that the Gullah were exposed to
other languages (Lanehart).
The preservation of
Gullah’s culture and language is extremely important to its people. When Union
forces arrived on the Sea Islands during the Civil War, the Gullah people were
eager to volunteer to the Union Army and fight for their freedom. The Sea
Islands were the first spot in the south where the slaves were freed. Before
the war even ended, missionaries from the north came to the Sea Island to
create schools for the newly freed slaves (“Gullah”). One of the schools that
was created during the Civil War was Penn School in St. Helena. It has since
grown into Penn Center, a leading organizational force, advocating for the
preservation of the area and the culture and language of the Gullah people. In
2006, U.S. Congress passed the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Corridor Act that
granted $10 million over the next 10 years to help with the preservation of
historical sites in the Lowcountry relating to Gullah culture (Hendry).
The Gullah people have deep
cultural characteristics of story-telling and call-and-response music. Themes
of spirituality and superstition run through their stories and songs. Their
brightly colored clothing and home décor, such as their blue porch ceilings,
align with the beachy geography of the area; however, it’s also rooted in
Gullah’s spiritual traditions; specific colors were believed to keep ghosts and
evil spirits away from one’s home. Gullah root doctors and herbal medicine are
well respected in the community.
Although the Gullah have distinctions between those who live on the
mainland (Freshwater Geechee) and those who live on the Sea Islands (Saltwater
Geechee), all Geechees are expected to help preserve the Gullah culture and
language. Gullah people who moved north during the Great Migration have a
tradition of sending their children down to the Sea Islands during the summer
to stay with their grandparents. It’s their way of preserving and keeping the
Gullah traditions (Lanehart).
3. Gullah
Gullah Island
Gullah
Gullah Island
was a television series on the Nickelodeon network from 1994-1998. The show was
inspired by Ron Daise, the leading actor and cultural advisor of the show, and
his life on St. Helena Island, South Carolonia, a part of the Gullah community.
The creator of the show, Maria Perez-Brown, attended the multimedia show of Ron
and Natalie Daise’s Sea Island Montage,
a performance celebrating the Gullah culture. Perez-Brown, an executive
producer of the Nickelodeon network had already been initating plans to expand
the network’s television lineup, including a multicultural children’s program The
network’s program expansion was to promote “flexible thinking’ an approach the network says
encourages kids to think on their own when making choices rather than using
rote memorization”
(Mangan). Perez-Brown had imagined the show taking place on a magical island.
The team was leery at first of basing a fictional setting off of a real place.
The Daises also served as cultural advisors to make sure Gullah’s culture and
traditions were being portrayed positively (Mangan).
The show follows the Alstons family, played
by Ron and Natalie Daise and the Daise’s actual children, Sara and Simeon. The
other characters on the show include the island’s residents and a frog puppet
named Binyah Binyah, whose name in Gullah means “island native” (Hendry). The
goal of the show, like most children’s shows, was to entertain and to educate
its young audience. However, Gullah
Gullah Island took a different path towards this goal by using a language
and cultural that had never been present in mainstream television before. In
fact, Gullah Gullah Island was the
first children’s show to star an African American family living in a black
community (Ruiz).
4. Multiculturalism
and Children
In “Multiculturalism and
Its Discontents: Essentializing Ethnic Moroccan and Roma Identities in
Classroom Discourse in Spain,” Garcia-Sanchez’s research analyzes language
policy scholarship in Spain’s educational system by tracking the
multilingualism and cultural diversity in one of Spain’s schools who was
applauded for its inclusive pedagogical methods. The school’s inclusive
ideology was a theme throughout the physical space of the schools, such as wall
murals and displays, as well the curriculum goals. The goal was to create an
environment that was tolerant of the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of
its students (Garcia-Sanchez 291).
Garcia-Sanchez examines the
construction of minority children’s ethnic identities “through the discursive
production of classroom narratives” and discusses “how teachers engage in
distinction, authentication, and authorization practices by drawing on essentialist
notions of immigrant and minority children’s identities and reproducing
homogeneous and static notions of culture” (291). She uses linguistic
anthropology and classroom discourse analysis as the methodology to analyze the
interactions between the students and the teacher and class discussions in
social studies and language arts classes.
Garcia- Sanchez identifies five
resources that teachers use to construct student identities in the classroom
and how the five resources function as markers of identity, meaning a student
is the represented voice of an ethnolinguistic group, or a way to construct
implicit unitary class identity. While the dynamics between teacher-student
relationship and television characters-audience relationship are different, Gullah Gullah Island incorporates some
of the five resources that Garcia-Sanchez identifies, specifically
initiation-response sequences and storytelling (292).
Garcia- Sanchez notes that while
the school’s good intentions were evident, sometimes things look great on
paper, but when put into practice it has an opposite effect. The researcher
noted that instead of creating an inclusive environment, ethnic “othering”
occurred instead (Garcia-Sanchez 293). Celebrations of different cultures were
add-on activities of mainstream culture celebrations instead of intermingled
together. “Cultural” became something the minority students possessed (Garcia-Sanchez
293). According to Garcia- Sanchez, “Until we disrupt ideologies that frame
diversity as suspect and problematic, those who genuinely struggle to address
racial and ethnic inequalities will most likely continue to reproduce them”
(307).
5. Conclusion
Similar to the school in
Garcia-Sanchez’s study, Nickelodeon network’s multiculturalism program’s push
began with good intentions, and it was honored with multiple awards throughout
the four season duration of the series, including the title of TV Guide’s Best
Children’s Show of 1996, two Parent’s Choice Awards, two nominations for the
NAACP Image Award, and even a nomination for an Emmy in 1997 (McClure).
However, as Garcia-Sanchez’s study points out, multicultural practices “meant
to promote inclusion and participation may have unintended, paradoxical
consequences” (306). While her research
examines multicultural practices within a school, it could be argued that a
children’s television show is parallel to the school’s “structural-ideological
field that belies our attempts to promote equity, diversity, and justice” (Garcia-Sanchez
307). Garcia-Sanchez stresses that it’s important to understand why dialect
differences exits and what we can do to become aware of our bias. Many
linguistic scholars, besides Garcia-Sanchez, argue that the best way to learn
to “understand” those with different dialects is to expose yourself to them. Gullah Gullah Island exposes children to
language differences. But, how accurate is the show’s representation of the
Gullah culture, language, and people? Does it promote cultural and linguistic
heterogeneity? How much can a television show
influence a child’s perception of language? Over the next few weeks, I plan on
watching the Gullah Gullah Island
series and using a similar approach and methodically as Garcia-Sanchez to
address the questions above further in my seminar paper.
Works Cited
Garcia-Sanchez, Inmaculada.
“Multiculturalism and Its Discontents: Essentializing Ethnic Moroccan and Roma
Identities in Classroom Discourse in Spain.” Raciolinguisitics. Edited by Alim, Samy, John Rickford and Arnetha
Ball, Oxford UP, 2016, pp. 291-308.
“Gullah.” The Oxford Companion of the English Language. Eds. McArthur, Tom,
Jacqueline Lam-MacArthur, and Lise Fontaine: Oxford University Press, January
01, 2018. Oxford Reference. https://www.oxofrodreference.comezproxy.umsl.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780199661282.001.0001/acref-9790199661282-e-550
Hendry, Erica. “Holding on to
Gullah Culture: A Smithsonian Curator Visits a Georgia Island to Find Stories
of a Shrinking Community that Has Clung to its African Traditions”
Smithsonian.org. Smithsonian Magazine.
March 2011. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/holding-on-to-gullah-culture-185296.
Lanehart, Sonja L. The Oxford Handbook of African American
Language. Oxford University Press. 2015. EBSCOhot, ezproxy.umsl.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=973803&site-ebost-live&scope=site.
Mangan, Jennifer. “Gullah-Baloo” Chicago Tribune, 25 April 1996, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1996-04-25-9604250311-story.html
McClure, Greg. “Gullah Stories” Purdue Today, 30 August 2013. https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q3/gullah-stories,-songs-featured-in-bcc-presentation-at-fowler-hall.html
Ruiz Patton, Susan. “Gullah Coming
to Fest* Nickelodeon Show Will be Part of ASA Packers Series” The Morning Call. 24 April 1998. https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1998-04-24-3202471-story.html
Wolfram,
Walt, and Natalie Schilling Estes.
2016. American English: Dialects
and Variation. Oxford: Blackwell.
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