Type of Document Master's Thesis Author Manget-Johnson, Carol Anne URN etd-07182008-150257 Title DREAD TALK: THE RASTAFARIANS’ LINGUISTIC RESPONSE TO SOCIETAL OPPRESSION Degree Master of Arts Department English Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Dr. Mary Zeigler Committee Chair Dr, Lynée Gaillet Committee Member Dr. Marti Singer Committee Member Keywords
- Haile Selassie I
- Colonialism
- Political Resistance
- Bob Marley
- Standard Jamaican English
- Oppression
- Caribbean Creole
- Language Variation
- Iyaric
- Dread Talk
- Rastafarian
- Reggae
Date of Defense 2008-07-18 Availability unrestricted Abstract Opposed to the repressive socio-economic political climate that resulted in the impoverishment of masses of Jamaicans, the Jamaican Rastafarians developed a language to resist societal oppression. This study examines that language--Dread Talk--as resistive language.Having determined that the other variations spoken in their community--Standard Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole--were inadequate to express their dispossessed circumstances, the Rastafarians forged an identity through their language that represents a resistant philosophy, music and religion. This resistance not only articulates their socio-political state, but also commands global attention.
This study scrutinizes the lexical, phonological, and syntactical structures of the poetic music discourse of Dread Talk, the conscious deliberate fashioning of a language that purposefully expresses resistance to the political and social ideology of their native land, Jamaica.
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