Language in Exile

Barbara Lalla is Professor of Language and Literature in the Department of Liberal Arts, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Her doctorate is in Medieval Studies, and teaching includes Language History, Literary Linguistics, and Medieval and Postcolonial Literature. Publications include Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole (1990) and Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1989), companion volumes both co-authored/co-edited with Professor Jean D'Costa; Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival (1996), and articles on Caribbean literature, discourse and language history. Her historical novel, Arch of Fire, appeared in 1998, and has since been translated into German (Flammedes Land, 2000). Jean D'Costa  retired as Leavenworth Professor Emeritus from Hamilton College in 1998, and lives in Florida with her husband, David D'Costa. Her children's fiction includes Sprat Morrison (1972; 1990), Escape to Last Man Peak (1976), Voice in the Wind (1978) for ages ten to twelve. For children aged seven to ten, she has published Duppy Tales (1997), Caesar and the Three Robbers (1996), along with Jenny and the General (2006) and, with Velma Pollard, co-edited and co-authored an anthology of short stories, Over Our Way (1981; 1993).  With Professor Barbara Lalla, she has produced Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole (1990), and also Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the 18th and 19th Centuries (1989).

"An important addition to studies of the genesis and life of Jamaican Creole as well as other New World creoles such as Gulla. Highlighting the nature of the nonstandard varieties of British English dialects to which the African slaves were exposed, this work presents a refreshingly cogent view of Jamaican Creole features." - SECOL Review "Provides valuable historical and demographic data and sheds light on the origins and development of Jamaican Creole. Lalla and D'Costa offer interesting insights into Creole genesis, not only through their careful mapping of the migrations from Europe and Africa, which constructed the Jamaican society but also through extensive documentation of early texts.... Highly valuable to linguists, historians, anthropologists, psychologists, and anyone interested in the Caribbean or in the history of mankind." - New West Indian Guide"