The language glossary - Clarifying concepts
By Debbie Harris, Contributor

AS IT was with Modules One and Two you are required to submit a piece of work in Module Three which will count as a part of the Internal Assessment for the course. Beginning this week I will provide you with a written sample of language used in the context of a Jamaican social situation. The sample you chose may be one of your own original pieces which you wrote or it may be work done by someone else. Whatever you choose to use for the analysis it must deal with the same theme which is evident in the Reflective and Expository Sections. Remember that your teacher must approve the piece of your choice. You will be expected to comment on registers, dialectal variations, attitudes to language and communicative behaviours. (I have given you some brief notes on each in previous lessons). This week we will look at one such written sample and next week you will be given an analysis of it. Discuss it with your classmates and see how well you can analyse it. Read the passage below and write an analysis focusing on registers, dialectal variations, attitudes to language and communicative behaviours shown. "Joe Joe started to take Miss Blossom to pictures and little by little the line of demarcation between social friends and sweetheart just blurred. Joe Joe tell her that the married man better stop come to her and Miss Blossom say him was only a social friend and Joe Joe say 'Yes', just like how him and her was social friend ­ and she told him he was too jealous and him say yes he was, 'But I don't want to see the man in here again,' and she said, 'Lord, Joe Joe.'

Little by little Miss Blossom started to look after the children and look after
Joe Joe clothes and meals, is like they choose to forget Bella altogether. Then one Christmas time Bella phone over the grocery shop and tell Mr. Lee to tell Joe Joe that she was coming home for Christmas.

Well to tell the truth, Joe Joe never want to hear anything like that. Although Miss Blossom couldn't compare to Bella because Bella was the first woman Joe Joe ever really love ­ Joe Joe was feeling quite contented and he was a simple man, him never really want to take on Bella and her excitement and her 'got to make it'. Anyway, him tell Miss Blossom say Bella coming home and she say to him, 'Well Joe, I think you should tell her that anything stay too long serve two masters, or two mistresses as the case might be.'

Joe Joe say 'Mmmmm ­ but remember say Bella is mi baby mother you know and no matter what is the situation, respect is due.'

Miss Blossom said that, 'When Bella take up herself and gone to New York and leave him, she should know that respect is due to him too.' Joe Joe say, 'Yes,' but him is a man who believe that all things must be done decently and in good order, so if him was going to put away Bella him would have to do it in the right and proper way. Miss Blossom say she hope that when Bella gone again him don't bother ask her fi nuttin. Joe Joe became very depressed.

If Bella looked like a checker cab the first time, she looked like Miami vice this time, inna a pants suit that look like it have in every colour flowers in the world and the colour them loud! And Bella broader than ever ­ Oh man. Norman said, 'Bees mus take up Bella inna that clothes dey. Any how she pass Hope Gardens them must water her.'

Bella seemed oblivious to the fact that Joe Joe was under great strain. She greeted him as if they had parted yesterday, 'Joe Joe what you saying sweet pea.' Joe Joe just looked at her and shook his head and said, "Wha happen Bella?' They went home but Joe Joe felt that he and the children went to meet a stranger at the airport. Bella had become even stranger than before to Joe Joe. He began to wonder exactly what she was doing in America, if she really was just waitressing at the club. Bella told him that he should come forward, because this was the age of women's liberation, and Joe Joe told her that maybe she should liberate herself outta him life because he couldn't take her.

Bella cried and said how much she loved him. Then things became really intense and it was like a movie and they had to turn up the radio really high to prevent the children from hearing them.

Joe Joe decided to just bite him tongue while Bella was home. He took to coming home very late all through the Christmas season because the house was usually full of Bella's posse including the 'Yvonne' of Bear Mountain Fame, and when they came to visit the house was just full up of loud laughing and talking and all kinds of references that Joe Joe didn't understand. The truth was that he was really dying for Bella to leave. He really didn't much like the woman she had become. First of all everything she gave him or the children, she tell them how much it cost ­ 'Devon, beg you don't bother to take that walkman outside, is Twenty-Nine Ninety-Nine, I pay for it at Crazy Eddies,' or, ' Ann-Marie just take time with that jagging suit, I pay Twenty-Three Dollars for it in May's Department Store.

Oh Lord.'

Excerpt from Bella makes Life, Lorna Goodison in A World of Prose by David Williams and Hazel Simmons-McDonald, 1994.