Levisen, Carsten & Jogie, Melissa Reshma (2015). The Trinidadian ‘theory of mind’: Personhood and postcolonial semantics. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(2), 169-193.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.2.2.02lev
Abstract:
Taking a postcolonial approach to the semantics of personhood, this paper critically engages with Anglo-international discourses of the mind, exposing the conceptual stranglehold of the colonial language (i.e., English) and its distorting semantic grip on global discourse. It is argued that creole categories of values and personhood provide a new venue for critical mind studies as well as for new studies in creole semantics and cultural diversity.
The paper investigates the cultural semantics of a personhood construct in one particular creole. It analyses the lexical semantics of the word mind/mine in Trini (the English-based creole of Trinidad) and explores the wider cultural meanings of the concept in contrastive comparison with the Anglo concept. The analysis demonstrates that the Anglo concept is a cognitively oriented construct with a semantic configuration based on ‘thinking’ and ‘knowing’, whereas the Trinidadian mind is a moral concept configured around perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The paper explores the Trinidadian moral discourse of bad mind and good mind, and goes on to articulate a cultural script for the cultural values linked with personhood in the Trinidadian context.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
