Master thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (MSc)
open access
In a world where globalization is reshaping the way we understand mobility, communication, and self-identification, the study of migrants learning and using the language of their host community is...Show moreIn a world where globalization is reshaping the way we understand mobility, communication, and self-identification, the study of migrants learning and using the language of their host community is of increasing academic interest. The concept ‘new speaker’ is being used in European minority language communities to study the linguistic niches that these migrants are creating through the use of these languages they learn, questioning traditional concepts such as “native speaker” and “non-native speaker”. In this thesis I explore the challenges that New Speakers of Papiamentu experience learning this creole language on the island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands), and the strategies they develop to make pragmatic use of this cultural capital they acquire. This thesis proposes a methodology that draws from Linguistic Ethnography and Visual Anthropology that results in a multimodal thesis which comprises an ethnographic documentary and this article. The documentary portrays how several individuals from different nationalities who are learning Papiamentu navigate Bonaire’s multilingual environment using this language. The results of this research suggest that new Papiamentu speakers are actors of social change in Bonaire, as they are creating and expanding a ‘contact zone’ between Papiamentu first language speakers and new Papiamentu speakers, stimulating new forms of identification, belonging and intercultural communication in the context of a creole language communityShow less