BRITISH BLACK ENGLISH

BRITISH BLACK ENGLISH, also known as patois. Any of several varieties of CREOLE English used in the UK by the children of immigrants from the Commonwealth Caribbean since the 1950s. While the older generation often retain their creoles, younger speakers have acquired local varieties of BrE and in some cases a modified variety of their parents' creole which may emerge during adolescence as an assertion of black identity. Its use is often associated with black youth culture, Rastafarianism, and reggae. Although speakers sometimes call it Jamaican, it is in many respects different from JAMAICAN CREOLE, which has no gender distinction, so that both male and female are referred to as im. In London Jamaican, shi is also used, probably under the influence of mainstream English. Linguists are not agreed whether there is a continuum of varieties linking English and the creole, as in Jamaica, or whether there are discrete, diglossic systems. Many speakers codeswitch between English and PATOIS and there are few intermediate forms. Most speakers live in the London area, with other concentrations in Birmingham and Leeds, where there is some influence from local speech. Patois is also used by some white children in black peer groups. There has been in recent years an increasing range of literature, especially poetry, in British Black English. See BLACK ENGLISH, DIGLOSSIA.