Cultural Imperialism Analysis

Imperialism is also a Caribbean issue which was highlighted within the novel in the form of cultural behavior and practices. Cultural imperialism looks at the cultural aspect of imperialism where the culture, traditions and practices of the more powerful civialisation or country are favoured by the inferior country. According to Frantz Fanon, cultural imperialism equates to psychological violence which is aimed at demolishing and shattering the identity and minds of the colonized. In his book “U.S- CARIBBEAN RELATIONS,” Palmer stated, hat U.S cable tv executing cultural imperialism on the minds of Caribbean people whether they deliberately intend to or not. (36) Mills highlights one event in which is present in the Caribbean however,

While everyone sees valentine’s day as a day “all about love and showing each other how much you care for them,” Keisha believes it is “some dum American thing and all yuh Caribben people so quick to eat it up.” She also explains that “it is just a dum trick by all them business people to try and take everybody money.” Another scenario in which cultural imperialism is highlighted in the text was the issue of body image. When the four friends went shopping, Harrietta shared her frustration with the fact that “ Everywhere you turn is some small short up piece of clothes for all yuh skinny ass.” In the Caribbean, many women like Harietta have “shape and size,” however, due to the European view that the ideal woman should be slim and petite, many of the clothes available locally and internationally are petite thus affecting the fashion culture in the Caribbean. Sabga stated that in the later half of the twentieth century, cultural imperialism has been used to construe the existing relationship between what is believed as “First” and “third” world countries. This leads to the idea itself that the Caribbean on a whole is lead to believe by the economically powerful countries that they are underdeveloped and inferior, which gives way for them to easily be influenced and adapt foreign

Arnold stated that “the resulting legacy for contemporary Caribbean societies imposed British English as the desirable standard in all matters of anglophone Caribbean language. ( 44) Arnold also stated that the colonial English used in the English Caribbean was designed in such a master as to control and continues to be promulgated in the service. It is because of this historical event, the Caribbean dialect is frowned upon as it is believed not to be an educated form of speech. Although dialect is not widely accepted outside the Caribbean, it is still apart of the Caribbean people as creole words, phrases and pronunciation has been passed down from previous generations. As such, the use of Code Switching is prevalent in the Caribbean. Code-switching refers to refers to the practice of interchanging two varieties of language or languages themselves, in this case, the alternation of dialect and what is considered as Standard English. The novel can be divided into three variations or aspect of language as characters differed in their speech. For instance, Dominick, along with the boys attending Duncan academy, all spoke Standard English, with extremely little to no use of the Caribbean dialect. This, however, was not present throughout the other characters of the book as some code switched and others completely used the dialect. For instance the girls, Andreide, Hariette and Alisa code switch at times