Toronto is the site of the second largest Caribbean community in North America. Language and music are important semiotic resources deployed by Caribbean Canadians in constructing bicultural identities. Thus, the Canadian reggae scene provides an ideal site for research into individual style and cultural practice in a multicultural setting. In ethnographic work among Canadian-born Jamaicans who are active participants in the Toronto Reggae scene, I studied how Jamaican and North American forms of English are deployed in the discursive performance of complex identities in the context of talking about music. This talk will provide an introduction to the varieties of English involved in discourse practices I studied as well as an overview of the social meanings of these varieties in the metropolitan Canadian context. Using audio and video recordings of a reggae promoter and talk show host, I will present a case study of one bicultural individual’s strategies of using different forms of English in meaningful contrast.
