The Metapragmatics of Saying in Sierra Leone Krio

Publisher: Cascadilla Proceedings Project
Publication date: N.A.
Number of pages: 19
ISBN: 1574734105Krio is spoken natively by no more than 200,000 speakers, mostly in the Eastern area of Sierra
Leone, but is used as the lingua franca throughout the country. Krio has bridged the linguistic gapbe tween speakers of diverse languages in the country and is used as a viable medium of bilingual and multilingual education, in political ceremonies and speeches, but above all in the rich history of orature that includes proverbs, stories, riddles, poems, and most prominently, drama. It is unusual to find written texts in Krio these days, but Krio drama was an important literary form and the main source of Krio literature available to the general public for years. There is a great deal of poetry, but most of it is unpublished. If there were satisfactory written sources for the earlier stages of Krio, it would be easier to determine just how stable Krio has been over the last century.