LITERARY REVOLUTION AND DECOLONISATION IN LOUISE BENNETT'S POETRY 53

her knowledge to counteract Mas Charlie who thinks that Creole is
inferior and has sworn to eradicate it:

 Ah yuh dem seh dah teck
 Whole heap a English oat seh dat
 Yuh gwine kill dialec! (SP 2-4)

 The speaker by quoting numerous examples endeavours to show
Mas Charlie that English was once considered a dialect and that five
hundred years has only served to produce more English dialects. She
raises the all too important question of why her interlocutor only
disdains JC and totally ignores dialects such as Lancashire, Yorkshire,
Cockney, 'broad Scotch' and 'Irish brogue.' The argument is that any
criterion that would dismiss JC as a language would also dismiss the
other dialects of English:

 Ef yuh dah equal up wid English
 Language, den wha meck
 Yuh gwine go feel inferior when
 It come to dialec? (SP 9-12)

 In all these poems, Bennett has dealt consistently with the attitude of
Jamaicans to languagess. Our poet, being fully cognisant of how effectively
language attitudes reveal attitude towards self, has parodied the common
people and their response to issues of language. Although one cannot
ignore the comic nature of much of her verse, she cunningly employs
comedy to get the society to laugh at its ills and then take a second
look at its actions. Poetry is used as a kind of therapy, a rehabilitative
measure for a society debilitated by the disease of colonialism. The
language one speaks does not determine what one thinks about, but is
psychologically linked to the way one perceives oneself.
 Therefore, all her characters (except the one in "Bans a Killin")
believe that they are linguistically deficient [i.e. they do not have a
language] and the total or partial acquisition of English, Spanish, or
French is an indication of improvement from a 'languageless' state.
Rejection of one's vernacular displays an equal rejection of one's true
identity and Bennett knew too well that the process of decolonisation
must be accompanied by linguistic rehabilitation (i.e. a campaign to
reclaim the mother tongue of the masses).
 Ashcroft et. al. in The Empire Writes Back reminds us that "Language
becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power