distance Labrador people feel from their Newfoundland neighbours, and the

• Main Authors: Martha Macdonald, Gerald Pocius Has Written
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Hudson; Hudson Bay; Newfoundland; inuit
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1028.3809; http://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/RLS/article/download/1230/911/

In a sense, all identity deals with the issue of contrast. We can argue that there can be no identity (individual, regional or national) without contrast of other persons or groups. Identity first centers on the individual and how we experience differences among those in our immediate context. The construction of individual and community identities has as much to do with actual confrontations with "the other " as anything. (Pocius 2001: 1) Labrador is a place of contradictions: part of a province which glories in its insularity, yet located on the mainland, and situated at a point where the north meets the east, displaying the powerful cultural traits of both places. Sandra Clarke is one of only a few scholars to discuss the English language in Labrador specifically: Thus Labrador shares with Newfoundland a common historic, geographic, economic and ethnic background, while at the same time maintaining a unique culture and character due to its diverse aboriginal population and its relative geographic isolation from the island. (Clarke 2010: 4) English is the primary language spoken by people in Labrador, with the important exceptions of Innu community members and the older generation of Inuttitut speakers in Nunatsiavut. Labrador, which contains only 5 % of the province's population, has amongst its linguistic forebears the Orkney Hudson Bay Company servants, the Innu and Inuit, and the English fishermen and merchants of the South Coast. In addition, large-scale development projects and military installations have recruited numbers of outsiders who have brought their own influence to bear on the English language and have to some extent brought about "dialect levelling. " (Clarke 2010: 155)