Language & Exile

It seems as though this year I have become incredibly interested in how language is used in text. Boland discusses language, and its incredible importance, on nearly every page. I have also noticed the link between Danticat and Boland in their feelings of isolation, or more specifically, exile. The following passage discusses both the exile, and the use of language...
"The inevitable happened. One day my tongue betrayed me out of dream and counterfeit into cold truth. I was in the cloakroom at school in the middle of the afternoon. A winter darkness was already gathering through one of the stubborn fogs of the time. A teacher was marshaling children here and there, dividing those who were taking buses from those who were being collected. "I amn't taking the bust," I said. I was six or seven then, still within earshot of another way of speaking. But the English do not use that particular construction. It was an older usage. If they contract the verb and the negative they say, "I'm not." Boland p. 46