Universität Bayreuth, Wintersemester 2005/06
PS User-related and Use-related Varieties of English

The social and linguistic development of contact varieties:
from Pidgin to Creole to Post-Creole

von: Christine Mayers

Table of Content

1. Introduction 3

2. From Pidgin to Creole 3

2.1. Social development  4
2.2 From Pidgin to Creole: linguistic development  5

3. From Creole to Post-Creole 6

3.1 From Creole to Post-Creole: social and linguistic development  7

4. Conclusion 8

Works cited 9

1. Introduction

The creation of a pidgin language is the result of language contacts between people who do not speak a common language but who feel the urge to talk with and understand each other. This might be the case in extreme situations such as war, colonisation or slavery but also simply in the context of international trade. Due to language contacts of groups of different languages, as it was especially the case during colonisation, the need to establish a mutual basis for communication arouse and lead to the development of pidgin languages. Whereas a pidgin has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary and is never spoken as a first or native language, a creole language, which derives from a pidgin, has acquired native speakers and undergone non-contact induced expansion concerning a more complex grammar and vocabulary. A creole language can become subject to the process of decreolization with the result of a post-creole, which refers to the merge of the creole with the standard language it received its vocabulary from in the postcolonial situation.
In the course of this paper I will elaborate on the social and linguistic development from a pidgin to a creole language and from a creole to a post-creole language. When focusing on linguistic features of creoles and on the phenomenon of the post-creole continuum, I will mainly refer to the Jamaican Creole, which is supposed to be the best-explained creole language.

2. From Pidgin to Creole

Normally, once a pidgin language is established, it does not last for very long; sometimes only a few years and seldom longer than a century. When the original use for communication becomes less important or disappears – this may be the case when the different speech communities separate or when one group learns the language of the other- the respective pidgin language vanishes. Thus, not every pidgin becomes a creole. Most pidgins are lingua francas serving to meet special local needs. If the pidgin is no longer needed, it dies out. According to Wardhaugh “Creolization occurs only when a pidgin for some reason becomes the variety of language that children must use in situation in which use of a ‘full’ language is effectively denied them” (Wardhaugh 1986: 76) As a consequence, they creolize the pidgin, i.e. the pidgin undergoes the process of depidginization and develops to a creole language.

2.1. Social development

In a respective community, the process of pidginization, which is at the same time a process of creolization, begins with more and more people making use of the Pidgin as prior means of communication. As a consequence, children are exposed to the pidgin more frequently than to any other language. Gradually, the pidgin equals the status of a mother language. In this way, the pidgin spreads as a mother tongue in the course of one or two generations. Besides the consideration of the linguistic development from pidgin to creole that will be discussed later, historical and social correlations play a decisive role in the process of creolization.
The social and historical development can exemplary be explained by the Creole spoken in Jamaica. Like many other creoles, the Jamaican Creole is a product of the time of colonization by white settlers from Britain in the late seventeenth century. These settlers established plantations for the growth of agricultural products such as sugar or tobacco. “The profits of these plantations were built on the use of slave labour imported forcibly from the west coast of Africa” (Montgomery 1995: 83). Not only in Jamaica, but also in most parts of the West Indies and the Southern United States, slaves had become a cheap labour force. Back then, communication between the white masters and the slaves was conducted by means of a pidgin. The superiority of the white masters was reflected in the pidgin. Most of the vocabulary was drawn from English und used within a simple grammar system. In phonological respects, however, African influences outweighed in the pidgin that remained “fairly rudimentary as long as it served only for the contact between master and slave” (Montgomery 1995: 83). The pidgin, however, did not exclusively serve as means for communication between master and slave, but also – as many of the African slaves did not share a common language and, as those who did were separated- the pidgin, as a consequence, evolved as a way of communicating amongst the slaves themselves.

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