PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES

Group 2 of Sociolinguistic:
1. Iis Handayani
2. Mamah Rohmawati
3. Siti Rohimah
 Definition
• UNESCO defined a lingua franca as a language which is used habitually
by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate
communication between them.
• A Pidgin is a variety of a language (e.g English) that developed for some
practical purpose, such as trading, among groups of people who had a lot
of contact, but who didn’t know each other’s languages.
• A Creole is a variety of language that developed from a pidgin and is used
as a first language by a population of native speakers.
 Geographical Distribution & Linguistic
Characteristic
• Pidgin and creole languages are distributed mainly, though not
exclusively, in the equatorial belt around the world, usually in places with
direct or easy access to the oceans. For example: east coast of South
America, around the coasts of Africa.
• Characteristic of lingua franca that goes beyond the boundaries of its
original community, and is used as a second language for communication
between communities. For example, English is a vernacular in the United
Kingdom, but is used as a vehicular language (that is, a lingua franca) in
the Philippines.
• Characteristic of Pidgin and Creole:
a) Well-organized linguistic system
b) Worth stressing
c) A complete lack of inflection in nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives.
 Theories of Origin
• According to the theory of polygenesis , is that pidgins and creoles have a
variety of origins; any similarities among them arise from the shared
circumtances of their origins.
• According to the theory of Relexification, all the present European-
language-based pidgins and creoles derive from a single source, a lingua
franca called Sabir used in the Mediteranean in the Middle Ages.
 From Pidgin to Creole & Beyond
• A pidgin is involved in the earliest stage of each creole.
• Not every pidgin eventually becomes a creole
• Creolization occurs only when a pidgin for some reason becomes the
variety of language that children must use in situations in which use of a
‘full’ language is effectively denied them.