Pidgins and Creoles, Reaction Paper Example

In the article entitled “Pidgins and Creoles: The Blurring of Categories”, C. Jourdan delineated the pidgin and creole languages which are a natural sociolinguistic result of ethnicities blending together in one area. Through pidgins and creole linguistic explorations, the adaptability of language was discussed. Sociolinguistic studies explain the concept of the language development that created pidgins and creoles upon the mingling of different ethnic groups.

Pidgins represent a vehicular language which is derived from two languages from two speakers who do not share any common language and struggle with a kind of makeshift language. Creoles have the more complex formative process. Creole is originally pidgin but then evolves into a original language.

The article discussed the heated debate which has led to the genesis of the linguistics of creole and pidgins. Many experiments have been conducted to determine these origins, but the experiments have been largely flawed. The process of pidgin and creole development has been involved the dominant language (superstrate) to be grammatically configured from the substrate languages. The features that were considered common to the Caribbean and West African language  were without the syntactic contexts.

There are some communities that had a blend of pidgin and creole and vernaculars; this resulted in Creole speakers shifting to the superstrate and vernaculars turning to pidgin. Universalists attribute these blends to the world system of language. Political and contextual influences are often overlooked as sources for the evolution of sociolinguistics. Pidgin and Creole have linguistic ‘souplesse’, which means it can adapt rapidly. This is important for the eventual recreation of a general theory of language change that is far more accurate than the current theory.