3. PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES Creoles attracted major scientific interest in the 1960s, whereas previously in the area of linguistics they were referred to as “marginal” (Reinecke 1938: 107) and were considered a part of trade jargon. They were regarded as slave talk, a dirty uneducated language, best avoided to be used in official situations. Thus, they were not given much international linguistic attention. Even now, long after its emancipation, [c]reole […] is still associated with the poorest members of society, who are mostly black, and with rural as contrasted with urban dwellers. Its speakers are seen as exclusively labourers, domestic helpers, small craftsmen and others belonging to the same social class as these. (Christie 2003: 2) Dell Hymes, in his preface to the book he edited, Pidginization and Creolization of Languages (1971: 3), which was the result of a conference devoted to pidgin and creole languages, goes even further by stating that “[t]hese languages have been considered, not creative adaptations, but degenerations; not systems in their own right, but deviations from other systems. Their origins have been explained, not by historical and social forces, but by inherent ignorance, indolence, and inferiority” (1971: 3). Such a low status in the minds of Jamaican citizens remains present even now. Evidence for this is the proposal that was considered in 2001 in the Jamaican parliament concerning “language as a basis upon which discrimination should be proscribed in the Constitution of Jamaica” (Brown-Blake 2008: 32). It was a long time before researchers began to linguistically appreciate pidgins and creoles, i.e. contact languages as a source of ways in which languages arise and are acquired. The conference that took place in 1968 in Mona was a breakthrough in the field of pidgin and creole studies. The study of these languages and their varieties may reveal the mechanisms of the creation and development of contact languages. During the conference in Mona, various definitions of pidgins and creoles were presented. According to Hymes (1971: 5), the existence of pidgins and creoles “[…] is largely due to the processes – discovery, exploration, trade, conquest, slavery, migration, colonialism, nationalism – that have brought the peoples of Europe and the peoples of the rest of the world to share a common destiny.” All of these factors accumulated to create a basis for the
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