Lingua francas, pidgins, and creoles

Lingua Franca

People who speak different languages who are forced into contact with each other must find some way of communicating, a lingua franca. In a publication concerned with the use of vernacular languages in education published in Parisin 1953, 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 variety of other terms can be found which describe much the same phenomenon. Samarin (1968, p. 661) lists four: a trade language (e.g., Hausa in West Africa or Swahili in East Africa); a contact language (e.g., Greek koiné in the Ancient World); an international language (e.g., English throughout much of our contemporary world); and an auxiliary language (e.g., Esperanto or Basic English). They usually develop as a consequence of population migration (forced or voluntary) or for purposes of trade. Still another kind of lingua franca is a mixed language. Bakker (1997) describes one such language, Michif, a mixture of Cree and French spoken mainly in Canada by well under a thousand people of métis (aboriginal and French) ancestry. Michif is sometimes characterized as a language that mixes Cree verbs and French nouns but probably more accurately is one that uses Cree grammar and French vocabulary. It is a clear marker of group identity for those who use it and emerged to express ‘a new ethnic identity, mixed Cree and French. A new language was needed to express that identity. The most obvious way to form a new language was through mixing the two community languages, Cree and French’ (Bakker and Papen, 1997, p. 355). Winford (2003, p. 206) adds that the Michif are an example of ‘newly emerged social groups who wanted a language of their own. . . [and] who saw themselves as distinct from either of the cultural groups from which they descended.’

 

At one time or another, Greek koiné and Vulgar Latin were in widespread use as lingua francas in the Mediterranean world and much of Europe. Sabir was a lingua franca of the Mediterranean (and later far beyond); originating in the Middle Ages and dating back at least to the Crusades, it survived into the twentieth century. In other parts of the world Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, and Swahili have served, or do serve, as lingua francas. Of these, Arabic was a lingua franca associated with the spread of Islam. Today, English is used in very many places and for very many purposes as a lingua franca, e.g., in travel and often in trade, commerce, and international relations (see pp. 379–80).

 

A lingua franca can be spoken in a variety of ways. Although both Greek koiné and Vulgar Latin served at different times as lingua francas in the Ancient World, neither was a homogeneous entity. Not only were they spoken differently in different places, but individual speakers varied widely in their ability to use the languages. English serves today as a lingua franca in many parts of the world: for some speakers it is a native language, for others a second language, and for still others a foreign language. However, in the last two categories abilities in the language may vary widely from native-like to knowledge of only some bare rudiments. This is certainly the case in India, where even though Hindi is the official language, English, spoken in all kinds of ways, is widely used as a lingua franca. Swahili is a lingua franca of East Africa. On the coast it has long been spoken as a native language. As Swahili spread inland in Tanzania, it was simplified in structure, and even further inland, in Zaïre, it underwent still further simplification. Such simplification was also accompanied by a reduction in function, i.e., the simplified varieties were not used for as many purposes as the fuller variety of the coast. In rural northern parts of Zaïre even more simplification resulted so that the Swahili spoken there became virtually unintelligible to coastal residents. While the existence of this variety demonstrates that Swahili was being used as a lingua franca, what many people were actually using was a pidginized form, Zaïre Pidgin Swahili. In this respect, those who used that variety were not unlike many today who use English as a lingua franca: they use local pidginized versions of English, not Standard English. Today, that Zaïre Pidgin English has become a creole, Restructured Swahili, and it is considerably different from the Swahili of the coast (see Holm, 1989, pp. 564–7).

 

Pidgin

 

A pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a contact language. That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do so. Very often too, that situation is one in which there is an imbalance of power among the languages as the speakers of one language dominate the speakers of the other languages economically and socially. A highly codified language often accompanies that dominant position. A pidgin is therefore sometimes regarded as a ‘reduced’ variety of a ‘normal’ language, i.e., one of the aforementioned dominant languages, with simplification of the grammar and vocabulary of that language, considerable phonological variation, and an admixture of local vocabulary to meet the special needs of the contact group. Holm (1988, pp. 4–5) defines a pidgin as: a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communication, perhaps for trade, but no group learns the native language of any other group for social reasons that may include lack of trust or of close contact.

 

The process of pidginization probably requires a situation that involves at least three languages (Whinnom, 1971), one of which is clearly dominant over the others. If only two languages are involved, there is likely to be a direct struggle for dominance, as between English and French in England after 1066, a struggle won in that case by the socially inferior language but only after more than two centuries of co-existence. When three or more languages are involved and one is dominant, the speakers of the two or more that are inferior appear to play a critical role in the development of a pidgin. They must not only speak to those who are in the dominant position, but they must also speak to each other. To do this, they must simplify the dominant language in certain ways, and this process of simplification may or may not have certain universal characteristics. We may argue, therefore, that a pidgin arises from the simplification of a language when that language comes to dominate groups of speakers separated from each other by language differences. This hypothesis partially explains not only the origin of pidgins in slave societies, in which the slaves were deliberately drawn from a variety of language backgrounds, but also their origin on sea coasts, where a variety of languages might be spoken but the language of trade is a pidgin. It also helps to explain why pidginized varieties of languages are used much more as lingua francas by people who cannot speak the corresponding standard languages than they are used between such people and speakers of the standard varieties. For example, Pidgin Chinese English was used mainly by speakers of different Chinese languages, and Tok Pisin is today used as a unifying language among speakers of many different languages in Papua New Guinea.

 

Creole

 

A creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers. As Aitchison (1994, p. 3177) says, ‘creoles arise when pidgins become mother tongues.’ A creole, therefore, is a ‘normal’ language in almost every sense. Holmes (1992, p. 95) says that ‘A creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of a first language.’ In practice it is not always easy to say whether we have a pidgin rather than a creole. Tok Pisin and some of the West African pidgins such as Nigerian Pidgin English probably exist as both pidgins and creoles. They have speakers who use them only as second languages in an expanded form and also speakers for whom they are first languages. Such expanded varieties are often characteristic of urban environments in which there is likely to be considerable contact among speakers of different languages and are sometimes referred to as extended pidgins. Winford (2003, p. 307) says that ‘creoles constitute a motley assortment of contact vernaculars with different histories and lines of development, though of course they still have much in common . . . [and] there are no structural characteristics that all creoles share . . . [and] no structural criteria that can distinguish creoles from other types of language.’

 

If we look at the actual processes involved in pidginization and creolization, we can see that they are almost diametrically opposed to each other in certain important ways. Pidginization generally involves some kind of ‘simplification’ of a language, e.g., reduction in morphology (word structure) and syntax (grammatical structure), tolerance of considerable phonological variation (pronunciation), reduction in the number of functions for which the pidgin is used (e.g., you usually do not attempt to write novels in a pidgin), and extensive borrowing of words from local mother tongues. Winford (2003, p. 302) points out that ‘pidginization is really a complex combination of different processes of change, including reduction and simplification of input materials, internal innovation, and regularization of structure, with L1 influence also playing a role.’ On the other hand, creolization involves expansion of the morphology and syntax, regularization of the phonology, deliberate increase in the number of functions in which the language is used, and development of a rational and stable system for increasing vocabulary. But even though the processes are different, it is still not always clear whether we are talking about a pidgin, an expanded pidgin, or a creole in a certain situation. For example, the terms Hawaiian Pidgin English and Hawaiian Creole English may be used by even the same creolist (Bickerton, 1977, 1983) to describe the same variety. Likewise, Tok Pisin is sometimes called a pidgin and sometimes a creole. In the absence of evidence for the existence of initial pidgins, Caribbean creoles such as Haitian Creole may also have come into existence through abrupt creolization, new languages created in as little as two generations. Mauritian creole may be another example. Creolists do unite about one important matter. They ‘generally accept that creole formation was primarily a process of second language acquisition in rather unusual circumstances. Moreover, children may have played a role in regularizing the developing grammar’ (Winford, 2003, p. 356).

 

(Source: Wardhaugh: 2006)