Creolization outside Creolistics

Looking up ‘creolization’ on any data base, or doing a search at amazon.com or simply googling the term will show that it is more widely used outside linguistics than inside – especially in anthropology, sociology, history and literary studies. Jourdan (2001: 2903) notes that the term has been borrowed from linguistics where one of its definitions is the creation of a new language out of contact between at least two different languages. Creolization in the sociocultural context usually refers to the creation of new aspects of culture as a result of contact between different cultures. In this column, I present some background information on what I'll call ‘sociocultural creolization’ and its links with linguistic creolization. Then I describe what I see as some of the differences between the sociocultural and linguistic approaches. I conclude with implications of these differences for the field of creolistics.