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Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 32:1 (2017) ► pp.1–47

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The legal hypothesis of creole genesis

Presence/absence of legal personality, a new element to the Spanish creole debate

 | University of Texas at Austin, USA | Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany
Published online: 23 June 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.32.1.01ses
The origins of the Afro-Hispanic Languages of the Americas (AHLAs), the languages that developed in Latin America from the contact of African languages and Spanish in colonial times, are extremely intriguing, since it still has to be explained why we do not find creole languages in certain regions of Spanish America, where the socio-demographic conditions for creole languages to emerge appear to have been in place in colonial times. Nowadays, in contrast, we can find such contact varieties in similar former colonies, which were ruled by the British, the French or the Dutch (. 2000. The Missing Spanish Creoles. Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages. Berkley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Despite the fascinating implications of this phenomenon, our knowledge of the AHLAs remains extremely limited. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for this situation, but no common consensus has yet been achieved (. 2001. Creolization of language and culture. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Mintz, Stanley. 1971. The sociohistorical background to pidginization and creolization. In D. Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, 481–98.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Laurence, Kemlin. 1974. Is Caribbean Spanish a case of decreolization? Orbis 231. 484–499.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Granda De, Germán. 1968. La tipología criolla de dos hablas del área lingüística hispanica. Thesaurus 231: 193–205.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Schwegler, Armin. 1993. Rasgos (afro-)portugueses en el criollo del Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). In Cameron Díaz D. Alayon (ed.), Homenaje a José Pérez Vidal, 667–696. La Laguna, Tenerife: Litografia A. Romero S. A.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2014. Portuguese Remnants in the Afro-Hispanic Diaspora. In P. Amaral & A.M. Carbalho (eds.), Portuguese-Spanish Interfaces, 403–442. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 1993. On the non-creole basis for Afro-Caribbean Spanish. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; etc.). The pull of different views on the issue has been labelled in the literature as the ‘Spanish creole debate’ (. 2005. A history of Afro-Hispanic language: Five centuries and five continents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: ch.9).
The current study is aimed at casting new light on the Spanish creole debate by relying on a comparative analysis of slave laws in the Americas. This article highlights the role that legal differences played in shaping colonial societies and the Afro-European languages that developed in the New World.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Spanish creole debate: An overview
    • 2.1The decreolization hypothesis
    • 2.2The non-creolization of Spanish in the Caribbean
    • 2.3The Afrogenesis Hypothesis
  • 3.The Legal Hypothesis of Creole Genesis
    • 3.1Roman slave law
    • 3.2Spanish slave law
    • 3.3English slave law
    • 3.4French slave law
    • 3.5Dutch slave law
    • 3.6Portuguese slave law
  • 4.How did legal personality affect Spanish slaves’ living conditions?
    • 4.1Historical remarks on Spanish slavery in the Americas
    • 4.2The legal practice of Spanish slavery
  • 5.Three case studies to test the legal hypothesis of creole genesis
    • 5.1Cuba
    • 5.2Barbados and South Carolina
    • 5.3Chocó
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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