The Creole Debate
by John H. McWhorter
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Pub Date May 31 2019 | Archive Date Jun 13 2018
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Description
Creoles have long been the subject of debate in linguistics, with many conflicting views, both on how they are formed, and what their political and linguistic status should be. Indeed, over the past twenty years, some creole specialists have argued that it has been wrong to think of creoles as anything but language blends in the same way that Yiddish is a blend of German and Hebrew and Slavic. Here, John H. McWhorter debunks the most widely accepted idea that creoles are created in the same way as 'children', taking characteristics from both 'parent' languages, and its underlying assumption that all historical and biological processes are the same. Instead, the facts support the original, and more interesting, argument that creoles are their own unique entity and are among the world's only genuinely new languages.
Advance Praise
‘This eloquent and well-researched book on creole languages is the final nail to the coffin of the ideologists who claim that there is nothing special about the grammars of these languages. Chapeau!' Peter Bakker, Aarhus University, Denmark
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781108450836 |
| PRICE | $22.99 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Librarian 463767
I received this e-book ARC through Net Galley from Cambridge University Press in exchange for a truthful review.
I was drawn in by this title as my family is made up of French creole speakers. However I am not a linguist and the audience for this scholarly text is most definitely geared towards linguists.
While most of the debate presented was not in my wheelhouse and way over my head, I enjoyed the "French plantation creole" grammar examples and reading about the vast number of languages from all over the world which are classified by linguists as creole languages.
Rashi R, Educator
McWhorter makes a fascinating claim here: that creoles are not pidgins or admixtures but rather new languages created using elements of contributing languages but, quite crucially, after a break in transmission rather than a continuous evolution. The first two chapters are of particular interest for non-linguists (most of whom, I imagine, will share my interest in sociolinguistics); I certainly plan to use excerpts with classes.
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