Most of the participants in the conference were linguists, but many of them had some social science training and about one of four was affiliated with a social science department. The depth and realism of some of the discussion reflected their presence. By meeting in Jamaica, the conference was able to benefit from the participation of a number of Caribbean scholars for whom creolized languages are of personal and practical, as well as theoretical, importance. The conference was cosponsored by the committee and the University of the West Indies, which has been the principal site of the development of creole studies in the past decade, and was held at the campus of the University in Mona, Jamaica, on April 9–12, 1968. During the past decade there has been a notable growth of interest and information concerning such languages, whose implications have not yet been widely recognized.įor these reasons an international conference was organized to encourage research on situations of pidginization and creolization, and call attention to its importance.

Whether these assumptions are justified is open to question what is clear is that even the ordinary work of the linguist cannot proceed without questioning them in the case of “pidgins” and “creoles.” These languages demonstrate dramatically the interdependence of linguistics and social science, and open up new possibilities for the integration of their methods and theories. Work proceeds as if something that might be called “normal transmission” of speech from one generation to the next could be assumed, or as if the sample of speech provided by one’s informants could be safely assumed to represent a norm identical throughout the community.

In analyzing historical change and in describing present structure in language, linguists often find it possible to take social factors for granted. Languages called “pidgins” and “creoles” have been something of a stepchild in scientific research, but their origins and social functions pose in particularly clear form problems of the sort with which the Council’s Committee on Sociolinguistics is concerned.

Pidgin language