Pidgins and Creoles: The Blurring of Categories

Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 20 (1991), pp. 187-209.In the conclusion of the article he wrote on "Pidgin and Creole Languages" for the 1976 issue of Annual Review of Anthropology, Derek Bickerton (20) claimed that despite the achievements of the previous ten years "the field still has a long way to go." Fifteen years later, pidgin and creole studies have come a long way. They have been transformed into one of the most dynamic and theoretically challenging fields of contemporary linguistics. During the past 15 years, Bickerton himself has done much to project pidgin and creole studies to the forefront of academic debate. His controversial but thought-provoking Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (22, 23) has generated vibrant discussions among scholars in a range of fields interested in the human language faculty. Can the study of creoles reveal the role played by the universal faculties of language in language formation and interlingual communication? Bickerton's challenge has catalyzed theoretical interest and brought focus and direction to a field of studies that had become extremely dispersed.