Marginalized peoples, racialized slavery and the emergence of the Atlantic Creoles
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Nicholas Faraclas
Abstract
A comparison of some of the assumptions that underpin current debates among linguists over the emergence of creole languages with some of those that undergird recent debates among historians over the emergence of racialized slavery reveals some common biases that render both of limited utility in their quest to account for the facts. Partisans on either side of both controversies tend to put forward simplistic, mono-causal explanations for highly complex phenomena, while ignoring important aspects of the social, political, cultural, and economic matrices from which both creole languages and racialized slavery emerged. The net result of these tendencies has been to silence the voices of marginalized peoples and to render invisible their considerable agency in the forging of the languages, cultures, and histories of the colonial era. Once these tendencies are abandoned, fresh perspectives and possibilities open up for moving us beyond these stagnant debates to account for the facts in a more satisfying way.
Abstract
A comparison of some of the assumptions that underpin current debates among linguists over the emergence of creole languages with some of those that undergird recent debates among historians over the emergence of racialized slavery reveals some common biases that render both of limited utility in their quest to account for the facts. Partisans on either side of both controversies tend to put forward simplistic, mono-causal explanations for highly complex phenomena, while ignoring important aspects of the social, political, cultural, and economic matrices from which both creole languages and racialized slavery emerged. The net result of these tendencies has been to silence the voices of marginalized peoples and to render invisible their considerable agency in the forging of the languages, cultures, and histories of the colonial era. Once these tendencies are abandoned, fresh perspectives and possibilities open up for moving us beyond these stagnant debates to account for the facts in a more satisfying way.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- Abbreviations xi
- Marginalized peoples, racialized slavery and the emergence of the Atlantic Creoles 1
- African agency in the emergence of the Atlantic Creoles 41
- Women and colonial era creolization 55
- Indigenous peoples and the emergence of the Caribbean Creoles 81
- Linguistic evidence for the influence of indigenous Caribbean grammars on the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles 111
- Sociétés de cohabitation and the similarities between the English lexifier Creoles of the Atlantic and the Pacific 149
- Influences of Houma ancestral languages on Houma French 185
- Marginalized peoples and Creole Genesis 215
- References 225
- Index 239
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- Abbreviations xi
- Marginalized peoples, racialized slavery and the emergence of the Atlantic Creoles 1
- African agency in the emergence of the Atlantic Creoles 41
- Women and colonial era creolization 55
- Indigenous peoples and the emergence of the Caribbean Creoles 81
- Linguistic evidence for the influence of indigenous Caribbean grammars on the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles 111
- Sociétés de cohabitation and the similarities between the English lexifier Creoles of the Atlantic and the Pacific 149
- Influences of Houma ancestral languages on Houma French 185
- Marginalized peoples and Creole Genesis 215
- References 225
- Index 239
