Abstract
This contribution provides an overview of macrosociolinguistic approaches to the study of language contact, with a focus on contact languages. It addresses the current state of the art and future of the field. It also reflects on the global inequalities of power in the study of contact languages and the ways in which research on contact languages can serve as a model for North-South cooperation. Studies on contact languages and their histories of formation show how power and prestige are tightly connected to demographic factors and the political, economic, and ideological frameworks that mold language structures. They also inform us about the mechanisms that seemingly exert an influence on the correlations between structural and extra-linguistic factors. New areas of comparative inquiry with large datasets, new methods and varied contexts continue to diversify and further our understanding of the macrosociolinguistics of contact. These advances require a dialogue with other focus areas of sociolinguistics and a critical, self-reflective approach to the epistemological basis of the field.
References
Adamou, Evangelia, Walter Breu, Lenka Scholze & Rachel Xingjia Shen. 2016. Borrowing and contact intensity: A corpus-driven approach from four Slavic minority languages. Journal of Language Contact 9(3). 513–542.10.1163/19552629-00903004Search in Google Scholar
Alleyne, Mervin. 1971. Acculturation and the cultural matrix of creolization. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages. Proceedings of a conference held at the University of the West Indies Mona, Jamaica, April 1968, 169–186. London: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Angelo, Denise. 2021. Creoles, education and policy. In Miriam Meyerhoff & Umberto Ansaldo (eds.), The Routledge handbook of pidgin and creole languages, 286–301. London & New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781003107224-18Search in Google Scholar
Ansaldo, Umberto & Miriam Meyerhoff. 2021. Not in Retrospective: The Future of Pidgin and Creole Research. In Miriam Meyerhoff & Umberto Ansaldo (eds.), The Routledge handbook of pidgin and creole languages, 1–12. London & New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781003107224-1Search in Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter, Finn Borschenius, Carsten Levisen & Eeva Sippola (eds). 2017. Creole studies. Phylogenetic approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/z.211Search in Google Scholar
Chaudenson, Robert. 1992. Des îles, des hommes, des langues: Langues créoles, cultures creoles. Paris: L’Harmattan.Search in Google Scholar
Chaudenson, Robert. 2001. Creolization of language and culture. Revised in collaboration with Salikoko S. Mufwene. London & New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203440292Search in Google Scholar
Clements, Clancy. 2009. The linguistic legacy of Spanish and Portuguese. Colonial expansion and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511576171Search in Google Scholar
Darquennes, Jeroen, Joe Salmons & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.) 2019. Language contact: An international handbook. Berlin: de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2005. Linguists’ most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism. Language in Society 34(4). 533–591. DOI: 10.10170S004740450505020710.1017/S0047404505050207Search in Google Scholar
Deumert, Ana, Anne Storch & Nick Shepherd (eds.). 2020. Colonial and decolonial linguistics. Knowledges and epistemes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198793205.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Di Garbo, Francesca, Eri Kashima, Ricardo Napoleão de Souza & Kaius Sinnemäki. 2021. Concepts and methods for integrating language typology and sociolinguistics. In Silvia Ballarè & Guilio Inglese (eds.), Tipologia e Sociolinguistica. Verso un approccio integrato allo studio della variazione. Atti del Workshop della Società Linguistica Italiana 20 settembre 2020, 143–176. Milano: Officinaventuno.Search in Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4). 453–476.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00374.xSearch in Google Scholar
Escure, Genevieve. 1982. Contrastive patterns of intra-group and inter-group interaction in the creole continuum of Belize. Language in Society 11(2). 239–264.10.1017/S0047404500009210Search in Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas (ed.). 2012. Agency in the emergence of creole languages. The role of women, renegades, and people of African and indigenous descent in the emergence of the colonial era creoles. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cll.45Search in Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas, Don E. Walicek, Mervin Alleyne, Wilfredo Geigel & Luis Ortiz. 2007. The complexity that really matters: The role of political economy in creole genesis. In Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen J. Matthews & Lisa Lim (eds.), Deconstructing creole: New horizons in language creation, 227–264. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.73.12farSearch in Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas. 2021. Identity politics. In Miriam Meyerhoff & Umberto Ansaldo (eds.), The Routledge handbook of pidgin and creole languages, 269–285. London & New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781003107224-17Search in Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph. 1984. Introduction to sociolinguistics. Volume 1: The sociolinguistics of society. Oxford & New York: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph. 1990. Introduction to sociolinguistics. Volume 2: The sociolinguistics of language. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Fernández, Mauro & Eeva Sippola. 2017. A new window into the history of Chabacano: two unknown mid-19th century texts. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 32(2). 304–338.10.1075/jpcl.32.2.04ferSearch in Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language. Ideologies, polities and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd, Kerstin Lunkenheimer & Katharina Ehret (eds.). 2020. The electronic world atlas of varieties of English. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3712132 http://ewave-atlas.org (accessed 2022-02-25).Search in Google Scholar
Krämer, Philipp. 2013. Creole exceptionalism in a historical perspective – from 19th century reflection to a self-conscious discipline. Language Sciences 38. 99–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.02.003.10.1016/j.langsci.2013.02.003Search in Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Oxford & Malden: Blackwell Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Le Page, Robert B. & Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lesho, Marivic & Eeva Sippola. 2014. Folk perceptions of variation among the Chabacano Creoles. Revista de crioulos de base lexical portuguesa e espanhola 5. 1–46.Search in Google Scholar
Makoni, Sinfree & Alastair Pennycook (eds.). 2006. Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853599255Search in Google Scholar
Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). 2013. Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://apics-online.info (accessed 2021-02-15)Search in Google Scholar
Migge, Bettina, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens (eds.). 2010. Creoles in education. An appraisal of current programs. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cll.36Search in Google Scholar
Migge, Bettina. 2007. Code-switching and social identities in the Eastern Maroon community of Suriname and French Guiana. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(1). 53–73.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00310.xSearch in Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney. 1971. The socio-historical background to pidginization and creolization. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages. Proceedings of a conference held at the University of the West Indies Mona, Jamaica, April 1968, 481–498. London: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 2013. Language contact outcomes as the result of bilingual optimization strategies. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16(4). 709–730.10.1017/S1366728912000727Search in Google Scholar
Nelde, Peter H. (ed.) 1990. Minderheiten und Sprachkontakt (Sociolinguistica 4). Tübingen: Niemeyer.10.1515/9783110245097.157Search in Google Scholar
Patrick, Patrick L. 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the mesolect. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/veaw.g17Search in Google Scholar
Rickford, John. 1991. Sociolinguistic variation in Cane Walk: A quantitative case study. In Jenny Cheshire (ed.), English around the world: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 609–616. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511611889.041Search in Google Scholar
Röthlisberger Melanie & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2019. Dialect Typology: Recent Advances. In Stanley D. Brunn & Roland Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the changing world language map, 1–26. Cham: Springer.10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_133-1Search in Google Scholar
Schneider, Britta. 2021. Creole prestige beyond modernism and methodological nationalism. Multiplex patterns, simultaneity and non-closure in the sociolinguistic economy of a Belizean village. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 36(1). 12–45.10.1075/jpcl.00068.schSearch in Google Scholar
Sessarego, Sandro. 2017. The legal hypothesis of creole genesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 32(1). 1–47.10.1075/jpcl.32.1.01sesSearch in Google Scholar
Sessarego, Sandro. 2018. On the importance of legal history to Afro-Hispanic linguistics and creole studies. Lingua 202. 13–23.10.1016/j.lingua.2017.12.001Search in Google Scholar
Singler, John Victor. 2008. The sociohistorical context of creole genesis. In Silvia Kouwenberg & John Victor Singler (eds.), The handbook of pidgin and creole studies, 332–232. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9781444305982.ch14Search in Google Scholar
Sinnemäki, Kaius & Francesca Di Garbo. 2018. Language structures may adapt to the sociolinguistic environment, but it matters what and how you count: A typological study of verbal and nominal complexity. Frontiers in Psychology 9. 1141. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0114110.3389/fpsyg.2018.01141Search in Google Scholar
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2020. Linguistic system and sociolinguistic environment as competing factors in linguistic variation: A typological approach. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 6(2). 20191010. DOI: 10.1515/jhsl-2019-101010.1515/jhsl-2019-1010Search in Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520912793Search in Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Van Coetsem, Frans. 1988. Loan phonology and the two transfer types in language contact. Dordrecht: Foris.10.1515/9783110884869Search in Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in contact. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.Search in Google Scholar
Yakpo, Kofi. 2020. Social factors. In Evangelia Adamou & Yaron Matras (eds.), The Routledge handbook of language contact, 129–146. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781351109154-10Search in Google Scholar
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Sociolinguistica: past, present and future
- Writing regime change: a research agenda
- Pasts, presents and futures: discourses of colonization and decolonization
- Metalinguistic activities as a focus of sociolinguistic research: Language Management Theory, its potential, and fields of application
- Deconstructivism, postmodernism and their offspring: disorders of our time
- Language biographies
- Progress in LPP: towards an assessment of challenges from critical perspectives
- Sociolinguistics in an increasingly technologized reality
- Language policy research directions embedded in the sociolinguistic enterprise
- Superdiversity and its explanatory limits
- Language and identity: past concerns, future directions
- Reconstructing multilingualism in the Habsburg state: lessons learnt and implications for historical sociolinguistics
- Language planning and language policies for sign languages: an emerging civil rights movement
- Rethinking some terminological and disciplinary boundaries in researching language maintenance and shift (in the context of migration and beyond)
- The macrosociolinguistics of language contact
- Beyond the binarism: locating past, present and future sociolinguistic research on ideologies of communication
- The pursuit of language standardization research as a mission for true sociolinguists
- Spatial representation and sociolinguistic synergies
- Reviews
- Josephson, Olle (2018): Språkpolitik [Language policy]. Stockholm: Morfem. 320 p.
- Chalier, Marc (2021): Les normes de prononciation du français : une étude perceptive panfrancophone (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 454). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter. 544 p.
- Spolsky, Bernard (2021): Rethinking Language Policy. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press. 276 p.
- Borbély, Anna (ed. 2020): Nemzetiségi nyelvi tájkép Magyarországon (Linguistic Landscape of Nationalities in Hungary). Budapest: Nyelvtudományi Intézet, 262 p.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Sociolinguistica: past, present and future
- Writing regime change: a research agenda
- Pasts, presents and futures: discourses of colonization and decolonization
- Metalinguistic activities as a focus of sociolinguistic research: Language Management Theory, its potential, and fields of application
- Deconstructivism, postmodernism and their offspring: disorders of our time
- Language biographies
- Progress in LPP: towards an assessment of challenges from critical perspectives
- Sociolinguistics in an increasingly technologized reality
- Language policy research directions embedded in the sociolinguistic enterprise
- Superdiversity and its explanatory limits
- Language and identity: past concerns, future directions
- Reconstructing multilingualism in the Habsburg state: lessons learnt and implications for historical sociolinguistics
- Language planning and language policies for sign languages: an emerging civil rights movement
- Rethinking some terminological and disciplinary boundaries in researching language maintenance and shift (in the context of migration and beyond)
- The macrosociolinguistics of language contact
- Beyond the binarism: locating past, present and future sociolinguistic research on ideologies of communication
- The pursuit of language standardization research as a mission for true sociolinguists
- Spatial representation and sociolinguistic synergies
- Reviews
- Josephson, Olle (2018): Språkpolitik [Language policy]. Stockholm: Morfem. 320 p.
- Chalier, Marc (2021): Les normes de prononciation du français : une étude perceptive panfrancophone (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 454). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter. 544 p.
- Spolsky, Bernard (2021): Rethinking Language Policy. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press. 276 p.
- Borbély, Anna (ed. 2020): Nemzetiségi nyelvi tájkép Magyarországon (Linguistic Landscape of Nationalities in Hungary). Budapest: Nyelvtudományi Intézet, 262 p.