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The conference sought to focus attention on processes, and to avoid popular connotations of the terms “pidgin” and “creole.” The terms have clear and standard scientific meanings. Two social scientists and two linguists were given the special task of reviewing the conference at its last session: Sidney Mintz (an anthropologist specializing in Caribbean cultures) from the standpoint of social history Henry Hoenigswald from the standpoint of a specialist in comparative and historical linguistics Allen Grimshaw as a member of the Council’s Committee on Comparative Sociological Research and William Labov from the standpoint of an innovator in sociolinguistic analysis. The papers prepared for the conference were grouped for discussion according to several main topics of concern: general conceptions of the nature of pidginization and creolization analysis of specific characteristics and processes reconstruction of the origins and history of such languages recognition of the past occurrence of creolization in the history of a language analysis of contemporary pidginization and creolization and studies of the social role of pidgin and creole languages in contemporary communities. 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.
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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.
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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.