Creolization? Or Globalization?

[Alexandre Enkerli]

John Thiels writes:
> Well, to put in my two cents' worth, I'd like to problematize the
>relationship between linguistic phenomena and cultural phenomena,
Good idea!

>although comparisons are often tempting and sometimes very fruitful.
Good point. When done carefully, they can give some insight in cultural
dynamics but they certainly don't tell the whole story.

>However, it is easy to transfer the whole kit of ideas contained in the
>idea of language (creolization) and transfer it to "culture"
It seems that a more fruitful approach is to look how contact may
influence both language and culture and see if similar phenomena occur...

>my beef with some of the globalization literature is that it does not
>usually address questions of inequality in the world system
Well, that's one interest of creolization as it usually implies some form
of domination, as opposed to trade-language-type pidginization.
Obviously, the "superstratum/substratum" dichotomy can easily be overdone,
but creolization surely doesn't imply the absence of power relations.

> Has anyone thought about Kulick's Language Shift and Cultural
>Reproduction in terms of this discussion?
Do you have the reference?

> I really liked his argument concerning the shift to Pidgin and the
> association for his informants of particular codes to gendered
> interaction...
"Breakthrough into Performance" meets the sociolinguistics of gender?

>is it relevant here?
Even if it isn't, it'd be interesting to hear more about the issue.