Creolization? Or Globalization?

[Mark A Peterson]

>Rachel Reynolds
>University of Illinois at Chicago:
>
>Can you please elaborate on your statment below?  You said:  "An
interesting
>outcome of this is that a conception of cultural dynamics informed by
>sociolinguistic issues is giving birth to a rather large body of
>scholarship."  It sounds very interesting, but I'm not quite sure I grasp
it.
>

I've been peripherally interested in some of the literature Alex is
referring to, particularly that aspect that relates to John McCreery's
original query and to Susan needham's earlier post, to wit, that
creolization, as a form of linguistic structuration through cultural contact
could serve as a model for an account of cultural hybridity in understanding
the cultural dimensions of globalization.

One early article in which some of these concepts are spelled out is Lee
Drummond's 1980 paper "The cultural continuum: A theory of intersystems"
Man 15: 352-374.  His cultural theory draws many of its concepts from Derek
Bickerton's 1975 Dynamics of a Creole System.

There are many other examples I've seen in the hybridity literature.  I
don't have the grounding in creole theories to judge them but my feeling is
they invoke rather than really use the creolization lit.  On the other hand,
Spitulnik, Debra.  1998. The Language of the City: Town Bemba as Urban
Hybridity.  Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(2) makes a distinction
between creolization and (Bakhtinian) hybridity which i don't quite get.  I
meant to ask her when we were at a conference in Hamburg together and
forgot.  Debra?  Do you monitor this list?


Mark Allen Peterson
Asst. Professor of Anthropology
The American University in Cairo
PO Box 2511, Cairo 11511 EGYPT
peterson at aucegypt.edu

"Laughter overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its
idiom is never used by violence and authority."
          -- Mikhail Bakhtin
-----Original Message-----
From: Rachel R. Reynolds <rreyno1 at uic.edu>
To: Alex Enkerli <aenkerli at indiana.edu>; linganth at cc.rochester.edu <linganth
@cc.rochester.edu>
Date: Sunday, February 20, 2000 7:20 PM
Subject: Re: Creolization? Or Globalization?


>
>
>
>At 02:28 AM 02/20/2000 -0500, Alex Enkerli wrote:
>>Well, while we can't generalize, it seems that linguists and
>>linguistic anthropologists engage differently with issues of
>>creolization.
>>In linguistics, there's both a significant amount of debate among
>>creolists themselves (for instance through the CreoList mailing-list)
>>and some degree of marginalization of creolists by some mainstream
>>linguists. Again, I don't want to generalize but it seems that these
>>linguists are mostly interested in creolization as representative of
>>a specific model of language change that, for instance, may challenge
>>language taxonomies.
>>In linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, however, there seems
>>to be more interest on issues of creolization and language contact,
>>especially as these issues relate to broader cultural phenomena such
>>as the negotiation of identity and language ideologies.
>>Yet, the term "creolization" may be heavily charged and some scholars
>>try to avoid the usual connotations afforded the term. An interesting
>>outcome of this is that a conception of cultural dynamics informed by
>>sociolinguistic issues is giving birth to a rather large body of
>>scholarship.
>>Anyone has good references handy?
>>
>>Alex Enkerli aenkerli at indiana.edu
>>Graduate student
>>Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
>>Indiana University
>>--
>>
>>
>