36.2915, Calls: Archipélies - "Special Issue: Describing Creole Languages in the 19th Century: Ideology, Sociology, and Intertextuality / Décrire les créoles au XIXe siècle : idéologie, sociologie et intertextualité" (Jrnl)

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Subject: 36.2915, Calls: Archipélies - "Special Issue: Describing Creole Languages in the 19th Century: Ideology, Sociology, and Intertextuality / Décrire les créoles au XIXe siècle : idéologie, sociologie et intertextualité" (Jrnl)

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Date: 29-Sep-2025
From: Olivier-Serge Candau / Philipp Krämer [philipp.kramer at vub.be]
Subject: Archipélies - "Special Issue: Describing Creole Languages in the 19th Century: Ideology, Sociology, and Intertextuality / Décrire les créoles au XIXe siècle : idéologie, sociologie et intertextualité" (Jrnl)


Journal: Archipélies
Issue: Describing Creole Languages in the 19th Century: Ideology,
Sociology, and Intertextuality / Décrire les créoles au XIXe siècle :
idéologie, sociologie et intertextualité
Call Deadline: 18-Nov-2025

How do beliefs about Creole languages influence the their descriptions
by 19th-century creolists? This issue of 'Archipélies' seeks to answer
this question, focusing on the beliefs, representations, and, more
broadly, ideologies that permeate descriptions of Creole languages
from the documentation of Haitian Creole by Ducœurjoly in 1802 to the
naturalistic portrayal of Creoles around the turn of the century. Far
from being reduced to simple nomenclatures, descriptions of Creole
languages reproduce an ideological background that must be examined in
order to better understand the gradual development of a linguistic
discourse on the genesis and structures of Creole languages. As
linguistic practices born out of colonial situations, forced contact,
and historical ruptures, Creoles and their descriptions crystallize
the ideological and conceptual divisions of coloniality, threatening
its coherence and uniformity.
[For an overview of the history of Creolistics, see Sousa et al.
(2019); Selbach (2020); Krämer (forthcoming).]
The special issue submitted to the journal Archipélies will be
structured around the following research questions:
1. From Labels to Ideology
The first section will examine the various names and labels given to
Creole languages in 19th century sources, paying particular attention
to terminology (scientific and otherwise), the expressions chosen, and
the fields to which they belong. [See the role of the term “baragouin”
in Père Labat’s work and the debate on the origin of languages in
Antiquity (Candau, forthc. a); see also the contributions in
Sippola/Selbach/Krämer (forthc.)].This section will address three main
questions:
 - To what extent do designations of Creole languages borrow from the
writing codes and ideological issues of the colonial thinking of its
time?
 - Does the description of Creole languages tie in with that of
so-called “ordinary” languages of the time, or does it, on the
contrary, denote a clear break?
 - How do the names used to designate Creole languages reveal
linguistic ideologies that underlie them?
2. Language, Society and Knowledge
The 19th century inextricably intertwined constructions of identity
and language. The principles put forward by thinkers such as Renan
(1882) and Bréal (1891) in particular, which formed the basis for many
linguistic debates that fuelled epistemological thinking in the 19th
century, are sometimes implicitly echoed in the writings of Creolists
[see Candau (forthc. b). Three in particular deserve our attention:
the transposition of naturalist discourse to the field of linguistics,
language as a sign of belonging to a common history and culture, and
the trace of the “spirit” of peoples in language. Contributions may
address one of the following three questions:
 - How do descriptions of Creole languages reflect the social debates
that marked the 19th century?
 - Does the racialist orientation of contemporary research have an
impact on the description of language and, in particular, on the
grammatical categories that are discussed? To what extent do creolists
subscribe to a deterministic view of human difference, or to what
extent do they maintain a universalist vision of linguistic
development?
 - What is the impact of epistemological assumptions on the choice of
grammatical categories? How do grammatical choices reflect
epistemological positions?
[See Krämer (2013, 2014) on the integration of 19th-century French
creolistics into the racial-colonial discourse of the time and the
discursive alternatives expressed in certain works.]
3. Epistemology and Intertextuality
The purpose of this last axis, without excluding others, will take a
more literary or philological approach. It will involve examining both
the more or less tangible reciprocal influence of the thinkers of the
century, who provide both consistency and scientific rigor to the
field, and the impact of a chosen textual genre (speech, letter,
essay, etc.) on the construction of ideological reasoning. The
following questions will be particularly addressed:
 - How much weight should be given to theoretical influences in the
reasoning of 19th-century creolists: What traces of authors’ voices
can be found throughout the texts, how does borrowing from other
thinkers shed light on the meaning of the argument?
 - What can we learn from writings that are sometimes considered minor
(correspondence, diaries, etc.) in the construction of linguistic
thought?
 - How do generic forms (treatises, letters, journals, in particular)
influence the development and construction of linguistic reasoning?
[See Sousa (2016); Krämer and Sousa (2017) for a first analysis of
intellectual networks in 19th-century Creolistics.]
Schedule:
 - Submission of proposals (title and abstract of approximately 500
words) to the issue coordinators
(olivier-serge.candau at univ-antilles.fr and philipp.kramer at vub.be) by
November 18, 2025.
 - Contributions may be written in any of the following languages:
German, English, all French-based Creoles, Spanish, French, or
Portuguese.
 - Notification of acceptance of proposals on December 16, 2025.
 - Submission of selected contributions in their final form
(approximately 40,000 characters, including spaces) by February 16,
2026.
 - Return of expert reviews on April 14, 2026.
 - Submission of corrected contributions on May 12, 2026.
 - Publication of the issue in mid-June 2026.
Coordinators:
Olivier-Serge Candau (Université des Antilles),
olivier-serge.candau at univ-antilles.fr
Philipp Krämer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), philipp.kramer at vub.be
Selective Bibliography:
Primary Sources:
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d’hybridation linguistique. Paris : Mainsonneuve et Cie,
librairies-éditeurs.
Anonyme (1804). Idylles ou essais de poésie créole par un colon de
Saint-Domingue. New York : Hopkins & Seymour.
Baissac, C. (1884). Cours de grammaire française. Port-Louis,
Mauritius : Cernéen.
Baissac, C. (1880). « Le Folk-lore de l’île Maurice », Paul Sibliot
(dir.), Les Littératures populaires de toutes les nations. Traditions,
légendes, contes, chansons, proverbes, devinettes, superstitions, tome
XXVII, Paris, Maisonneuve et Leclerc.
Bréal, M. (1891). « Le langage et les nationalités », Revue des Deux
Mondes (1829-1971), 108(3), 1er décembre 1891, pp. 615-639.
Claustre, H. (1895). Catéchisme créole Sainte‑Lucie.
Coelho, F. A. (1881). Os dialectos românicos ou neo-latinos na Africa,
Asia e America. Lisboa : Casa da Sociedade de Geografia.
Corre, A. (1890). « Chapitre V. Le Langage », Nos créoles. 1re
édition, 1890, 2e édition, Paris, P.-V. Stock éditeur, 1902.
Descourtilz, M.– E. (1799-1803), Voyage d’un naturaliste en Haïti,
1799-1803 [Texte imprimé]/par M. E. Descourtilz, publié par Jacques
Boulenger.
Ducœurjoly, S.-J. (1802). Manuel des habitans de Saint-Domingue, 2
tomes, Paris, Lenoir.
Fourdinier, abbé (1835). Catéchisme, ou abrégé de la doctrine
chrétienne, à l’usage des paroisses des colonies françaises ;
approuvée par la Sacrée Propagande, édition de 1845, Paris, Séminaire
du Saint-Esprit.
Fourès, M. (1893). « Notes sur le parler créole d’Haïti », Bulletin de
la Société des parlers des France, 1, 295–299.
Goux, J.-M. (1842). Catéchisme en langue créole précédé d’un essai de
grammaire sur l’idiome usité dans les colonies françaises, Paris,
impr. de H. Vrayet de Surcy et Cie, 1–20.
Hovelacque, A. (1867). « Créole », La Linguistique : histoire
naturelle du langage, Paris : Schleicher Frères. La Grande
encyclopédie, tome XIII.
Longin, F. (1848). « Du Langage ou patois créole », Voyage à la
Guadeloupe, Le Mans, Monnoyer, 223–245.
Poyen-Bellisle de, R. (1894). Les Sons et les formes du créole dans
les Antilles, Baltimore, John Murphy & Co.
Redpath, J. (1860). A guide to Hayti, Boston: Haytian Bureau of
Emigration.
Renan, E. (1882). « II. “Ce que nous venons de dire de la race, il
faut le dire de la langue” », Qu’est-ce qu’une nation ? [Conférence
prononcée à la Sorbonne le 11 mars 1882], pp. 45-47.
Rosny de, L. (1887). Les Antilles. Étude d’ethnographie et
d’archéologie américaines. Paris, Maisonneuve Frères et Charles
Leclerc éditeurs.
Thomas, J. J. (1869). The Theory and practice of Creole grammar,
Port-of-Spain: Chronicle publishing office.
Turiault, J. (1873–1876). « Étude sur le langage créole de la
Martinique », extrait du Bulletin de la Société académique de Brest,
2e série, tome 1, 1873-1874, Brest, impr. de J.-B. Lefournier aîné,
1874, 401-516 ; 2e série, tome 3, 1875–1876, Brest, impr. et litho. de
J.-P. Gadreau, 1877, 1–107.
Van Name, A. (1869). « Contributions to Creole Grammar », Transactions
of the American Philogical Association, 1.
Vinson, J. (1884). « Créoles ». Louis-Adolphe Bertillon et al. (dir.),
Dictionnaire des sciences anthropologiques, Paris, Doin, 345–347.
Vinson Julien, 1882, « Les origines du patois de l’île Bourbon »,
Bulletin de la société des Sciences et Arts de l’île de la Réunion,
Saint-Denis, Gabriel et Gaston Lahuppe, pp. 88-100.
Secondary Sources:
Baggioni, D. (1999). La naissance de la créolistique, dans : S. Auroux
(éd.) : Histoire des idées linguistiques. Tome 3 : L’hégémonie du
comparatisme. Liège : Mardaga, p. 253-261.
Candau, O.-S. (à paraître a). « Entendre et faire entendre la parle
des Caraïbes insulaires. Lectures d’extraits d’écrits de missionnaires
dominicains aux Antilles dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle »,
dans Olivier-Serge Candau, Mylène Lebon-Eyquem et Odile Hamot (dir.),
Mélanges offerts au professeur Lambert Félix Prudent, Saint-Denis,
Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques, à paraître (a), s.p.
Candau, O.-S. (à paraître b). « Entre ombre et lumière : quelques mots
sur le génie de la langue créole », La Linguistique, « Les langues
créoles du xviie au xixe siècle. Aux origines de l’étude grammaticale
», dir. Olivier-Serge Candau et Béatrice Jeannot-Fourcaud, La
Linguistique, vol. lxi, fascicule 2, Presses Universitaires de France,
p. 9-26.
Candau, O.-S. (2025). « Jean Turiault : portrait de l’écrivain en
plagiaire », dans Olivier-Serge Candau, Gwenaëlle Boucher et Nathalie
Bouchaut (2025), Voix créoles. Dire, entendre et faire entendre les
voix créoles, Pointe-à-Pitre, Presses de l’Université des Antilles, p.
221-23
Krämer, P. (2013). Linguistique coloniale au xixe siècle : Le discours
racialiste dans la recherche française sur les langues créoles. French
Colonial History 14. 55-70.
Krämer, P. (2014). Die französische Kreolistik im 19. Jahrhundert.
Rassismus und Determinismus in der kolonialen Philologie, Hambourg,
Buske.
Krämer, P., Sousa, S. M. de (2017). Across the oceans and through the
Alps: The intellectual networks of 19th-century creolistics. Grazer
Linguistische Studien 87, p. 107–132.
Krämer, P. (à paraître). Histoire des études créoles françaises, dans
P. Krämer, K. Mutz, P. Stein (éd.), Manuel des langues créoles à base
française, Berlin, De Gruyter.
Selbach, R. (2020), On the history of Pidgin and Creole Studies, dans
U. Ansaldo, M. Meyerhoff (éd.), The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and
Creole Languages, Londres/New York, Routledge, p. 365–383.
Sippola, E. / Selbach, R. / Krämer, P. (à paraître). Names and Naming
in Creole Languages. Special issue for Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages.
Sousa, S. M. de. (2016). A influência de Hugo Schuchardt na primeira
geração de lusocrioulistas, Thèse de doctorat, Graz, Université de
Graz.
Sousa, S. M. de / Mücke, J. / Krämer, P. (2019). A History of Creole
Studies, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.

Linguistic Field(s): Discipline of Linguistics
                     Discourse Analysis
                     History of Linguistics
                     Philosophy of Language
                     Sociolinguistics

Language Family(ies): African Pidgins and Creoles
                      Asian Pidgins and Creoles
                      Creole
                      Pacific Pidgins and Creoles
                      Western Atlantic Creole



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