Creoles in Contact in French Guiana & Suriname: Implications for Language Documentation

Creoles often exits in contexts characterized by multilingualism: what are said to be members of a creole community tend to have varying degrees of exposure to the Creole and other languages present, different levels of competence in each language and partially different attitudes towards them. Language use patterns are equally variable among community members and across social settings. As in most Africa settings, heterogeneity represents the norm rather than the exception. Viewed from this perspective, the notion of a language as a solid, self-contained and distinct system predominantly used for transmitting referential meaning which does not interact with other such entities with which it physically coexists appears like a fiction. However, despite mounting evidence, linguistic description and documentation tends to shy away from dealing with the consequences of this evidence. The aim of this paper is to chart new approaches to documenting languages that place linguistic heterogeneity and language variation and change at the centre rather than at the periphery. Based on a case study of language variation and linguistic practices relating to the Creoles of Suriname in French Guiana and Suriname, we emphasize two main aspects: a) people engage with (context-based) practices which together constitute a system of communication that is linguistically heterogeneous and may not be made up of what linguists call a language and b) depending on their social practices and ideologies, people's system of practices may involve a fair bit of variation even among members who perceive themselves as belonging to the same social entity/community. Based on evidence from our case study, we propose that empirically accountable language documentation must adopt a multi-methodological approach to language description, including a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic context, linguistic structure AND linguistic practice. Notions like language, 'good, rightful/representative' speaker, community and their relationship are not givens, but have to be critically examined within the context. Greater attention must be paid to community-as-value (Coupland 2009) to fully capture language and a language. Descriptions should be representative of the practices characterizing the speech community and be defined or deduced in a bottom up manner. Among other things, this crucially involves taking into account the practices of ALL language users regardless of how and when they learned and use the language as restricting research and documentation to (some) people who learned it as a language of primary socialization produces socially and linguistically unrepresentative grammars.