The Status of Creole in the Caribbean

Abstract

The assessment of the status of Creole languages has been made by reference to their coexistence with standard languages. In the case of the Caribbean, those comparisons have been with major European languages which have themselves been lexical sources for Creoles of the region itself. An important part of the determination of status has been the degree of penetration of the Creoles into those areas of the public domain that have been traditionally dominated by the standard languages. The domains used as measures of penetration are the following : politics and government, education, the media and the performing arts. There has been no recent survey of the use of Creole languages in the Caribbean region and such a survey is urgently needed. The issues raised in this article should be among those that shape the design of the future survey.