SOCIOLINGUISTICS
UNIT 6
TRƯƠNG VĂN ÁNH
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
UNIT 6: PIDGINS AND PIDGINISATION
I. INTRODUCTION
Pidgin is a variety of many languages. As a result, there are such varieties as Pidgin English, pidgin French, pidgin Chinese, pidgin Portuguese, pidgin Russian, etc. Some linguists have described pidgin as the corrupt version of any language although some have also explained pidgin as the language of common or ordinary people. Pidgin and pidginization will be studied in sociolinguistics and the differences and similarities between pidgins and creoles will also be linguistic aim.
According to Hymes, pidgins and creoles ‘are marginal, in the circumstances of their origin, and in the attitudes towards them on the part of those who speak one of the languages from which they derive.’ They are considered additional to the common language in use even though they play important role to our understanding of language, and some millions of people use them in the daily life.
II. GENERAL OVERVIEW
Among the many languages of the world exist a few used languages named marginal position: the various lingua francas, pidgins, and creoles. It is clearly understood that languages have been developed since the dawn of human history, but, in comparison with what we know about many ‘fully fledged’ languages, our knowledge is comparatively little about them. There is a little amount of historical documents on languages; linguists began their serious study of such languages only a few decades ago; and, the result of
their study has not been efficient enough to explain all the scientific features of languages in the world. Up to now, linguists have not paid full attention to pidgins and creoles. It may be said that there has been lack of works on the languages used in the modern life.
Being different from official languages, a pidgin has no native speakers: it is not one’s mother tongue but is contact language. When people speak different languages, they often simplify languages used for communication. Using their contact languages, they also create variations attributable to their native language backgrounds. Thus, they form contact languages related to the native
languages. They choose the particular forms that they have simplified from the model languages. It is popular that, communicating with each other, people make use of languages in a variety where linguistic features are greatly decreased and they become kinds of hybrids.
Therefore, pidginisation is a complex process of sociolinguistic decrease in internal form, simplifying the rules of languages in use. As a result, a pidgin comes into existence and is used as a norm. The change of languages takes place in internal speech communities when a pidgin is formed. This process will continue and have no end in greater and greater demand of the speech
communities. A pidgin is different from native languages. Formed in easy use, it undergoes varying degrees of simplification and admixture. When many people make stable use of a new simplified language, a pidgin gradually comes into being.
Linguists considered pidginisation second-language learning with restricted input. Speakers use their native languages to combine with the languages they hear to begin a process called pidginisation. To accord with substrate sound system, speakers thoroughly re-phonologise the words and slot them into syntactic surface
structures. More so, a group of learners may also initiate restructuring of a language; this leads to structural reduction and substrate transfer to form a process of pidginisation.
III. CONCEPT OF PIDGIN
As a simplified language, a pidgin evolves as a means of communication between groups of people who do not have a language in common in situations such as business or daily communications. As second languages, Pidgins are not the native language of any speech community, but they are popular in society. In comparison to other languages, pidgins are
usually disdained. However, not all simplified or “broken” forms of language are considered pidgins. Not being official language, pidgins possess the own norms of usage for people to learn in order to speak and use a pidgin well.
Formerly, the word pidgin also spelled pigion, comes from a Chinese Pidgin English pronunciation of business. Initially used to describe Chinese Pidgin English, a pidgin was then generalised to mention any pidgin. For example, common Vietnamese people use Vietnamese pidgin English, Vietnamese pidgin
French, Vietnamese pidgin Russian, etc. A Vietnamese pidgin English may also be used as the specific word for a local pidgin in places where people speak it. For instance, the phrase of ‘zou ok’ comes from the English sentence you are ok in Ha Noi when a taxi driver speaks English to a foreigner. The pidginization process takes place in a context which maybe involves at least three languages (Whinnom, 1971). In the process one language is clearly more important that the others. In Vietnam, contacting foreigners, common people try to speak English, French or
Russian in their own accent and with their simplified rules most of which are not standard. However, foreigners can understand them and the communications may become all right.
IV. PIDGIN DEVELOPMENT
That a pidgin comes into existence usually requires prolonged and regular communications between people belonging to the different language communities. A pidgin is often used by working people or little-educated people. Educated people can use foreign languages fluently.
Keith Whinnom (in Hymes (1971)) states that pidgins need three languages to form, with one being clearly more important than the others. It is often stated that when parents speak pidgins and then teach their children the pidgins they use, pidgins become creole languages. Then creoles can replace the existing mix of languages to become the mother tongue in a community (For example, Krio in Sierra Leone and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea). In fact, not any pidgin becomes a creole language; a pidgin may not be used and disappear before this process could happen.
In comparison, pidgins and creoles appear independently under different situations. A pidgin often comes first; however, this does not need take place all the time. Moreover, a creole does not necessarily develop from a pidgin. Pidgins emerge among people who do their business while they preserve their native vernaculars for their daily interactions. Creoles, meanwhile, evolved in settlement colonies where people speak a European language which would not be standard used heavily by servants, slaves or uneducated people. These servants and slaves would use creoles as daily vernaculars, rather than merely their native languages.
People in the world have used popular languages such as English, French, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic as lexifiers, which are sources of words and contain complex grammatical rules, for varieties of languages called pidgins. Therefore, a pidgin, also called a contact language, is a mixture of two or more other languages created usually because of business purposes between peoples who do not speak a native language for communication. English-based pidgins are used in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Cameroon, and Philippines; Spanish and Portuguese pidgins are used in South
America, for example; Such varieties of languages often have simple vocabulary, poor grammar and are used only when people cannot use other types of communication.
V. CONCLUSION
In a community a pidgin is not a native language. At first, people of different races try to contact each other using a simplified language coming from their two mother languages. Gradually, the pidgin develops and is used more and more. Therefore, its vocabulary and grammar expand. Children of these people grow up and use this pidgin as their first language. Then this pidgin becomes a creole and is used by a second generation of speakers. In the next stage of development of
a pidgin, it is characterized by different grammatical simplified features such as avoidance of passive voice or complex grammatical points, lack of case distinction in pronouns, lack of complex affixes and different word order. Pidgin is a language which people are in need of because it develops out of the need to enhance communications among a vast population with different native languages.
VI. SUMMARY
For better understanding, pidgins develop with time and change into other language forms with simpler varieties of vocabulary and grammar. Then a pidgin evolves into a creole in a process called creolisation. The process stimulates further change of a language and makes languages grow. Using a creole in the contact with the standard language, people tend to change one form to the other thus often to form the structures of creole to make it resemble the standard version, perceived as having higher social status.
As a result, pidgins make communication possible and easy in a complex linguistic set up used in multilingual contexts.
VII. EXERCISES
1. Name some languages from which pidgin comes?
2. Do educated people make use of pidgin?
3. Who often make use of pidgin?
4. Have you ever heard a pidgin deriving from Vietnamese?
5. Tell some forms or varieties you have heard among working people in Vietnam.
6. Tell some pidgin English.
7. Tell some pidgin French.
8. Tell some pidgin Chinese.
9. Tell some pidgin from other languages.
10. In your opinion, should we use pidgin?
Good luck!
nguon VI OLET
