faraclas - globalization and the future of creole languages (1)

7/30/2019 Faraclas - Globalization and the Future of Creole Languages (1)

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Globalization and the future of

Creole languages*

Nicholas FaraclasUniversidad de Puerto Rico

e plantation system that gave rise to many existing creoles can be said tobe the prototype upon which the current wave of corporate globalization hasbeen modeled (Linebaugh 1992). e daily wages received by the major-ity of workers worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century are not evenequal to half the value of the daily food rations received by plantation slavesat the beginning of the 19th in the Greater Caribbean or at the beginningof the 20th in the South Pacific (World Bank 2000; Farnsworth 1999 and

Queensland 1892). Structural adjustment policies are restricting the spreadof English to the few who reap some reward from corporate globalization. Incontrast, the overwhelming majority are by necessity learning and reshapingexisting regional koines, pidgins, and creoles, through processes of adapta-tion, creativity and resistance (Rickford 1983). Far from being a threat tocreoles, corporate globalization is bringing about an increase in the numberof speakers of these languages, which dwarfs the much proclaimed growth ofEnglish worldwide.

Keywords: Commons, creole languages, enclosures, globalization, koinelanguages, Melanesia, pidgin languages, plantations, resistance, slavery,subsistence, women

. Globalization: e hype and the reality

e proponents of the current wave of globalization would have us believe thatit is a great equalizing force which levels the economic, social, and cultural

playing fields for all of the peoples of the world. In fact, the version of global-ization that has recolonized the world over the past few decades was designed


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33 Nicholas Faraclas

(George 1988, 1989; Bennholdt-omsen and Mies 1999, among many oth-

ers). For this reason, the current round of globalization, the latest in many,will hereaer be referred to as corporate globalization in this work, followingBennholdt-omsen, Faraclas, and Von Werlhof (2001).

Instead of truly free markets with equal access and benefit for all, we haveever more unfair, monopolistic, and economically- and environmentally-irra-tional control over global trade by a handful of companies, accompanied by themost massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of hu-man kind (Norberg-Hodge 2001; Faraclas 2001b). Instead of a state that inter-

feres less and less in peoples lives, we have increases in corporate welfare anddecreases in corporate tax matched by decreases in social welfare and increasesin taxes on those least able to pay, with exponential growth in governmentalbudgets dedicated to the propagation of massive state controlled mechanismsof surveillance, incarceration, and security designed to force those who mightresist these injustices to acquiesce to them (McMurtry 1998). Instead of a freeflow of information and opinion from every corner of the globe, we have cor-porate sponsored news empires which are attempting to create a worldwidetruth ghetto of manufactured consent (Herman and Chomsky 1988). Instead

of a rich and dynamic interplay between diverse cultures we have a globalizedmedia machine that pushes a monoculture of the mind and the idealizationand universalization of the beliefs, language, and lifestyle of the MacDon-aldized American consumer (Shiva 1992, 1998, 2001).

. Income, population, and the global plantation

Besides adequate housing and clothing, Bahamian plantation owners were re-

quired by a law passed in 1798 to provide their Afro-Caribbean slaves with 8pounds (about 3700 grams) of potatoes per day, or the equivalent (Farnsworth1999). A century later and on the other side of the planet, the QueenslandLaborers Act of 1892 stipulated that the daily rations supplied to each adultMelanesian slave on the sugar plantations of northern Australia at the turn ofthe 20th century include the following, in addition to housing, a yearly rationof clothing, and a shilling per month:

Meat (500 grams)

Potatoes (1,500 grams)Bread (750 grams)


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Globalization and the future of Creole languages 333

Salt (12 grams)

Tobacco (10 grams)Soap (30 grams)

Even if we make allowance for the purchase of the least expensive and lowestquality locally produced food in bulk and for the substitution of items such aspotatoes for more readily available local equivalents such as cassava or sweetpotatoes, there are very few places on the planet today where either the Carib-bean or the Melanesian daily regimen would cost less than the equivalent ofUS$4.00 per day, and in most countries it would cost considerably more. For

example, Table 1 shows that to buy the equivalent locally produced food itemsin Papua New Guinea (PNG) at present would cost at the very least US$4.00daily for the Bahamian rations of 1798 and US$5.00 daily for the Queenslandrations of 1892.

Meanwhile, during the past twenty five years of forced corporate globaliza-tion imposed on PNG by the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (WB/IMF), the minimum wage in PNG has slipped from US$5.00 per day beforestructural adjustment to the present level of US$1.00 per day. Incredible as it

may seem, the WB/IMF and the other shock troops of corporate globalizationin PNG have strenuously opposed even the most modest initiatives to raise theminimum wage in the country from US$1.00 to US$1.50 per day!

Each year the World Bank publishes its WorldDevelopment Report, whichincludes estimated Gross National Product (GNP) per capita figures for thecountries of the world, in order to estimate the average income of the citizens

Table . Market value of 1798 and 1892 daily slave rations in 2004

Food Item Amount 2004 Price in PNG Kina

Bahamas Rations 1798:

Sweet Potatoes 3700 gm. PGK 12.50 = US$ 4.00

Queensland Rations 1892:

Bread 750 gm. PGK 3.00

Meat (lowest quality) 500 gm. PGK 6.00

Salt 12 gm. PGK 0.15

Soap 30 gm. PGK 0.15

Sugar 250 gm. PGK 0.75

Sweet Potatoes 1,500 gm. PGK 5.00

Tea 25 gm. PGK 0.25

Tobacco 10 gm. PGK 0.50


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of each nation (World Bank 2000, 2003). ese figures have been contested

by many because they include earnings from which most of the populationdoes not benefit either directly or indirectly, and because they do not take intoaccount the growing gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor in al-most every country (Bennholdt-omsen and Mies 1999, George and Sabelli1994). Despite the fact that these figures normally overestimate average accessto cash, they consistently show that more than half of the worlds populationearns less than the equivalent of US$2.00 per day. When these data are consid-ered together with the information in Table 1 above, it becomes apparent that

aer several decades of corporate globalization, the income received by thepreponderant majority of the worlds peoples is less than half of what would berequired of them merely to purchase the food rations dealt out to plantationslaves 200 years ago, with absolutely no money le over to cover other costssuch as housing and clothing (Elliot 2001).

Based on projections of decreasing fertility in the South and factoring indeaths from HIV/AIDS, United Nations population projections show that ofthe expected 9.3 billion human inhabitants of the Earth by the year 2050, 8.2billion will be living in the less developed countries, with more than half of

the increase over the next 50 years to be registered in six Key Countries: Nige-ria, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. At the same time, evenaer taking increased immigration into account, the numbers for nearly all ofthe industrialized countries of the North will decline significantly by 2050,with falls of 14% each in Germany and Japan, 25% in Italy and up to 40% inRussia and the Ukraine (Tisdall 2001).

Table 2 displays a breakdown of the latest available (and again overesti-mated) income figures provided by the World Bank (2003) for the six Key

Countries.

Table . Percentage of people living on less than US$ 1.00 and 2.00 per day in 6 KeyCountries

Key Countries Last year surveyed % Living on less

than US$1.00/day

% Living on less

than US$2.00/day

Bangladesh 2000 36.0% 82.0%

China 2000 16.1% 47.3%

India 2000 34.7% 79.9%

Indonesia 2000 7.2% 55.4%

Nigeria 1997 70.2% 90.8%


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Before the age of corporate globalization, the frightening implications

of the figures in Table 2 would have been mitigated to a considerable extentby the numbers of people gaining their livelihoods by traditional subsistenceactivities, rather than through the cash economy. But the unprecedented andall sided attack launched by the current round of globalization on subsistenceeconomies worldwide is closing even this escape valve for most of the worldspeoples.

Overall, corporate globalization has brought about inequality on an un-precedented scale, with less than 20 per cent of the worlds peoples consuming

more than 80 per cent of the worlds resources. Corporate globalization looksset to bring about an even wider gap between rich and poor both within andbetween nations. Recently released United Nations Development Program fig-ures show that:

even though the wealth of the planet has been multiplied six times since 1950,the average income of the peoples of 100 of the 174 countries surveyed is inrapid decline, as is the average life expectancy [using a new scale measured interms of years of good health, as devised by the World Health Organization].e fortunes of the three richest people in the world is greater than the com-

bined GNP of the 48 poorest nations, that of the 15 richest people exceeds theGNP of all of sub-Saharan Africa, and finally, that of the 84 richest people sur-passes the GNP of China, with its 1.2 billion people (translated from Frenchby the author from Latouche 2001).

In the final analysis, an ever shrinking minority of the worlds population isbenefiting from corporate globalization, while an ever expanding majority isbeing thrown into a situation similar to or even worse than that of plantationslaves during the colonial era. In other words, instead of converting our planet

into some idyllic global village as the companies, the governments, and themedia would have us believe, corporate globalization is in reality transformingthe world into one gigantic global plantation.

. Globalization and the new slavery

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the resurgence of slavery inthe globalized economy. In a seminal work on this subject, Bales (1999: 9) points

out the differences between the Old Slavery and the New Slavery (Table 3).Bales focuses his attention on the plight of an estimated 27 million men,d hild ld id ( l 70% f h li i th K C


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labor where they are obliged to work for less than what it costs to survive,under threat of severe punishment or even death if they refuse to do so. Childlaborers and bonded debt slaves in South Asia, household servants in WestAfrica, sex workers in Southeast Asia, and charcoal workers in Brazil fall intothis category, which others have estimated to contain more than 200 millionpeople.

Besides underestimating the numbers, Bales leaves many essential issueseither only superficially dealt with or completely untouched in his analysis ofthe factors that have made the New Slavery possible. A key area that deservesmore attention is the role of corporate globalization in the ever accelerating de-struction of the global commons and the rapidly decreasing access that peoplesthe world over are being allowed to their traditional means of gaining a sub-

sistence independently of the cash economy. Another is the ongoing processof primitive accumulation which has accompanied every round of the expan-sion of capital from the age of the colonial plantations to the current era of theglobal plantation (Luxemburg 1967).

If we define slavery as work which is remunerated for less than what it coststo reproduce ones labor power, not only do Bales 27 million bonded laborersand the 200 million slaves counted by other authorities on the subject meetthis definition, but so does an ever expanding majority of the people of the

world whose labor power has been drastically devalued by the forces of corpo-rate globalization, as shown in Section 1.1 above. If we define slavery as forcedl b i t l h i d th t f i h t d th

Table 3. Old Slavery versus New Slavery

Old Slavery New Slavery

Legal Ownership Asserted Legal Ownership Denied

High Purchase Cost of Slaves Low Purchase Cost of Slaves

Low Profits from Slave Labor (5% in 19CUS South)

High Profits from Slave Labor (50100% atPresent)

Shortage of Potential Slaves Abundance of Potential Slaves

Long-Term Relationship between Masterand Slave

Short-Term Relationship between Masterand Slave

Slaves Maintained by Masters as an Invest-

ment

Slaves Disposable when No Longer

NeededEthnic Differences Crucial in DefiningSlave Status

Ethnic Differences Not Crucial in DefiningStatus

(Source: Bales 1999)


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do not work may number somewhere between 27 and 200 million. But for a

rapidly growing majority of the population of the Earth today, the only choiceavailable is to work for less than subsistence wages or to die of starvation, sinceall previously existing alternatives to gaining subsistence outside of the casheconomy are being systematically blocked by corporate globalization.

e structural adjustment policies of the WB/IMF, which involve suchmeasures as: (1) the devaluation of currencies (and therefore of labor power);(2) the freezing or complete abolition of the statutory minimum wage; (3) therepeal of all laws designed to protect workers and their commons (the environ-

ment); (4) bogus land reform programs that make it easier for companies tocontrol the land; (5) the promotion of cash cropping at the expense of subsis-tence agriculture; and (6) increased health and school fees to force people outof subsistence and into the cash economy; amount to nothing less than thefoundations for a new wave of primitive accumulation of control by corpo-rate interests over more and more labor and land (Faraclas 1994,1997a, 2001b,Turner and Brownhill 2001).

In fact, the situation faced by the plurality of wage workers on the planettoday meets all of the criteria for the New Slavery outlined by Bales (1999) in

Table 3 above. Just as corporate globalization is converting our world into a bigplantation, it has converted the overwhelming majority of the worlds peoplesinto immensely profitable new slaves, whose level of compensation, workingconditions, and security are vastly inferior to those even of the old slaves ofthe colonial plantation era.

.3 Globalization, education, and the spread of English

Another aspect of corporate globalization has been the crippling of state spon-sored education in the Majority World, especially at the secondary and ter-tiary levels. Under structural adjustment, country aer country experienceddecreases in school attendance rates in the 1980s and early 1990s, due to severecuts in government funding to the education sector, deterioration of class-rooms and other infrastructure, a rapid increase in school fees charged to par-ents, a sharp decrease in the value of teachers salaries, and the failure to payteachers for months or even years at a time (Elliot and Atkinson 2001, George1988). e figures for the three Key Countries in South Asia in Table 4 speakfor themselves.

Since the late 1990s the WB/IMF has begun to put into place a series


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previous decade. Under these reforms, funding for education has risen onlyslightly, with most additional resources merely being bled from the alreadyhemorrhaging secondary schools and universities, and redirected to the pri-mary schools (Faraclas 1998b). e result has been a nominal improvementin primary school attendance rates in some countries over the past few years,but these figures belie a desperate situation on the ground, where poorly de-signed, one-size-fits-all(-countries) educational reforms have been devised andimposed by WB/IMF consultants without consultation with teachers, parentsor students. In most cases, the reforms have only made a bad situation worse(Muoz 2001).

e net effect of these disturbing trends is that both the quantity and qual-

ity of formal education has seriously deteriorated in nearly all of the six KeyCountries as well as in most of the rest of the developing countries where over80% of the future adult population of the world resides. We can therefore con-clude that fewer and fewer young people will have access to formal instructionin English and other European languages for the foreseeable future, since inmost of these countries intensive instruction in these languages does not beginuntil secondary school. e much publicized increase in the numbers of peoplelearning English worldwide is mainly restricted to a large number of citizens

of the handful of non-English speaking nations of the Minority World (Con-tinental Europe, Japan, etc.) and the small minority of people in the MajorityWorld who reap some material rewards from corporate globalization.

So while it is true that the number of people learning English in the Ma-jority World today exceeds that of all the inhabitants of all of the tradition-ally English-speaking nations put together, this represents only the privileged510% of the population of these countries, who attend private schools andhave access to cable television, the internet, etc. (Simmons 2001). ese localelites, islands of Minority World privilege in a sea of Majority World misery,are another byproduct of the increasing inequalities brought about by corpo-rate globalization ey can be said to function as the local overseers for cor-

Table . Educational indicators for the Key Countries of South Asia

Adult Illiteracy Rate Mean Years of Schooling

Bangladesh 62% illiterate 2.0 years/person

India 48% illiterate 2.4 years/person

Pakistan 62% illiterate 1.9 years/person

(Source: Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center 1999)


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Once again the hype of globalization does not match the reality. Instead

of becoming a great equalizing language, leveling differences in educationaland job opportunities and permitting more communication and greater un-derstanding among all peoples, English is becoming the language of the globalelite, who will use it increasingly to exclude the majority of the worlds popula-tion from access to the Masters House of well paid employment, universityeducation, international travel, legal migration, the Web, American style con-sumerism, etc.

. Globalization and migration

e enclosure and destruction of more and more of the global commons andthe comprehensive attack by the forces of corporate globalization on forms ofsubsistence activity outside of the cash economy are forcing an unprecedentednumber of the people of the Majority World off of their traditional lands andinto a mobile, globalized workforce. But while corporate globalization insistson the free movement of capital across all borders, it abhors the free movementof labor across international boundaries. is means that it is primarily the

urban agglomerations of the Majority World that are obliged to accommodatethis burgeoning displaced population, as attested by the current and projectedrates of urbanization for our six Key Countries listed in Table 5.

e new globalized plantation therefore consists of these urban centers,together with the mines, logging camps, mega-project sites, large cash cropplantations, cattle ranches, export zones, schools, disciplined forces instal-lations, prisons, and other workplaces that act as magnets for the uprootedpeoples of the Majority World. It can be safely said that within the next two

decades, the majority of the worlds peoples will have been transformed from

Table . Percentage of urban population in 6 Key Countries 1975, 1998, and 2012

Key Countries Living in cities 1975 Living in cities 1998 Living in cities 2012

(projected)

Bangladesh 9.3% 20.0% 30.8%

China 17.3% 32.7% 45.9%

India 21.3% 27.7% 35.9%

Indonesia 19.4% 38.3% 52.4%

Nigeria 23.4% 42.5% 55.4%


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

largely self-sufficient subsistence producers into wage slaves on this globalized

plantation.

. Language on the globalized plantation

e question now arises as to what languages these laborers are exposed towhen they move from their traditional lands where they practiced subsistenceto the work sites of the globalized cash economy. Since the majority of the

worlds population (both at present and especially in the future) will be citi-zens of one of the six Key Countries, it is not unreasonable to use these as ourmodel here. In all of these six countries, a similar pattern of linguistic practicesemerges, as shown in Table 6.

For the populations of all of these nations, language use patterns involvinga complex mosaic of elite, sacred, governmental, foreign/prestige, written, re-gional, subregional, and local languages and dialects (most of which are mutu-ally unintelligible) have been the norm for thousands of years. More recently,standard languages, national spoken languages, and European languages have

been added to this rich mix. Deliberately contrasting it with the monolingualmelting pot model that has prevailed in the United States, Y. Kachru (1992)describes this situation as follows:

In India, populations that speak different languages have lived side by side,while preserving their distinct languages and developing new varieties ormixed codes An educated Hindi speaker from the town of Chapra in Biharuses the local Bhojpuri at home, a less localized Bhojpuri when conversingwith a relative from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, Eastern Hindi when ad-

dressing a Maithili-speaking neighbor, Standard Hindi when talking to hisor her boss in Lucknow, English when talking or writing tothe govern-ment official from Madras, and Sanskrit when conducting the daily worship.Depending upon the addressee, the style of Standard Hindi may be Persian-ized, Sanskritized, or Englishized. Also, depending on the locale or the need todemonstrate in-group membership or social distance, the code selected maynot conform to what has been said above (262263).

It is difficult to characterize the situation of Indian bilinguals or multilin-guals in terms of maintenance or shi. e situation is dynamic rather than

static; there is no point at which a certain dialect or language may be said tohave relinquished a certain domain. It is a matter of degrees rather than abso-


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.Languageusageinthe6KeyCountries

s

Nigeria

China

Indonesia

India

Pakistan

Bangladesh

Langua

ges

English

Stan

dardChinese

Putonghua

English

BahasaCreole

English

English

StandardHindi

English

StandardUrdu

English

StandardBengali

ialWritten

SacredLgs

English

Arabic

Stan

dardWritten

Baihua

Clas

sicalWenyan

BahasaCreole

English

Dutch

Arabic

StandardHindi

English

Sanskrit

StandardUrdu

English

Arab

ic

HighBengali

English

Arabic

onalSpo

ken

ges

NigerianPidgin/

NigerianCreole

BeijingKoine

Putonghua

BahasaCreole

HindiKoine

UrduKoine

StandardCollo

quial

BengaliKoine

nal&Sub-

alLangu

ages

RegionalNigerian

Pidgin

RegionalLgs:e.g.

Hausa,Yoruba,

Igbo,&c.

Regional

Putonghua

Regional

Dia

lects:Xiamen

Gua

ngzhou&c.

RegionalBahasa

RegionalLgs:

JavaneseBugin

ese

&c.

RegionalHindi:

E/W/S,

RegionalLgs:

BhojpuriKoine

&c.

RegionalLgs:

Sind

hiPushto&c.

RegionalBengali

Dialects:N/E/

SE

Rajbangshi&c.

LanguagesLocalLgs*

LocalDialects

&Lgs

LocalLgs

LocalDialects

&Lgs

Loca

lDialects

&Lgs

LocalDialects&

Lgs

Faraclas1996

Norman1980:

245257

DeF

rancis1984

Ajamseba1996

:13

Dimock,Kachru,

&Krishnamurti

1992:262

Breton1997

Pren

tice1985:

185

207

Chowdhury1965:

125142

Breton1997

anguages


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

Table 6 shows that a roughly similar state of affairs exists in the other five Key

Countries, where elite citizens with post-secondary formal education com-mand most or all of the full range of language varieties along a continuumdefined very schematically by rows 1 to 5 on the table.

Non-elite citizens of the six Key Countries living in the countryside andengaged in subsistence production typically speak their Local Languages (row5 on Table 6) and their koineized or pidginized Subregional Languages (row4) as their first languages (L1), with perhaps some knowledge of their koin-eized, pidginized, or creolized Regional Language (row 4) as well. Once they

are uprooted from their customary lifestyle and join the globalized workforceor go to school, they normally learn their Regional Language (row 4) and theirkoineized, pidginized, or creolized National Spoken Language (row 3), both ofwhich are, in almost every case, typologically similar to their Local and Subre-gional Languages (rows 5 and 4).

In fact, most of the linguistic conditions facing the new slaves of the cur-rent era of corporate globalization are precisely those encountered on the plan-tations of the colonial era. erefore, it is not surprising that language contact

varieties such as koines, pidgins, and creoles which oen involve the restruc-

turing of dominant colonizing languages by colonized speakers of non-domi-nant languages feature prominently in Table 6. Although there is considerabledebate regarding the precise meanings of the terms koine, pidgin, and creole,the following rough working definitions will suffice for the purposes of thisstudy. A koine is generally considered to be a compromise dialect that emergesfrom contact between a prestige dialect and non-prestige dialects of the samelanguage. In our Key Countries however, many of these dialects are mutuallyunintelligible and therefore could be considered to be separate languages, in

which case the result of contact would resemble a pidgin or creole more thana koine. A pidgin normally arises in situations where a dominant language ismassively restructured in the direction of the non-dominant languages spokenas first languages (L1) by dominated groups of people. e resulting pidgin isused by its speakers to meet particular communicative needs in a restrictednumber of situations. When a pidgin is used to meet all communicative needsin all situations, it becomes a creole (Holm 2000).

Using the development of Melanesian Pidgin on the plantations ofQueensland and Samoa during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a mod-el, Siegel (1999) uses insights from the field of second language (L2) acquisitionto propose the following set of situational constraints which are maximally


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languages (L1) to pidgins and, it is argued here, by extension to other contact

varieties, such as koines and creoles:

1. Degree of proficiency: Transfer from substrate languages (L1, or Localand/or Subregional Languages, rows 4 and 5 on Table 6) to a koine, pidgin,or creole (L2, or National Spoken Language and/or Regional Language,rows 3 and 4 on Table 6) is more likely to occur in earlier stages of languageacquisition, but also occurs in later stages, when learning more complexstructures. e new slaves, like the old slaves, are at the equivalent of anearly stage of second language acquisition, knowing very little of the sec-

ond language (L2) to be learned on the global plantation.2. Sociolinguistic context: Transfer from substrate languages (L1) to a koine,

pidgin, or creole (L2) is more likely in naturalistic contexts than in a class-room, and when speaking with members of ones own ethnic group thanwith speakers of the dominant language. For the laborers on the new glob-al plantation as for those who worked on the colonial plantations, formalschooling in the Standard and Official languages (rows 1 and 2 on Table 6)is rarely an option, and any new languages they learn on the global planta-

tion are primarily used to communicate with other workers, rather thanwith the bosses or the Elites.

3. Communicative needs: Transfer from substrate languages (L1) to a koine,pidgin, or creole is more likely to occur in situations of communicativestress and overload. For the workers of the globalized economy as for co-lonial plantation slaves, there is an immediate need to communicate andcooperate with one another. Communication takes precedence over cor-rectness, so that if an incorrect feature is used but communication is notdisrupted, this feature will be reinforced as a communicative strategy inthe linguistic repertoire of the speaker.

Siegel (1999) proposes one other situational constraint favoring transfer fromsubstrate languages (L1) to a koine, pidgin, or creole (L2) which was notfoundon the plantations of Queensland and Samoa, but which is found in many ofthe situations into which the new globalized workforce is being propelled:

4. Language distance: Transfer from substrate languages (L1) to a koine,pidgin, or creole (L2) is more likely to occur if the degree of typological

similarity between them is high or perceived by the speakers to be high.Whereas the typological similarity of the languages spoken by the colo-


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

plantation worksites, where the koineized, pidginized, and creolized Na-

tional Spoken and Regional Languages (rows 3 and 4 on Table 6) that theglobalized labor force is learning are typologically similar to the Local andSubregional Languages that they speak as their first languages (L1).

It is striking to note that in all six countries, all of the National Spoken Lan-guages as well as nearly all of the Regional and Subregional Languages haveundergone considerable koineization, pidginization, and/or creolization in re-cent history, especially since the beginning of the colonial era (Chowdhury1965; Dimock, Kachru, and Krishnamurti 1992; Gumperz and Wilson 1971).

Kachru (1992: 265) shows how since independence, regional dialects of Hindihave developed under the influence of the linguistic habits which their speak-ers bring to them from the local languages that they speak. For example, West-ern Hindi has an ergative construction as do the local languages in the West(Braj, Khari Boli, Rajasthani, etc.), while no such construction exists in EasternHindi, mirroring the ergative-less local languages in the East (Awadhi, Bho-

jpuri, Magahi, Maithili, etc.). Dutton (1998) contends that the Standard Beijingdialect of Chinese developed historically through a process of koineization, the

last wave of which resulted from the influx of people from all over China intoBeijing during the 1950s.

In Nigeria and Papua New Guinea, the rapid increase of second- and first-language users of Nigerian Pidgin and Melanesian Pidgin is responsible forthe simultaneous and ongoing re-pidginization and creolization of those lan-guages, a process by which speakers continue to reshape national and regionallanguages according to the linguistic patterns and practices that typify theirlocal languages (Faraclas 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1996). If a previouslyexisting pidgin is necessary for certain types of creole genesis, as suggestedby McWhorter (1997), there is no shortage of languages in all of our six Keycountries which could play this role as well.

e Masters House is not immune from these linguistic trends, either.Recent studies indicate that an embryonic English as Lingua Franca in Eu-rope (ELFE) is developing structural features which are bringing it closer tothe languages of the continent, considered together as an areal-typological unit(Jenkins and Seidlhofer 2001). Noting that the ratio of non-native speakers tonative speakers of English has now reached 4 : 1, House (2001) contends that:

e Empire has struck back already. Non-native speakers of English have cre-ated their own discourse norms and genres, while successfully maintaining


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formally educated Elite minorities in our six Key Countries who speak vari-

eties of West African Standard English, South Asian Standard English, etc.In many respects, the linguistic situation in the six Key Countries shows

important parallels to the creole continuum described by Rickford for CaneWalk in Guyana (1983):

1. For the overwhelming majority of the population (the slaves on the glo-balized plantation), the opportunities for social-economic mobility areextremely limited (12) and therefore speaking acrolectal varieties (i.e. the

varieties spoken mainly by the Elites, rows 1 and 2 on Table 6) is notseen

as necessary and/or appropriate in most situations.2. For a much smaller minority (the overseers on the global plantation), in-

creasing ones command of th[e acrolectal] end of the continuum is seen asa means of preparing for future socio-economic mobility (12) and, there-fore, speaking acrolectal (Elite) varieties is seen as necessary and/or appro-priate in many situations.

3. Neither the slaves nor the overseers see any particular variety as neces-sary or appropriate in all situations, to the exclusion of any of the other

varieties (13).4. Dimensions such as occupational stratification, prestige, level of formal

education, friendship, identity, solidarity, and social class need to be fac-tored in to explain which varieties of language will be used by a particularindividual in a given situation (14).

5. only an approach to linguistic and cultural attitudes which is infinitelymore sensitive than the standard view is [i.e., that acrolectal (Elite) vari-eties invariably have a positive value, and basilectal varieties (Local Lan-guages, row 5 on Table 6) invariably have a negative value] can serve toexplain the unsettled and dynamic character of creole continua (15).

Perhaps the best way to describe the patterns of language use in the six KeyCountries is as a number of creole-like continua overlapping one another.

us, the majority of the worlds peoples are entering the globalized work-force as bilingual or multilingual individuals, whose linguistic repertoire is

very likely to include a continuum of several sociolects of at least one koin-eized, pidginized or creolized language. Furthermore, their integration into theglobalized workforce entails the learning of at least one more koine, pidgin, orcreole and a greater number of additional lects along the creole-like continua ofthe languages that they have already mastered Moreover there is considerable


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and re-pidginizing them, in conformity with the linguistic practices and pat-

terns that typify their local and subregional languages. While in most caseslocal and subregional languages are being maintained alongside regional andnational koines, pidgins, and creoles, there are significant numbers of childrenwho are learning these koines and pidgins as their first languages. is impliesthat the global plantation is simultaneously a site for the most massive waveof koineization, pidginization, and creolization in the history of humanity, farexceeding the scale at which these phenomena manifested themselves duringthe colonial plantation era.

. Language, domination, and resistance

e similarities between the linguistic situations in our six Key Countrieswhich are illustrated in Table 6 are not merely the product of some fortuitouscoincidence. Most of the regions which are now incorporated within theirborders underwent one or more waves of conquest over the past millennia bygroups of people who to one degree or another attempted to enclose the localcommons and dominate the local populations, not only economically and po-

litically, but culturally and linguistically as well. e fact that none of these re-gions is monolingual today (to the contrary, many of these areas remain someof the most linguistically diverse on the planet) attests to the extent to whichtheir populations resisted enclosure and domination by refusing to adopt thelanguage of their oppressors. ey did so by retaining their traditional lan-guages and/or by massively restructuring the invading language in the imageof their local speech forms. is accounts both for the tenacity of local lan-guages and for the widespread phenomena of koineization, pidginization and

creolization in these nations at present, even aer European invasion duringthe colonial period and in the face of corporate globalization today.

McMurtry (1998) explains the connection between the commons and lan-guage in the context of corporate globalization in terms of

the conflict in principle between the logic of the civil commons and themarket value system. e roots of the civil commons predate the market bymillennia. e civil commons is, indeed, found in the origins of language it-self. We secure and develop language through education, whether informalor formal. rough literacy, cultural heritage, and the opening word acrossthe community fabric, the civil commons gives individuals the opportunity toexpress themselves and it does so without a market exchange required for


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furthering of life without the mediation of market price or profite civil

commons is, if we can see past the value program [of corporate globalization]that now attacks it, the underlying life-organization of society. One might saythat to attack the civil commons is to attack civilization itself and, beneaththat, our common life-ground individual, social, and environmental. Butthe civil commons is not recognized for what it is because the value program[of corporate globalization] rules out universally accessible goods of life fromits system of worthWhat is not recognized as being of value becomes value-less. Because the current market program cannot see past its own demandsfor ever more market activities of society, it cannot recognize the substance

of what it annihilatesBy its nature language is open to all, enables all, andis humanitys greatest contribution to the life-realm of value. Overcoming mo-nopolies of language is much of the story of civilizations development (370371,italics my own).

Whereas the current wave of globalization is similar to those that came beforeit, in that it entails economic, political, cultural, and linguistic domination, itrepresents a qualitative intensification of these processes, because while previ-ous waves of invasion and domination le most of the worlds peoples withat least some access to traditional subsistence activities as a way to gain theirlivelihoods, corporate globalization aims to force every human being into thecash economy, mostly as disposable slave labor on the global plantation. Inthis respect, the present age is remarkably similar to the era of colonial slavery,which uprooted millions of people on every inhabited continent from theirtraditional subsistence economies in order to forge a workforce completely atthe mercy of capital.

It must be stated from the outset that local languages and restructured va-rieties such as pidgins and creoles should not be fetishized as the sufficient

ingredient in any recipe for resistance to systems of domination nor shouldany language be considered to be absolutely resistant to cooptation and ap-propriation to serve the ends of corporate globalization. ese caveats aside, itwill be argued here that just as colonial plantation slaves used their customarysubsistence knowledges, cultures, and languages to resist, subvert, and eventu-ally derail the processes of colonization, so are the wage slaves of today utiliz-ing their traditional subsistence ways, local languages, and restructured codes(pidgins and creoles) to undermine the processes of recolonization and the

monopolies of language upon which the entire enterprise of corporate global-ization depends.Diff t l b th d d t diff t i t ti l


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

(row 1 in Table 6) and the monopolies of language that they incorporate both

legitimize and give expression to a qualitative intensification of the systems ofdomination (such as capitalism, patriarchy, and racism) upon which neocolo-nialism depends. In contrast, local languages (line 5 of Table 6) both embodyand give voice to ways of being, thinking, and living in society that have eithernever involved the acceptance of domination in any form or which may tosome extent have incorporated earlier, qualitatively weaker forms of domina-tion based on distribution of wealth, sex/gender, ethnic difference, etc. (Fara-clas 1994).

us, the struggle to preserve local languages against the onslaught of mo-nopolies of language is an integral part of the struggle to preserve culturaldiversity against MacDonaldization, and cognitive diversity against monocul-tures of the mind (Shiva 2001). Local languages and the cultures and peopleswho created them are living proof that the systems of domination which cor-porate globalization presents to the world as natural, normal, and inevitable arenothing of the kind, and are instead gross aberrations that originally took holdin a miniscule minority of the worlds cultures at an extremely recent momentof human history, but which have spread like an aggressive cancer that now

threatens our very survival as a species (Faraclas 2001b).When the new slaves on the globalized plantation confront the dominant

language and culture of corporate globalization, they do not do so as passivevictims. Instead, they tenaciously maintain their native tongues and lifestylesas much as possible and actively restructure the dominant language and cul-ture according to their indigenous languages and cultures, through processessuch as pidginization and creolization. In this way monopolies of language andculture are subverted, broken up, and redistributed back into the civil com-

mons (McMurtry 1998: 370).In the Caribbean, indigenous theorists have carefully analyzed the sig-

nificance of the extensive pidginization/creolization of languages and culturesthat resulted from the last great wave of globalization which took place in thatregion during the colonial era. Two schools of thought have emerged in thisconnection (Brudzinski 2003). Scholars such as Jean Bernab, Patrick Cham-oiseau and Raphal Confiant (1993) see pidgin/creole language and culture asconstituting an oppositional counteridentification on the part of enslaved pop-ulations to dominant European language and culture. Other thinkers, such asdouard Glissant consider the process of pidginization/creolization as a meansused by plantation slaves to disidentify and dissociate themselves from all of


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the creation of new autonomous identities and spaces for creativity that are in-

accessible to the colonial gaze. What unites both of these positions, however, isthe view that pidgins/creoles have played a pivotal role in resistance to global-ization and domination, as an integral part of a successful collective responseby enslaved peoples to the attempted enclosure of their minds, bodies, land,and labor. Both groups of theorists acknowledge the significant contributionof pidginization/creolization to the social movements that eventually led toabolition and the dismantling of the colonial plantation system and recognizethe great potential that pidgins/creoles have for building bonds of solidarity

and resistance among the new slaves of the global plantation in their strugglesagainst corporate globalization.

. Melanesian Pidgin and the movement for critical literacy in Melanesia

e three independent states of Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, the SolomonIslands, and Vanuatu) differ from our six Key Countries in that they neverreally experienced invasion and domination before the colonial era. For thisreason, they are linguistically the most diverse nations in the world, with more

than 1,000 distinct languages belonging to several different families spokenamong their six million inhabitants. Because the Europeans found it very dif-ficult to subdue peoples who had never experienced nor accepted subjugation,hierarchies, inequalities in wealth, and the other aspects of domination, theywere unable to gain a secure foothold on these islands until the mid19th cen-tury. is relatively recent and superficial encounter with invasion has le over90% of the land and over 80% of the labor in Melanesia still under the tra-ditional clan-based regime, which guaranties everyone complete food, hous-

ing, employment, and social security in the abundance of subsistence, withimmunity from the artificial scarcities created by the cash economy (Faraclas1998a; Bennholdt-omsen and Mies 1999). Since the enclosure of labor mustbe preceded by the enclosure of land, the main goal of the structural adjust-ment programs implemented by the WB/IMF in Melanesia has always been toforce, entice, or delude Melanesians into changing the jurisdiction over theirland from their traditional laws (under which the people have collective powerover the land, which is inalienable) to the land laws introduced under the co-lonial and neocolonial governments (under which the state has the ultimatepower over land, which can be sold or purchased just as any other commodity,see World Bank 1964)


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

Over the past two decades, Melanesia has proven to be a flashpoint of suc-

cessful resistance to the policies of corporate globalization. In 1989, the yearthat marked the culmination of a movement to reclaim land forcibly seizedfrom them before independence in 1975, the people of Bougainville shut downone of the largest copper and gold mines in the world. Despite the fact that vastmineral deposits remain and against the combined forces of the Australian andPapua New Guinean armed forces, the mine has remained inoperable to thisday. In 1994, a massive wave of protests forced the WB/IMF to withdraw itsproposed land reform, one of the major conditions of the second structural

adjustment program for PNG, which stipulated that the government wouldhave to do away with traditional land laws and replace them with Europeanstyle registration, titles, etc. Since 1996, the people of Vanuatu have waged sucha fierce campaign against the WB/IMF and structural adjustment, that theWB/IMF cannot operate openly in the country and is forced to work throughthe Asia Development Bank. Not daring to use the terms structural adjust-ment and land reform, the authorities use the names Comprehensive ReformProgram and Land Use Planning instead, but to no avail: the WB/IMF agendahas been blocked at every stage.

In 1997, the entire nation of PNG was brought to a complete standstill bya general strike, demanding that Executive Outcomes-cloned Sandline merce-naries smuggled clandestinely and illegally into the country by the governmentitself to provide a Sierra Leonean- or Angolan-style final solution to the Bou-gainville Crisis be deported immediately and that the Prime Minister, DeputyPrime Minister and Minister for Defense (who were responsible for hiringthese soldiers of fortune) resign. As a result, not only were the mercenaries ex-pelled, but Sandline Inc. went bankrupt, and not only did the Prime Minister,

his Deputy and the Minister for Defense all resign, but the governing coali-tion was routed in the elections which followed. e so-called ethnic conflictwhich has been raging in the Solomon Islands since 1998 is both a logical con-sequence of and a defiant response to the ravages brought about by structuraladjustment and corporate globalization in that country. It is no accident that asa result of this conflict, most of the alienated land on the island of Guadalcanal(including one of the largest and most profitable oil palm and cocoa planta-tions in all of the Pacific) has been returned to the traditional landholders un-der their customary laws (Ahai and Faraclas 1993; Faraclas 1994, 1997a, 1997c,1997d, 1998b, 2001b).


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Behind all of these instances of resistance to corporate globalization is a

flourishing pan-Melanesian critical literacy movement which operates on thefollowing principles:

1. e central role of women in the struggle to retain traditional power overland, labor, and life and in confronting corporate globalization without be-ing corrupted or co-opted by it. Womens organizations and women ac-tivists have provided the backbone and scaffolding to all of these popularmovements. For example, during the protests against land reform in PNG,it was the women not the men who had the courage to face the armed po-

lice and shame them into putting down their weapons, saying Dont youhave children, too? What will become of them if they have no land?

2. e use of traditional Melanesian subsistence knowledge, language, andculture to oppose corporate globalization. For example, much of the popu-lar mobilization that occurred in all of these cases was integrally connectedto the establishment of community controlled schools for the teaching ofcritical literacy to both children and adults in local languages and Melane-sian Pidgin.

3. e crucial role of Melanesian Pidgin in reading, writing, and renamingthe world as well as in building national, regional and international move-ments against corporate globalization in Melanesia.

e movement against corporate globalization in Melanesia depends upon theuse of Melanesian Pidgin to overcome the monopolies of language wielded byagencies such as the WB/IMF. In the process of using traditional languages andknowledges to read and write the world, Melanesians have discarded much ofthe semantic universe that has been imposed on them by the forces of domi-

nation and replaced it with their own system of meanings which serves theirinterests, rather than the interests of profit. For example, the words develop-ment and civilization have been redefined by Melanesians themselves asgut-

pela sindaun a good life andgutpela ples a good community respectively, inMelanesian Pidgin. Under these new definitions, these concepts are demysti-fied, so that people realize that their ancestors were in many ways much moredeveloped and civilized than the global plantation that the companies, the gov-ernments, the schools, and the media have been peddling as development andcivilization. is reconfiguration of semantic spaces and the radical re-read-ing of the past that it allows, opens up the possibility for a radical re-writingof the future so that people can create a society that meets their own needs


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

.3 Women, subsistence, language, and the movements against corporate

globalization in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and Mexico

Farida Akhter (2001) demonstrates how the thousands of women and theirfamilies who participate in the subsistence-oriented Nayakrishi Andolonmovement in Bangladesh have also used the process of redefining and renam-ing the world to oppose corporate globalizations monopoly of language withparticular reference to agribusiness and reproductive and genetic technologies.In a very similar way to the literacy workers in Melanesia, the women of Ban-gladesh have used the traditional Sanskrit term ananda happy life to demystifyand seize control over the concept of development. e semantic space coveredby the term deha which means both body and land in Bengali is another casein point. Nayakrishi Andolon is waging a successful struggle in Bangladeshsimultaneously against the use of reproductive technologies by corporationsto control womens fertility as well as against the use of pesticides and geneti-cally modified terminator seeds. Reclaiming the traditional meanings of theconcept deha, the women of Nayakrishi Andolon see no separation betweentheir bodies and the land. Because they would never poison their own bodies,

they would never poison the land with pesticides and herbicides. Because theywould never allow others to control and curtail the life-giving fertility of theirland, they would never allow others to control and curtail the fertility of theirbodies. As a result of Nayakrishi Andolons activities, women are saving andsharing seed so that the number of varieties of rice and other crops is risingaer years of decline, more and more farms are returning to traditional or-ganic practices so that people are no longer dependent on the cash economy topurchase pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and women are no longer allow-

ing companies to control the fertility of their bodies. So, while many farmersin South Asia have sunk so far into debt through the use of green revolutionchemicals (which by now have lost their effectiveness as pests grow immune tothem) that they are beginning to consume these poisons themselves in a rashof suicides (Shiva 2001), the women of Nayakrishi Andolon are turning thisland-body logic on its head to liberate themselves from the cash economy andto maintain control over the land, instead of being forced by debt to sell theirfarms to the corporations.

Women in Kenya have also been at the forefront of struggles against corpo-

rate globalization. Turner and Brownhill (2001) characterize this as a fight forfertility, from the uprooting of coffee trees by the women of Maragua to make


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corporate agenda being carried out by the government in the 1990s, to the cur-

rent wave of land seizures across Kenya and the rest of Africa by landless peas-ants otherwise destined to become new slaves on the global plantation. eMaragua women were able to successfully thwart the WB/IMF agenda for theconversion of rural Kenya into one big cash crop plantation not only in theirlocal area, but across the nation. e Freedom Corner mothers obtained therelease of 50 out of 51 of their children the fruit of their fertility, their bod-ies aer they used the curse of nakedness to shame and strike fear into thehearts of the police and soldiers who attempted to suppress their daily protests

in Nairobi. And there is no sign that the occupation of land owned by agribusi-ness, the government, the politicians, or big planters will cease in the foresee-able future. It is important to note that all of these popular movements in Ke-nya can trace at least some of their roots to the African schools established byanti-colonialist women in the 1920s. Needless to say, the use of the local creoleKiswahili has played a key role in all of these challenges to corporate globaliza-tion (Ani 2000), as did Nigerian Pidgin both in the brutally suppressed studentprotests against structural adjustment policy in Nigeria during the 1980s and1990s as well as in the current nationwide general strikes against IMF-ordered

increases in fuel prices.Perhaps noone has subverted a dominant language so creatively and effec-

tively as a tool against the agenda of corporate globalization, however, than theindigenous peoples of Chiapas who, under the auspices of the Ejercito Zapatis-ta de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN or Zapatistas) have successfully jeopardizedthe entire neoliberal project in Mexico. As second language speakers of Span-ish, they have transformed that language into a potent force and inspiration forindigenous peoples and the other new slaves on the global plantation around

the world (Faraclas 1998c). Esteva (2001: 165) speaks of the Zapatistas rejec-tion of nouns of dependence (such as education, health, and employment) inpolitical discourse in favor of verbs which denote real actions taken by peopleto create their lives (such as eat, learn, heal, settle, exchange). According toEsteva, the Zapatistas seek to move Mexico away from the melting pot modelthat typifies its neighbor to the North, in favor of a radical pluralism similarto that found in our six Key Countries (see Y. Kachru in Section 2.0 above),in order

to radically reject all pretense of homogeneity that, in the name of an illu-sory equality making some people more equal than others, attempts to sup-

diff li i h i l j i i i i i i l


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

of relationshipsto create a we which is open, supportive, and fully inclu-

sive, that leaves behind forever all exclusions, eliminating them in a fiesta ofconvivial diversityto create a Mexico in which many Mexicos can fit, themany Mexicos who the Mexican people really are and want to continue being(160).

As for the means to be used to achieve these ends, Esteva notes that languageand meaning will play a far more important role than guns or conventionalpolitics:

neither the political parties nor the structures of power seem to have noticed

the true character of the current situation. People are not in the mood for apopular revolt, but for a political rebellion, a peaceful insurgency. ey are notpreparing for a civil war, but a transformative peace. And they do not want toweaken or stop their mobilization, nor settle for cosmetic changes. ey in-tend to profoundly change Mexican society through the progressive creationof political spaces in which they can effectively govern themselves[is]agenda does not lead to a manifestoorchestrating peoples efforts from thetop downIt delineates a common ground, the shape and limits of a territoryof meaning and action (a new horizon of intelligibility) based on experiences

to be shared. (164165)

Corporate globalization is currently attempting to enclose all of the land andlabor of the planet, and impose monopolies of language and a monocultureof the mind over all of its inhabitants. But across the Majority World, people(particularly women) are fighting to retain their access to the global commonsand to the subsistence activities that give them independence from the casheconomy and the global plantation, as well as to retain the diversity and abun-dance which their languages, cultures, and nature have bequeathed to them

as a birthright. ese struggles are much more sophisticated and far-reachingthan those conducted within the corporate dominated paradigm of guns andparliaments. Instead, they focus on our cultures, our languages, and the every-day subsistence activities by which we all manage to maintain our existence onthe Earth, so that whatever change occurs will affect how we survive, what webelieve, and the ways that we relate to ourselves and to one another.

. Women, subsistence, and language in the minority world

Once again, the phenomena we are considering are by no means restricted tothe South In the North as well monopolies of language and monocultures


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subsistence, diversity, fertility, and popular control over land and labor. As in

the Majority World, these struggles are characterized by the prominent rolethat women play in them, as well as by a politics that rejects the idea that powerlies in armies, in the commanding heights of governmental authority, or inthe technologies of destruction and deception wielded by capital. Instead, thefocus is on using traditional cultures and languages as a starting point for thecreation of effective means of survival, continuity, and building strong familiesand strong communities.

Although corporate globalization is progressively eliminating all avenues

of legal migration across international boundaries, illegal and semi-legal im-migration is having a profound impact on the languages and cultures of theMinority World. In her analysis of the International Gardens project in Gt-tingen, Germany, Mller (2001) shows how refugee women are utilizing thesubsistence activity of food gardening to

develop new forms of intercultural communication, [to] establisha linkbetween the place they have le and the one they now live in,[to] graduallystart to put down rootsin Germany,[to] developnew ways of being andliving together,[and to] uphold and createsocial reciprocity (192194).

All of this is done using a politics similar to that expounded by the Zapatistas(see Esteva 2001 above):

It is striking that the International Gardens are not politicized in the senseof a power-oriented strategy, as is the case in many male-dominated refugeegroupsConflicts between Kurds and Turks or Croats and Serbsare setaside. Although social praxis in the gardens, like migration, is deliberatelyplaced in a political context, the central focusis not to gain control overpeople and resources, but rather to ensure the continuity of material, social,and cultural self-sufficiencye exceptional situation of migration makes itclearer than perhaps any other that women are the ones who create the dailyconditions on which life is based, and make these available to the community(194).

Just as in Cane Walk in Guyana (see Rickford 1983 above), the refugee womenin Gttingen have defied the standard views and binarisms normally put for-ward by social scientists to explain cultural and linguistic contact:

In the International Gardensdimensions of foreigners reality emergewhich cannot be located between the conventional poles of either assimila-tion or rejection of the host culture e continuity represented by subsistence


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the starting point, retained and reconstructed by confronting the ruptures of

expulsion and flight with continuity as a survival strategy (200).

e experience of First Nations, Puerto Rican, and African-American womenin contemporary US society must also be considered here. Although in manycultures men traditionally share the task of raising children with women, thepatriarchal nature of colonization and globalization have thrust nearly the en-tire responsibility for the maintenance and transmission of language, culture,diversity, and subsistence practices from one generation to the next onto theshoulders of women, particularly in the growing pockets of Majority World

poverty to be found in the countries of the Minority World today. Medicine(1985: 160) describes the situation as follows:

American Indian women perform at least three distinctive social rolesthrough their patterns of language use in their communities. ey maintain[traditional] cultural values through the socialization of children; they serveas evaluators of language use by setting the normative standards of the nativeor ancestral tongue and English; and they are effective as agents of changethrough mediation strategies with White society.

In the same vein, Zentella (1985: 174) states that in the Puerto Rican barrios ofNew York City:

e preeminent role of women in child-rearing, their immersion in Spanish-linked [subsistence] activities, their responsibility for contacts with the familyin Puerto Rico, and the traditional association of the home or we languagewith feelings of personal intimacy and group solidarity, make women the cul-tural bearers, that is, those given most responsibility for maintenance of thehome language and cultural survival.

While similar roles are attributed to African-American women, there is an add-ed social class dimension that affects attitudes toward the dominant languageand culture, as found in Cane Walk in Guyana (see Rickford 1983 above). Intheir study of conversational topics among African-American women, Robinsand Adenika (1985: 186) observe that:

Working class womens lives were not affected by the integration movementto the same degree as the LMC [lower middle class] women, because theireconomic status afforded them a lifestyle that was far removed from what

they considered to be real hope. ey worked so that their lives could be freefrom hunger and cold, and they prayed that their childrens lives would beb tt th th i B th f lt th t th ld t di i i h Whit


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oppressorsRacial advancement and integration were most important to MC

[middle class] and LMC women. Education and emulation of Whites wereseen [by middle class women] as the primary vehicles for achieving thesegoals.

e present day experiences of marginalized women in both the South and theNorth suggest that women have always played a crucial role in the process ofpidginization and creolization, especially on the old plantations of the colonialera and the new globalized plantations of today. Women have been respon-sible for learning, maintaining, utilizing, monitoring, and transmitting a wide

range of languages and sociolects, in order to guarantee their own survival aswell as the survival of their families in a linguistically complex and sometimes

very hostile environment, and to equip the next generation with all of the com-municative tools it needs to survive and thrive in the future.

. Language, resistance, and contemporary culture

In literature, music, the performing and graphic arts, and even in advertisingitself, language which in its form and/or meaning represents resistance to thepolitical, economic, social, cultural and linguistic monocultures which un-derpin corporate globalization, has become the norm throughout the world(Frank 2001). e hip-hop movement, which reflects the increasing use of Eb-onics or African-American English among all sectors and ethnic groups in USsociety, is now both a pan-African and a global phenomenon, especially in itsmost politically engaged forms (Chonin 2001; D 1997; DeBose and Faraclas1993; Servant 2000). An encouraging number of the hitherto apathetic anddepoliticized young people of the urban US are now actively creating a radi-

cal politics that rivals that of their counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s, whichis expressed through the fora of poetry slams and hip-hop song and dancesessions. In Africa, rappers criticize the co-opted and commercializedgangsta

versions of hip-hop, using their own languages and ideas to make rap a power-ful political and educational tool in their societies (Astill 2001). As far as thosewho criticize the globalization of African music are concerned, African urbanmusicologist omas Gesthuizen (creator of the website: Africanhiphop.com)says that for the African rappers, this sort of fusion is living proof of the vi-

ability of their cultures in the 21st century. Whats more, it gives a universalsignificance to their [socio-political] message. (translated from French by thea thor from Ser ant 2000) In other ords e en tho gh the st le ma be from


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3 Nicholas Faraclas

While the most socially conscious Rap music challenges the forces behind

corporate globalization in a very explicit way, much of the rest of this genre isin open and flagrant confrontation with most dominant paradigms, in terms ofits language, attitude, values, style, and subject matter, a good deal of which canbe traced back to features that have characterized African-American and Afro-Caribbean music since the days of the colonial plantations (Bethune 2000). epolitics of hip-hop music, like those of the Zapatistas, those of the movementsagainst globalization in the South, and those of many womens struggles in theNorth, centers on survival, the family, and community. In her analysis of the rela-

tionship between family and politics in hip-hop, Bethune (2000) contends that:despite the continual threat of separation and the artificial versions of the[nuclear] family that their masters attempted to impose on them, the slaves[on the colonial plantations] managed to a large extent to forge a familialframework that corresponded to their own world-view and which served theirown interestsese frameworks would persist aer emancipation (153,translated from French by the author).

Although misogynist lyrics are not uncommon in much ofgangsta rap, in po-

litically engaged hip-hop music, consideration and appreciation is accorded towomen, and especially mothers in their capacity as subsistence providers andeducators.

While hip-hop has moved from the ghettoes of the US to Africa, the boot-leg home-video industry which originated in Nigeria is beginning to makeinroads into the inner cites of North America. ousands of videos, with adistribution of from 30,000 to 300,000 each have been shot in Nigerian Pid-gin, Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa over the past few years without any system ofcontrol,distribution charter, or government support (Servant 2001). MasterPwas has taken a cue from the Nigerians and is currently having great suc-cess with his bootleg videos in his home town of New Orleans. Wongs (1986)observations regarding the manner in which contemporary Afro-Caribbeanartists in the UK are positioning themselves through language, hold true formost of the explosion of creativity that has emerged from both the colonialplantations and the global plantation:

Excluded from society and defined as being deficient in all areas, black peoplehave asserted their right to exist and to be defined in their own terms. Survival

strategies involve the politics of confrontation as well as the cultivation of life-styles and communal features whose characteristics and values are outside of


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3. Conclusion: Globalization and the future of Pidgin and Creole

languages

e linguistic responses of the peoples of the world to successive waves ofdomination in the past suggest that pidginization and creolization may becomethe norm rather than the exception for most of the peoples of the world as theera of corporate globalization progresses. In Nigeria, Nigerian Pidgin is fastoutstripping all other languages to become the de facto national language ofthat country. In Melanesia, Melanesian Pidgin has already become the second

language of the great majority of the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, theSolomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Besides a plurality of speakers who use themas conventional pidgins, that is, as a secondary means of communication inrestricted contexts, both of these languages can claim a growing number ofspeakers who utilize them as their principal means of daily communication,that is, as creolized speech forms. A similar situation is emerging across manyof the countries of the South, particularly in those countries where the over-whelming majority of the adults of the future will reside.

As pidginists and creolists, it is more important than ever to make sure

that we do not become fixated on a particular language or set of languages asthe realpidgin(s) or creole(s), or end up focusing more of our attention on thepast than on the present and the future, or continue to insist that a particularscenario for pidgin and creole genesis is the one and only valid one, to theexclusion of all of the others. If we can avoid these pitfalls, vast horizons openup for the future of pidgin and creole linguistics.

Based on the evidence presented above, I would like to put forward a fewsuggestions as to how we as pidginists and creolists might revitalize and refo-

cus our research to explore these new possibilities:1. Incorporate maximum flexibility into our working definitions of pidgins

and creoles. If we consider pidgins and creoles to result from a situationwhere the linguistic commons of a group of people is under threat or oth-erwise destabilized, and, in order to remedy this situation, that group usesall of their linguistic, cognitive, and creative resources and a number ofdifferent processes (such as relexification, restructuring, etc.) to create anew language from elements of their own traditional language(s) as well

as of the language(s) of one or more groups that are responsible for thisdestabilization, the sites for research into the phenomena of pidginization


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2. Incorporate functional criteria into our working definitions of pidgins and

creoles. When people use their linguistic, cognitive, and creative resourcesas explained in point 1 above to create a new speech form to be utilized in arestricted set of circumstances, we can define this as a pidginized language,and when the use of this pidginized language expands to encompass allaspects of daily life, we can define this as a creolized speech form.

3. Focus more on situations where peoples means of subsistence and survivalare being enclosed, which seem propitious for the types of linguistic phe-nomena that typify pidginization and creolization. In the era of corporate

globalization, such situations are unfortunately all too easy to come by.4. Look more closely at how monocultures of the mind, monopolies of lan-guage, truth ghettoes, and manufactured consent are being imposed onthe peoples of the world and how people are reacting to and resisting theseprocesses in struggles for diversity of all kinds, from biodiversity to lin-guistic diversity.

5. Pay more attention to how women use and modify languages in theirstruggle for fertility, for subsistence, and for the survival of their familiesand future generations. We need to know more about how women man-

age, in spite of all of the obstacles and barriers that each successive wave ofglobalization puts in their way, to utilize and change their linguistic reper-toire in order to guarantee the survival of their families, their subsistencepractices, their cultures, and their languages.

6. Seek out points of creative resistance to political, economic, cultural, andlinguistic domination. Situations such as the colonial plantations and thenew globalized plantation have given rise to virtual explosions of creativeresistance, in which those in the dominated position find ever more inge-

nious and effective ways to subvert and redefine the universe in their ownimage and in their own interests, just as in the process of pidginizationitems from the vocabulary of a dominant language may be used with radi-cally different meanings to reflect the linguistic practices and interests ofthe dominated.

7. Expand our research emphasis from segmental phonology and morpho-syntax to suprasegmental phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and otherareas that have received less attention than they deserve in pidgin and cre-ole studies. For example, the type of African-American English utilized inhip-hop music and poetry slams may exhibit much more distance fromStandard English in its intonation and semantics than in the other better


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Note

* Substantial portions of the initial sections of this paper appeared in: Faraclas, N. 2001a.From alpha to omega: Education reforms and new pedagogies in Papua New Guinea. In: B.Cope, B. and M. Kalantzis (eds). Learning for the Future: Proceedings of 8th Literacy and Edu-cation Research Network Conference. Melbourne: Common Ground Press. ese sections arereprinted here with the kind permission of the editors of that volume.

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