In many contemporary situations where creoles evolved, there is usually evidence of another process at work. Just as there was development from a pidgin to a creole, known as creolization, there is now often a retreat from the use of the creole by those who have greater contact with a standard variety of the language. Where education and greater social prestige are associated with a “higher” variety (e.g. British English in Jamaica), a number of speakers will tend to use fewer creole forms and structures. This process, known as decreolization, leads at one extreme to a variety that is closer to the external standard model and leaves, at the other extreme, a basic variety with more local creole features. Between these two extremes may be a range of slightly different varieties, some with many and some with fewer creole features. This range of varieties, evolving after (= “post”) the creole has come into existence, is called the post-creole continuum.

So, in Jamaica, one speaker may say a fi mi buk dat, using the basic creole variety, another may put it as iz mi buk, using a variety with fewer creole features, and yet another may choose it’s my book, using a variety with only some pronunciation features of the creole, or a “creole accent.” It is also very common for speakers to be able to use a range of varieties in different situations.

We would predict that these differences would be tied very much to social values and social identity. In the course of discussing language varieties in terms of regional differences, we have excluded, in a rather artificial way, the complex social factors that are also at work in determining language variation.