creole (n.)

A term used in SOCIOLINGUISTICS to refer to a PIDGIN LANGUAGE which has become the mother-tongue of a SPEECH community, as is the case in Jamaica, Haiti, Dominica, and several other ex-colonial parts of the world. The process of creolization expands the STRUCTURAL and STYLISTIC range of the pidginized language, so that the creolized language becomes comparable in FORMAL and FUNCTIONAL COMPLEXITY to other languages. A process of decreolization takes place when the STANDARD language begins to exert influence on the creole, and a POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM emerges. However, this process is not the reverse of creolization, and therefore some sociolinguists have suggested alternative terms for this stage, such as metropolitanization. When the development of a creole approaches that of the source language, recreolization may occur, with speakers introducing creole features into the standard variety (as has been observed, for example, in London Jamaican English).