Nowadays, there is being a very noteworthy transformation in language as a consequence of society’s evolution. Merely, this transformation is due to political, social and economic changes. When society changes, language is adapted to it or changed as well depending on society’s needs as they are interconnected. Society cannot exist without language and language cannot exist without society, they must go together. Therefore, it could be said that language is a representation of society because it reflects society’s needs. For instance, in the case of English, it has changed in many ways throughout history, originating different dialects or varieties such as ‘American English’ or ‘Australian English’ among many others. ‘Dialect’ here means the type of language which a person uses (Trudgill, 1974). A dialect can be differentiated of other similar terms because it is mainly focused on the vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar differences rather than other features and it can be applied to all varieties. The main dialect, or the most important one, in English is the ‘Standard English’. Standard English is used in more “formal” situations, for instance when teaching English as a second language, on the news, or when it is spoken by a person who has a higher cultural level (Trudgill, 1974). However, not using it and using another dialect of English does not mean that the other dialect is less formal than Standard English, wrong, or even a ‘bad language’ as many people claim some languages to be. Other dialects are just different, because Standard English also has its colloquial expressions or words as well as any other variety, it is not always politically correct. Regarding Standard’s English accent, the one which is used or taught together with Standard English is the British English Accent, also called ‘RP’ (Received Pronunciation). Therefore, other varieties apart from the standard English may be seen as a bad use of the English language, even though they may be as correct as standard English is (Trudgill, 1974). The main varieties which come to people’s mind when non-standard varieties of English, and other languages in general, are mentioned, are the pidgins and creoles languages, which are sometimes seen as ‘bad languages’ because of their features and background (Greenbaum, 1985).
The aim of this essay is to analyse the attitudes towards pidgins that may consider them as ‘bad languages’. In order to do that, a few explanations about what the pidgin varieties or languages are will be needed as well as a brief explanation of their characteristics that may be different from other languages in order to come to some first understanding of the subject. Afterwards, as they are connected, there will be another explanation on how a pidgin language may become a creole as it grows as a language, as well as some issues that pidgins and creoles may bring along. Then, to come to a deeper understanding of the subject, the history of the origins of pidgins and their development with the passage of time that made them what they are now will be explained. Finally, in order to strengthen the arguments analysed during the essay, there will be some examples of pidgins and creoles such as ‘Singlish’, ‘Hawaiian Creole/Pidgin English’, or ‘Chinese Pidgin English’ supported by a comparison between them in general and Standard English. After all the analysis and examples, my claim on the view that pidgins are ‘bad languages’ will be very clear, although it will be emphasized again at the conclusion, which will also have a recapitulation of the analysis made during the essay.
Even though there has been a big controversy in defining the term ‘pidgin’, it could be defined as a language which does not have native speakers. It is mainly created for the needs of people which share no common language as a way of being able to communicate between each other, and therefore it is only used as a contact language, its use is limited (Todd, 1990). A pidgin language is a mixture between two languages, but it is more similar to the ‘most important’ one of the two languages which are mixed. It was mostly used when trading, in military operations or as a way of communication among settlers and slaves or ethnic communities when no extensive communication is needed in the past, even though some of them are still in use nowadays. Thus, pidgins are mainly created for political situations (Greenbaum, 1985). Therefore, it does not need to have many specific features or functions, it is very simple and it only needs the basic features of a language, just what is more important for being able to communicate (Romaine, 1988). Moreover, it could be said that pidgins are also used as a lingua franca (Greenbaum, 1985) because for example in the case of English as a Lingua Franca, both languages share the characteristic of being a language used among speakers of different languages as a contact language, and the same happens with pidgins (Seidlhofer, 2011). However, the clear difference is that in the case of English, the lingua franca is an already existing language which is used among speakers from different nations. In contrast, in the case of pidgins it is created for that only purpose.
A pidgin could be characterized for the simplicity of its language in comparison to “bigger” languages whose language is more complex (Mühlhäusler, 1986). As mentioned above, a pidgin is more alike to the most “predominant” language of the two although it shares features of both languages. For example, its vocabulary is usually more similar to the language which is “pidginized” but it still maintains some of the grammar and morphology characteristics of the other language which is not “pidginized” (Greenbaum, 1985). However, both had been reduced to an extent in order to create a simpler language and easier to understand by both parts, that is why they share features of both of the languages which are mixed (Mühlhäusler, 1986). For instance, some of them may not even have gender or number, and that is what can show their simplicity (Romaine, 1988). Besides, pidgins may possess their own unique characteristics even though others are a representation of the syntax of the language of origin (Todd, 1990). Nevertheless, linguists still doubt if pidgins should be addressed as dialects of the language which is most important in the union of the languages or just as languages (Romaine, 1988).
Moreover, pidgins may reach a point in which they are that expanded that they become creoles. Creole means “a pidgin which has become the mother tongue of a speech community” (Todd, 1990: 2), which in other words means that a new generation of speakers is born where a pidgin language is spoken and thus they acquire that language as their first language (Mühlhäusler, 1986). As an example we have the case of Hawaiian Creole English (Thompson, 2014). However, there has been almost the same controversy trying to define ‘creole’ as it was trying to define ‘pidgin’ (Mühlhäusler, 1986). Furthermore, both pidgins and creoles have not been studied as much as other linguistic fields as they were not considered to be ‘authentic’ languages, but little by little they are becoming more important and more studied (Romaine, 1988). Brought along with the transformation pidgins suffer there is consequently a change in the characteristics as well because it becomes a mother tongue for some speakers. Therefore, it now needs to have proper structures, syntax, vocabulary and grammar as it will be used by people who may only know that language and they must be able to express themselves in an appropriate way, and for that, they need a wider range of lexicon and knowledge (Todd, 1990).
In short, this transformation is mainly due to the communicative necessities of the new generation of speakers (Romaine, 1988). For instance, this change which occurs to a pidgin when it becomes a creole can also be a cause of a ban. In the past, the territories which were colonized were under the control of the settlers and they may have prohibited the people who lived there to speak their mother tongue, making them to have a need of expanding the pidgin language in order to be able to make it efficient and effective for being capable of communicating in a proper way among themselves and towards their settlers (Todd, 1990). Another possibility can also happen within multilingual areas where both a pidgin language and another “normal” language are used and the pidgin language is learned by a new generation, mostly by listening to it, becoming their first language and bringing along that transformation (Todd, 1990).
Regarding their origin, even though pidgins and creoles can nowadays be seen in all the continents of the globe, they have existed now for many centuries and they appeared with the same purpose they currently have: to connect people who share different languages (Todd, 1990). Therefore, it is important to come to a deeper understanding on their origin as a way of understanding better how they work and how they emerged. However, as many of the things related to this field, the origins of the pidgins and creoles are also very controversial and still there is no agreement on the theories of their origin. Although there are five main ones which many important linguists in the field seem to share: According to Todd (1990) these are the baby-talk theory, the independent parallel development theory, the nautical jargon theory, the monogenetic/relexification theory, and the theory of synthesis (Todd, 1990: 26). Mainly, the baby-talk theory is called like that because some likenesses were found to be in common between pidgins and the imperfect speech of children during their first ages, who seem to have great skills at learning languages (Todd, 1990). According to the theory of the independent parallel development, pidgins and creoles were created separately although they share many similarities in their origins (Romaine, 1988). Then, the theory of the nautical jargons claims that it was not in the settlements were pidgins emerged but in the ships among speakers of different languages and then this language was expanded to the people who lived in these places (Todd, 1990). The monogenetic/relexification theory argues that all the European-based pidgins were based on a Portuguese pidgin and then expanded to many colonies as a consequence of the trade. This is believed because of the similarities pidgins share with other languages (Romaine, 1988). The last one was created by Loreto Todd and within this theory she comprehended the other four. She claimed that they were similar because all languages are similar and so are the processes they all follow such as simplification (Todd, 1990).
Some examples of both pidgins and creoles can be ‘Hawaiian Pidgin/Creole English’, ‘Chinese Pidgin English’ or ‘Singlish’.
Hawaiian Pidgin English, or, Hawaiian Creole language is the language spoken by Hawaii’s inhabitants. Although it is sometimes referred as Hawaiian Pidgin English it is actually Hawaiian Creole English as it is a full developed language (Laddaran, 2015) which became one of Hawaii’s official languages in 2015, apart from English and Hawaiian. This is due to the fact that most of the people who have raised in Hawaii understand it and it is commonly used within informal situations (Laddaran, 2015). Its vocabulary is mainly based in the English language but it also uses words from other languages (Thompson, 2014), like any other language does, and it has its own structures, syntax, and grammar. Regarding its origin, it mainly emerged because of immigration. Plantations workers had different ethnic backgrounds and they needed a language to communicate, which later was used by their children as well and eventually led to be their main language (Thompson, 2014).
Regarding Chinese Pidgin English, it was used during colonial times as a trade language between China and England. It is a modification of English and it expanded itself to an extent that it was even used among Chinese speakers of different dialects who could not understand each other. However, it was later related to the slave trade and thus it stopped being used (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006).
Last but not least, another important example is ‘Singlish’, which is the colloquial Singaporean English. It is used in informal situations mainly by many people. It emerged when Singapore became independent. However, it was supposed to be English because they wanted it to be the official language of Singapore, but it ended up being a mixture between English and other dialects (Singlish, 2015).
With these examples, it is now even clearer that pidgin and creole languages are ‘normal’ languages as any others because they function as a normal one and they have their own features. However, it is true that their origin may not be the same as in other languages or that they may not be as valued as others, but still they can be considered as ‘good languages’. Despite the fact that some of them have disappeared or are just used in informal situations or in the streets.
Therefore, after having analysed what pidgins are and all their features it can be said that pidgins are not bad languages. As Loreto Todd explains: “there is no such a thing as a primitive or inferior language” (Todd, 1990: 1). A language cannot be considered as ‘bad’ just because it differs from other languages as long as it has the characteristics that define a language. Society is who make a language be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ depending on the values they attribute to that language. However, linguistically speaking, a language is not bad, useless or inferior even if they are not as popular as other languages because they all are used as tools with the same objective: communication (Todd, 1990). All varieties, dialects and languages are as good as any others because they all fulfil the needs of the speakers who use them. Moreover, according to the Online Cambridge Dictionary, a bad language is considered to be words which can be regarded as offensive (Cambridge Dictionary, Unknown). Hence, pidgins are not bad languages because they are not swearing words or anything similar. It may have colloquial forms and terms but as any other languages, without going any further, Standard English. Thus, a ‘bad language’ relies only on a matter of social prejudices which may be due to the social or historical background a language may have or its status as a language, meaning that an evaluation made from a social point of view is actually baseless (Trudgill, 1974).
In conclusion, all the analysis made about the pidgins and creoles speaks for itself. Therefore, it can be said that such things as ‘bad languages’ do not exist, or at least as a way of referring to a variety, language or dialect. It is all a matter of social judgement values such as languages’ social status, their use, or their background, which usually is limited. Nevertheless, linguistically speaking, all the languages, varieties, and dialects are as valid as any others as they all have their own structures, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax in general, and this is what makes them to be considered as a ‘good language’, which can be seen with the help of the examples provided. In addition, all of them have the same purpose that every language has, which is being able to be used as a communicative tool among people. However, it is true that they have important differences or that their origins are not very clear but it does not mean anything, only that it is not a field as explored as others. For example, some pidgins do not have gender or number and they are very simplified and reduced but even with that they are still considered as languages because the utility which is given to them is the same. In addition, they can be considered as ‘lingua franca’ as any other languages because they share the characteristic of being languages used as contact languages between two speakers which do not share the same language. Thus, all that truly matters is the linguistic view of the language and not the social view depending on the value of the language. Furthermore, this claim will be definitely supported in the future as the study of the field grows and more knowledge about pidgins and creoles is got to know.