Assessing the sociolinguistic situation of the Maroon creoles

Abstract

Recent anthropological and socio-historical research on Maroon populations suggests that Maroon communities have undergone significant social change since the 1960s spurred by processes of urbanization. However, to date very little is known about how these social changes are impacting on the Maroon Creoles as there is very little sociolinguistic research being carried out in the region. The aim of this paper is to examine the sociolinguistic context of the Maroon Creoles in the light of data from two recent sociolinguistic surveys carried out in Suriname and French Guiana. The findings demonstrate that the sociolinguistic status of Maroon languages has undergone various changes. Several of them are now well represented in French Guiana and, as additional languages, are gaining speakers both in Suriname and French Guiana. While their speakers increasingly practice them together with other languages, thus displaying their multilingual repertoire, there is little indication that their survival is threatened because their speakers predominantly hold positive attitudes towards them.

Caribbean, South and Central America

“…All three are ethnically diverse and in all of them indigenous American populations constitute tiny minorities of the population while African-descent populations are dominant though changes have occurred since independence with Asian immigrant populations constituting increasingly larger proportions of the society in Suriname and Guyana. All three countries are linguistically very diverse and there is migration between them in that Afro-Guyanese have migrated to Suriname and French Guiana and Afro-Surinamese Maroons make up an important section of the French Guianese population (see Migge & Léglise 2015;Price & Price 2003). Besides European languages that serve as the main media in the official domain, creole languages play an important role in society.…”

Language and Slavery: A social and linguistic history of the Suriname creoles. By Jacques Arends

“…Here we find information on the origin, linguistic nature and basic usage patterns of what Arends considers to be the main representative of the three creole clusters, Sranan (SRANAN), Ndyuka (EASTERN MAROON CREOLES) and Saamaka (WESTERN MAROON CREOLES). This section is useful but inevitably somewhat dated (see Price [2013] and Migge & Léglise [2015] for more recent work). Issues relating to the book's research approach -diachronic philology-are discussed in the final part.…”