This chapter offers a close analysis of the Uniformitarian Principle and its use as a conceptual tool for understanding and narrating language contact and language change, paying special attention to the social life of Anguillian, the English-lexifier Creole language of Anguilla, the most northerly of the Caribbean’s Leeward Islands. The language and aspects of the situation of contact that led to its emergence are described from a novel uniformitarian perspective that integrates insights from general linguistics, Communication Accommodation Theory, and the analysis of early colonial-era archives.

What psycholinguistic mechanisms shape the emergence of Creole languages, and are these processes unique or universal across human language evolution? In this exploration, determiner-noun fusion (DNF) in Haitian Creole takes center stage, challenging assumptions about the sole role of substrate influence. By analyzing DNF patterns in Haitian Creole and comparing them to those in Mauritian Creole, the chapter reveals how statistical learning – hallmarks of word segmentation – plays a pivotal role. These findings align Creole emergence with broader linguistic processes, refuting claims of a “break in transmission.” This chapter bridges Creole linguistics and psycholinguistics, providing support for the Uniformitarian Principle and reshaping the debate on Creole emergence.

The uniformitarian approach to language evolution advocated by Mufwene, DeGraff, and Aboh claims that the emergence of creoles is driven by the same restructuring processes as those of other languages. Together with the genetic inheritance from the parent languages, language contact and population structure are important factors which may explain why some emergent varieties exhibit more divergent structures than others. The analysis of Brazilian Portuguese presented here has been conceived of within this uniformitarian view on language evolution. Despite the striking divergence between the Brazilian and the European Portuguese varieties, Brazilian Portuguese cannot be considered a creole language because it was not forged in a society characterized by the same demographic distribution pattern of the ecologies in which creole languages have emerged. It is, nevertheless, a language that has emerged in an ecology of intense multilingualism in which European, Bantu, Gbe, and Native Brazilian languages interacted daily. Explanations for its peculiarities will then have to take this fact into consideration. From a uniformitarian approach, the study of a non-creole language resulting from intense multilingual contact such as Brazilian Portuguese can help shed light on its main claim: that creoles and noncreoles have emerged by the same restructuring mechanisms.

Framed within historical pragmatics, this chapter revisits and explains the nature of Portuguese encounters along the western coast of Africa as reported by sailors, missionaries, and merchants. The chapter examines sources written in Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French, or, later, English. Although Portuguese was used as the trade lingua franca in forts such as Elmina, there is no evidence that it ever pidginized. This disputes the long-held assumption in creolistics that the initial contacts between Europeans and non-Europeans systematically produced pidgins. An important reason is that the use of Portuguese was restricted to the brokers, also known in colonial history as intermediaries, middlemen, and go-betweens. By the seventeenth century, the coastal fortifications were also quite cosmopolitan contact settings where various Europeans speaking different languages and Africans interacted with each other in diverse languages, often without interpreters. Professional interpreters were needed particularly for expensive-commodity transactions. The chapter shows that contact between different populations and “brokers on the move” led to the emergence of new Portuguese varieties in the Cape Verdean archipelago and in Rios de Guiné, just like Portuguese itself had developed from the contact of populations migrating within the former Roman Empire.

In this chapter, the author puts forth the notion of “universal creolization” to undermine the false dichotomy between mixed and non-mixed languages. The premise of this position is that as no language evolves in a vacuum, but instead unavoidably comes into contact with other languages, all languages undergo varying degrees of language mixing. Reclaiming the word creolization to refer to language mixing (be it at the lexical, morphophonological, semantic, and syntactic levels) is a first step towards blurring up the false dichotomy between Creoles and non-Creoles or between mixed and non-mixed languages, effectively undercutting Creole Exceptionalism. This chapter promotes instead a uniformitarian approach to the study of Creoles and uses as evidence the diversity and variation within and across Creoles, as well as the processes they undergo in their development, similarly to all other languages. To illustrate universal creolization, we take as evidence the mixed nature of English, starting with Old English and finishing with Modern English. We unpack the Language Subordination framework to show how the false dichotomy between Creoles and non-Creoles may have first emerged.

This chapter presents the first genetic and areal study of copula systems in West African Pidgin (WAP). The typological analysis of the three WAP varieties Pichi (Equatorial Guinea), Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin reveals a founder signal of their ancestor Krio (Sierra Leone) and its Yoruba substrate, plus an areal signal from the African adstrates and European superstrates in their respective ecologies. The strength of the founder signal increases in the order Ghanaian Pidgin < Cameroon Pidgin < Pichi. The areal signal follows the inverse order, reflective of differences in “social entrenchment,” a shorthand for the demographic strength of founder communities, differing social functions, and the extent of vernacularization of each variety. A qualitative and phylogenetic analysis reveals a rich functional and formal differentiation of nominal, locative, and property predication in West African Pidgin and its African adstrates. Despite different social histories, there is no evidence for pidginization or other types of “abnormal transmission” in the evolution of WAP. Instead, natural principles of genetic transmission, areal diffusion, and adaptation have colluded in shaping the copula systems of the WAP varieties in ways specific to each ecology.

The introductory chapter presents the central themes and framework of the book. It presents the motivations for the study, the main theoretical underpinnings, and the cultural context in which the ethnographic fieldwork took place. The chapter discusses social belonging, prestige and material practices as central in shaping language ideologies and the construction of languages.This is linked to sociological theories of modernity, which have examined the role of social categories in late modern contexts. The latter use the metaphor of ’liquidity’ to emphasise the shifting, context-dependent nature of social categories, while recognising the conditions that temporarily stabilise them. In suggesting the study of how language practices and categories emerge, the chapter situates these processes within broader social structures and power dynamics. This sets the stage for a book that contributes to the decolonisation of linguistics by challenging Eurocentric assumptions and studies language as a socially constructed phenomenon with implications for understanding diversity and social order.

This chapter explores material language practices and their interaction with language ideologies. It investigates how oral, literal, and digital forms co-constitute discourses of normativity and prestige. Through observations of literacy practices, teaching, media, and participants’ reflections, the chapter studies materialisations of language and their ideological implications. The dominance of English writing in formal and institutional contexts contrasts with the variable use of oral Kriol, which resists standardisation. Efforts by the National Kriol Council to create a standardised orthography reveal tensions between fostering linguistic legitimacy and maintaining the anti-standard nature of Kriol. Digital communication amplifies these dynamics, bringing to the fore non-standardised writing that reflects local linguistic realities. Kriol’s oral and multimodal characteristics, perceived as spontaneous, creative, and resistant to disciplinary norms, challenge Western-centric ideologies that prioritise fixed standards. This shows that material language practices are culturally specific. A consideration of the role of materiality in language ideologies challenges universalised epistemologies.

The chapter explores complex ascriptions of linguistic prestige in Belize’s multilingual and postcolonial context. The observations made challenge traditional binary models of overt and covert prestige. English, the former colonizer’s language, holds formal prestige linked to its global status, economic utility, and educational norms. However, this prestige coexists with linguistic insecurity, as many Belizeans combine local and exogenous norms. Conversely, Kriol carries polycentric prestige rooted in national identity, creativity, and resistance to colonial hegemony. It indexes reputation rather than respectability, aligning with Afro-European traditions and anti-standard ideologies. Despite its rise in public and formal domains, Kriol remains ideologically linked to informality, creativity, and resistance. The chapter also highlights the emic construction of ‘code-switching’, valued as the ability to distinguish English from Kriol, reflecting education and social status. This linguistic liquidity – marked by overlapping functions, fluid boundaries, and contradictory discourses – reflects the complex interaction of different forms of prestige in Belize.

This chapter investigates how belonging is constructed through language in Belize. Inspecting linguistic landscapes, interviews, and ethnographic observations, the study reveals the sometimes paradoxical ways languages are ideologically positioned within local, national and transnational contexts. Kriol is central to constructing national belonging and serves as a unifying symbol of a diverse population. It is also tied to racial and transnational belonging, connecting to Afro-Caribbean cultural spaces. Conversely, Spanish is associated with immigration and Guatemala, despite its historical presence and ongoing use. This tension results in contradictory discourses, where Spanish is simultaneously seen as ‘foreign’ and as a home language. English occupies a dual role as both a foreign and national language. While it indexes Belize’s colonial ties and distinguishes Belizeans from their Hispanic neighbours, it is also regarded as essential for education and economic mobility. The chapter concludes that language ideologies and practices do not always align, reflecting the coexistence of diverse historical, social, and political discourses in shaping linguistic belonging in Belize.

This chapter introduces the study of language ideologies and the relationship between language, social belonging, and social order, particularly in the context of late modernity. It approaches linguistic categories as discursively constructed rather than naturally occurring. This frames language as a key lens for understanding human social organisation, emphasising that ideas about language reflect and co-construct broader social and political ideologies. Through a discussion of sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological theories, the chapter critiques essentialist views of language. It introduces concepts such as social indexicality, standard language, prestige, and centring institutions to explore how language acquires social meaning and status. The chapter also examines the material dimensions of language, including the role of writing, sound, and tangible artefacts such as grammars and dictionaries in shaping linguistic ideologies and language categories. It lays the foundations for understanding languages as dynamic, constructed phenomena embedded in specific historical, cultural, and material contexts.

This chapter focuses on the broader historical, social, and political context of Belize, which is shaped by colonial history, transnational connections, and multilingual practices. Belize’s linguistic composition reflects its complex history, with English as the official language, Kriol as a marker of national identity, and Spanish as both a widespread and contested language. The historical prominence of Afro-European Creoles and the national fear of Guatemalan territorial claims have added to the prestige of anglophone languages. In addition, Belize’s sociolinguistic diversity incorporates indigenous languages, global influences, and a dynamic interaction between English, Kriol, and Spanish. The studied village, initially settled by Spanish speakers, has evolved into a ‘superdiverse’ community due to tourism, migration, and global economic integration. The chapter explores spatial and social stratification within the village, where language use reflects not only ethnicity and class but also local and transnational affiliations. The chapter illustrates the fluidity of linguistic and social boundaries, challenging Eurocentric assumptions about diversity and belonging.

This chapter examines language ideologies in the context of creole linguistics and in the Caribbean. Creole linguistics offers critical insights into how languages are socially constructed. Traditional debates in creole linguistics have often framed creoles as ‘simpler’ or structurally distinct from other languages, reflecting Western biases. Other approaches challenge these views and underline the fluidity and variability of creole languages. In the second part, the chapter examines language attitudes and ideologies in creole-speaking societies, focusing on the Caribbean in general and Belize. Creole languages function as symbols of solidarity and belonging. In Belize, the rise of Kriol’s prestige reflects national identity and cultural independence, and intersects with English, Spanish, and indigenous languages. This requires frameworks that account for the polycentric, complex sociolinguistic realities of creole-speaking societies. The chapter establishes Belize as a compelling site to explore how languages are discursively constructed, and shows how academic and lay perspectives influence this construction.