Creoles and acts of identity: convergence and multiple voicing in the Atlantic Creoles

Abstract

In this work, we analyze aspects of the phonology, morpho-syntax and lexico-semantics of the Afro-Atlantic Creoles to show how, by taking advantage of formal, structural, and functional convergence between and among African languages, European languages, a Proto Atlantic Portuguese lexifier Creole, and universals of language use, speakers of the Atlantic Creoles have shaped and deployed their creolized languages as instruments of double and multiple voicing (Du Bois 1903; Bakhtin 1930). This pluri-voicing has allowed Atlantic Creole speakers to equip themselves with a linguistic repertoire that has enabled them to use what appear at first glance to be the exact same words and structures to simultaneously assert Afro-Atlantic identities, Euro-Atlantic identities, Atlantic Creole identities and other identities. Following one of the many immensely helpful and intellectually sound approaches adopted by Holm (2000), we demonstrate how, as research on the Atlantic Creoles progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify a single source for many Atlantic Creole words and constructions. We argue that linear, mono-causal and mono-dimensional accounts of creole genesis must therefore give way to multi-directional, multi-causal and multiplex scenarios of convergence among forms and structures found in what have been traditionally classified as superstratal, substratal and adstratal input varieties as well as those found universally and in a Proto West African Portuguese Creole. We conclude that the Atlantic Creole words and constructions studied in this paper are best accounted for by a reconceptualization of Atlantic Creole speakers as creative and resourceful agents who have co-instantaneously used their creole languages to identify, counter-identify, and dis-identify with both African and European ways of understanding the world and acting in it.

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