Research on Maroon Languages and Language Practices among Matawai and Kwinti Maroons

Abstract

The first part of this chapter reviews the research on the Maroon Creoles of Suriname (and French Guiana) showing that research to date has primarily focused on genesis-based, structural linguistic issues to the detriment of sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological issues. This has much inhibited interaction with other disciplines such as anthropology and education that also have an interest in Maroon Culture and (mis)represented them as relatively static and rural languages despite the fact that their speakers have undergone rapid urbanization and social change in the last thirty years. The second part of the paper explores language practices among Kwinti and Matawai Maroons, two understudied and endangered Maroon languages, showing that while the latter is still regularly practiced as a community language in the village context, the former appears to have become an ethnic register of a generalized (eastern) Maroon variety.

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