Christophe Landry.
“Creole — Capital-C in English Always.”
©
Christophe Landry, Ph.D.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
I find it incredibly annoying when people write Creole with a lowercase-C in English. My issue here is that the logic in lowercasing Creole is flawed, and that this is some form of microagression. My annoyance is that this creates contexts in which Creoles themselves have no power in what their own language is called or how it is spelled.
Some say, when we refer to “creoles,” we refer to process [the process of creolizing]. Well, that process is called Creolization, which is often spelled with a capital-C in English in the same way that Americanization is. As best I can tell, processes are capitalized in English when the processes are named for ethnic, religious, or national populations — hence Creolization. But all languages undergo these same processes — why reify and exceptionalize Creolization? There’s an entire debate about this in linguistics and the pushback is growing but ultimately, Creolization still is most commonly associated with non-Whites only even though the same processes created modern European languages different from their parent languages.
There’s a perfectly normal and less bizarre way to point out the evolution of Creole languages. Most people just say “a Creole language” or will specify: “a Spanish-based Creole language” or “a Dutch-based language.” But these people cannot or prefer to not do the same for Creole languages. They will say that “a Creole language” is different from “a creole,” that one speaks to a language, while the other speaks to process. Again, the process is Creolization and Creolize, just as one Americanizes and Anglicizes.
Folks will say things like “Is Brazilian Portuguese a creole?” If Creole encompasses a set of languages, like Romance/Latin, Germanic, Sinitic, etc., there too Creole is exceptionalized, one of the only ones people lowercase. One reason I recently was given [paraphrasing] “is because those languages are genetic families but creoles are a set of ” languages sharing a common evolution rather than a single root. All Creole languages derive from other languages, just like French does in part from Latin. But Creoles are the only languages that have a name for their evolution that comes from the name of the language itself, why?
My annoyance here is that White-identified people historically dominate linguistics (the discipline) and as such shape how non-linguists understand language in the world. Such scholars may not think of themselves as having real cultural capital to persuade or influence the average person, but anyone with eyes and ears knows “if you’re Black, stay back. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re White, alright.” “White” voices often are more valued among non-White populations, too: it’s akin to what people call the Stockholm syndrome. What White-perceived people say and do matter and have consequences.
Most Creole languages and Creole identities are endangered, and are in such a fragile state that lowercasing their language undermines those communities’ ability to reverse endangerment. Lowercasing Creole decreases its prestige, it is a visually symbolic “lesser than” that parallels or coincides with how people generally view those languages as “broken” forms of “White languages” [originating in Europe]. It’s actively participating in that derision, when you’ve the social, economic, and cultural capital to reverse that psychology and to reverse that endangerment, too.
Plenty people who lowercase Creole will say that they are merely observers describing what they see and hear. The idea is that they are only passive, almost invisible bystandanders witnesses language at play. This is false: they are not invisible in the way that Ralph Ellison explored in “Invisible Man.” They often sit, observe, and record, but they also theorize. At some point, they publish their observations and theories in journals and books, and present at conferences and other events and frequently introduce new terminologies. What those folks say and write become the go-to source, and as such is normalized. For this reason, it’s fairly common to hear Louisianians say they speak “Colonial French” or “Plantation Society French,” terms that have no historical relevance to Louisianians (identity-wise) but are terms that a linguist coined at the turn of the 21st century. Some Louisianians will now argue you down that they and their family identify their language as “Colonial French” in English and when you ask how long they’ve called it that, they say since forever. What linguists say and write have (unintended) consequences.
Important: I’m not saying that any of these folks are racist or that they intend to diminutize or undermine. Although linguists studying endangered language communities would be in some other focus if those languages were prestigious. But I am calling this a microagression. We all commit microagressions, which are actions or phrases that the listener views as offensive but were never intended to be offensive. None of these folks are actively trying to keep Creole languages as minority languages, or encouraging people to continue to view Creole languages with less prestige than languages other than those originating in Europe. However, it is indirectly contributing to that end.
If you are Creole, and you catch folks doing that, point it out straight away. Do it nicely but sternly: it is, after all, your language, your culture, your ethnicity, your prism, not theirs, and they need to respect that.
Text prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
Landry, Christophe. “Creole — Capital-C in English Always.” Facebook. 27 December 2021, 10:30 a.m., https:// www. facebook. com/ Christophe Landry Louisiana/ posts/ 4826429807379573. © Christophe Landry, Ph.D. Used by permission. All rights reserved.