Pidgins and creoles in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Starting from the observation that few English-based pidgins and creoles are documented for Southeast Asia, this chapter offers a discussion along three main pathways. It highlights the significance of other communities and language varieties in the history of contact in Southeast Asia—the Malay-speaking network of Monsoon Asia, the other European colonizers, in particular the Portuguese, and the Chinese from the Pearl River Delta—and their impact on the evolution of Southeast Asian Englishes. It examines how scholarly paradigms for contact varieties have afforded them differing treatments as pidgin and creole varieties, mixed languages, world Englishes, and hybrid Englishes. Finally, it offers a prognosis of their vitality, given Southeast Asia’s changing ecologies, especially in multilingual urban centres. Together these contemplations afford a more comprehensive and nuanced appreciation of the dynamics and outcomes, for a more inclusive account of contact languages and a more unified theorizing of English in Southeast Asia.