Dieter Stern (UGent)
This lecture explores the possible social roles associated with pidgins, thus placing pidgins within the communication matrix of their respective larger speech communities. Since social roles of linguistic codes are inevitably determined by the prestige values attached to them, the discussion of the social roles of pidgins will be introduced by a general discussion of prestige values. Taking up Broch & Jahr’s (1983) refutation of the generally held view, that pidgins always have a low social status, the paper sets forth the concept of “expert status” as a key social role involved in speaking a pidgin. This social role is based on the positive evaluation of a respective pidgin by its speakers as a highly appreciated capacity within the larger community, viz. that of being able to communicate with foreigners. It will be argued that the highly esteemed role of “expert” is possibly the prevalent role in early stages of pidginization, as long as more intimate knowledge of the lexifier is inaccessible to the pidgin’s speakers. Negative evaluation of pidgins is mainly found with outside observers, like travel writers, and is adopted by pidgin speakers themselves only when they acquire a sense of speaking the lexifier ‘properly’. The “expert” role serves as a means of conveying one’s status within the larger community as being a member of an expert group. It is thus aimed at the in-group, but does achieve this aim by discriminating against the out-group in interethnic contact situations, viz. the ‘Others’.
Besides the role of “expert” there is the more obvious “xenophobic” role of marking ethnic boundaries and signifying social distance. This social role is directly addressed at the ‘Others’. Like the “expert” role it operates on the basis of a discrimination of ‘we’ against ‘them’. But whereas this discrimination is instrumental to the “expert” role, it is essential to the “xenophobic” role.
These basic claims are illustrated and substantiated by observations drawn from the three documented Russian lexifier-pidgins Russenorsk, Chinese Pidgin Russian and Taimyr Pidgin Russian. The lecture thus serves the double end of elaborating the theoretical issues outlined above and demonstrating, how these operate in the case of Russian pidgins.