Creole emerged because French had not yet achieved normative unity at conquest
Evidence
One possible response-in any case, the one l venture-is that the French language, which we think of as so intent on universality, was, of course, not like this at the time of the conquest of the Americas, having perhaps not yet achieved its normative unity. Breton and Norman dialects, the ones used in Santo Domingo and the other islands, were less coercively centripetal and thus able to enter into the cornposition of a new language. English and Spanish were already perhaps more “classic,” and lent themselves less to this first amalgam from which a language could have sprung. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 508
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s creolization/rhizome-identity line through Glissant: language formation as concrete practice of detour rather than fixed center. — connects to: Creole emerged only in French colonies, not British or Spanish ones — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 504; Only French among European colonial languages in the Caribbean yielded compromise Creoles — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 611; French colonial policy aimed to assimilate colonial peoples into French identity — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2195 (+2 more)
- ADDENDUM: Supports ‘Grafting & Growth’ theme loosely only as a language-borne example of productive amalgam without a coercive center.
Broader Connections
- Only French among European colonial languages in the Caribbean yielded compromise Creoles
#expands(0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 611 - French colonial policy aimed to assimilate colonial peoples into French identity
#expands(0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2195 - Colonial administrative languages emerged unplanned from pre-existing lingua francas before print capitalism spread them
#corroborates(0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 476 - France was simultaneously assimilationist and associationist as colonial doctrine
#qualifies(0.70) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1283