ABSTRACT
This is a discussion of the way in which first ‘pidgin Portuguese’ and then ‘pidgin English’ developed in West Africa, with later examples drawn particularly from Nigeria. Any history of these languages is bound to be speculative: they had no literature and their documentation is haphazard. I have found, however, that the disparate pieces of evidence become more coherent when one tries to understand the social relations that underlie them. In the course of European contact with the peoples of the West African coast, members of very different cultures created and maintained a common language. What had they in common that enabled them to do this, and how far did they understand each other? What does the structure of the language itself tell us of their relationship? My account raises as many questions as it answers, but they are questions of interest to social anthropologists, referring as they do to the nature of communication, and to the creation and choice of social identity. The place of language in culture has often been discussed, but less attention has been given to the uses of language in society. 1 The history of any pidgin is a fruitful topic for such inquiry. 2
