ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some dilemmas faced by the Creoles of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast in claiming and implementing the linguistic rights granted them under Nicaragua’s Law of Autonomy for the Caribbean Coast Regions (1987). It ar gues that ‘diaspora’ groups like these (Hall 1990 [1993], 1996; Gilroy 1993) are particularly ill-served by the unitary notions of peoplehood, identity and language that underpin W estern state language policies and minority challenges to them (W oolard 1998: 17). Creole has, after all, become the technical term for the opposite of these notions: for transnational, hybridized languages usually analyzed as continua or bridges between African and European languages; and by extension for the transnational, syncretized cultural identities with which these languages are associated (Pieterse 1994).
