Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide a general picture of the pidgins and creoles spoken in Australia. Outside its scope are descriptive and historical accounts of individual languages as well as Aboriginal English, the history and structure of which differ in a number of significant aspects from that of English-derived pidgins and creoles, and are dealt with in other chapters of this volume (see Kaldor and Malcolm, Eades, and Koch).

The greatest need in an overview of this kind seems to be clarification of basic terminology. As pointed out by Sandefur (1985b), ‘the terms “pidgin”, “creole” and “Aboriginal English” have been used with a great deal of ambiguity in recent years’. This ambiguity reflects an insufficient understanding of the phenomena at hand as well as the continuing influence of folk labels for varieties of speech used by non-mainstream Australians. One view, in particular, that has continued to survive even in quite respectable publications is that there are underdeveloped languages with few or no abstract terms, and that pidgin and creole languages are corruptions of true languages. Hence we find Pidgin English referred to as a ‘quaint and macaronic jargon’ or ‘English perverted and mangled by the natives’ or, from a different perspective (Strehlow 1947: xviii) ‘English perverted and mangled by ignorant whites, who have in turn taught this ridiculous gibberish to the natives and who then affect to be amused by the childish babblings of these “savages”.’