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The Creole Language Debate and The Use of Creoles in Australian Schools*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

J. Harris  and
J. Sandefur
J. Harris
Affiliation:
Darwin Community College, N.T.
J. Sandefur
Affiliation:
Ngukurr, N.T.
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Extract

The English-based creoles, which are spoken by a very large number of Aboriginal Australians, are so named because it is obvious that a large proportion of their lexicon is derived from English. This fact alone, however, does not indicate that they are merely regional varieties of English. They are distinct languages. Together with other world creoles, they are at the frontier of linguistic research and the subject of considerable controversy. One critical forum of debate centres on the validity of creoles as languages of education. It is the intention of the authors that this paper should achieve two things. Firstly, it is intended to contribute constructively to that debate. Secondly, it is intended to provide an overview of the present use of some creole languages in Australian schools.

Type
Section One
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , August 1994 , pp. 7 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press or the authors 1994

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised and extended version of an article which originally appeared as “Creol languages and the Use of Kriol in Northern Territory Schools”, Unicorn, 9:3, 1983 : 249-269. Part of this article was presented at the Seventh Annual Congress of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia, as a paper by John Sandefur entitled “Kriol in Education in 1982”. It was read on his behalf by Barbara Sayers. In the preparation of that paper, the assistance of Kathryn Gale, Stephen Harris, Joyce Hudson, Eirlys Richards and Allan and Donelle Steele is gratefully acknowledged.

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