Social Context of Creolization

From the book flap description: "Why do some pidgins die out or change only very slowly, whereas others creaolize completely within a single generation? What factors in the social context trigger or retard the linguistic processes involved in pidginization and creolization and how? This unique collection is the first devoted entirely to the investigation of the social conditions surrounding the formation of pidgins and creoles, an area of research that has been attracting increasing attention among creolists and sociolinguists. The notion that social foces are the crucial factor in determining where and when pidginization will occur is a fundamental assumption underlying the work of this volume. The contributions explore this problem under the assumption that pidginization and creolization are not freak events exampt from the laws governing ordinary linguistic processes but rather that pidginazation and creolization are combinations of these same ordinary linguistic processes that can be predicted to occur whenever and wherever the proper social conditions are extant. The problem is to isolate the significant factors of the social environment that are necessary or sufficient to trigger the formation of pidgin and creole languages."