There is a canonical list of languages that most specialists would not hesitate to call creoles, but the boundaries of the list and the criteria for being listed are vague.
This involves, in particular, trying to see whether we can define “creoles” as a meaningful class of languages. These two facts may be related, in part because they circle around notions such as “derived from” or “simplified” instead of “original.” Rather than simply taking the notion of “creole” as a given and trying to account for its properties and origin, this essay tries to explore the ways scholars have dealt with creoles.
Creole languages have a curious status in linguistics, and at the same time they often have very low prestige in the societies in which they are spoken.
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