Creolization andCréolité

AbstractThe concept of creolization covers a number of key areas, including transnationalism, multiculturalism, diversity,métissage, and hybridization. Its origins lie in the interrelated processes of colonization, slavery, and migration that brought the New World into being. It originally referred to a European or an African subject displaced by place rather than race, along with the Creole languages that first appeared on slave plantations. These languages combined a European acrolect with a range of African basilects, joining these grammatical features to a relexification of colonial languages.Creolization, then, defines cultures and identities in constant transformation. Today, creolization focuses on the growing intensity of global migration, and the intersection and interaction of majority and minority cultures across national boundaries. Ultimately, creolization should be understood as an unending, fluid process that cannot be reduced to a single path or principle, and it emphasizes the unpredictable results of cultural contact.