Local Languages with Global Impact: Resistance and Persistence of Caribbean Creoles

Though many Caribbean Creoles operate alongside their lexifier languages, the speakers are generally stigmatized, and the violation of the linguistic rights of Creole speakers almost normalized in most places, the languages persist. The linguistic expressions of our Caribbean life are means of communication forging cultural innovation, unity and identity in the face of forces persistently bent on annihilating them. How do the languages survive these pressures? This chapter explores the resistance by Caribbean communities, as evidenced in the Creole languages in the Caribbean region and the diaspora. It employs a descriptive mixed-method approach to examine typical examples of the victory of Caribbean Creole usage in education in the region, and in literature and the performing arts as they extend beyond our national borders, gaining world-wide recognition. The analysis reveals profound implications for the triumph of Caribbean Creoles as a prime example of local languages with global impact, rejecting the colonial-elitist practice of marking non-European languages as inadequate to meet the needs of the new century.