Between the Seventeenth and the Nineteenth centuries, approximately four million Africans were taken to the Caribbean as slaves. Slave traders deliberately mixed slaves up so that there were few together who spoke the same language or came from the same tribe. This was to prevent plotting and conspiracy. The only common language was that of their oppressors, whether they were French, British or Dutch. As a result of this, new languages, called pidgins, were created. The slaves used these pidgins to communicate. These languages have a limited vocabulary, a simple grammatical structure and a narrow range of functions. They...
term Nation Language. This term is used particularly when referring to Creole employed in Literature. There is always a reason for this, an authorial choice. When encountering Nation Language in a literary text, the reader should question why it has been used just as one would analyse the layers of language in a Shakespeare play, in order to develop ideas about authorial purpose. It is important to realise that there are many varieties of Black English as well as different registers. For the purposes of study, however, it is possible to make some generalisations about its features.