Características da Língua de Contato: Um Estudo do Crioulo de Guiné-Bissau à Luz das Teorias Crioulas

• In Event: Supporting transformative education through technology

Proposal

Guinea-Bissau Creole is a lingua franca widely spoken in the country and constitutes one of the most important linguistic manifestations of the historical heritage resulting from Portuguese colonialism in West Africa. Formed in a context of interaction between different African ethnic groups and the Portuguese colonisers, Guinean Creole offers a fertile field for the study of contact linguistics and creolisation.
This paper proposes an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of Guinean Creole, highlighting its particularities in comparison with non-Creole languages such as Portuguese. The research is based on the studies of Taylor (1971), Bickerton (1981), Markey (1982), McWhorter (1998) and Holm and Patrick (2007), who identify typical characteristics of creole languages. The aim is to see how these characteristics manifest themselves in Guinean Creole.
The study of Guinea-Bissau Creole is extremely important not only for understanding linguistic dynamics in contact contexts, but also for contributing to broader debates on cultural identity and linguistic preservation in post-colonial situations. In a multicultural country like Guinea-Bissau, where more than 20 ethnic groups live together, Creole serves as the main lingua franca and a factor of national cohesion (Couto and Embalo, 2010). However, its particularities compared to other languages, such as Portuguese, are still little explored on the academic scene.
Studies such as Bickerton's (1981) and McWhorter's (1998) have laid solid foundations for understanding the formation of creole languages, but rarely have they addressed the specific context of Guinea-Bissau in detail. This work therefore aims to contribute to the academic debate by offering a new perspective on the Guinean Creole language, its particularities and its implications for contemporary society.
Guinean Creole, born out of a unique context of interaction between various African languages and Portuguese, bears traces of a linguistic complexity that deserves to be better studied (SCANTAMBURLO, 2013). As a native speaker and researcher, my aim is to offer a deeper and more contextualised analysis that enriches the field of creole linguistics, expanding the studies that defend the idea that creole languages form a synchronically distinguishable subgroup among the world's languages (Parkvall, 2008; Bakker et al., 2011).
The methodology of this study is based on empirical data collected during field research carried out in Guinea-Bissau in 2021. The corpus was formed from interviews conducted in three communities: the city of Bissau, where seven ethnic groups live together (Fula, Mancanha, Balanta, Mandinga, Mansonca, Papel and Manjaco); the community of Bafatá, where the Fula group was the main focus; and the community of Quinara, where the interviews were conducted with the Balanta group.
In each of these communities, 12 people were interviewed, six of whom were self-declared female and six male. To ensure triangulation of the data, the interviewees were selected on the basis of gender, age group and ethnic origin. The age groups were divided as follows: Band 1 (21-35 years), Band 2 (40-50 years) and Band 3 (over 55 years). All the interviews were recorded using a Sony ICDPX 240 recorder, then transcribed and analysed.
This research allows for a detailed linguistic analysis, taking into account the variation in gender, age and social context of the speakers. Based on the data obtained, the structural characteristics of Guinean Creole will be examined, such as morphosyntax, vocabulary and influences from Portuguese and African languages. In addition, the study will look at how historical and social factors have influenced the evolution of Creole over time.
This study is based on the work of important scholars of Creole linguistics. Taylor (1971), Bickerton (1981) and McWhorter (1998) are central authors for understanding the processes of formation and development of Creole languages in contact contexts. According to Bickerton (1984), creole languages emerge in scenarios where different ethnic groups, speaking mutually unintelligible languages, are forced to live together without a common language. European colonialism between the 16th and 19th centuries created such contexts, and the emergence of Portuguese pidgin in Guinea-Bissau is a classic example of this.
McWhorter's work (1998) will be particularly useful for analysing the grammatical simplicity characteristic of creole languages, which he defines as the result of combining different linguistic substrates. In the case of Guinean Creole, this grammatical simplicity, with the absence of complex verb inflections and the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) order, can be observed in comparison with Portuguese. However, the language also has its own particularities, such as the strong presence of lexical and phonetic elements from African languages.
This study will also benefit from the work of Holm and Patrick (2007), who emphasise the differences between Portuguese, English and French-based creoles. Although Guinean Creole shares many characteristics with other Portuguese-based Creole languages, it is distinguished by its strong cultural roots in local African languages.
Guinea-Bissau is a nation marked by ethnic and linguistic diversity, with more than 20 ethnic groups, each with its own language. Creole, which was born as a contact language during the colonial period, developed as a means of communication between the different ethnic groups and the Portuguese colonisers. The use of Guinea-Bissau Creole intensified especially in the coastal regions and in urban centres such as Bissau and Bafatá, where commercial and social interactions with the Portuguese were more frequent.

Author

• Alfa Dos Santos Silom, Não