Fuzzy boundaries between Creole and French in the Mauritian Linguistic Landscape

Bibliographic Data

ID14860702
AuthorsElissa Pustka (0000-0001-6328-087X, University of Vienna, corresponding author), Yannick Bosquet (University of Mauritius)
Year2025
Publication date2025-12-04
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Pidgin and Creole Languages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0920-9034 • E-ISSN: 1569-9870
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jpcl.25001.pus
OpenAlexW4416998418
LanguageEN
References cited15

Drawing from linguistic landscape data collected in the public space of multilingual Mauritius, this paper discusses the manifestation of linguistic hybridization in its written form. Theoretically, we draw mainly on the concept of interlect coined by Prudent (1981) to describe the linguistic practices in creole speaking islands. We show the embeddedness of French and Creole, two of the most spoken languages in the country, and English, the official language, in these signs and argue that boundaries between these languages are difficult to define and fuzzy. The case is particularly frequent that Creole structures are ‘masked’ by a French orthography. Although this fuzziness can be observed at all the levels of the language structure, we here focus mainly on the orthographical and the morphological levels

Creole language · Embeddedness · Focus (optics · Linguistic description · Linguistic landscape · Economic Zones and Regional Development · Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies · Migration, Identity, and Health

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