The origins - It's all relevant!

Why would it matter to understand the origins of Pidgin and Creole?

It depends on what you understand language is. Actually, it does not. For even if you are not studying language, the origins of Pidgin and Creole is also the story of how science looks into its objects; it is the story of how a group of people dealt with communication, or the lack of it; it is the story of how different people from different backgrounds overcame their differences and were able to create common ground; it is also the story of how cooperation can arise from the most terrible situations, and how we have to live knowing that those terrible situations existed. 

Christine Jordan, a researcher in the field of Linguistics and Anthropology, puts it better than I ever could:

               “The stories of this genesis are recent examples of how cultural groups become                                     “enlanguaged”, of how human societies create for themselves the language that becomes                      the medium of their new cultural life. Being “enlanguaged” means being in the world                         ( Heidegger 1962), being part of the cultural environment that sustains the symbolic                             systems of human beings”

Recent examples, which is to say that many researches saw in studying these languages the opportunity to find  rules and explanations on how languages and grammar develop in loco, by collecting data from native speakers or people who were close enough to register this development. 

There are different theories, however, to what those origins are, which try to find different things. Some will argue in favor of studying Pidgin and Creole to understand second language acquisition, some will argue in favor of studying it to understand the basics of human communication, some will connect the origins to the development of a cultural identity. I myself agree with the latter ones. 

Let's take a look at some of what was said about it...