This is an informative book that students of language ethnography, but not of ‘creolization’ or ‘pidginization’, will find particularly useful, in spite of what the title conjures up. (Note the ironic similarity to Dell Hymes’ 1971 Pidginization and creolization of languages!) The contributions cover various ecologies in which speakers use languages to index their ethnic identities or political orientation, their socioeconomic statuses, or settings (and topics) of their interactions. The timespaces include Antwerp (Belgium), Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, French Guyane, East Africa, South Africa, Casamance (Senegal), Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cape Verde, and Guinea Bissau. Naturally, the languages and repertoires involved are quite diverse, including creoles, an expanded pidgin, indigenous African languages (a category in which Afrikaans should fit, even for those that do not consider it as a creole), and immigrants’ languages in the case of Antwerp. The speakers are indeed also situated in contrasting ecologies, viz. diasporic (the case of Antwerp and Guyane) and indigenous (the vast majority of the case studies), although one may want to distinguish between rural and urban populations in the latter case.

What is not evident is whether there are new, creole identities or cultures to be associated with the linguistic behaviors that are covered in the book, and whether ‘cultural pidginization’, as claimed by the editors and adopted by some contributors, is consistent with the interpretation of ‘pidginization’ in studies of creole and pidgin vernaculars, from which the editors have adopted the concept.Footnote ¹ Otherwise, it is interesting to compare, for instance, how people in Guinea Bissau and in Cape Verde capitalize on their respective creoles to index particular identities. The case of Cape Verdeans returning home from Europe illustrates their ambivalence between showing off the success from their immigration and desire to show that they still adhere to their traditions through their language choices (e.g. Portuguese vs. Crioulu). In Sierra Leone, shifting to Krio or sticking to one's ethnic language (for those that are not Krios) has political implications, especially if one is away from their ethnic region.

One wonders whether there is really re-ethnicization through language alternations. Mauritius is an interesting polity where citizens apparently stick to their ancestral ethnicities, although there are cross-ethnic mixes, and Kreol is being promoted by some as the national language, although it is not considered ethnic, by contrast with, say, ‘Sino-Mauritian’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Hindu’, or ‘Tamil’. Overall, every polity has its own way of managing is multi-ethnic peculiarity, with the residents (including non-natives) navigating the multilingual landscapes skillfully. Social indexicality is the leitmotif of the book, which has prompted me to ask, since the beginnings of the project culminating in it, what the ill-defined concepts of creolization and pidginization contribute specifically to understanding it. The book is, however, a treasure trove of information about language and social/political/ideological identity.