Setting the stage for reimagining Creole communities

This chapter discusses the rationale for the book, gives an overview of the main issues raised, as well as the scope, aims, and structure of the book. We argue that Sociolinguistics and research on Creoles share many common interests but have lost touch with each other. This has largely left the former without insights from complex and heterogeneous linguistic contexts, while leaving the latter with little contemporary socioculturally-oriented research and a piecemeal perspective on language practices in Creole communities. We review sociolinguistically-informed research on Creole communities and developments in Sociolinguistics, introduce the notion of forcefields which we develop in this book, and discuss the concept of Creole community. Given important social and linguistic changes over the last few decades, now is a good time to reconnect research on Creole communities with contemporary sociolinguistic frameworks to reshape academic discourses on language practices relating to Creoles and European languages (specifically English) in these contexts.