This document discusses the genesis and development of pidgin and creole languages from an anthropological perspective. It notes that pidgins developed as contact languages between groups who did not share a common tongue, often in plantation settings, to facilitate communication between workers. Creoles emerged when a pidgin became the native and stable language of a speech community. The cultural processes of pidginization and creolization show how language is intertwined with culture. Pidgin and creole studies are of interest to anthropologists because they arose in sociocultural situations involving new cultural worlds and the meeting of different cultural ideologies, such as in colonial plantation societies.