Variation und "Interlekt“ bei Patrick Chamoiseau: Postkoloniale Überlegungen zwischen Kreolität und Kreolistik

The question of “interlectality” in the context of French Caribbean Creolity, especially in its occurrence as literary “interlect”, constitutes a (potential) area of dialogue between linguistics and literary studies. From a linguistic perspective, it is especially important to “translate” the literary category of interlect into a linguistic terminology. In fact, the analysis shows that, in case of Chamoiseau, we are dealing with a literary interlect with aesthetic pretensions, which results from the endeavor to make everyday life aspects of the Antilles accessible to a national Francophone public. This interlect cannot merely be comprehended via structural criteria but should also be conceptualized in terms of a poetics of opacity, in which the specificity of the French Caribbean contact situation finds its aesthetic-literary formation.