There is no such agreement on the definition of the group of languages called pidgins and creoles […] Some definitions are based on function, the role these languages play in the community: e.g., a pidgin is an auxiliary trade language. Some are based on historical origins and development: e.g., a pidgin may be spontaneously generated; a creole is a language that has evolved from a pidgin. Some definitions include formal characteristics: restricted vocabulary; absence of gender, true tenses, inflectional morphology, or relative clauses, etc. Some linguists combine these different kinds of criteria and include additional restrictions in their definitions.
- DeCamp (1977), a pag.3-4

Pidgins and creoles are spoken in places where two or more cultures have come in contact, with one group of people usually dominating the others economically, socially, or militarily. Slavery, colonialism, military occupation, migration from villages to the city, new trade relations – each can produce an intercultural contact in which one group has the upper hand and it is the dominated who are associated with the pidgin or creole that is often used in such a community.
- DeCamp (1977), a pag.7-8