Featuring an international contributor list, this long-awaited and broad-ranging collection examines the key issues, topics and research in pidgin and creole studies. It is a comprehensive reference work that explore the treatment of core aspects of pidgins/creoles, focusing on the questions that animate creole studies. It brings together newly-commissioned entries by an international contributor team. It is accessibly structured into four sections covering: the character of pidgins and creoles; the relation of pidgins/creoles to other language phenomena and other languages; issues in pidgin/creole genesis; and, the role of pidgins/creoles in society. It provides a valuable resource for students, scholars and researchers working across a number linguistic disciplines, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and the anthropology of language.