It's a term from Linguistics. That's the study of language Paul. Pidgins and Creoles, often exhibit it. A pidgin is a makeshift basic language designed with the intention of communicating at the simplest level. Extremely weirdly many pidgins/creoles across the world have incredibly similar structures and many words in common. Some people have put this down to their descent from Portugese Mariner's dialects others point to Noam Chomsky's idea of language being innate within us, hardwired into our brains asthe cause. Linguistics is gratifyingly kooky sometimes.
Studies have shown that when we learn a pidgin we use our existing lexical structure (sentences etc) and supplant within that structure the new vocabulary. That's what Relexification is. As far as I'm concerned this is a gold nuggett of information when it comes to talking about the Ardkore continuum. Reynolds has made the point in the past that Ardkore uses the existing structure of Reggae (The DJ, the Dancehall, the Dubplate) and fills it with, well whatever.
Ardkore (and Hip-Hop), often the spawn of the Jamaican diaspora, is a Relexification of Reggae. A pidgin with which to converse with the locals.
Posted by Woebot at April 1, 2003 01:40 PM