There has been an enormous increase in the power and influence of Creole speakers in those countries of the Caribbean where Creole languages are the major language of everyday communication. This increase in influence over the past two decades has been the result of the anti-colonial movement, political independence and efforts by the mass of the population and their organisations to exert more control over the political and economic systems within these societies. There has been, in the area of language use, a clear expression of the changes taking place elsewhere in the society. Two or three decades ago, it would have been generally true to describe the language situation in any part of the Creole-speaking Caribbean as diglossic.