Introduction
Postcolonial urban centers constitute a challenging but fascinating laboratory in which to study language ideologies. Socially, they have been described as societies in rapid flux (Hannerz Reference Hannerz1987) where indigenous modernities are created. Linguistically they are often very complex since a large number of languages are usually present: local languages, supported by ethnic in-migration from rural areas, often coexist with the language of the former colonial power. After decolonization, as new social groups appear within a new social order, new linguistic ideologies may develop that displace or add to previous ones.
A good example of this complexity is that of shifting language ideologies in Honiara, the capital city of Solomon Islands. In that very young town (about sixty-five years old), many languages coexist in a dynamic relationship: about seventy-one vernaculars; English, the colonial language and still the country's official language; and Pijin, the vehicular language and de facto national language. Pijin is the Solomon Islands variety of Melanesian Pidgin, of which Tok Pisin (in Papua New Guinea) and Bislama (in Vanuatu) are also dialects. Since Solomon independence in 1978, PijinFootnote 1 has acquired a certain social legitimacy and two generations of native speakers in Honiara. Jourdan's research there over the last twenty-five years shows that Pijin has changed considerably, linguistically and sociolinguistically—particularly along age clines, the varieties of Pijin spoken by young people exhibiting the more pervasive changes (Jourdan Reference Jourdan2007a). Generational differences are complicated by factors such as education, degrees of social proximity to English (the main lexifier of PijinFootnote 2) and the distance that youth have from vernacular-supported ancestral cultures. Youth have appropriated Pijin and developed an urban popular culture of which it is the medium. Yet, in the midst of these changes, the linguistic legitimacy of Pijin seems to be lagging behind its social legitimacy.
Language ideologies can be defined as cultural conceptions of languages (Makihara Reference Makihara2004). They are culturally shaped attitudes about the nature of language, the way it should be used (i.e. when, where, and by whom), the value of particular languages and linguistic varieties, their origins, and their future (Kroskrity Reference Kroskrity2000:5). That ideology is at work is signalled by the presence of recurrent patterns across individual discourses—of “cultural tapes”, as Ortner (Reference Ortner2003:7) wittily put it. As is now well established (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1982, Reference Bourdieu and Thompson1991; Kroskrity Reference Kroskrity2000), the constitution of linguistic repertoires is largely shaped by prevalent language ideologies, which in turn advocate what languages should be spoken and how. In postcolonial contexts, often associated with the concurrent emergence of nationalist awareness and class differentiation, complex changes in language ideologies involve high stakes, since national linguistic policies are often still being defined.
The aim of this article is to contribute to the theorization and documentation of language ideologies by showing from the concrete local example of Solomon Islands how, in such situations of rapid social change, increased social complexity can produce the accumulation and fluid cohabitation of different language ideologies. In doing so, we make a distinction between perceptions about languages, and language ideologies—perceptions are the most visible layer, expressed directly in social discourses, while ideologies are the underlying line of reasoning, of which speakers are often unaware and which can hardly be articulated freely by them. Changing perceptions about languages are thus the audible outcome of evolving weighting between ideologies. At the same time, changing perceptions interact with the ideologies that underlie them, in that they lead to partial reinterpretation of the latter. In Solomon Islands, the colonial linguistic order that established a strict hierarchical relationship between languages is being challenged by competing linguistic ideologies that make room for a dynamic relationship between languages. Some of these ideologies are in line with colonial “takes” on language, while others are independent developments. They sometimes converge and work together to reinforce perceptions; they sometimes thrive as competing contradictory ideas, which can be called upon strategically by speakers—most evidently to support one's opinions about the future status of Pijin. Rather than disappearing, language ideologies from the past interact with new ones, and are reinterpreted in the light of the new social context—like old shells filled with new meanings.
This article builds on previous research by Jourdan in Honiara from 1981 on. It is based most specifically on data collected in 2007 and 2008 among members of the middle class. In addition to participation observation and natural conversations, sixty-minute interviews in Pijin on language ideology were conducted. Fourteen middle-aged professionals and civil servants were interviewed by Jourdan in Honiara; twenty seven Solomon students (nineteen to twenty-five years of age) from the University of the South Pacific (USP) were interviewed by Angeli: nineteen in the Honiara campus and eight in the main Suva campus (Fiji). Three focus groups with students (two in Honiara, one in Suva) were also conducted, transcribed, and analyzed.
Concretely, we analyse the development and coalescence of linguistic ideologies that lead to shifting perceptions regarding Pijin and English. Our analysis focuses mainly on the relationship between these two languages in the city. This is not to say that vernaculars have ceased to be important. To the contrary, urban pull is strong and a constant stream of migrants and visitors from the provinces contributes to the maintenance and social relevance of vernaculars (see Jourdan Reference Jourdan2007b). Along with kastom (the ensemble of customary practices and ideologies that have become salient and, in some discourses, are somewhat reified) and wantok Footnote 3 social networks (fictive kin based on a common vernacular language), the vernaculars (langgus, in Pijin) are central to the reproduction of ethnic groups in town. But with the passage of generations, social and political power is slowly shifting into the hands of those who, because of the history of social change in the city, are bilingual in Pijin and English only. We show that the development of new language ideologies can lead people to re-evaluate the meaning of symbolic domination by one language (in this case English). We also discuss the paradoxical situation of Pijin, which benefits from increasing legitimacy as a cultural item in the city, despite its lack of linguistic legitimacy. Finally, we argue that, in a context of growing national consciousness, the colonial language ideology persists in a way that is detrimental not only to the recognition of the local lingua franca, but also to the acquisition of Standard English.
The ethnographic context
Urbanization is a new phenomenon in Solomon Islands. While small towns have developed throughout the country, Honiara remains the only urban center, having been created after World War II by the British colonial government on what remained of the American army base at Point Cruz on Guadalcanal. For much of its history it was the seat of the colonial administration and the hub through which labour and goods circulated. Progressively, and in parallel with the development of work opportunities, the town was changed from a place Solomon Islanders merely passed through to one where they came to settle. Thirty-five years after independence and eleven years after a coup that wreaked havoc on people's livelihood and the country's economy, Honiara now has an estimated population of 64,609 people, 36,334 of whom are under the age of twenty-five.Footnote 4 The population of Solomon Islands comprises seventy-one different ethnolinguistic groups (Summer Institute of Linguistics 2010) and most of them are present in Honiara in various degrees. Pijin and English complete the town's linguistic landscape. However, Pijin is the linguistic cement of the city and the language one must learn if one wants a social life there outside of the wantok networks. Interestingly, an ever-growing number of children, particularly those born in Honiara to linguistically mixed marriages (and increasingly to parents with the same mother tongue), do not know their parents' ancestral languages. Pijin is their mother tongue.
Pijin is one of the three Melanesian Pidgins (along with Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and Bislama in Vanuatu) whose history is associated with the labour trade that existed between the Melanesian Islands and the tropical state of Queensland in Australia during the second half of the nineteenth century. Islanders who returned from their indentured work contract on Queensland's sugarcane plantations brought Pijin back to Solomon Islands at the end of the nineteenth century (Keesing Reference Keesing1988, Reference Keesing, Baldauf and Luke1990). Progressively, it became the vehicular language of the country, particularly in the mission stations of the South Sea Evangelical Church on the island of Malaita and in work settings such as plantations where language diversity was very high.
In Honiara, where the degree of language diversity is even higher, Pijin quickly became the main language of the urbanites, used in almost all contexts of social life. In many households, especially in linguistically mixed marriages, Pijin has become the main (even in some cases the sole) language of the family. There exist now two generations of native speakers of Pijin. As with many pidgin and creole languages over the world, Pijin coexists with its lexifier, English, which has remained the official language, the medium of formal education, and the language that opens the doors to tertiary education and upward social mobility—including employment in the public service. All written communication in the public domain is in English, save for the odd sign in Pijin here and there in government and private offices, and in the streets. Pijin has no official status; though it has been codified by Christian associations such as Solomon Islands Translation Advisory Group and Solomon Islands Christian Association (SITAG) for the purpose of translating the Bible, and even though there has been a full dictionary since 2002 (Jourdan Reference Jourdan and Maebiru2002), few people are literate in it. In contemporary urban Solomon Islands, literacy in public schools is acquired in English only.Footnote 5
Despite its young history, Honiara is socially and culturally heterogeneous—the three essential variables being ethnicity, age and developing social classes. Urbanites—be they recent arrivals or members of families that have lived in town for two generations—originate from all corners of the country. Otherness is experienced by all on an everyday basis in most private and public spheres and spaces, and in contexts as diverse as the multiethnic residential neighbourhoods, work places, schools, and churches. An ever-increasing number of marriages are bi-ethnic.
Generational differences are also increasing and contributing to social diversity in a way that reshapes people's relation to their ethnolinguistic affiliations. Education, general outlook on life, cultural taste, and the degree of relationship people entertain with their village-based kin and cultural practices all reinforce the distinction between middle-age and young urbanites. In general, the latter have conspicuously embraced a taste for what is seen as culturally foreign (movies, television, popular music) and new communication media such as cell phones and the internet, and they manifest limited interest and involvement in matters of kastom. Though many of the young people we spoke with still define their identity with regards to the ethnic groups of their parents (particularly that of their father), this definition lies at the level of discourse and not so much of practice.
All of this leads to, and reveals, increasing social and cultural complexity, which in turn favours the development of new linguistic ideologies. We are currently witnessing the emergence of a budding class system that reproduces itself. The middle class, the focus of this article, is large and includes people with jobs as diverse as schoolteachers, nurses, public servants, office clerks, small businessmen, and doctors. While it is tempting to define a class system using criteria such as unequal access to wealth, adherence to different representation systems, and development of different consumption patterns, in Solomon Islands it is difficult to draw clear lines between some of these (see also Hau'ofa Reference Hau'ofa, Hooper, Britton, Crocombe, Huntsman and Macpherson1987; Philibert & Jourdan Reference Philibert and Jourdan1994; Gewertz & Errington Reference Gewertz and Errington1999; Gooberman-Hill Reference Gooberman-Hill1999; James Reference James2003). That is particularly the case between the upper-middle class and the elite, where the distinction is not only a matter of financial means but also of prestige: some members of the political elite are not wealthy, but derive prestige from their family history and political power, and sometimes their profession. The gap between haves and have-nots is growing (Solomon Islands Statistics Office 2006:3–6). More and more people's livelihoods in town are seriously jeopardized by a lack of employment opportunities, the very low minimum wage, rising costs of living, unequal access to education (all the best schools are private and expensive), and inadequate lodging and food (Maebuta & Maebuta Reference Maebuta and Maebuta2009). The socioeconomic differences are expressed, not surprisingly, through consumption and behavioural patterns, memberships in various social networks, but also through knowledge of different linguistic repertoires—and in particular varying degrees of familiarity with English (Jourdan Reference Jourdan2007a).
Shifting language ideologies in Honiara
The history of linguistic contacts in Solomon Islands has been associated with the history of cultural contacts, most specifically in relation to exchange of goods and valuables. On that basis, we can expect that linguistic contact—which in the first instance involved vernaculars, and later on (since the beginning of the twentieth century) vernaculars, English and Pijin—was more or less permanent, regular, and intense, depending on historical periods and regions. In Honiara, where ethnolinguistic contact has been most intense, people's awareness of language differences has been more salient and led to the superposition of several language ideologies that, at times, either compete or alternate in people's discourses. We label them as: reciprocal multilingualism (prevalent in precolonial times), hierarchical multilingualism (introduced during the colonial period), linguistic pragmatism (present throughout, but reshaped by the relatively recent dominance of English as an international language), and linguistic nationalism (a recent development). Let us examine in detail these different ideologies, which inform, at different levels, all Honiarans' attitudes toward Pijin and English.
Reciprocal multilingualism
Precolonization language ideologies are generally little known, for lack of written sources. In Solomon Islands as in the rest of Melanesia, the linguistic situation prior to colonization seemed to have consisted in reciprocal multilingualism (Jourdan Reference Jourdan2007a; Robbins Reference Robbins2007). Under this system, all vernacular languages occupied an equal position in the linguistic exchange and were learnt by neighbouring groups as needed. As far as the oral historical record can tell, all vernaculars seem to have coexisted in a nonhierarchical relationship—no group tried to impose its own language on other groups.Footnote 6 Multilingual competence, which not everyone possessed to the same degree, was highly valued and individuals derived prestige and power from being able to speak in many languages and for their oratory skills (see also Sankoff Reference Sankoff1980 and Kulick Reference Kulick1992 for a similar description concerning precolonial Papua New Guinea).
As Jourdan (Reference Jourdan2007a) has noted, reciprocal bilingualism and multilingualism are specific in that they imply engagement with and openness to other cultures and other languages. They also imply that other people's languages can be learnt. Certainly, there were ideas of what speaking a language well means; much political power was indeed obtained by individuals who were also good orators. As well, women marrying in sometimes complain of being teased (even criticized) for not speaking well the vernacular of their husband, and at times prevented from speaking it altogether (Keesing & Fifi'i Reference Keesing and Fifi'i1969). But contemporary Melanesian ethnography (Schieffelin Reference Schieffelin1990) shows that linguistic normativity was (and still is) relatively little enforced upon native and nonnative speakers.
The precolonial ideology of reciprocal multilingualism remains influential in subtle ways, the low level of linguistic normativity (in Pijin as well as in vernaculars) being precisely one of them. Knowing several languages is also still highly valued in Honiara. All vernaculars are still viewed as being of equal worth (other people's vernaculars are never disparaged), and people who can speak or understand several vernaculars are obviously proud of their linguistic competences. This interest in learning languages (if often limited to learning a few words for basic greetings), which applies to foreign languages as well as to local ones, is never rooted in the desire of gaining tangible rewards. Rather, the benefits are social: Learning the others' language is conceived as opening the door to the establishment of friendly relationships. In line with this notion of “reciprocity”, most young Honiarans we spoke with consider it natural that expatriates learn Pijin when they settle in Solomon Islands, even though they still marvel at those who speak it well. Learning the local language—even if this language is “just” Pijin—is viewed as a mark of respect for local people and of goodwill in the establishment of relationships.
Hierarchical multilingualism
A profoundly different linguistic order was brought about by colonization (Calvet Reference Calvet1979; Sankoff Reference Sankoff1980; Mühlhäusler Reference Mühlhäusler1996; Jourdan Reference Jourdan2007a), which was hierarchical and, as one would expect, placed English at the top. Colonial labels imposed on local languages—“dialects” for vernaculars, “broken English” for Pijin—contributed to express and reinforce this hierarchy, and the concurrent social and intellectual hierarchy that colonials attempted to establish between local populations and themselves. As noted by Calvet (Reference Calvet1979:52–53), in colonial situations, the term “language” is always reserved to the European language, whereas all local languages are labelled “dialects”. This term, value-free when it is used diachronically (e.g. French, Italian, and Spanish are all dialects of Latin), was then used synchronically in a pejorative way by colonials—based on the opposition civilized/language vs. uncivilised/dialect—to establish a racist social hierarchy between local and colonial languages (and people).
The colonial language ideology was based on three important assumptions. First, it was strongly biased in favour of literacy and promoted the idea that “true” languages are necessarily written languages. Second, it was informed by European tenets of linguistic purism, which deprecate syncretic linguistic practices and equate language change with decay, in a way that assumes that “real” languages are not human artefacts but are “natural”, immutable products (Woolard & Schieffelin Reference Woolard and Schieffelin1994:64). In this view, a language that has a recent and traceable history cannot aspire to the status of “real” language—although, from a long-term historical perspective, all languages (and English most conspicuously) were in fact born from contact between different linguistic groups. For these reasons, Creole languages such as Pijin, which emerged from contact between English and Melanesian languages and were not standardized and written until recently, ranked even lower than local vernaculars in the colonial hierarchy. Furthermore, British colonials tended to disparage Pijin because of its superficial lexical resemblance with English. It led them to conceive of it as a bastardized form of English that had no internal structure (Keesing Reference Keesing, Baldauf and Luke1990:154–55).
It was in fact assumed and hoped that Melanesian Pidgin, of which Pijin is a branch, was “a temporary interlanguage on the way to full competence in English” (Smith Reference Smith2002:199), which would be quickly replaced by “proper” English after a transitional stage through “simple” English (Jourdan Reference Jourdan, Baldauf and Luke1990:167; Keesing Reference Keesing, Baldauf and Luke1990:159). Here we note the third important assumption of colonial ideology: the idea that a language reveals a certain level of intelligence and civility in a people (Balibar & Laporte Reference Balibar and Laporte1974; Cohen Reference Cohen1978; Calvet Reference Calvet1979; Woolard & Schieffelin Reference Woolard and Schieffelin1994:63; Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000), and the concurrent linkage of language, race, and civilization (i.e. education/class status) in a global evolutionist scheme. English was seen as the language of progress and development, a role that it was assumed no vernacular, let alone Pijin, could properly fulfill. Writing about the colonial linguistic situation of Vanuatu, Terry Crowley (Reference Crowley2000) makes the case that from the moment English, a written language, entered the language scene in Vanuatu, local people were branded as illiterate and many started to devalue their own languages—they perceived them to be inadequate because they were nonwritten and were associated with what they perceived as their own technological “backwardness”. A similar analysis can be made for Solomon Islands.
Despite independence, the idea of linguistic hierarchy remains and has left important marks on how Solomon people think about English and Pijin.Footnote 7 The prejudices against Pijin are currently encapsulated by two stock-phrases directly inherited from colonial ideology: Pijin hem broken English nomoa ‘Pijin is just broken English’ and Pijin spoelem English ‘Pijin ruins English’. These ideas remain part of Solomon “common sense”. Not only are they part of the message about Pijin that the students receive at school, but they can be heard in Honiara in daily conversations and in the media, whenever people assess the merits of Pijin. They arose spontaneously during most interviews we conducted, as if they were obvious facts.
The first current prejudice against Pijin, Pijin hem broken English nomoa, a bastardized version of English, is based on the widespread belief that Pijin was born from a failed attempt by speakers to acquire English. Many people even contend that Pijin has “no grammar” (i.e. no conventions and no internal system). Indeed, associating words like “Pijin” and “grammar” or “structure” sounds so odd that during interviews this association generally generated laughter. Still endorsed by large segments of the population (and in particular the local older elite, who were schooled in institutions where speaking Pijin was forbidden and often called for punishment, and later in foreign universities), this belief is hardly challenged by young educated Honiarans, even those who grew up with Pijin as their mother tongue. But among them, the stock-phrase “broken English” often has an ill-defined and largely contradictory content. In particular, many of them reinterpret its “brokenness” as being a recent phenomenon related to what they perceive as the increasing Anglicization of Pijin (we return to this point below).
(1) [Taem iu Pijin] iu no spikim according... iu no spikim stret lo English. Iu enihao. Iu brekem rules, ot grammatical rules, so iu jes spikim enihao.
(James, 23, student in Honiara; Pijin as second language)
‘When one speaks Pijin, one does not speak according… one does not speak proper English. One does anything. One breaks rules, all the grammatical rules, one simply speaks in any odd way.’
The second current prejudice against Pijin, Pijin spoelem English, is grounded in the idea of “interference”, and its roots lie in the colonial assumption that the two languages cannot coexist in the same social niche. Thus, people should speak either Pijin or “proper” English, depending on the level of education; they are not supposed to be bilingual in English and Pijin (although in practice all highly educated Solomon Islanders are). As the following quote illustrates, interference is understood as a direct correlate of the “broken” nature of Pijin.
(2) Pijin ia hem kaen type... broken English. So taem hem kam fo… English olsem, bae hem lelebet had nao fo iusim raet English. Bikos Pijin hem bara spoelem tumas nao! So taem man English go, bara brekbrek type, ia!
(Laura, 23, student in Suva; Pijin as first language)
‘Pijin is a sort of… broken English. So when comes the time to speak English, it is hard to use proper English. Because Pijin really interferes a lot! So when someone speaks English, it is all broken!’
The fact of using Pijin on a daily basis, and a fortiori learning formally Pijin before English, is believed to jeopardize children's capacity to acquire Standard English. This prejudice is commonly found in other places where Creole languages are spoken (cf. among others Garrett Reference Garrett2005, Reference Garrett and Heller2007; Migge, Léglise, & Bartens Reference Migge, Léglise and Bartens2010), and largely accounts for the marked resistance most Solomon Islanders we spoke with exhibited toward the idea of schooling in Pijin.
These two prejudices are clearly related to the idea that English is the language of progress and development. As more people receive formal education, it is expected that the country, as a whole, should naturally “move” from Pijin (pre-English) to Standard English. Several young Solomon Islanders made this quite clear during interviews, as exemplified in excerpt (3) below.
(3) Bae otta pipol bae ot bekam moa fo spikim nao English, bikos more bae otta go fo educatim themselves. Bikos, olsem, bae mifala no stay lo datfala same level all the time.
(Joyce, 24, student in Suva; Pijin as second language)
‘Eventually people will end up speaking English, because more of them will become educated. Because, we will not stay at the same level all the time.’
Arguably, this idea is perpetuated by the current education system in Solomon Islands. English is officially the only medium of instruction (except for the first two years of primary schooling in rural areas where vernaculars can be used), and is certainly the only language used for writing. Whereas teachers in the elite schools teach only in English (a point that is very attractive to their clientele), public school teachers often resort to Pijin in the classroom when their students do not understand instructions given in English.
In addition to these two language ideologies rooted in the past, two new ones have recently appeared, particularly among the middle class, which are significantly shaping Solomon people's attitudes toward English and Pijin. Importantly, these new ideologies lead to a partial reinterpretation of previous language ideologies—a shift in meaning—rather than a challenge to them.
Linguistic pragmatism
The first trend consists in the increasing awareness of the value of English as linguistic capital (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu and Thompson1991) on the global market. Under the colonial system English long functioned as major linguistic capital in Solomon Islands, at both the symbolic and instrumental levels. It could be argued that independence, especially in the early years, reinforced the symbolic tension between English, the depositary of most social prestige but spoken by hardly anybody, and Pijin, widely spoken but lacking prestige. British colonials had groomed most of the Solomon Islands politicians who inherited power after independence, and who came to believe that Pijin was simply not good enough linguistically (due to limited vocabulary and seemingly no grammatical rules)—while English was the language that got them where they were. This linguistic capital proved an exceptionally important political and social capital. By contrast, it could also be argued that Solomon Islands politicians exhibited some linguistic real-politik in choosing English and not Pijin as the official language of instruction: They were certainly aware that a language such as a pidgin was lacking the cultural currency necessary to serve as a language of international communication and education.
As in many other former colonies where English is the official language, it has remained the language of social advancement. Mastery of English is generally required for well-paid white-collar jobs, but even more important is that under the current education system entry into upper grades depends on English proficiency—all national exams are given in English. Furthermore, as university degrees must be completed abroad,Footnote 8 English is a gatekeeper language for both outward and upward social mobility, which are closely related.
English also happens to be the language of international communication in today's world. Its current instrumental value as an international language, however, is not related to its valuation under the colonial regime. Though both systems of valuation re-enforce each other, they are two distinct phenomena. To illustrate this distinction, we may contrast this situation with the one existing in former French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies, where the hegemonies of the excolonial languages as languages of power and status have become partly challenged by the international dominance of English (e.g. Swigart Reference Swigart2000:121; Makihara Reference Makihara2004:534).
In this regard, it is striking that in the Solomons the status granted to English as the official language and language of education is now often reinterpreted by young Honiarans in terms of its current international dominance rather than in reference to the country's colonial past.
(4) Distaem, iumi part blo global community naia. So hem better fo iumi mas understandim language wea iumi save spikim globally. So I think datwan nao dastawae otta introdiusim English insaed lo skuls, than Pijin.
(James, 23, student in Honiara; Pijin as second language)
‘Nowadays, we are part of a global community. So it is better for us to understand English which is spoken globally. I think this is why they introduced English in the schools rather than Pijin.’
As a result, while the hierarchy between Pijin and English remains, its meaning has shifted significantly among young people. The superiority of English is now generally attributed not to its intrinsic qualities, nor to the prestigious status of its speakers, but to its greater instrumental value at the global level in terms of university education and job opportunities, in a world that our interviewees perceive as increasingly globalized.
Linguistic nationalism
The second important contemporary trend is the growing influence of nationalist discourses, and attendant “nationalist” language policies, intended to revitalize indigenous languages (e.g. Lotherington Reference Lotherington1998; Salaün Reference Salaün2007) in the Pacific region.Footnote 9 Concretely, these policies focus on the recognition of local languages as national languages and on their promotion as the preferred medium of education.Footnote 10 As has been convincingly argued (e.g. by Meeuwis & Blommaert Reference Meeuwis, Blommaert and Auer1998; Makihara Reference Makihara2004; Riley Reference Riley2007; Makihara & Schieffelin Reference Makihara and Schieffelin2007), this endeavour has been informed by a nationalist ideology of European influence that has spread among Pacific and African elites in the last decades.Footnote 11 It derives from the essentialization of the equation between one nation, one people, one language, and one territory in a timeless past, leading to the imagination (and active construction, cf. Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000) of a utopian, homogenous, and “authentic” linguistic community. Based on the idea that, in order to be congruent with national identity, a language must have “unmixed roots deeply embedded in land and blood” (Riley Reference Riley2007:74), this paradigm has strong purist and monolingual overtones.
This rising pan-Pacific ideology is also reaching the Solomon Islands, mostly via higher education. As young educated Solomon Islanders relocate to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, or New Zealand to complete their degree at local universities (where students and professors from the whole Pacific region gather), they discover and become acquainted with alternative education systems that privilege local languages and corresponding nationalist (and regionalist) discourses. All the while, Solomon students become clearly aware of the peculiar situation of Pijin, which has received no official recognition to date. Yet, they are not necessarily ready to endorse the idea that Pijin should be recognized as the national language in Solomon Islands, nor that it should be used in schools.
A few of our informants did argue that Pijin is part of Solomons' cultural heritage and national identity; others insisted that as the sole language spoken by an increasing number of urban children, it needs to be recognized.
(5) Kos samting ia nao mi tingim, spos iu no putum Pijin olsem wanfala langguch, olsem iu tekem rights blong olketa pikinini wea fest langguch blon olketa nao Pijin. Olketa no garem eni langguch moa. Den… bat olketa still Solomon Islanders, ia, so iumi mas, olsem, make way fo olketa ia mixed marriage pikinini.
(Mark, 55, professional; Pijin as second language)
‘I am thinking that if we do not recognize Pijin as a language, it is as if we are taking away the rights of children for whom Pijin is the mother tongue. They do not have any other language. Still, they are Solomon Islanders and we must make room for these children born to mixed marriages.’
People like Mark did lament that Pijin is not promoted as the national language. However, the nationalist framework, because it is largely based on tenets of linguistic purism and linguistic authenticity, can also be, and most often is, mobilized to demonstrate its inapplicability to the Solomon case. The argument generally put forward is that there are too many vernacular languages in Solomon Islands, and that the only common language, Pijin, as a product of cultural contact, is too “artificial” and “inauthentic” to warrant its protection as part of Solomon culture.
Crossing ideologies: Some implications
How do these different language ideologies coalesce, and with what concrete consequences for Solomon Islanders? While the precolonial linguistic ideology sustains multilingualism and the pragmatic language ideology clearly favours the learning of Standard English (as linguistic capital for education abroad), the remainder of colonial language ideology in a context of growing national consciousness appears to have negative consequences for both the recognition of Pijin and the acquisition of English.
On the one hand, the weight of the colonial legacy—the association of English with social superiority through the pervasive linkage of language, race, and class status—makes it extremely difficult for Solomon Islanders to speak Standard English in their country. Pijin, as the de facto national language, is perceived as the language of solidarity and equality among fellow Solomon Islanders. Like Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and Bislama in Vanuatu (Siegel Reference Siegel1997:200), it has become a key element of the Solomon national identity. English, by contrast, remains perceived as the language of social inequality, making its use (except in extremely formal settings and by very senior members of the political and professional elites) socially inappropriate (see Swigart Reference Swigart1994 and Spitulnik Reference Spitulnik1998 for similar analyses in postcolonial Africa). In Honiara, this phenomenon is most striking in higher-education institutions such as the USP Honiara Center, where students are indeed expected and encouraged by their professors to speak Standard English, so that they can be properly prepared for their sojourn in Fiji, where the main USP campus is located. Yet, even in this educational context, it is virtually impossible for students to speak Standard English in classrooms: Doing so would immediately and durably lay students open to the accusation of “acting whiteman”—of in effect claiming to be socially superior to their fellow classmates.
(6) Mifala tritim dat iu should spikim Pijin nomoa kos mitufala semsem. (…) Iu should tok lo mi, olsem, normal language wea iumi iusim. (…) Mi no different man fo iu English lo mi.
(Gabriel, 24, student in Honiara; Pijin as first language)
‘We consider that the other one should speak Pijin because we both are of the same kind. (…) You should talk to me in the normal language that we use. (…) I am not different so that you can address in English to me.’
(7) Like criticism bae big tumas, ia. [laughs] O if iu English lo klas ia ot rolim eyes. Ot se ‘wat nao man ia laek provim samfala whiteman! Evri lokol nomoa!’
(Sarah, 20, student in Honiara; Pijin as first language)
‘Criticism will be huge. If you use English in class, they roll their eyes. They say: Is this guy trying to pretend he is a Whiteman! We're all just locals!’
As illustrated by the second quote, peer pressure is high and social sanctions against using Standard English strong (to the regret of many students). As a result, as was observed during two months of field research at the USP Honiara Center in 2007, students who speak out in class always resort to Pijin (Angeli Reference Angeli2008). Or rather, they resort to a variety of Pijin heavily mixed with English—largely due to the fact that all educational material, as well as all notes taken down by students (not literate in Pijin), are in English.Footnote 12 Peer pressure therefore curbs the pragmatic ideology and powerfully thwarts whatever strong desire the students may have to acquire proficiency in spoken Standard English.
On the other hand, this situation does not necessarily benefit Pijin. As previously mentioned, the nationalist and colonial ideologies, which are equally informed by European-biased conceptions of what a “real” language is, often agree to devalue Pijin and disqualify it as a potential official language, because it is a creole. When confronted with the official language statuses of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and of Bislama in Vanuatu (enshrined in the constitution of these countries), many young Solomon interviewees stressed that those pidgins are at least “real” Melanesian Pidgin and therefore more legitimate to receive official status. In doing so, they recurrently minimized the mutual intelligibility between Tok Pisin, Bislama, and Pijin, seemingly oblivious (or sometimes unaware, in the case of Bislama) of their relatedness and common history.
Among the youth, this resistance is anchored in the idea that an original “pure” Pijin may have existed in the past, which would have been better suited to become a national language, but that it no longer exists in Solomon Islands due to Anglicization. What young people mostly speak in Honiara —what we label in this article “Urban Pijin”—is therefore unworthy of national protection. But this belief is based on the transformation of social consciousness, independent from the colonial legacy, and is closely related to the construction of an urban identity in Honiara. This point deserves additional exploration.
The paradoxical situation of Urban Pijin
(8) Pijin we used to speak. Bat lo Solomon Islands, distaem, nomoa nao. Pipol adapt lo English, gogo, hem go lus nao. Pijin hem go lus nao. So distaem pipol se ‘oh, mifala go lo bus’, for example. Bus hem English wod. Hem should talem ‘mifala go lo sigorafe’, kos hem nao original Pijin blo Solomon Islands.
(Lionel, 23, student in Honiara; Pijin as second language)
‘We used to speak Pijin. But in the Solomon Islands now, it's no longer the case. People move to English, and progressively, it gets lost. Pijin gets lost. So nowadays, people say “oh, mifala go lo bus” [we go to the forest], for example. “Bus” is an English word. One should say “mifala go lo sigorafe”, because this would be the original Pijin of Solomon Islands.’
Contrasting an allegedly original “pure” Pijin and the variety of Pijin now spoken in Honiara is a key feature of the middle-class youth discourse. This claimed opposition between “Old Pijin” and “Urban Pijin” (further analyzed from a linguistic point of view in another study (Jourdan & Angeli Reference Jourdan and Angeli2009)) highlights the complexity and flexibility of current language ideologies in Honiara.Footnote 13 However, we first define more precisely what lies under the label “Urban Pijin”.
Defining Urban Pijin
In a nutshell, Urban Pijin is characterized by a continuum of ways of speaking Pijin that involves much linguistic mixing, with more or less usage made of English in the mix, in ways that are difficult to describe in terms of rules or principles but that seem to become increasingly associated with age cline, education, and time of residence in Honiara.Footnote 14 The mixing of English and Pijin prevails in many public contexts in Honiara, although it is not officially recognized—at school, at church, on radio channels, even occasionally in Parliament. Mixing is also a common practice, although under a slightly different form, in the daily home life of many urbanites. The usual forms of interaction of Pijin with English involve bilingualism with diglossia (Pijin for most oral communication and English for all written communication); code-switching; code-mixing; borrowing of English lexemes phonologically and morphologically assimilated or not to Pijin phonology and morphosyntax; Pijin words calqued onto an English sentence matrix; and English words calqued onto a Pijin sentence matrix. Some speakers may use predominantly one or two of these forms of interaction, whereas others use many of them, at times in the same speech event.
As illustrated by the excerpts presented in this article, mixing is a very common practice in Honiara; but the type of code-switching involved in most communication events depends on the speakers' language proficiency in both languages, which is related to education and class membership. One of the peculiarities of Pijin/English bilingualism in Honiara is that speakers who know English well also know Pijin, but the reverse is not necessarily true. Among adults, many Pijin speakers do not know English. More and more young Honiarans of all social classes, however, are exposed to English at school at an early age, and we can expect that bilingualism in these two languages will eventually become the norm.
The situation of Urban Pijin in fact resembles in many regards that of other creoles that have coexisted alongside their lexifier in a low-high language relationship. While the development of the incipient varieties that comprise Urban Pijin brings to mind the often criticizedFootnote 15 “post-creole continuum model”, and the series of lects often applied to Caribbean creoles, it does not correspond to the situation witnessed in Honiara. We find here that budding varieties of Pijin are not necessarily developing in relation to English, or with English as the target language, even though English, the language of upwardly social mobility, exerts enormous pressures on Pijin (see Siegel Reference Siegel1997 for similar conclusions concerning Tok Pisin). While some speakers deliberately speak a variety of Pijin that they want to be as close to English as possible, for affect or for pragmatic reasons, others do not: They exploit the linguistic system of Pijin that develops partly independently from English (while making room for lexical borrowings from English). About 80% of Pijin's vocabulary is derived directly or with lexical reanalysis from English. We do not consider therefore that contemporary English loan words inserted into an otherwise Pijin sentence represent Anglicization of that language: We understand them as neologisms derived from the source lexicon. By contrast, we would call Anglicization the process whereby Pijin morphosyntax would be bent in the direction of English, or phrases would be borrowed wholesale with more and more English in the mix over the years. While we find some occurrences of this in the speech of some speakers, there are not many. Our informants, all members of the middle-class either by birth, aspiration, social status, or newly acquired socioeconomic means, share the characteristics of speaking English well—that they would use English as a linguistic resource when speaking Pijin is therefore not surprising (Angeli Reference Angeli2008). But the reverse (using Pijin inside English) is also true. Our data show that, to date, the situation involves more code-switching and code-mixing than restructuring along a continuum in the direction of English.
Urban Pijin in the midst of adverse language ideologies
Even though Anglicization is far from being demonstrated for all registers of the language, young speakers frequently qualify Pijin as “broken Pijin”, or “broken Pijin-English”. Interestingly, this latter phrase takes here a meaning (i.e. Pijin getting broken as it gets closer to English) quite distinct from the one that prevailed under the colonial period (i.e. Pijin being born as broken English).
(9) Tude, otta pikinini ot mixim English wetem Pijin. Hem no rili Pijin. (…) Distaem nao hem broken, broken Pijin ia, broken English.
(Lydia, 23, student in Honiara; Pijin as second language)
‘Today, the children are mixing English with Pijin. It is not really Pijin. These days it is broken Pijin, broken English.’
The terms that young Honiarans tend to use to designate the variety of “mixed” Pijin that they speak are clearly derogatory (e.g. broken Pijin, kruket Pijin); but they never directly condemn this variety, nor would they relinquish it. They value it, as a flexible, modern, “multicultural” language, open to the globalized world. Young people actually consider that the “new” variety of Pijin they speak is much closer to English than to Old Pijin and to other Melanesian Pidgins—which are all assimilated, in a fetishizing manner, under the label of “real” Pidgin (Tok Pisin, from Papua New Guinea, is often taken as most representative of it). This perception, contradicted by the fact that the three dialects are mutually intelligible, may well express a desire to associate themselves symbolically with the highly valued, “developed” English-speaking international community.
By contrast, the relationship of young middle-class people to what they call Old Pijin is distinctly ambivalent. Emblematic of a past time, Old Pijin remains prestigious as it is endowed with the aura of respectability associated with the elders and kastom traditions. Though itself a collection of regional ways of speaking Pijin, it is developing as a powerful linguistic yardstick. It serves as the point of comparison and reference for all recent transformations of contemporary Pijin that seem to differ from it, slightly or significantly. The labels used to qualify it—“proper”, “real”, “pure” Pijin—clearly express the reverence young people feel they have, or should have, for it. Old Pijin, which they associate with elders in the villages (and allegedly dying with them), and which, because of its authenticity, would have been the only Pijin worth protecting by language policies, is in fact a language largely fantasized by them. Young people imagine it as being influenced neither by English nor by vernaculars.
(10) Real Pijin, olsem full Pijin nao, olsem no langgus moa o no mixmix. No mix moa wetem English o langgus, full time Pijin nomoa.
(June, 23, student in Honiara; Pijin as second language)
‘Real Pijin is like full Pijin, there is no vernacular or mixing. No mix with English or vernaculars, only Pijin full time.’
At the same time, some young people also consider Old Pijin as “quaint” and “old fashioned”, and people speaking it are often times seen as unsophisticated. The derogatory qualifiers of lokol ‘local’, kanaka ‘hillbilly’ are heard at times. They label people arriving from the rural areas if and when their old-fashioned Pijin, linked to their lack of familiarity with the urban mores, makes them look and sound really “strange”.
Let us go back to the different ideologies that we discussed previously. The idea of Urban Pijin being “broken” is indeed complicated by the fact that Pijin is a pidgin, that is, a language with “mixed” linguistic origin. Based on colonial ideology, Pijin is conceived of as “corrupted” English, which, hopefully, may over time evolve into “proper” English. Based on the nationalist framework, the Anglicization of Pijin that is allegedly taking place is perceived as a new corruption that distorts the original “pure” Pijin. In this context, the “corruption” of Pijin can be at once lamented and celebrated, and issues of linguistic normativity become singularly complex. Most interestingly, both of these two distinct perspectives, which coalesce to stigmatize contemporary Pijin even more so than before, are often held by one person, who may alternatively resort to one or the other, depending on the issue under discussion. Generally, they do so to disqualify Pijin as a national language and language of education. In fact, they do so often for pragmatic reasons, and with the desire, overt or covert, to acquire Standard English in order to better their educational and professional opportunities. And yet, paradoxically, among the same youth, Pijin is definitely a language of solidarity and even of national pride when studying abroad, which they do not easily relinquish to the benefit of English, even though the English-speaking environment (e.g. in Suva) would allow them to do so. The gap between anti-Pijin discourses and actual language practices among many Solomon students at the USP in Fiji is indeed quite outstanding (Angeli Reference Angeli2008:161).
Conclusion
Clearly, Pijin has confounded the many predictions that it would die away, which dominated the colonial discourse on language (Keesing Reference Keesing, Baldauf and Luke1990). Today in Honiara, the language is widely used by all people in their daily interactions, even university-educated people, and even in the most formal settings such as Parliament. By virtue of being the mother tongue of two generations of urbanites and the lingua franca of the town (and the country), Pijin has acquired obvious social legitimacy (see Jourdan Reference Jourdan1996). Yet many Solomon Islanders still refuse it any linguistic legitimacy. Two main reasons may explain this apparent contradiction. First, years of Pijin bashing at school have left their mark on the population, and most importantly among those who still control the socioeconomic power in the country. Second, Pijin is not taught in schools as a subject—only English is. Were people taught Pijin syntax, the way they are taught English syntax, they would realize that Pijin's grammar is not a debased version of English syntax, but that it owes much to the syntax of the ancestral languages of their forebears who brought Kanaka pidgin back to the Solomon Islands (Keesing Reference Keesing1988). The establishment of Pijin and English as distinct languages of equal worth, through formal teaching and through the recognition of Pijin as a national language, could produce not only symbolic benefits (in the recognition that there exists a truly local national language), but also tangible ones—such as disinhibiting students from being afraid of speaking Standard English, because it could encourage them to consider it as a “normal” second language rather than as a language socially loaded (Angeli Reference Angeli2008). Yet, if Pijin is granted the status of official language alongside English, this will raise questions as to which variety of Pijin should be legitimized (but this is outside the scope of this article).
The situation we just analyzed is an excellent example of the complexity of the linguistic situations in some postcolonial contexts. Here, what makes the situation so complex is that linguistic ideologies are not replacing each other, but accumulate and interact, shedding new light on each other. Certainly, the colonial linguistic order that established a strict vertical relationship between languages is now being challenged. There is no longer a fixed hierarchy, as competing linguistic ideologies make room for a dynamic relationship between languages. All of these language ideologies coexist in a fluid way. Each can be highlighted in some contexts and inhibited in others. Each can be brought to bear strategically, most strikingly to advocate or resist the recognition of Pijin as a national language, but more generally for social positioning and identity creation.
Thus the symbolic domination of English over Pijin has significantly shifted in meaning over the years, as young middle-class Honiarans now reinterpret those colonial readings of Pijin through the lens of nationalist and pragmatic linguistic ideologies. However, so long as English—the gatekeeper to higher education and upward social mobility—functions as the major linguistic capital, its symbolic domination will likely remain unchallenged.
