From multilingualism to bilingualism: changes in language use, language value, and social mobility among Engdewu speakers in the Solomon Islands

ABSTRACT

On the island of Santa Cruz in the Solomon Islands, the Engdewu language is facing imminent language shift because of the increasing use of the lingua franca Solomon Islands Pijin in the community. In this article, I argue that this language shift is occurring because of changes to the social structure in Baemawz, one of the villages where Engdewu is spoken. The social structure is changing in two ways. First, because of the desire for economic advancement, people migrate off the island more frequently than in the past introducing them to the value of Pijin as a language for social and economic mobility. Second, intermarriage patterns are moving away from patrilocality to neolocality; husbands can now move into their wives’ village bringing with them their local language. These changes affect the values that Engdewu and Pijin have in the community and the way these languages are used among children and adults leading to replacive bilingualism in a historically multilingual society.

KEYWORDS:

• Language shift
• multilingualism
• language ideology
• intermarriage
• migration
• Melanesia

Acknowledgments

The research for this paper took place in 2008 during my Master’s program in the Anthropology Department at California State University, Long Beach. I would like to thank Barbara LeMaster, Alexandra Jaffe, Sue Russell and Brenda Boerger for their help designing this research project and providing feedback on my initial findings. The writing of this article took place during my PhD program at UCSD. I would like to thank Kathryn Woolard and John Haviland for their insightful comments that helped shape my findings into a journal article. In addition, I would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers whose comments and critiques strengthened the final version of this article. Finally, I would like to thank the people of Baemawz for welcoming me into their lives and sharing their stories and with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Rachel Emerine Hicks http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5302-2380

Notes

1 In previous work, I have called Engdewu ‘Nagu,’ but in 2009 the name was changed to Engdewu in the Ethnologue (Boerger et al. 2012). In writing this paper, I have used Engdewu instead of Nagu and any exceptions were my informants’ specific word choice.

2 Spelling of places and languages is based on the alphabet formulated by Brenda Boerger (see Boerger 2007 for more explanation). Approximate pronunciations for language and village names in IPA: ‘Natqgu’ [natʉgu], ‘Engdewu’ [ϵŋdewu], ‘Nalrgo’ [nalɞgo], ‘Äiwoo’ [æewu], and ‘Baemawz’ [baimawə].

3 See Emerine (2009) for the complete set of interview questions.

4 Twenty-six interviews, not 23 because in three instances I directly interviewed two adults in one household.

5 OLAC, the online open language archives, lists some of the works available in Pijin, http://www.language-archives.org/language/pis accessed 15 September 2016.

6 Eleven haf-hafs not 10 because in couple 7 both individuals are haf-hafs.