Pijin at school in Solomon Islands: language ideologies and the nation

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the reasons that have excluded Pijin, the lingua franca of Solomon Islands, South West Pacific, from being used as a medium of instruction, and why this may now become possible. Following a short sociolinguistic sketch, I present the colonial and post-colonial linguistic ideologies that shaped sociolinguistic relationships in Solomon Islands. I then analyze the dynamics between Pijin and English as expressed by various interest groups, and then outline the development of nationalist ideologies that consider Pijin in a new light. The article concludes with a discussion of the impact of PRIDE (Pacific regional initiatives for the delivery of basic education) on the possible integration of Pijin as a medium of instruction in primary schools particularly.

Keywords:

• language planning
• language ideology
• colonization
• schools
• Solomon Islands Pijin

Notes

The PRIDE project (funded by NZaid and European Development Fund, and implemented by the University of the South Pacific (USP) started in 2004 and was slated to finish in 2009. It is an initiative of the Pacific Forum Ministers of Education. Its goal is To expand opportunities for children and youth to acquire the values, knowledge and skills that will enable them to actively participate in the social, spiritual, economic and cultural development of their communities and to contribute positively to creating sustainable futures. (www.usp.ac.fj/pride)

Pijin is one of the three Melanesian pidgins that stabilized on the plantations of Queensland: its syntax is predominantly mapped on that of the Eastern Solomonic Languages (see Keesing, 1988) and 80% of its vocabulary comes from English.

In the same census, 85.6% declared they spoke English, 78% declared they spoke a local language, and 78% declared they spoke another language. These figures, which hinge on the definition of what constitutes ‘speaking’, are certainly erroneous in face of the ethnographic evidence to the contrary gathered during 30 years of field research in Honiara. In 2008, when asked if they could speak an ancestral language, 13 young urbanites between the ages of 18 and 30 years old, answered yes without hesitation. When asked to be more specific, they explained that they could only say ‘hello’ and a few words here and there, but that they certainly were not able to understand or hold conversations in that language.

Outside of ideological dimensions linked to the prestige of speaking English, this confusion may explain the high proportion of rural speakers who declared they spoke English to the 2009 census enumerators: 69% said they spoke English; 66.6% said they spoke Pijin (2009 census, Table 1).

Substantial portions of this section have been published in Jourdan (1990) but it has been updated here to account for the changes that have taken place in the 20 intervening years.

Students who cannot continue their studies because of lack of school seats are called school leavers. They are not drop outs in the sense we know the word. Increasingly the term used to refer to them is ‘pushed out’.

Except for the few expatriates who stayed in the country after independence, there was no English speech community per se, and at any rate, these were not communities to which the local children had an access.

All the middle-class families I have lived with since 1982, my first sojourn in Solomon Islands, have asked me to tutor their children in English after school.

Some children of the elite are being introduced to English early on as a second (or third language) at home. This is rare, however. But they pick up English early when they are sent to private elitist day-care centers and primary schools such as Chung Wah or Woodford's schools.

I will not explore here the impact on language use created by the presence of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, called locally RAMSI. About 2000 military personnel and ‘professional experts’ have been in the country since 2003, the bulk of them in Honiara. Their presence reinforces the social visibility and audibility of English in the city and is bound to alter the language game there.

If ever the proposal of using Pijin at school is successful, it remains to be decided which variety of Pijin to use: the more anglicized variety spoken by the members of the young urban middle class, or the more classic variety found in the villages.