PIDGIN ENGLISH IN FIJI: A SOCIOLINGUISTI C HISTORY

Abstract

The development of pidgin English in the Pacific in connection with imported plantation labor has been well documented. Three varieties and their sociolinguistic histories have been described in detail: Queensland Canefields English (Dutton 1980), Samoan Plantation Pidgin (Muhlhausler 1978), and Hawaiian Pidgin English (Reinecke 1969 [1935]). Nothing substantial, however, has been written on pidgin English in another important plantation country: Fiji. Writers who have mentioned the language situation on Fiji’s early plantations do not provide a very clear picture. For example, the pioneer of pidgin and creole studies, Hugo Schuchardt, writes: “Several sources on Viti Levu have categorically denied the existence of an English Jargon.” But he immediately goes on to say, “perhaps because they were thinking of the natives and not of the foreign workers.” He also reports that E. L. Layard, the British Consul in Noumea, “believes Beche-le-mar English is acquired in Queensland and on the Fiji Islands” (Schuchardt 1980 [1883]: 16, 17). In a later article Schuchardt mentions correspondence from the Imperial German Consular Administrator in Apia, Samoa, who says that pidgin English “does exist among the workers recruited from Melanesia who live on the Samoan Islands, the Fiji Islands, and in Queensland.” However, correspondence from the German Consul in Levuka reports “no Beche-la-mer exists there,” and Lorimer Fison, a missionary in Fiji, says: “Natives of other islands who came to Fiji learned Fijian, not English” (ibid. 1980 [1889]: 24, 28).

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