Language Contact in a Plantation Environment: A Sociolinguistic History of Fiji

Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language

by Jeff Siegel

Jeff Siegel's fascinating book provides a sociolinguistic history of language contact in Fiji where, from the 1860s until 1920, some 90,000 labourers from other Pacific islands and from India worked on the European-owned plantations. It focuses on the pidgins and other language varieties developed to meet the needs of peoples from different linguistic backgrounds and different cultures, and it brings a new standard of coverage and comprehensiveness to the notion of the 'life cycle' of pidginization and koineization. Importantly, it also includes data on the linguistic situation that is the legacy of the plantation era. The study is therefore a valuable contribution to our knowledge of an area that has been relatively neglected in sociolinguistics. At the same time, it is a far-sighted and lucid contribution to the continuing and controversial debates about the origins and structure of pidgin languages and about other sociolingustic phenomena that result from language contact.

324 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 1987

Reviews

[SpentCello · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an intriguing and thorough overview of the state of language use in Fiji in the 1980s, with a strong focus on contact languages. Although a lot of the terms and generally accepted theories have changed since the book was published, it still offers great insight into the language situation in plantation-era Fiji. I'd read other linguistic and ethnomusicological articles about Fiji previously, but this was much more fleshed out and gave more context to the other papers I have read.

In saying that, the book does suffer from a (necessary) overreliance on very small sample sizes and pools of speakers, particularly to do with the historical contact varieties - some examples and conclusions relying on the tiniest scrap of tangential evidence. And in some ways, the scope is too broad, giving you an arbitrary collection of examples in passing and then moving right on through dozens of dialects/pidgins/other language varieties.

While I found this an interesting read, it had too broad of a scope and is now quite aged in terms of linguistic research. Really only useful if you have a specific interest in the language varieties discussed or if you have an interest in how linguistic discourse on pidgins/contact languages has developed over time.