Language contact in a plantation environment : a sociolinguistic history of Fiji

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.

• Part I. Background: 1. The plantation scenario
• 2. Language contact in Fiji before the plantation era
• Part II. Languages from the Pacific: 3. Labourers from the Pacific
• 4. The plantation language: English or Fijian?
• 5. Plantation Pidgin Fijian
• Part III. Languages from India: 6. Indian Labourers
• 7. Plantation languages of the Indian labourers
• 8. Plantation Pidgin Hindustani
• Part IV. The linguistic legacies of the plantations: 9. The development of Fiji Hindustani
• 10. Decendants of Pacific Islands laborers
• 11. Pidgin languages in Fiji today
• 12. Conclusions.