Sociolinguistic situation

The New Hebrides became politically independent from Britain and France in 1980. The nation renamed itself at that time as Vanuatu, a word which derives from widely distributed indigenous words of the shape vanua ‘land’ and tu ‘stand’, which was intended to symbolize the independent status of the new republic. Vanuatu is a highly multilingual nation boasting at least 80 actively spoken languages (and up to a couple of dozen other languages that have either become extinct or which have become moribund since initial contact with Europeans) distributed across a population of about 200,000 (Crowley 2000). It has the most complex linguistic demography of any country in the world in terms of the number of languages per head of population.

At independence, Bislama was declared by the constitution to be the national language, largely in order to avoid the need to make what would have been a politically divisive choice between English and French. This declaration makes Vanuatu unique among the countries of the world in that it has a former pidgin language that has higher constitutional status than a former colonial language. English and French are recognized alongside Bislama as co-equal “official languages”, and they (but not Bislama) are also declared to be “languages of education”. However, Bislama is effectively the default language throughout the country when people with different vernacular backgrounds come together, with English and French seldom being used informally or conversationally.

Bislama began its life as a plantation pidgin performing a fairly restricted range of functions and having, therefore, a relatively restricted vocabulary. However, over the last few decades it has dramatically expanded in the range of contexts in which it is used. It is now widely used as a language, particularly in urban areas, of religious worship, national and local politics (including parliamentary debate), the bureaucracy, the legal system, shopping, work, sport, the radio, friendship and romance, and even family life. As a result, the lexicon of Bislama has expanded dramatically to allow its speakers to meet a wide variety of new needs. Much of this expansion has been met by borrowing from English (e.g. palemen ‘parliament’) or, to a lesser extent, French (e.g. lepap ‘pope’ < le pape), though a fair amount of new vocabulary has also developed spontaneously on the basis of original Bislama roots (e.g. mama loa ‘constitution’ < mama ‘mother’ + loa ‘law’).

A national identity for the new Republic of Vanuatu is currently being forged, but this identity is largely expressed through the medium of Bislama rather than any of the local vernaculars, or through English or French. Accompanying this sense of national identity expressed through Bislama, associated to a significant extent with the relatively young urban population in the main centres of Port Vila and Luganville, is a very rapid stylistic expansion of the language into areas of youthful enthusiasm and adventure. Since independence, there has been a dramatic resurgence of traditional kava drinking, which is largely carried out through the medium of Bislama. Patterns of youthful indulgence in alcohol, partying and dancing, along with urban issues such as unemployment and inter-communal disputes have also brought Bislama into new social domains for which its speakers have needed to acquire new vocabulary and stylistic variation (Crowley 1989).

Although nearly all children these days attend English- or French-medium primary schools for six years where metropolitan languages represent the dominant (or only) medium of instruction – and smaller numbers proceed to secondary and even tertiary education –, neither English nor French has any significant use informally among Ni-Vanuatu (as citizens of Vanuatu are called). These formerly colonial languages function as “high” languages in a kind of diglossic relationship with Bislama at the national level, being reserved largely for written or official purposes, with Bislama being the language of choice even for most tertiary-educated Ni-Vanuatu in informal and spoken contexts.

Despite the fact that Bislama began its history as nobody’s first language, thereby qualifying unambiguously as a pidgin language, it has gradually been acquiring small numbers of first-language speakers. Possibly as much as ten percent of the population today grows up speaking Bislama and no local vernacular, largely as a result of marriages between people from different language groups living in urban centres or on plantations. Because of this, some writers insist on referring to Bislama as a “creole” rather than as a “pidgin”, though in reality there are no clearly recognizable features by which Bislama acquired as a second language and Bislama acquired as a first language can be differentiated, with the distinction therefore being essentially meaningless in the local context. My own preference is to avoid such a pointless distinction by referring to Bislama generically as a “contact language”.