Bilingualism and creolization in Solomon Islands

The paper takes a cultural approach to the study of creolization and argues that the expansion of Pijin as the lingua franca of the Solomon Islands was curtailed, during the greater part of its social history (1) by the fact that most adults were bilingual or multilingual and (2) that Pijin was not associated with a cultural world that had legitimacy in the mind of Pijin speakers. The paper starts with a presentation of the nature and extent of multilingualism in the history of the Solomon Islands and Honiara, capital city of the country; it continues with a discussion of the process of creolization understood as inherently linked to social change. The conclusion argues that creolization takes place gradually.