Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: sociolinguistics and English around the world
- 1 The UK and the USA
- 2 Ireland
- 3 Urban and rural varieties of Hiberno-English
- 4 Sociolinguistic variation and methodology: after as a Dublin variable
- 5 The interpretation of social constraints on variation in Belfast English
- 6 Canada
- 7 Phonological variation and recent language change in St John's English
- 8 Sociophonetic variation in Vancouver
- 9 Social differentiation in Ottawa English
- 10 New Zealand
- 11 Social constraints on the phonology of New Zealand English
- 12 Maori English: a New Zealand myth?
- 13 Sporting formulae in New Zealand English: two models of male solidarity
- 14 Australia
- 15 /æ/ and /a:/ in Australian English
- 16 Variation in subject–verb agreement in Inner Sydney English
- 17 Australian Creole English: the effect of cultural knowledge on language and memory
- 18 South Asia
- 19 Final consonant cluster simplification in a variety of Indian English
- 20 Patterns of language use in a bilingual setting in India
- 21 Speech acts in an indigenised variety: sociocultural values and language variation
- 22 Southeast Asia and Hongkong
- 23 Stylistic shifts in the English of the Philippine print media
- 24 Variation in Malaysian English: the pragmatics of languages in contact
- 25 Social and linguistic constraints on variation in the use of two grammatical variables in Singapore English
- 26 East Africa (Tanzania and Kenya)
- 27 The politics of the English language in Kenya and Tanzania
- 28 National and subnational features in Kenyan English
- 29 Southern Africa
- 30 Sources and consequences of miscommunication in Afrikaans English – South African English encounters
- 31 Syntactic variation in South African Indian English: the relative clause
- 32 The social significance of language use and language choice in a Zambian urban setting: an empirical study of three neighbourhoods in Lusaka
- 33 West Africa
- 34 The pronoun system in Nigerian Pidgin: a preliminary study
- 35 The sociolinguistics of prepositional usage in Nigerian English
- 36 Social and linguistic constraints on plural marking in Liberian English
- 37 The Caribbean
- 38 Standardisation in a creole continuum situation: the Guyana case
- 39 Gender roles and linguistic variation in the Belizean Creole community
- 40 Sociolinguistic variation in Cane Walk: a quantitative case study
- 41 The Pacific
- 42 Watching girls pass by in Tok Pisin
- 43 Sociolinguistic variation and language attitudes in Hawaii
- 44 Variation in Fiji English
- Index of topics
- Index of place names
41 - The Pacific
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: sociolinguistics and English around the world
- 1 The UK and the USA
- 2 Ireland
- 3 Urban and rural varieties of Hiberno-English
- 4 Sociolinguistic variation and methodology: after as a Dublin variable
- 5 The interpretation of social constraints on variation in Belfast English
- 6 Canada
- 7 Phonological variation and recent language change in St John's English
- 8 Sociophonetic variation in Vancouver
- 9 Social differentiation in Ottawa English
- 10 New Zealand
- 11 Social constraints on the phonology of New Zealand English
- 12 Maori English: a New Zealand myth?
- 13 Sporting formulae in New Zealand English: two models of male solidarity
- 14 Australia
- 15 /æ/ and /a:/ in Australian English
- 16 Variation in subject–verb agreement in Inner Sydney English
- 17 Australian Creole English: the effect of cultural knowledge on language and memory
- 18 South Asia
- 19 Final consonant cluster simplification in a variety of Indian English
- 20 Patterns of language use in a bilingual setting in India
- 21 Speech acts in an indigenised variety: sociocultural values and language variation
- 22 Southeast Asia and Hongkong
- 23 Stylistic shifts in the English of the Philippine print media
- 24 Variation in Malaysian English: the pragmatics of languages in contact
- 25 Social and linguistic constraints on variation in the use of two grammatical variables in Singapore English
- 26 East Africa (Tanzania and Kenya)
- 27 The politics of the English language in Kenya and Tanzania
- 28 National and subnational features in Kenyan English
- 29 Southern Africa
- 30 Sources and consequences of miscommunication in Afrikaans English – South African English encounters
- 31 Syntactic variation in South African Indian English: the relative clause
- 32 The social significance of language use and language choice in a Zambian urban setting: an empirical study of three neighbourhoods in Lusaka
- 33 West Africa
- 34 The pronoun system in Nigerian Pidgin: a preliminary study
- 35 The sociolinguistics of prepositional usage in Nigerian English
- 36 Social and linguistic constraints on plural marking in Liberian English
- 37 The Caribbean
- 38 Standardisation in a creole continuum situation: the Guyana case
- 39 Gender roles and linguistic variation in the Belizean Creole community
- 40 Sociolinguistic variation in Cane Walk: a quantitative case study
- 41 The Pacific
- 42 Watching girls pass by in Tok Pisin
- 43 Sociolinguistic variation and language attitudes in Hawaii
- 44 Variation in Fiji English
- Index of topics
- Index of place names
Summary
Introduction
The Pacific is a vast area containing a large number of indigenous languages, Asian mainland languages, half a dozen European languages and a number of pidgins and creoles. Here I will take the Pacific to include the island nations and territories of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (excluding Australia and New Zealand). These three areas are taken by geographers and others to comprise Oceania. Micronesia includes the island groups east of the Philippines and north of the equator. They include, for example, the Mariana, Marshall, Caroline and Gilbert Islands and have a land area of about 1,335 square miles. Melanesia comprises the island groups in the southwestern Pacific extending southeastwards from the Admiralty Islands to Fiji and includes such nations as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. Polynesia consists of a group of islands in the eastern and southeastern Pacific extending from New Zealand north to Hawaii and east to Easter Island.
This section includes papers representing two of the areas of Oceania, namely, Melanesia (Mühlhäusler on Tok Pisin, and Siegel on English in Fiji) and Polynesia (Sato on English in Hawaii). Despite the considerable interest in Oceania on the part of anthropologists and linguists (see Watson-Gegeo 1986 for an overview of research on the use of indigenous languages), to my knowledge no systematic studies have been done on the history and use of English (or any other European language such as German) in Micronesia, so this area is not represented here.
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- English around the WorldSociolinguistic Perspectives, pp. 617 - 636Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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