Jourdan Shades of legitimacy. 1 The shades of legitimacy of Solomon Islands Pijin Christine Jourdan, Concordia University 1 Published in: Pidginization and Creolization in Post Colonial Contexts. Edited by Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho. London: Brill Publishers, pp. 78-95 Introduction 2 I recall vividly the strange thought that crossed my mind early in my research on the Pijin of the Solomon Islands back in the early 1980s. This language, spoken by almost everyone on an everyday basis in Honiara, the capital city of this small Pacific Islands archipelago, was in reality no one’s language. By no one’s language I meant that no one seemed to identify with it, nobody was claiming it as his or hers, no one seemed to have any vested interest in it, linguistic or social. Yet all urbanites had to speak Pijin if they wanted to have a life in town. Pijin was available to all, unavoidable, yet claimed by no one. Many, having embraced the colonial linguistic ideologies transmitted by the local school system, considered it a ‘debased jargon that had no grammar’. It was clearly illegitimate in their eyes. And yet, Pijin was so much part of the life they lived in town that a clear symbiosis existed between the two. This contradiction was puzzling. Today, the situation and status of Pijin are changing. Not only is Pijin the cement of urban social life and culture, it is also the sole mother tongue of two generations of young urban people. It is their language. Angeli and I have shown (2014) that when combined, these two linguistic 1 Research in Solomon Islands was made possible by grants from the Canada Research Council for Social Sciences. I thank the Solomon Islands participants in my research for their forbearance, and the editors of this volume for their comments on the initial version of this text. 2 Parts of this article borrow ideas and arguments from Jourdan 1996, and Jourdan and Angeli 2014.