Apart from a handful of studies (e.g., Kinney 1956), linguists know little about what variation exists in Hawaiian and what factors constrain the variation. In this paper, we present an analysis of phonetic variation in the word "keia," meaning "this," examining the social, linguistic, and probabilistic factors that constrain…

This paper examines how flows of people, media, money, technology, and ideologies move through the world, with attention to how these scapes (Appadurai 1990, 1996, 2013) shape identity construction among language learners, both in and out of classrooms. After illustrating intersecting scapes in sociolinguistic terms, I explore the relevance of…

Some 40 years ago, language transmission in Hawai'i was interrupted among Hawaiians across all islands with the sole exception of language maintenance among a small community on the tiny, isolated Ni'ihau Island. Today, Hawaiian has returned as spoken and written medium with some 5000-7000 new speakers. The present paper provides an up-to-date…

This article analyzes four Hollywood films set in Hawai'i to shed light on how particular languages and language varieties "style" (Auer 2007; Coupland 2007) Local/Hawaiian and mainland U.S. characters as certain kinds of people. Through an analysis of films featuring "haole" ("white, outsider") male protagonists who…

This dissertation takes a discursive approach to Hawai'i stand-up comedy, which is a highly dramaturgical genre, and it examines the cultural specificity of Hawaii comedy in an explicitly interactional context. This culturally-specific performative genre is a discursive site where comedians and their audiences jointly construct multivocal humor…

In this essay, the author examines the attitudes that people in Hawai'i have about Hawai'i Creole. The author first describes the background of the language and explores educators' views from the 1920s to 1940s about Hawai'i Creole (HC), which was first viewed as the the "Pidgin problem" in Hawai'i. The frustrations expressed by…

In this article, the author explores local culture and local cultural practices in an attempt to understand the forces and influences that have affected the development of a local identity as well as the persistence of Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole) as its language. The author begins with an introductory discussion of themes that emerge in two short…

This article presents an adaptation of a position paper written by Da Pidgin Coup, a group of concerned faculty and students in the Department of Second Language Studies (SLS). In fall 1999, the group became concerned about a statement made by the chairman of the Board of Education implicating Pidgin in the poor results of the students of Hawai'i…

People's attitude towards using the Pidgin language from Hawaii is described. The way in which Pidgin is changing is analyzed with the help of Pidgin linguistics students from University Hawaii.

Examines uncertainty reduction processes in interethnic relationships between Hawaiian Japanese and Caucasians. Indicates that ethnicity, stage of relationship, and ethnolinguistic identity influenced the set of dependable variables. Suggests that ethnolinguistic identity helps explain aspects of interethnic encounters that are intergroup based,…

Discusses the language and linguistic transformation of Hawaii, viewing language as socially constitutive, creative, and recreative and pointing out similarities between the language transformation and the Western penetration of Hawaii. (Author/CB)

Examines the conversational behavior of eight-year-old Hawaiian boys and girls of either Caucasian or Japanese descent in same ethnic and same-gender pairs or in mixed-ethnic and/or mixed-gender pairs. Results suggest that temporal speech patterns are stable characteristics of children's vocal behavior, and that these conversational rhythms vary…

This article discusses language planning activities at the East-West Culture Learning Institute in Hawaii. Activities have been planned to facilitate and orient the use of the language planning approach by practitioners who have increasingly focused on the relation of development and modernization to language, and need to understand how language…

The purpose of this paper is to outline theory and methods associated with a research strategy for identifying elements of cultural congruence or incogruence in classroom speech events. The hypothesis of "sociolinguistic interference" proposed by D. Hymes is discussed and studies of language education of Hawaiians and other minorities…

Describes sociohistoric influences on the development of Papahana Kaiapuni, an indigenous language-immersion program in kindergarten through grade 12 in selected public schools in Hawaii. Highlights the importance of parental activism and the value of this program as a model for other threatened languages. (SLD)