Da Kine Tawk: Identity and Social Meaning Through the Use of Basilectal Pidgin in Hawai`i
Clint Awai-Jennings, Ohio State University
In the State of Hawai`i, there are over 600,000 speakers of Hawai`i Creole English, known to its speakers as Pidgin. Pidgin emerged from the sugarcane plantations in the Hawaiian Kingdom during the last part of the 19th century. This English-based creole contains elements from the ancestral languages of its speakers – Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese, Tagalog, and others. Though there is a large speech community, Pidgin is a language of family and friends. Pidgin is not taught in schools, used in workplaces, and is frowned upon in most public spaces. This language lacks a dictionary and only has a small grammar book. Despite all these facts, Pidgin has persisted in use, not bowing to English, but instead continues to evolve and remain a major part of the identity of its speakers.
My work focuses on the social meaning behind the use of Pidgin. More specifically, the use of basilectal Pidgin, which could be seen as signaling membership to an almost inner circle, i.e., an in-group of an in-group. The use of key phrases and grammatical markers are some of the strategies used to signal their Local-ness in their everyday social transactions. I will be looking at how Pidgin speakers navigate through this language situation, as well as the motivations for their choices.