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LG474 Language Rights

Professor Peter Patrick
Daniel Oesterle

The Situation of Hawaiian and Hawaii

Creole English
A Language Rights Perspective on Language in Hawaii 1

Introduction
The Hawaiian Islands form a unique and immensely rich ecosystem with regard to
flora and fauna. But, unbeknownst to many outsiders, the same can be said about languages
in Hawaii. Due to its history, its geographical location and fertile land, Hawaii has developed
a remarkable linguistic diversity for such a small area. But while the biodiversity of the
Hawaiian Islands has been responsible for Hawaii often being called a paradise, the
conditions for speakers of some of its languages have been less than paradisiac throughout
the history of the Islands.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hawaii residents spoke the following languages
besides English at home in 2009: Philippino Languages like Tagalog, Llocano and Cebuano
(33%), Japanese (16%), Chinese languages, apparently mainly Cantonese (9%), other Asian
and Pacific Islands languages like Samoan (15%), Spanish (8%) and other Indo-European
languages (6%), as well as, of course, Hawaiian (6%), making Hawaii [] as multilingual a
place as one could find in the United States (Lippi-Green 2012, 237). The 2009 statistics
quoted by Lippi-Green did not yet record Hawaii Creole English (HCE) as a separate language
category.
Two of the languages mentioned above are tied to the land (or ina in Hawaii) in a
special way, because they originated here and are hardly used to a significant extent outside
the Hawaiian Islands. These two also happen to be the most interesting from a language
rights perspective; they are Hawaiian and Hawaii Creole English.
On the one hand, the preservation of the indigenous Hawaiian language or Olelo
Hawaii is of interest. Hawaiian was in danger of extinction at several points (Lippi-Green
2012, 237), and although, with an EGIDS rating of 2 (Ethonlogue 2016b) it is far from being
considered endangered, it is spoken today only by a small minority of Hawaii residents. As
1

The proper name Hawaii will consistently be spelled with okina sign, denoting the glottal stop, a meaningbearing consonant in Hawaiian. In this paper, Hawaii refers to the geographical entity of the Hawaiian
Islands as well as the U.S. State of Hawaii (officially spelled without the okina, cf. https://www.usa.gov/stategovernment/hawaii). In keeping with English spelling and pronunciation customs Hawaiian, used as an
adjective and as name for the aboriginal language, will be spelled without the okina for ease of reading.

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mentioned above, only for 6% of people who speak a language other than English at home
that language is Hawaiian. As a minority language and as an indigenous language it is worth
the attention of those interested in Language Rights.
On the other hand, there is the situation Hawaii Creole English (HCE), often
simply referred to as Pidgin2 - although this is technically a misnomer (cf. Wong 2013). It is
still strongly stigmatized, associated with poverty and low social status, and called lazy and
often referred to sometimes even by its speakers as Broken English (cf. Lippi-Green
2012).
To understand the situation of both languages I will briefly highlight the relevant
points in the history of the Hawaiian Islands. I will talk about how ideology and attitudes
toward language have influenced and still influence the life of languages in Hawaii. For this, I
will among other things analyze a news report about HCE and the ensuing reactions of online
commenters. I will go on to point out relevant legal and human rights instruments, especially
with regard to education. I will then mention some policies that were implemented in the
interest of language rights for the two languages. Finally I will give an outlook on what can
and should be done.

Present Issues
Olelo Hawaii, the native language of the indigenous people of Hawaii is protected
under the Native American Languages Acts (NALA), it is a source of pride and identity for the
descendants of the indigenous people of Hawaii or kamaina (children of the land). It is
also generally respected by the wider society (in a nostalgic way) and often, like Hawaiian
culture in general, romanticized by Mainland Americans, with little regard to all the issues
that follow from annexation and colonization(Lippi-Green 2012, 235).
HCE, is not protected and also not particularly prestigious (perhaps with the
exception of the surfing scene). It has only recently been recognized as a language category
separate from English (Nabarr 2015), although its linguistic peculiarities and significant
differences from standard English have been documented for a long time (e.g. Reinecke
1935/1969). HCE is also not exactly a minority language roughly 50% of Hawaiis population
speak it to some extent, 10-30% use it as their primary language (Lippi-Green 2012, 237). So
why is it relevant from a Language Rights viewpoint?
Although HCE uses English as a main lexifier, it incorporates vocabulary from other
languages (Hawaiian, Portuguese and Chinese) and, like other creoles, has its own distinct
grammar (cf. Lippi-Green 2012). By linguistic standards it could easily be classified a separate
language (cf. Wong 2013). Because speaking your own language is a Human Right (), but the
use of HCE still stigmatized (cf. Wong 2015, Lippi-Green 2012) and thus effectively
discouraged, if not actively discouraged in some contexts. This is what Johnson calls
2

Pidgin with a capital P will be used interchangeably with HCE, pidgin with a lowercase p refers to any
pidgin language.

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Unofficial, covert, de facto, and implicit mechanisms, connected to language beliefs and
practices, that have regulating power over language use and interaction within communities,
workplaces, and schools(2013, 9).

History
Understanding the history of the Hawaiian Islands is necessary for understanding the
current status of both, Olelo Hawaii and Pidgin. The following brief history is based on
information by the Smithsonian (n.d.), Hawaii DOE (n.d.) and Lippi-Green (2012, 236ff) if not
indicated otherwise.
Around the year 400 AD the Hawaiian Islands were settled by Polynesian navigators
who brought their language with them. In 1778 the first European, James Cook, landed on
the Island of Kauai. Hawaiian had been the only language spoken in the Islands for centuries
and it also thrived in the first unified Hawaiian Empire under King Kamehameha I, who ruled
over the Islands from 1791 onward. In 1820 the first Christian missionaries arrived. They
created the first dictionaries and developed a writing system for Hawaiian to spread their
faith. They were soon followed by traders and whalers. In the following period the native
population was diminished by diseases the foreigners had brought with them. Around the
same time the pidgin that would form the basis of todays HCE developed.
Like other pidgins it developed through the contact of several languages, usually
three or more. It was made necessary by plantation workers and traders with different
mother tongues coming together and needing to communicate with each other, in order to
be able to work with each other for a limited time (e.g. when loading and unloading goods in
port). Consequently the resulting pidgin had a limited use, therefore also a limited
vocabulary and limited grammar. This makeshift language, like all pidgins, was nobody's
native language. But when children grow up where Pidgin is spoken, they pick it up and
develop it into a full-fledged language system, a creole language (cf. Siegel 2010, Lippi-Green
2012). This is what happened in the case of HCE.
In 1841 King Kamehameha III established the public education system in Hawaii, the
only system established by a sovereign monarch, and Hawaiian was the main language of
instruction. By 1893, however, private English-only schools set up by the white upper class
were better funded and more prestigious than public schools with instruction in Hawaiian,
the American colonists controlled Hawaiis sugar-based economy and the Hawaiian king was
overthrown. The influence of English continued to increase, until finally Hawaiian was
outlawed as language of instruction in 1896. In 1898 Hawaii was annexed by the USA, and
the Hawaiian Language was further suppressed, leading it to the brink of extinction.
In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th U.S. state, opening the way to an ever increasing
influx of tourists and U.S. mainlanders. This led to Standard American English being idealized
and ideologized as the language of success and upward mobility. (Standard) English-only
policies in education prevailed for a long time, which influenced Hawaiian and HCE.

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Only in 1978 Hawaiian became an official language of the State of Hawaii along with
English and educational programs to promote the use of Hawaiian, and remove the stigma
that had been associated with its use. Pidgin however remained stigmatized, and is in fact to
this day associated regarded as a lower-class, uneducated slang dialect owing to its
plantation history (Wong 2013).
2015 was the first time that HCE was recognized as a separate language category
from English by the U.S. Census Bureau (Nabarr 2015). This was seen as an important step
towards De-Stigmatizing Hawaiis Creole Language (Wong 2015).

The Stigma of HCE

Like most creoles that are still in contact with its main lexifier language, there exists a
continuum on which speakers of the creole speaker can move. Depending on r the
circumstances of acquisition and the current situation, their speech will be somewhere
between basilect, that is the form with the least mutual intelligibility with the main lexifier
language (English in our case), and accented standard usage (cf. Siegel 2010; Lippi Green
2012, 238).
Using a similar strategy as Lippi-Green uses to illustrate the complex issues of
language and identity in Hawaii, I will analyze the original news report that Wong (2015)
refers to in her article on de-stigmatizing Pidgin.
The way people speak about the language in the article, as well as the reactions of
online commenters illustrate some of the attitudes toward the language and offer some
interesting insights for the sociolinguist. Sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics concerned
with describing language use as a social phenomenon (Coulmas 1997). The significance of
language as an indicator of ethnicity and social status is more significant and pronounced in
Hawaii than elsewhere (cf. Lippi-Greene 2012, 235), so there are few better places to study
language use as a social phenomenon.
The way in which HCE and standard English usage are often alternated is best
explained with the concept of diglossia. Diglossia is a situation where two genetically
related varieties of a language, one identified as the H(igh) (or standard) variety and the
other as the L(ow) (i.e. nonstandard) variety, have clearly distinct functions in the
community. [] [T]he H variety is used in formal settings, whereas the L variety is used in
informal interactions (Kamwangamalu 2010). A quote in Nabarr (2015) illustrates this
distinction: The grandmother of nine says there is a time and place to turn Pidgin on and to
turn it off, something she's trying to pass on to her family. Often this depends on the
perceived appropriateness of register in the situation, and sometimes an internalized idea of
what is proper and what is not. This is becomes evident for example in the following
statement by the same woman: "There's barriers of when the proper English should come in
and when we can be who we are, and I am proud of both, Auld said (Nabarr 2015).

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Reading the comments to this news story reveals a wide range of reactions, from
expressions of celebration and empowerment to amusement as well as worrying ignorance.
They reveal that people have very different attitudes and show that the stigma is far from
being a thing of the past. Especially the idea that proper English is a requirement for
economic upward mobility is expressed very drastically, for example in the following
exchange between two users:
myauthorizedopinion: Seriously? A lazy language? What's next E_bonics as a valid
language for the under educated?
Robert Kendall: It's not "lazy"; the Pacific Rim pidgin languages developed
while people with no knowledge of each other's native languages did business
with each other. Kinda-sorta the opposite of lazy, chief.
myauthorizedopinion: Explains the absence in a technical
environment. Please pay me a 6 figure income while I
communicate in a manner that comes across as less than
educated.
It also appears that people struggle to defend their language (which they should
not have to in the first place) because they are unsure of linguistic facts. For example User
Lisa Chantel Hill Wade, after justifiably stating that, Some of these comments regarding
pidgin English are plain stupid., makes the potentially misleading remark that Throughout
history pidgen languages have formed. It is the first generation to developing a standard
language within a community.
The status of HCE as a potential second language (as opposed to a language variety)
is also a subject of the discussion (and some amusement). User Michael McCabe for example
says I'm putting it on my resume hahaha. Oh who dat??? Bi Lingual!!. To Lippi-Green (2012)
this idea is not laughable at all. She quotes an educator saying [C]hildren who appear to be
pidgin speakers to the max, meaning it appears they cant speak anything else, those same
children are sitting in front of the TV set every night r reading standard English []. They are
bilingual.

Language Rights Instruments

There are many international Human Rights instruments that guarantee people the
freedom to speak their own language without being discriminated against. Naturally these
also apply to the situation here. First and foremost this would be the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (UDHR), stating in Article 1 that All human beings are born free and equal
in dignity and rights and in Article 2 that Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms
set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex,
language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or
other status (UN 1948).

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In the following I will especially refer to instruments that pertain to education, as this
is the most important part of any language policy (cf. Lo Bianco 2010).

Hawaiian
An instrument that applies more specifically to Hawaiian is the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPS), asserting the right of indigenous peoples to revitalize,
use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions,
philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names
for communities, places and persons in Article 13, and in Article 14 the right to establish
and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own
languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning and
that Indigenous individuals, particularly children, have the right to all levels and forms of
education of the State without discrimination (UN 2008). While the United States were not
among the 143 countries who originally adopted the declaration, President Obama
announced that the United States supports the Declaration, whichwhile not legally
binding or a statement of current international lawhas both moral and political force
(USA 2010).
In the case of Hawaiian there also exist several applicable instruments on the
national and state level. For example the United States Native American Languages Act
(NALA) makes explicit that it also extends to the indigenous population of Hawaii. Section.
103 states that For purposes of this title (1) The term Native American means an Indian,
Native Hawaiian, or Native American Pacific Islander. The law is intended to ensure the
survival of these unique cultures and languages (USA 1990). The act in Section 104:
It is the policy of the United States to
(1) preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans
to use, practice, and develop Native American languages;
[]
(3) encourage and support the use of Native American languages as a medium
of instruction in order to encourage and support
(A) Native American language survival,
(B) educational opportunity,
(C) increased student success and performance,
(D) increased student awareness and knowledge of their culture and
history, and
(E) increased student and community pride;
[]
(5) recognize the right of Indian tribes and other Native American governing
bodies to use the Native American languages as a medium of instruction in
all schools funded by the Secretary of the Interior;

Another applicable instrument on the state level is the Hawaiian Language Access
Law of 2006, which acknowledges that language was a barrier for Hawaiians who identify as
Limited English Proficient (LEP) (HI GOV 2016).

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HCE
If it is argued that HCE is in fact a separate language, then a range of international
laws and conventions would be applicable to HCE. This would have repercussions to its
status in education, arguably the most relevant aspect, because this is where it is still
suppressed the most. As Christina Higgins, a sociolinguist of the University of Hawaii says,
Pidgin is just one language among many in Hawaii, including Hawaiian, that have lost out to
English-only policies. Language discrimination [] creeps into education policy across the
country (Wong 2013). The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, UN), which was
signed but not ratified by the United States (UN 2016), however states in Articles 29.1 that
The education of the child shall be directed to:
[]
(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity,
language and values,
And furthermore in Article 30 that In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic
minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is
indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her
group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to
use his or her own language.

Efforts and Language Policy

In the following I will give a brief overview on what efforts have been made in terms
of language policy, after providing a definition of what language policy entails.
According to Johnsons synthesis of different accepted definitions, A language policy
is a policy mechanism that impacts the structure, function, use, or acquisition of language
and includes: 1. Official regulations often enacted in the form of written documents,
intended to effect some change in the form, function, use, or acquisition of language which
can influence economic, political, and educational opportunity; 2. Unofficial, covert, de
facto, and implicit mechanisms, connected to language beliefs and practices, that have
regulating power over language use and interaction within communities, workplaces, and
schools; 3. Not just products but processes policy as a verb, not a noun that are driven
by a diversity of language policy agents across multiple layers of policy creation,
interpretation, appropriation, and instantiation; 4. Policy texts and discourses across
multiple contexts and layers of policy activity, which are influenced by the ideologies and
discourses unique to that context (Johnson 2013, 9).

Hawaiian
Language policy and planning have been significant in the development of Hawaiian
especially with regard to education. This started with the 1978 State Constitutional
Convention, stating in Article X, Section 4 that The State shall promote the study of
Hawaiian culture, history and languagein the public schools. (cf. HI DOE). The 1980s saw
the expansion of Hawaiian studies and Hawaiian being taught in schools, and in 1978 the
establishment of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program (HI DOE). The immersion

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concept is basically a voluntary reversal of the forced English-only requirement of colonial

times, where children were forced to speak nothing but English. This has led to the
existence of a healthy population of younger speakers along with older speakers and the
language being used in all domains (Ethnologue 2016a).

HCE
Ironically, in the same year that the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program began,
the Hawaii Department of Education proposed a policy decision they called Standard
English and Oral Communication demanding that Standard English be the mode of oral
communication for students and staff in classroom settings (Lippi-Green 2012, 240). This
would have technically prohibited the use of HCE and was therefore met with much protest
and outrage (as well as some approval). Currently, the Hawaii DOE doesnt have a policy
governing the use of Pidgin in the classroom (Wong 2013).
While it is not clear that the recognition of HCE by the US Census Bureau was a
deliberate act of language planning, i.e. establishing a policy in order to obtain a pre-defined
goal (cf. Lo Bianco 2010), it is definitely an act on behalf of the state that has had an
influence on the language. As exemplified by the comments on the report as well as other
reactions by the press (cf. Wong 2015) and on social media (e.g. in this entertaining video by
Hawaiian comedian and Pidgin advocate Andy Bumatai: https://goo.gl/IZgWtW), the
discourse and social perception of HCE was impacted by the decision. But there might also
be some more tangible consequences, after all, Lippi-Green notes, government funding for
all kinds of services is dependent on these [census] statistics (2012, 238). The recognition
could be used to support the claim that HCE is a separate language and thus speakers are
entitled to their language being treated as equally valid as standard English. This de-facto
recognition was what much of the reaction to the census decision revolved around.
Wong (2015) hopes that this will encourage educators to integrate it into their
teaching, potentially elevating the achievement of Pidgin-speaking students and that
speakers of comparable linguistic systemsfrom African American Vernacular English, or
ebonics, to Chicano Englishmay even see similar changes one day, too.

Outlook
In the case of Hawaiian there exist many laws and provisions. The challenge is more
that of making sure these laws are applied and that the population continues to use the
language. The problem here might be that while Young speakers are being trained in
immersion courses and also very old speakers exist, [] relatively few adult and middle-aged
speakers, which results in lack of communication situations for active use. After the forced,
top-down decline of colonial times, a lack of active use could lead to a bottom-up language
decline.

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Education, especially in schools is probably the single most important factor for the
well-being of the two languages discussed here. For Hawaiian, it can only be hoped that the
successful immersion programs continue to exist and perhaps will be expanded.
It is also desirable that the success of the immersion model will lead to it being
adopted in other places where formerly suppressed native languages are in danger of
extinction.
In all this the idea of additive bilingualism as put forward by Lambert (1974) would
have to be stressed, that is, the idea that instead of one (second) language being learned
and the other (first) language becoming irrelevant, a second language can be acquired while
the other retains its value and relevance. The concept could be used to counteract the
belief that one language will overcome and replace others and that thats a good thing
(Wong 2013) or debunk myths, for example that learning Hawaiian will keep children from
learning English, or in the case of HCE, that speaking Pidgin is just a lazy way of speaking
English.
As the writings by Lippi-Green and Wong show, language rights activists and linguists
can help by educating and advocating, and helping people assert their language rights.
Sociolinguists in particular can help people understand the difference between a linguistic
system and social prejudices that are, although maybe rooted in its history, nothing to do
with the language as such.
Perhaps the example of Hawaii can also help question counterproductive Englishonly policies or controversies over the use of African American Vernacular English in schools
in the mainland United States, as Wong (2013) suggests.

Conclusion
As it may have become clear the language in Hawaii is a very rich topic that could not
be discussed here in all its complexity. The issues surrounding Hawaiian and HCE are not the
only language- and ethnicity-related sources of tension in Hawaii (cf. Lippi-Green 2012, 39).
It will be worthwhile for anyone interested in language rights and sociolinguistics to continue
to look at language in the Hawaiian Islands from a language rights perspective.

Word Count: 3968

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