2. Reflections

Steve Choi:

The field trip to Hawaii was a memorable experience. Not only it was fun to learn about the culture of such a socially diverse community, but more importantly, it was a precious opportunity for us to leave the classroom, do some field work and collect real life data. This gives us a taste of how sociolinguists carry out researches and derive findings from the results.

Generally speaking, the research was successful as we were able to fulfill its purpose, which is to investigate on HCE was being viewed by the local and non-local people and to look for the use of HCE in media and under different social contexts. We, however, did encounter some difficulties in the course of research. Before we started our journey, we thought that the university campus would be a perfect location for us to gather information from the students and the teaching staff. Unfortunately, during the summer break, the school was rather emptied and there were not many targets for us. It turned out to be a lot harder getting people to participate in our research by filling out the questionnaires and being interviewed by us.

Despite all difficulties and constraints, we managed to reach and even exceeded our target of 40 research participants. Through the process of data analysis, we all had attained a better understanding on the creole languages, especially, in our case, HCE. We were more familiar with why and how such a language is formed and maintained from time to time and how the language is being perceived. By that we were also able to predict the development of HCE. As the creole is viewed by the majority as broken language that has a low social status, we are expecting the language to wither away in the future. The social situation of Hawaii has changed and contact languages are no longer essential to the community. Newer generations generally receive higher education and therefore prefer to use Standard English to HCE. For this reasons, we are grateful that we still got access to the first-hand evidence and conducted such a research on the creole. 

Thomas Au:

The field trip was a great experience to me. Apart from the enjoyable free time in Hawaii, the experience in collecting linguistic data was very valuable. Although there were many inadequacies in preparation and many unexpected situations during the process, I believe it will be a lesson for me to pursue my study. For example, data collection on the street was a new experience to me. Statistical data analyses, conducting interviews and searching for daily use of HCE were also important training for every linguistic students.

HCE is a totally new language to me that I had no knowledge about it before the field trip. However, from the preparation work and other information collected during the field trip, contact language like HCE shows the dynamic and evolution of a language. Language, on the one hand, serves very practical usage: communication; on the other hand, it connoted and affected many different aspect of human lives, from history to social structure and even culture. More importantly, as HCE evolved from the Hawaiian Pidgin English, the emergence of language, its grammar, its vocabulary and so on becomes more interesting. Although there are still no general consensus on this topic, the field trip experience and knowledge obtained from it have given me more insights and aroused my interests in this area as well, which to me is the central topic of linguistics.

During the field trip, out of my expectation, there were not much Pidgin words in public area. People tended not to speak it so publicly. This made me more aware of the real linguistic situation in Hawaii, or similar places in which there is pidgin or creole. Although the language may still be used by a lot of inhabitants, the subordinate status and people’s negative attitude towards it remain a significant factor for the discrimination and disappearance of languages. First, people still regard HCE as ungrammatical which is proven wrong by scholars; this makes me more aware of how external factors like policies can shape people's understanding of language, which is actually an important topic in both linguistic and cultural studies. Also, questionnaire participants responded us that if the language is not good and there is another language to replace it, then the extinction does not matter to them. To linguists the disappearance of language is a loss to the linguistic diversity; however, to others, it may mean nothing to them, even culturally. This becomes a very severe disparity which I think needs more discussion. Yet, I still believe every language has their significant history and social values in it, which we need to preserve and respect. Some more work like promotion and education, and even changes language policies should be done. Also, given the reality, documentation of languages becomes very important in preserving the precious linguistic diversity.

Jessica Liu: 

From having no idea about what Hawaiian Creole English is to interviewing local Hawaiians about the language and then forming a blog about it, I start to realize how much one can learn and be inspired from a language.

At first, HCE appears to be a very clever “creation” of immigrant workers for communication, yet the emergence of HCE is actually a very natural process. It reveals to me the intrinsic ability of human towards communication and language acquisition. Although I have learnt that there is a critical period in which humans acquire a language almost naturally and most efficiently, HCE was picked up by the immigrant workers without much difficulty even though it has a distinct structure from their own languages.

What I find most attractive about the language is its close link with the history of Hawaii. You cannot understand what HCE is until you listen to the story of Hawaii and its plantation workers who represented a mix of diverse cultural backgrounds. So I think HCE carries a more meaningful function than just a language for communication. It is part of the history itself, and unlike English which is spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, HCE is unique to Hawaiian people.

Although I do agree that the sound system or syntax of HCE may give an impression of unstandardized English or even slang, they should by no means be discriminated against. We should be noted that slang has its functions that are hardly replaced by formal languages, and this is exactly the reason why there is a practice of code-switching. We just have to be aware of when to use the code so that we can make the good use of it and fully elaborate its functions.