3. Social Status of Hawaiian Pidgin

Generally speaking, Hawaiian Pidgin has a low prestige that interviewees often regarded it as bad language, slangs, broken English and so on, as the recordings of the interviews show. Some questionnaire participants also thought the language sounds "unintelligent". These adjectives and descriptions reflect that the language is still looked down upon. This shows not only how the language itself is being despised but also how the speakers are regarded as uneducated.

Regarding our questionnaires, two of the statements (“I think Hawaiian children should learn Hawaiian Creole English.”, and “I think people should promote the use of Hawaiian Creole English in Hawaii.”) in the part of the questionnaire where participants have to show their responses are about education and promotion of HCE. When asked whether they think their children should learn the creole, both of the groups, locals and non-locals, expressed negative attitudes (Also Listen to clip 1).

Statements	Local Speakers		Non-local Speakers
	Mean (M)	Standard Deviation (SD)	Mean (M)	Standard Deviation (SD)
6) I think Hawaiian children should learn Hawaiian Creole English.	2.64	.93	2.54	.97
11) I think people should promote the use of Hawaiian Creole English in Hawaii.	2.93	1.00	2.62	.87

Clip 1: Pidgin Not A Good Thing

Participants were later asked about the reasons according to their responses. Those that disagreed with the education for future generations stated that not only the creole itself is impractical, but also brings about detrimental effect to the ordinary language learning process. In other words, the questionnaire-takers feared that allowing their offspring to learn HCE could affect their English or any other languages they learn that are of dominant use in society. For the same reason, the local and non-local participants tend not to approve of the state-wide promotion of the creole. This is in line with the studies we have mentioned that most educators believe speaking the non-standard language, as what most Hawaiian perceive HCE to be, would adversely affect the proficiency of the Standard English (Feldman, Stone, Wertsch & Strizich 1977). Despite the fact that this is misleading as we have also explained earlier, and the the efforts of the Da Pidgin Group in promoting the inclusion of HCE, it is predictable that the deeply rooted resistance to the language will remain under the predominant, stereotypical impression of the language. 

For the non-speakers, they generally think there is no immediate necessity for them to learn and speak the language (“I want to learn Creole for communicating with my local Hawaiian friends.”: M = 3.00, SD = 1.07). They do not seem to have the urge to pick up the creole when a lingua franca, English, is available and widespread within the community. To the participants who do not speak HCE, learning to speak a local creole language just to communicate with their local Hawaiian friends seem redundant and unnecessary. This confirms what Holm (1988) claimed about creole, where it is only considered to be “a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common”. This reflects, once again, how the language is not regarded as a predominant language in Hawaii. 

After collecting responses from the interviewees concerning Pidgin, we have also found that some ideas fit into the model of language subordination process proposed by Lippi-Green (1997). Corresponding to the model:

1.    Authority is claimed: Interviewees expressed that speaking Pidgin may reflect one’s unintelligence and that Standard English is better.

2.    Misinformation is generated: Pidgin is often regarded not a language but slang or broken English that is without proper grammar by the interviewees.

3.    Non-mainstream language is trivialised: Some interviewees said Pidgin is fine for joking and hanging out with close friends, but not suitable for formal situations such as schools.

4.    Explicit promises are made/Threats are made: An interviewee explicitly regarded that speaking Pidgin in interviews for job is not appropriate as this adversely affect the chance to get the job.

References

Feldman, C. F., Stone, A., Wertsch, J. V., & Strizich, M. (1977). Standard and nonstandard dialect competencies of Hawaiian Creole English speakers. TESOL Quarterly, 41-50.

Holm, J. (1988). Pidgins and creoles (Vols. 1-2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an Accent. London: Routledge.