Documenting an Endangered Language: The Inclusive First-Person Plural PronounKākouas a Resource for Claiming Ownership in Hawaiian

Abstract

This study employs tape-recorded data from interviews with elder speakers of Hawaiian conducted in the year 1970 to describe how a specific feature of the Hawaiian language, the first-person inclusive plural pronoun kākou, may be used in discourse as a resource for making claims of ownership on behalf of Hawaiians. To do so, the analysis first invokes Hanks's (2005) notions of deixis and deictic field to show how kākou can create a sense of community among speakers of Hawaiian. Insights from membership category analysis (Sacks 1992; Sacks and Schegloff 1979; Schegloff 2007) are then drawn on to demonstrate how kākou can be interpreted in interaction as a reference to the category of “Native Hawaiian” and how that category can be used to construe specific natural resources, activities, and forms of language as part of a Hawaiian identity. Discussion of the analysis centers on the status of Hawaiian as an endangered language in the midst of a revitalization movement where language and culture have been points of contestation. Usage of kākou to claim ownership is seen as a resource that can allow speakers of Hawaiian to work through the language itself to negotiate what it means to be “Native Hawaiian.”