Perceptions of pragntatic differences in a Hawaii Creole English speaker

Abstract

In the field of speech-language pathology it is imperative to determine if an individual truly has a communication disorder or whether communication is intact but influenced by cultural differences. Ten participants from the United States (US) mainland and ten participants from Hawaii reviewed a videotaped Hawaii Creole English (HCE) speaker in a didactic conversation. All pragmatic skills that were assumed to be ‘inappropriate’ were identified and recorded using a pragmatic protocol. The data was compared between groups, and a significant difference was found in how intelligibility of speech was viewed. A majority of the participants from the US mainland found the HCE speaker to be disordered in intelligibility.