"Pidgin English" in Hawaii: A Local Study in the Sociology of Language

Abstract

While the broader aspects of language have been voluminously treated from a sociological or a social-psychological point of view, as much cannot be said of particular linguistic areas and problems. The field of what may be called marginal languages-i.e., forms of speech which are not accepted as of equal prestige with the common language of an area or with well-established dialects, and which generally arise where different cultures are juxtaposed rather brusquely-has been little exploited. The more elusive aspects of the use of idioms lacking prestige, the interplay of the warmth and intimacy characterizing their use within the we-group with the embarrassments that come of using them before or in addressing outsiders, have received scant treatment. Only by comparison of a number of local studies are we likely to arrive at valid generalizations regarding the rise of makeshift languages and their nature and role, the circumstances under which a form of speech loses or gains face, and especially the significance of a nonstandard dialect to its speakers and hearers. With the hope of providing one such study, as well as of calling attention to the richness of material awaiting the student in this field, the present writer has sought to treat one of the several problems of sociological importance in one small area, Hawaii: namely, that of the English language continuum which has partaken of the nature in turn of a trade jargon, a cross between a Creole language and an immigrants' mixed dialect, and finally a' class dialect comparable to those of other English-speaking colonies.' When the Hawaiian Islands were opened to our civilization in the last years of the eighteenth century, a kind of broken trade language grew up in the ports and later (I820-80) on the whaling vessels. From the scanty references it appears to have been chiefly English adapted to Hawaiian syntax and pronunciation and containing a large number of