Standard and Nonstandard Dialect Competencies of Hawaiian Creole English Speakers

Abstract

In the context of a larger study designed to investigate the cognitive implications of speaking a Creole variety of English, some data were collected which call into question the common assumption of linguists and educators that speakers of a variety of English do not have a functional command of Standard English. High school students in a remote rural town on the island of Hawaii were found to be equally competent in Standard and Hawaiian English as measured by parallel forms of a sentence imitation test. The implications of this finding for educational practices in Hawaii are discussed, and it is concluded that educators should no longer discourage the use of Hawaiian English in the classroom, since the primary educational goal should be the development of the general linguistic ability which underlies both dialects. During the past several years there has been a marked shift in the approach educators have taken toward students who speak nonstandard varieties of English. Educators used to strive for the elimination of the use of a variety of English and its replacement with Standard English. It has now become widely accepted that the principal goal should be rather the supplementation of the linguistic repertoire of such speakers through the development of their ability to use Standard English. This supplementation approach is based on the work of linguists such as Labov (1966) who have argued convincingly that there is no inherent connection between varieties of English and the problems of loose or sloppy thinking often associated with their use. The newer approach often amounts to nothing more than a change in the educator's attitude toward varieties of English; the result has been that there is no longer such a strong tendency to label varieties as wrong, sloppy, etc. Both approaches, however, call for a heavy emphasis on Standard English instruction in the classroom. A tacit assumption underlying both of these approaches is that anyone who uses a variety of English at * The research reported here was supported by the National Institute of Education