Language revitalization through a media practice

―What was the Hawaiian language radio program, Ka Leo Hawai‘i, like?―

Abstract

　This study analyzes a Hawaiian language radio program, Ka Leo Hawai‘i, broadcast in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Based on a collection of recordings of over four hundred shows from the 1970s and 1980s, it attempts to describe what the program was like at that period. The program can be described as a media practice that formed and maintained a community through documenting the language and culture of Native Hawaiians. A central feature of the show was invited guests, many of whom were elders and native speakers of Hawaiian. After the program ended, the audio recordings were digitized, and they have been used for educational purposes and have continued to make a contribution to the revitalization of the Hawaiian language. These recordings are truly important because Hawaiian has almost no collections of audio recordings as large in volume and that were collected as systematically as Ka Leo Hawai‘i. It is also not easy to generate new audio recordings of elderly native speakers because their number is now presumably under one hundred.