Hawai’i creole and language awareness

Abstract

Language awareness, a useful and innovative concept in many fields of social science and humanities, is especially critical in cases of marginalized languages (and/or language varieties). In marginalized languages/varieties, linguistic attitudes towards them influence the choice of languages in various domains and social settings. Language awareness not only serves as a useful tool in language education, but may also effectively change linguistic attitudes in a speech community. Introducing the case of Hawai’i Creole, an English-lexifier language spoken in Hawai’i, this paper demonstrates the role language awareness plays in shifting linguistic attitudes towards the marginalized variety in dynamic multi-linguistic situations. More specifically, the following issues are discussed; 1) how is language awareness related in education of creole language speakers, 2) how have language awareness been implemented in education in Hawai’i, and 3) how have activities outside of education raised language awareness in Hawai’i.