Article published in:
Anxiety, Insecurity, and Border Crossing: Language Contact in a Globalizing World
Edited by Mie Hiramoto and Joseph Sung-Yul Park
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 24:2] 2014
► pp. 173–195

“Island girl from the island”

Tattooed symbols and personal identities in contemporary Hawai‘i

This study investigates the construction of hybrid identity and cultural values as demonstrated by local Hawai‘i residents in the multiethnic urban community of Honolulu. Due to its unique historical background, Honolulu has become host to a variety of Pacific and East Asian ethnic and cultural communities, many of which are places wherein tattooing has been a traditional practice among the natives. Ideals of culturalized identity were espoused by tattoo wearers through discourse with the researchers. The results demonstrate that many wearers feel an interconnection or transnationalism with one or more of Hawai‘i’s constituent cultures, and often imbue tattoos with personal or cultural meaning, with the goal of displaying the semiotic ideology of their local specific identity in a Hawai‘i context.

Keywords: Hawai‘i Creole, tattoos, multiethnic community, language ideology, mobility and scale, linguistic anxiety
Published online: 22 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.24.2.02hir
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