In light of a belief that Hawaiʻi Creole (HC) is mostly inappropriate in public domains of society, this study examines how it was
employed in two university commencement speeches by a local politician in Hawaiʻi. The analysis adopts the perspective of
heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981) in order to describe how HC is used together in the
speeches with English and also some Hawaiian words. By focusing on the contrastive indexical meanings attached to all three
languages, the analysis describes how the speaker combined humor and serious advice in his speeches. In particular, a focus is
given to a specific feature of the HC grammar, the negative imperative, that was used by the speaker to underscore his main
points. Discussion of the analysis considers the potential of the perspective of heteroglossia to understand the usage of HC in
the public domain in Hawaiʻi to construct formal speeches of a decidedly ʻlocal’ style.
1985Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bailey, Benjamin
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Boggs, Stephen
1985Speaking, Relating, and Learning: A Study of Hawaiian Children at Home and at School. Norwood, New Jersey, Ablex.
Boggs, Stephen
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Da Pidgin Coup
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Mufwene, Salikoko
2001The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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1983Nana I Ke Kumu [Look to the Source] Vol 11. Honolulu, Hawaii, Hui Hanai.
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Reinecke, John
1969Language and Dialect in Hawaiʻi: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
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1968 “Bilingual Usage in Paraguay.” In Readings in the Sociology of Language, ed. by Joshua Fishman, 512–530. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton.
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Saft, Scott
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Saft, Scott
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.