Language as Colonialism in Hawai'i, British Columbia and Abroad

For over a thousand years, Hawaiʻi existed as a monolinguistic nation fully sustained by the Indigenous language ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi. It took less than one hundred years following colonial contact with the English language to essentially displace ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi on six of seven inhabited islands. Following bans on usage of ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi in schools after the illegal overthrow, Pidgin (Hawaiʻi Creole) emerged as a language of the labourer population to help them rise up against exploitative plantation owners. Today, Hawaiʻi is still occupied by the United States government and Indigenous languages Pidgin and ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi remain marginalized. In fact, in schools today the use of Pidgin is still highly stigmatized although it is spoken as a first language by half the population of Hawaiʻi. ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi language revitalization efforts are largely underfunded and undervalued. Unfortunately, this dynamic between languages in Hawaiʻi is not unique. Language stigma and diglossia presents in various ways all around the world, including in British Columbia. In this talk, Mitchi Kamigaki-Baron will outline her research and facilitate a discussion on how other language communities abroad are affected by similar histories.

Mitchi (Michelle) Kamigaki-Baron is a third year PhD student in the Linguistics Department at UBC. She was born and raised in Hawai'i and is a descendant of coffee plantation labourers from Hōnaunau. Her research involves speech production and perception, phonetics, bilingualism, second language acquisition and language continua. She is involved in work with Pidgin, ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi and Secwepemctsín.