Aboriginal English has been documented in widely separated parts of Australia and, despite some stylistic and regional variation, is remarkably consistent across the continent, and provides a vehicle for the common expression of Aboriginal identity. There is, however, some indeterminacy in the way in which the term is used in much academic and…

This article discusses a documentary film project produced by high school students in Hawai'i that investigated the value of Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole) in schools and society, and which ultimately aimed to address the problem of "linguicism" (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1990). The project was carried out within a critical language awareness framework…

This article analyzes four Hollywood films set in Hawai'i to shed light on how particular languages and language varieties "style" (Auer 2007; Coupland 2007) Local/Hawaiian and mainland U.S. characters as certain kinds of people. Through an analysis of films featuring "haole" ("white, outsider") male protagonists who…

This dissertation takes a discursive approach to Hawai'i stand-up comedy, which is a highly dramaturgical genre, and it examines the cultural specificity of Hawaii comedy in an explicitly interactional context. This culturally-specific performative genre is a discursive site where comedians and their audiences jointly construct multivocal humor…

This study describes a rare Swahili pidgin created by two five-year-old boys, one American and one African. The discussion examines the linguistic and social factors affecting the "origins, maintenance, change and loss" (Hymes 1971) of their language and the place it created for their friendship. This place, constructed by and through language,…

The languages of Klingon and Na'vi, both created for media, are also languages that have garnered much media attention throughout the course of their existence. Speakers of these languages also utilize social media and information technologies, specifically websites, in order to learn the languages and then put them into practice. While teaching a…

Education policy always appears to be controversial, especially in post-colonial nations. In Vanuatu, the dual educative system inherited from the period of colonization has raised many debates. The government of Vanuatu is certainly aware of national educational issues in the school system such as the poor literacy rate and high school fees but…

English and French have been retained by Vanuatu's education system as the two media of instruction. Other languages are ignored and often explicitly banned by school policies. However, code-switching between the official and other languages is common, with particularly frequent use of Bislama, the national dialect of Melanesian Pidgin. While it…

Ample research has explored language attitudes and speaker evaluations, yet it has not attended to direct incidences of language criticism. This article presents evidence demonstrating that a majority of those surveyed in Hawai'i have experienced language criticism. Coded data suggest that criticism takes place during employment, educational,…

In this essay, the author discusses her experiences in creating her film about Hawai'i Creole. She shares how she chronicles the essence of local life in the film through Pidgin. She also discusses how she came to understand the power of Pidgin, its centrality in people's lives, and its place in defining the uniqueness of Hawai'i. As the author…

For over a decade, the Department of Education in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has adopted vernacular education as a way of ensuring that the educational experiences of children in schools draw on the cultural and linguistic knowledge they bring to the classroom. In PNG, there are many potential vernaculars--apart from the local languages, there are Tok…

Using English as a global communicating tool makes Taiwanese people have to speak in English in diverse international situations. However, consonants and vowels in English are not all effortless for them to articulate. This phonological reduction study explores concepts about phonological (articulating system) approximation. From Taiwanese folks'…

This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to "harness" this diversity for learners' benefit. It challenges the largely…

Language, language policy and curriculum issues occupy very important and strategic places in educational planning in any society. In a multilingual Nigerian society as well as in similar countries like Australia, India or even in seemingly homogeneous linguistic societies like Britain, language planning, development and policies are sin qua non.…

In this essay, the author examines the attitudes that people in Hawai'i have about Hawai'i Creole. The author first describes the background of the language and explores educators' views from the 1920s to 1940s about Hawai'i Creole (HC), which was first viewed as the the "Pidgin problem" in Hawai'i. The frustrations expressed by…