Stylization and language ideologies in Pidgin comedic skits Gavin Furukawa ⇑ University of Tokyo, Japan article info Article history: Available online xxxx Keywords: Hawaiʻi Creole Pidgin Comedy Indexicality Linguistic schizophrenia abstract Hawaiʻi Creole or Pidgin is a highly stigmatized language variety spoken by half a million people in the state of Hawaiʻi. The residents of Hawaiʻi and speakers of this language often view it with a complex mix- ture of both hate and love. Previous discursive approaches to this topic have often focused on the strate- gic, pragmatic uses of the language for constructing identities and ideologies however the complex and often contradictory nature of Pidgin speakers’ beliefs and attitudes towards their language is often miss- ing from these analyses. In this article, the ideologies of Pidgin are examined through analyzing the come- dic skits of Rap Reiplinger, a local comedian whose work still enjoys great popularity over 30 years after his death. By mapping out the indexical fields this article shows how multiple and sometimes opposing ideologies may be simultaneously produced and reproduced in Pidgin comedy routines by the formation of multiple semiotic centers. The analysis will also show how these ideologies are then re-appropriated by others through selective activation of these indexical fields and how the activation of multiple fields can lead to the reproduction of those contradicting beliefs that are at the core of Pidgin speakers attitudes towards their own language. Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction It has been often pointed out that the local people of Hawaiʻi have an interesting love/hate relationship with the language of the local culture, Hawaiʻi Creole. Local people in Hawaiʻi are often very proud of being local. They express it though music, through food, and most especially through language. At the same time, the local language of Hawaiʻi Creole, also known more commonly as Pidgin, is a highly stigmatized language variety (Eades et al., 2006, pp. 144–146; Marlow and Giles, 2010). Researchers who seek to collect data in Hawaiʻi of people using this language often run into many difficulties because of the extreme shame that is some- times evoked by its use. This complicated relationship that the locals have towards Pidgin and the ambivalent ideology held has been previously described as linguistic schizophrenia (Kachru, 1977; Higgins, 2010). Pidgin evolved first as a language of communication among the different language communities on the sugar plantations of Hawaiʻi in the 19th century. Various groups of laborers, supervi- sors and plantation owners needed a way to communicate with each other. This resulted in the development of a pidgin Hawaiian (Sakoda and Siegel, 2003 p. 6–10) which was then replaced by an English lexified pidgin once the Hawaiian monarchy was over- thrown and English became the official language in the islands. Over time, the language became more complex and the second generation of immigrants began to speak it as their first language at which point the language became a creole. As this new generation of first language creole speakers began to leave the plantations for white collar work in the city in the 1920s, they brought their language with them. However, as the language of blue-collar plantation workers, the creole became quite stigmatized (Siegel, 2008, pp. 55–56); a phenomenon com- mon to many pidgins, creoles, and other non-standard language varieties (Siegel, 1999). From this time, Pidgin was described with very negative terms such as ‘‘sloppy” and ‘‘ugly” (Da Pidgin Coup, 1999, p. 6). This ideology about Pidgin continues to this current day where modern critics say that it is a language that ‘‘should just die” (Siegel, 2005) or suggest that ‘‘only idiots speak pidgin. IDIOTS” (Bioneural, 2014). Part of this negative image for Pidgin revolves around the belief that speaking Pidgin can cost you your job or can lead to failure in your career. This belief is consistently put forth by business people in the state who are constantly requesting people who can ‘‘speak English, not Pidgin” (Wong, 2013a). This belief was further given credence by a Supreme Court case in 1987 where two local weath- ermen were denied promotions due to perceived Pidgin accent which amounted to a few subtle vowel differences from standard English, with occasional flapping, and occasional deletion of the http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.06.006 2211-6958/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Address: ALESS Program, Center for Global Communication Strategies (CGCS), University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan. E-mail address: gfurukawa@aless.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp Discourse, Context & Media xxx (2017) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Discourse, Context & Media journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dcm Please cite this article in press as: Furukawa, G. Stylization and language ideologies in Pidgin comedic skits. Discourse Context Media (2017), http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.06.006