ABSTRACT

Place has long been central in the linguistic and cultural practices of indigenous people. This chapter examines how new speakers who are engaged in the revitalisation of ʻŌlelo Hawai‘i express their connections to place in relation to their learning and use of the language. In doing so, they espouse language ideologies about Hawaiian that depart from conventional ideologies about learning languages, which typically highlight the practical and economic benefits of learning a globally relevant language. Drawing on positioning frameworks and narrative analysis (Bamberg 1997; De Fina 2013), I analyze interviews with new speakers of Hawaiian to better understand how they position themselves as learners and speakers of that language. Their narratives reveal that they are often positioned in a liminal status because Hawaiian is not a language that is associated with western forms of socio-economic mobility. However, these new speakers challenge this liminality by expressing how the Hawaiian language connects them to the land, to their ancestors and to their communities in ways that embrace ea, a Hawaiian term that relates to the linkage of life-breath-sovereignty. Through their stories, they reject dominant economic and linguistic discourses of liminality and authenticate themselves through narratives about language learning, place and belonging from a Hawaiian worldview.