WAYFINDING IN PACIFIC LINGUASCAPES: NEGOTIATING TOKELAU LINGUISTIC IDENTITIES IN HAWAI‘I A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS AUGUST 2012 By Akiemi Glenn Dissertation Committee: Yuko Otsuka, Chairperson Michael Forman Katie Drager William O’Grady Richard Schmidt TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication and acknowledgments i Abstract iv List of tables and figures v Epigraph vi 1. Introduction and research questions 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Research questions 2 1.3 Tokelau linguistic identity in a transnational space 4 1.3.1 The Tokelauan language in the diaspora 9 1.3.2 Olohega in Tokelau 12 1.4 Tokelauans in Hawai'i 16 1.4.2 Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika School 18 1.4.3 Tokelau identities in Hawai'i 23 1.5 Overview of the study 25 2. Theoretical frameworks 26 2.1 Introduction 26 2.2 Theories of community 26 2.2.1 Speech communities and communities of practice 27 2.2.2 Imagined communities 29 2.3 Language and place 31 2.3.1 Multilocality and multivocality 31 2.3.2 Linguistic ecologies 33 2.4 Social meaning and metalinguistic knowledge 35 2.4.1 Performance and performativity 35 2.4.2 Indexicality 36 2.4.3 Enregisterment 37 2.4.4 Stancetaking in discourse 38 2.4.5 Crossing 40 2.4.6 Language ideology 41 2.5 Ideologies of language maintenance and endangerment 41 2.5.1 Heritage language 42 2.5.2 Language revitalization and endangerment 44 3. Approach and methodology 49 3.1 Approach 49 3.1.1 Defining a Pacific linguascape 49 3.1.2 Seawater in the theory machine 56 3.1.2.1 “Just like Tokelauan, but different”: Tokelau in the linguascape 58 3.1.3 Defining ethnometalinguistics 63 3.1.4 The ethnometalinguistic language object 71 3.2 Methodology 74 3.2.1 Linguistic ethnography 75 3.2.1.1 Data collection and participant observation 76 4. Olohega speech in Tokelau 79 4.1 Introduction 79 4.2 Variation in Polynesian languages 79 4.3 Historical accounts of variation in Tokelau 84 4.4 Contemporary variation in Tokelau 86 4.4.1 Tokelau sounds and problems of description 87 4.4.2 Olohega speech 93 4.5 Phonemic variation in the Hawai'i Tokelau community 107 4.5.1 Speaker preference for lenis and fortis sounds 109 4.5.2 Ethnographic explanations 110 5. ‘Localizing’ Tokelau spaces through ethnometalinguistic action 116 5.1 Introduction: Ethnometalinguistic socialization at Te Lumanaki School 116 5.2 Te Taki’s Kālele Survey and early metalinguistic commentary 118 5.2.1. Kālele Survey results 126 5.3. Curriculum development at Te Lumanaki o Tokelau School. 129 5.4 Localizing Tokelau spaces 138 5.4.1 Diminutive morphemes, encapsulation, and Localizing as a means for 138 establishing affective bonds. 5.4.2 Creating Local Tokelau performance, validating Local Tokelau identities 150 through ethnometalinguistic knowledge 6. Polynesia as a linguascape: linguistic wayfinding and the authentication of identity 164 6.1 Introduction 164 6.2 Linguistic melancholy 164 6.3 Expressions of linguistic melancholy in Te Lumanaki’s community of practice 170 6.3.1 Authenticity in diaspora and discourses of voyaging 170 6.3.2 Wayfinding as a deictic practice: co‐constructed Tokelau identities in 176 text 6.3.2.1 Lepa’s malaga letter 177 6.3.2.2 Co‐created text and linguistic repair 186 6.4 Linguistic melancholy and public performance of identity 190 6.4.1 Discourses of authentic Polynesianness 190 6.5 Melancholy mapping: wayfinding in the linguascape 198 7. Conclusion 203 7.1 Introduction 203 7.2 Overview of chapters and summary of findings 203 7.3 Contributions and implications 206 7.4 Limitations of the study 209 7.5 Directions for further research 209 7.6 Wayfinding 209 References 211 Appendix A: Abbreviations, glossing, and transcription conventions 238 Appendix B: Kālele Survey instrument 239 Dedication These pages are dedicated to my late father Sanders Glenn, Sr., warrior, scholar, and lover of words, whose pursuit of the outstanding and the humane has been my constant example in every stage of my education, And to my late grandmothers, Gertelia Bullock Glenn and Vivian Goodman Brewington, whose open hearts and vigilant memories set me on this path. Nunohum, kuwumaras. Mo na tino Tokelau i nuku kehe, na ika motu i te moana… i Acknowledgments Tūlou muamua. This work would not have been possible without the support of countless people in Hawai‘i, around the Pacific, and throughout the world. First, my heartfelt thanks go to the people of Te Taki Tokelau who, with the most profound alofa, welcomed me as a tuafafine, he uho, he mātua, an aunty and a daughter into the kāiga and into the community. Na mātua ma na faiāoga o Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika e: Ma he loto maua lalo, fakafetai lahi lele mo koutou fehoahoani i te gāluega tenei. Ko koutou amanaki mo te fanau e te fetū taki ala o taku folau hakili. I am indebted to countless scholars in Hawai‘i and New Zealand, first among them, Dr. Sania Fa'amaile Betty Pedro Ickes whose friendship, support, and advice has buoyed me in the rough waters of graduate study and dissertation writing. For your example as a scholar, leader, and fatupaepae Betty, fakafetai lahi lele. Thanks go to my colleagues Laurie Durand and David Strauch who helped with much of the heavy lifting in the last days of writing, and to my dear colleagues and friends Ana Mirón, Stephanie Kakadelis, Kanjana Thepboriruk, Robyn Lopez, Jessica Greenfield, Birte Petersen, Karena Kelly, Hollie Smith, Ku‘uwehi Hiraishi, Dr. Toshiaki Furukawa, Yumiko Enyo, and Dr. Mie Hiramoto, for their support and enthusiasm for my work, for sharing meals, and bouncing ideas around. Special thanks, too, must go to my Candidates Support Group members, Dr. Karen Huang, Carl Polley, Jawee Perla, Dr. Nian Liu, Dr. Apay Tang, and Elaine Lau. To those in Tokelau and New Zealand whose hospitality and candidness facilitated my ii research there, fakafetai lahi lele kia te Taupulega o Fakaofo, te Aliki Faipule Foua Toloa, Logo Toloa, and the Toloa kāiga katoa, Tialeniu School in Fakaofo, Kula Teao in Porirua and in Fakaofo, Siamau and Elia O’Brien of Auckland, Ioane and Telika Teao of Porirua, Jonathan and Elisapeta Pedro of Auckland, the nuku of Fakaofo, and the Tokelau Apia Liaison Office in Sāmoa. My thanks also go to Dr. Robin Hooper and Dr. Judith Huntsman whose scholarship and connection with the people of Tokelau has been an inspiration, even from the early days of my project. To my friends and family who read drafts and offered encouragement along the way, among them Mālia Alatasi Dean, Selepa Alatasi, Meagean Alatasi, Mahelino and Bonnie Patelesio, the families of Te Lumanaki: Te Kāiga Alatasi, Te Kāiga Hokoana‐Coffin, Te Kāiga Ickes, Te Kāiga La'ulu, Te Kāiga Moefu, Te Kāiga Patelesio, Te Kāiga Pedro, Te Kāiga Salausa, Te Kāiga Su'a, Te Kāiga Thompson, and others, fakafetai lahi lele. Thanks to my friends who provided emotional and logistical support, especially in the final stages, Dawn Mahi, Marcos Bendaña, Kristie and James Reilly, Deyon Nagato, Laura Sardagna Viana, Lucas Moxey, Gabriel, Anna‐Maria, and Kristy Correa, Malte Göbel, and Dewi Maile Lim. To those who have supported me and whom I have carried in my heart since Fredericksburg, Rose Rutherford and Katherine Colville, thank you. My deepest thanks must go to my family, on whom I have leaned for support in this process: my brother Sanders Glenn, Jr. and my mother Lina Brewington‐Glenn, my grandfathers Robert Brewington and Clarence Glenn, and countless interested relatives in Hawai‘i and North Carolina. iii Abstract This dissertation examines the linguistic practices of Tokelau people resettled on Hawai‘i’s island of O‘ahu as they engage in the work of maintaining their heritage language. The focus of the research is on the community of practice that has developed around the language and culture school Te Lumanaki o Tokelau i Amelika (‘The Future of Tokelau in America’) begun by descendants of people displaced from US‐affiliated Olohega (Swains Island) and relocated to O‘ahu beginning in the middle twentieth century. Through interviews, audio recordings of interactions, and ethnographic observation, I show that a key part of reclaiming and maintaining Tokelau identities in this space is the construction and negotiation of an imagined Pacific linguascape, peopled by talkers and defined by movement between islands of culture and actual transit through the geography of the Pacific. Community members make sense of their experiences in the multicultural world of modern Hawai‘i through talk and through knowledge about talk, including dialectal variation, language contact, language history, and intracommunity linguistic ideologies. Through participation in explicit engagements with language, a species of ethnometalinguistic action, Tokelau people and speakers of Tokelauan make sense of social and historical interactions through language, using talk not only as a diagnostic for measuring linguistic sameness and difference, but also in dynamic ways as a wayfinding tool as they move through new social and cultural spaces in their homelands, as they encounter indigenous Pacific Islanders elsewhere, and as they reinvent and reinterpret themselves along the way. iv List of figures Figure 1: Political map of the Pacific 5 Figure 2: Map of the central Pacific, including Tokelau and neighboring island groups 6 Figure 3: Examples of “good speech” and “bad speech” pronunciation 82 Figure 4: Consonant inventory of the language of Vaitupu and Fakaofo 88 Figure 5: Proto Polynesian consonant inventory 88 Figure 6: Tree diagram of highest order Polynesian subgroups 89 Figure 7: [s] in lexical items.