_".:r. l"'~ ".,.., ' ',,!Im"'! Birds ofa Different Feather: Tok Pisin and Hawai'i Creole English as Literary Languages

Rdgins and creoles are widely varied with respect to their uses and func-tions, whether officially recognized or not. Throughout their history most of these languages have not had any official status in the countries where they are spoken, even though they are often widely used by the majority of the population. The low status of pidgins and creoles is more generally a consequence of their being regarded not as full-fledged languages, but as corrupt and bastardized versions of some other (usually European) lan-guage. Most of them are not written and therefore, not standardized, a situation that also fuels popular ideas that they are not "real " languages. My purpose here is to compare two English-based Pacific pidgins/ _ creoles that differ dramaticall)T in terms of their functions and_sta.tus: Iok Pisin and Hawai'i Creole English. Tok Pisin 'Talk Pidgin ' is a de facto official language in Papua New Guinea spoken by more than half of the population of 3.5 million. English, however, is the official medium of edu-cation. In practice, having official status means that Tok Pisin may be used in the House of Assembly, the country's main legislative body. In fact, most business is conducted in Tok Pisin, the most widely shared lan-guage among the members. By contrast, Hawai'i Creole English, spoken in the Hawaiian Islands by somewhat less than half the population of just over a million, has no official status. In the first section I present brief historical sketches of both languages in order to situate them in their sociohistorical context. Historically, Hawai'i Creole English represents, at least for the Pacific region, a more abrupt case of creolization than does Tok Pisin (see Romaine 1988)