Summary Of Lisa Kanae's 'Servant Tongue'

Servant Tongue: The Alienation of Native Speakers through Colonialism
“Agaa!” my mother yelled in pain as she stubbed her toe on the side of the kotatsu, an unique Japanese table covered with a futon blanket that is designed to keep legs warm during the winter. Full of curiosity like any other 8 year old, I stopped and pondered the word she cried in agony. “Okasan, what did you say?” I asked. Still in pain, my mother ignored my question as she examined her swollen toe. I repeated my question a little louder. With a hint of shame in her eyes she responded, “I said agaa, it’s Hogen.”
Lisa Kanae’s Sista Tongue is a piece that explores the deep relationship between Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) and the colonization of Hawaii. Kanae takes

her time to explain the history of the development of this Creole and the social implications it meant for its speakers through time. By switching between her observations of her own cousin Harold and those of “academic professionals” such as Madorah E. Smith, Kanae vividly illustrates the reality of the alienation brought down upon Creole speakers by those who spoke proper English. Kanae’s combination of different viewpoints paralleled with historical narration lends itself to the reader to infer that the entire piece is not only about language, but the force of colonialism in which alienation of the native population’s language is inevitable.
Alienation is the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong, or in which one should be involved. While the concept of alienation is deeply rooted in Marxist theory, in which the use of alienation is used by the elite to ensure the conformity of the working class, it can also be applied to show the relationship between colonialism and language (Seeman 782). For example, Kanae illustrates through her historical overview how the rapid American colonization of Hawaii’s indigenous populace created a language inequality that reflected the “master-servant” environment propagated by the sugar plantations. While the use of HCE allowed locals to “maintain a sense of ethnic identity” it promoted the alienation of HCE speaking youth through derogatory labels such as “handicapped” and “retarded.” (Kanae 11)
On another island in the Pacific Ocean, a similar force of language-alienation through colonialism can also be observed throughout its history. The island of Okinawa sits among the Ryuku archipelago chain and is just less than one thousand miles south of mainland Japan. It is currently home to Japan’s largest ethnic minority of 1.3 million Okinawans (Noguchi 69). Okinawans are not Japanese. As early as 300BC, Okinawans started to develop their own traditions and unique language. For example, ancient Okinawans interred their dead in urns while Japanese used the process of cremation and while pork was a main part of the Okinawan diet, Japanese ate little to no meat (Noguchi 70). Okinawa enjoyed lucrative trade with surrounding Asian countries and thus became colonized by the mainland Japanese Shimazu clan in 1609 (Noguchi 72). Under the feudal clan system, Okinawa was able maintain its native language of Hogen for the next 270 years (Noguchi 71). In 1880, the takeover of the Edo Shogunate marked the beginning of Okinawa’s history as a permanent prefecture of Japan.
The Edo Shogunate implemented strict policies of “linguistic standardization for the entire country under the slogan of futsugo (common language)” (Noguchi 71).

Initially the Okinawans embraced the idea of modernization and had a positive outlook towards their relationship with mainland Japan. This attitude quickly changed as native Okinawans were alienated by their colonizers. Much like how Kanae highlights the American education system’s alienation of those who spoke HCE in Hawaiian public schools, the Okinawans were forced to learn Japanese as it became the official language of instruction. Okinawan students caught speaking Hogen were forced to wear a tag, a scarlet letter of sorts, called a hogen-fuda. Throughout the day the tag was passed from one student to another as they were caught speaking the subservient Hogen language. The children had to resort to ways of passing the tag of shame on to others. “They found that a good way was to hit another pupil; the struck child would invariably cry out ‘Agaa’ and be forced to don the tag himself” (Noguchi 72). Throughout the early 1900’s Hogen was considered a barbaric language and those who spoke it received cruel forms of discrimination. For example, during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, native Okinawan speakers were regarded as spies and 30% of the Okinawan population ceased to exist (Mie). Much like how HCE denotes negative stereotypes and is shunned in formal American settings, the use of Hogen still marks the inferior status of Okinawans among elitist mainland Japanese. As a result of this, in 2009 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization labeled Hogen as an endangered language

(Mie).
The hint of shame in my mother’s eyes as she explained the meaning of the word ‘agaa’ was deeply rooted in the discrimination and segregation her ancestors faced through the process of Japanese colonialism. Although there are notable differences in the histories of Okinawa and Hawaii, the inevitable byproduct of language-alienation enforced by their colonizers is the remarkably similar. In conclusion, Kanae’s Sista Tongue is not a just a story of Pidgin in Hawaii, but more importantly it illustrates the framework in which colonialism alienates its subjects and rapes their native language leaving a stain on it forever.