Kū Kia ‘I Manua: The Linguistic Landscape of the Mauna Kea Protectors Movement

Abstract

This paper describes the linguistic landscape of a single protest by the Mauna Kea Protectors’ movement against the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope project in Hawai.i on June 24, 2015. It focuses primarily on the written language of protest signs and clothing, which move through the landscape over time. Using geosemiotics and intertextual analysis, this paper shows how this linguistic landscape helped to create a place of resistance using polylanguaging practices that mix English, Pidgin (Hawai.i Creole), and Hawaiian. Communities of practice such as the Mauna Kea Protectors not only affect the discourse over land-use decisions, but also affect the visibility and prestige of indigenous languages.