Speak American

Speak American Synopsis

Speak American explores how language tied together race, power, and citizenship in Territorial Hawai'i from 1924 to 1960 via the public K-12 English Standard School System. In this segregated system, children were tested for spoken English fluency: those who passed were placed in elite classes or schools, while others remained in regular classrooms. Proposed by white mothers, the policy used language as a tool to implement de facto racial separation, privileging those who already spoke English rather than teaching it to those who didn't. This dynamic was enabled by "listening regimes" (disciplinary practices that trained educators and the public to listen for and reward Standard English), while marginalizing Hawai'i Creole English, the everyday language of plantation and urban life.

Drawing on archival records, interviews, and school alumni events, the book introduces the concept of the "panauricon"-a listening-based counterpart to Foucault's visual panopticon-to describe how language surveillance reinforced and extended social hierarchies. A century later, debates over monolingualism and national identity persist, making this study of Hawai'i's historic linguistic politics both timely and urgent.