In:Emancipatory Pragmatics: Innovative approaches to pragmatics incorporating the concept of “ba”
Edited by Yoko Fujii, William F. Hanks, Sachiko Ide, Scott Saft and Kishiko Ueno
[Culture and Language Use 24] 2025
► pp. 325–346
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Emancipatory Pragmatics and the application of the concept of ba to an indigenous language and culture
The case of Hawaiian
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 2 December 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.24.13saf
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.24.13saf
Abstract
This chapter applies ba and ba theory to the Hawaiian language
to demonstrate that ba theory, unlike western approaches to context, has the potential to appreciate
the deeply intimate relationship between people and land in a Hawaiian cultural perspective. By examining Hawaiian
data from two sources, a Hawaiian language radio show in the 1970s and old Hawaiian newspapers that date back to the
1800s, the analysis focuses on two linguistic features, person categories and possessive forms, to show how the
Hawaiian language was used to anchor Native Hawaiians in an interdependent and inseparable relationship with the land.
Discussion emphasizes the potential of ba theory to enable researchers of Indigenous languages to
underscore the importance of the people-land connection in their cultures.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Ba and context
- 3.The Hawaiian perspective
- 4.Data and analysis: Person categories, possessives, and the merging of the self with the land
- 5.Discussion and conclusions
Notes References
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