This was one of the biggest projects I've done for linguistics so far. This class was the second sociolinguistics class. Throughout the class we went through different sociolinguistic studies and looked more in-depth at the rules for research studies. The final for the class was to create an outline and proposal for our own sociolinguistic study. I chose to focus on Pidgin or Hawaiian-Creole. In looking for a topic that would guide my research on Pidgin I got very deep into the concept of Crossing: the use of language varieties associated with social or ethnic groups that the speaker does not normally ‘belong’ to.’ The original study was in 1995 and specifically looked at crossing through use of Panjabi, Indian English and Creole in Britain.
I chose to apply this to Pidgin because However, there are no clear lines that designate which ethnic groups Pidgin ‘belongs to.’ The use of crossing in Hawaii would contribute to the understanding of crossing and why it occurs. I did so much research and was truly proud of the proposal I turned in. It's actually a topic I think would be incredibly interesting and perhaps quite important to research.