Maori Identity

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Language as an expression of identity

Pakeha attitudes (TPK 2002)

615 Maori/725 non-Maori

Maori

• Cultural developers 68%
• Maori only 20%
• Uninterested 12%

Non-Maori

• Passive Supporters 49%
• English only 12%
• Uninterested 39%

Maori identity

• Geneology (whakapapa)
• Family (whanau)
• Place (mountain, river, marae)
• Customs and Traditions (tikanga)
• Upbringing
• Language
• etc

Arapera Ngaha (2005)
Hawaiian Conference

Language & Identity

• Restricted domains
  E.G. on the marae
• Symbolic Language
• Code-switching (Holmes 1991)
  Sarah: I think everyone’s here except Mere.
  John: She said that she might be a bit late but actually I think that’s her arriving now.
  Sarah: You’re right. Kia ora Mere. Haere mai. Kei te pehea koe?
  Mere: Kia ora e hoa. Kei te pai. Have you started yet?

Use of Maori words (Bjelde)

• His uncle died, and we have a __________for him last week on the marae.
• The children are learning _____ at the kohanga reo.
• She brought a ________ to her sister in Wellington. ________.
• My name is Susan and I come from New Zealand
• A high school hosts a ______________to look at ways to improve the knowledge of Maoridom among their pupils.
• Keri and Witi knew their _________many generations back.

Code-switching (Holmes 1991)
Sarah: I think everyone’s here except Mere.
John: She said that she might be a bit late but actually I think that’s her arriving now. Sarah: You’re right. Kia ora Mere. Haere mai. Kei te pehea koe?
Mere: Kia ora e hoa. Kei te pai. Have you started yet?

Maori English Vernacular

• First identified in 1970s
• Strong link between Maori English and SES
• Not all Maori use MEV, and not all Maori use MEV all the time
• Resurgence of MEV

Shelly Robertson –Can MEV be identified?

• 30 bus drivers in Wellington
• Listened to 6 speakers
  1YPM young ‘Maori sounding’ Pakeha speaker
  2YP young Pakeha speaker
  3 MP conservative middle-aged Pakeha speaker
  4MM middle-aged Maori speaker
  5YMP young Pakeha-sounding Maori speaker
  6YM young Maori speaker
• Open response question on ethnicity

Robertson results

• More speakers classified as Pakeha than as Maori
• Maori tended to identify Maori more successfully
• Non-New Zealanders were less accurate of all listeners
• More younger listeners stated Maori as a classification (perhaps more salient)
• Male listeners were slightly better at identifying Maori speakers
• Two speakers 4MM and 6YM were correctly identified as Maori by at least 50% of listeners, and by 87% of the Maori listeners.

Maori English

• Discourse Features (not absolute differences)
  Eh? (Maori ne –question marker)
  Narrative structure
  Verbal feedback
• Syntactic Features
  There’s...five ducks on your front deck.
• Morphological Features (more often)
  I seen them

Phonetics

• Phonetic Features
  Vowels
  (KIT, BOOT, BOAT, MATE, EYE)
• Consonants
  Aspiration [ph], [th], [kh]
  dog...dogzs....(bus—spy)
  Things (tthings)
  Them, The (eg., Maori ‘te’)
• Intonation (syllable-timed)