Article.
Tetyana Kozlova
DOI 10.31558/1815-3070.2019.37.16
UDC 811.111:81’42:81’373(931)
BORROWING AS AN INTERFACE FOR MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSE:
AOTEAROA NEW
ZEALAND
Статтю присвячено проблемам формування
мультикультурного середовища та засобам його репрезентації в лексиці. На
прикладі новозеландського національного варіанту англійської мови доведено
важливу роль запозичень з мови маорі для процесів інтеграції автохтонної та
привнесеної європейської культурної спадщини, поступового формування
бікультурної англійськомовної єдності.
Ключові слова: мультикультуралізм, мультилінгвізм,
запозичення, асиміляція, дискурс, новозеландський варіант англійської мови,
мова маорі.
1. Introduction
The
issues of multiculturalism and multilingualism have been of increasing
importance for the countries where the English language was transported and
later evolved as the system of national varieties. Beyond the realm of its
origin, English contacted and interacted with indigenous and migrant languages,
absorbed new distinctive features.
The
composition and functioning of New Zealand English lexicon offer a fascinating
insight into the evolution and the present state of New Zealand cultural
diversity. Having originated in New Zealand, words and phrases have special
historical significance as they reflect a local penchant for coinage as well as
they confirm New Zealand relations with Australia and the indigenous Maori
culture.
The
Te Reo words in New Zealand English (hereinafter NZE) have been thoroughly
studied from many angles (Baker; Eagleson; “Good Australian”; Languages of New
Zealand 59–240; Reed; Trudgill; Turner). History, communicative
vitality and frequency of Maori loans in written and spoken English were
discussed by J. Macalister (Macalister). Maori expression creep into
colloquial English was an important part of J. Metge’s
(Metge) research on how Aotearoa and New Zealand cultures meet. J. Hay
et al.
(Hay, Maclagan, Gordon) focused on the historical account of Maori borrowing
into NZE, spheres of lexical concentration while a general account of New
Zealand English on the background of other varieties is found in (Bell,
Kuiper).
In
spite of the fact that NZE is obviously one of the best studied English
varieties worldwide, the problems of biculturalism and multicultural reality in
New Zealand remain unresolved at present. Avoiding disputes on the nature and
dilemma of biculturalism and multiculturalism (“Muslim Integration”; “Race, Colour and Identity” 175–282; “Tangata
Tangata”), it is essential to note that Pakeha-Maori partnership in New Zealand
is running its course and provides space for discussion.
The
purpose of this study is to analyze
how indigenous Maori linguistic heritage influenced the structure, content and
functioning of the New Zealand English lexicon, and how the Maori and Western
(non-Polynesian) knowledges are gradually contaminating to form the distinctive
New Zealand bicultural whole reflected in various discourse practices of the
English-speaking New Zealanders.
2. Methods and
materials
To
analyse the Maori impact on the distinctiveness of English and bicultural
(Pakeha-Maori) society in New Zealand, a corpus of Maorisms was compiled from
regional dictionaries (Orsman; Hughes) and texts relating to various types of
communication (fiction, poetry, mass media, historical records, and scientific
discourse). According to the criterion of functional significance, the corpus
of selected words and phrases included different groups:
- numerous loans genuinely specific to New Zealand – hutu “a small native tree” (Orsman 367),
kahawai “a kind of sea fish” (ibid.
386), patupaiarehe “a supernatural
being, a fairy-like being” (ibid. 583) etc.;
- plentiful nonce usages and recent coinages in New Zealand
English – hui-hopper “smb who
become a serial hui attender (meetings
on marae)” (“New Zealand” 72);
- a handful of loans that have entered the common core of
English as a lingua franca and thus been internationalized − tapu “very important and not allowed to
be touched or charged, according to the beliefs of the Maoris (= one of the
original people of New Zealand)” (Cambridge Dictionary), Maori “one of the original people of New Zealand and the Cook
Islands”, kiwi (ibid.) “a New Zealand
bird, the national symbol of New Zealand” (ibid.);
- a negligible number of cross-variety loans that are
shared by New Zealand and Australian Englishes – kai, kai-kai “food” (Hughes 285), kai, kaikai “food” (Orsman 387).
Structural and semantic types of analysis were employed
to identify the assimilation degree of the selected lexical units. The
following principles were taken into consideration: the ability of loans to
agree with the phonetic system, spelling and morphological rules of English,
the complexity of their semantic structure and involvement into phraseologisation
in the target-language.
Application of contextual and conceptual analysis made it
possible to discover the types of discourses that Maorisms are mostly appealing
to, examine their functions and significance in particular spheres of
communication.
3. Results and
Discussion
The
Maori borrowings which are systemically used in New Zealand English and
registered by regional dictionaries normally follow English pronunciation
rules: NZE kaio /ˈkaiʌu/
vs Ma. /ˈka:eo/, NZE kahwai /’kawai/ vs Ma. /ˈkahawai/
(Orsman 387). Nevertheless, loans also occur as a variety of modern
pronunciations replicating the original forms. For instance, the adjective Maori “usual, normal” (tangata Maori “usual human beings”) appears as /ˈmæuri/, /ˈmaori/, or “as
ˈma:ri, with a tapped r perhaps preceded by some sort of
central onglide” (Wells 181), with intervocalic /r/ approaching RP /ˈməʊl.di/
(Orsman 469). Spelling-pronunciation is found in the contexts pertaining to the
Maori race, society and its culture: “One [copy] translated into Mowrie”, “In Mowrie (New Zealand language) it is not difficult to express the
sound” (emphases added) (cited in Orsman 470).
On the suprasegmental level, borrowings turn up in their
anglicized forms following the pattern where stress falls in the first
syllable: NZE kuri /ˈkuri/, /ˈguri/
“a dog” vs Ma. /kuˈri:/. In modern applications, accentual alternatives reflect
on semantic variants as in NZE manuka
/ˈma:nǝkǝ/ “a common native scrub bush” when stressed on the first
syllable in the Maori fashion (Ma. /ˈma:nuka/), and NZE manuka /mǝˈnu:kǝ/, /mǝˈnjukǝ/ “timber
of manuka” when the accent shifts to the terminal syllable.
Graphic
adaptations of Maori linguistic incorporations are found in established
spelling forms. It is noteworthy that in spite of the phonological transparency
in Maori, orthography rules are far from being uniform. Alternative spellings
are given to long morpheme-internal vowels by designating them by a macron or
doubling the vowel letter. In contrast, anglicized forms avoid such
representations (Ma. kahikātoa
/kahiˈka:toa/, NZE kahikatoa
“manuka”) unless for the sake of motivation in onomatopoeic units (Ma.
/pakaˈha:/, NZE pakaha “a rainbird”,
also imitative of the bird’s call pakahaa
(Orsman 566)) or stylized depictions of Māori customs, life-style, social
issues, etc. (New Zealand Māori Word Encyclopedia (Lambert, title
page)).
The macron spelling becomes
the mark of identity as it appears in contextually proximal positions to the
lexical units conceptually connected to the identity marker. The instances that
follow are quotes from scientific and educational literature on social issues
in New Zealand, its multiculturalism and the role of Maori identity in its
development: “… mixed blood Māori–Chinese people
living among the more conservative Chinese communities often met with
discrimination because only ‘pure Chinese’ were considered good enough”
(emphasis added) (Ip 3), “New Zealand is a bicultural nation. Māori voyagers named this chain of
islands Aotearoa or land of the long white cloud. Colonisation by the British
in the nineteenth century produced a complex history. You will hear about the Māori world view, and Pākehā, or
European, New Zealand culture, from Dr Maria Bargh (Te Arawa and Ngāti Awa)
who teaches politics in Te Kawa a Māui” (“New Zealand Landscape”).
Another point about graphic representations of Maori
words in New Zealand English deals with the initial capitalization. It is well
instanced by the words maori / Maori and pakeha / Pakeha “a pale-skinned non-Polynesian
immigrant” whose both forms are accepted in Maori (c 1850) and English orthographies. While the Maori writing
seems to prefer the capitalized form, many Maori writers and scholars vary the
spelling in the writing in English. With the trend towards capitalization, the
small letter initial occurs in the contexts revealing negative evaluation: “Nga toki a te pakeha” (emphasis added); The axes of the foreigner” (Williams 1), “Ahakoa pakeha ahakoa tangata maori, e kore e tohungia (emphasis
added); Whether foreigner or native, he will not be speared” (ibid.), “E kore oti te pakeha e arahina?
(emphasis added) Shall not then the foreigner be conducted?” (ibid. 106).
In line with the writing in Maori,
English usage employs a small letter in the implicitly derogatory contexts:
“’Don’t talk to him – damned pakeha, ‘he said. ‘But I wasn’t,’ she
said with a gentle smile.” (emphasis added) (Wilson 146). Where it is important
to express hatred, anger, indignation, it is attributed to a fictional Maori
interlocutor: “Here comes the chief in the ship’s boat. <…> Someone has
been off in a canoe and told the chief that “Melons” and the “New Pakeha” were fighting like mad.
<…> He [the chief] is really vexed <…> “good work; killing my pakeha; look at him! <…> I won’t
stand this; not at all! not at all! not at all! <…> Killing my pakeha! (In a voice like thunder and
rushing savagely” (emphases added) (Maning 33–36). As is clear, the word Pakeha / pakeha is infrequently
used in English by non-Maori speakers and rarely appears in spoken English.
Grammatical assimilation of Maori
borrowings in NZE is traced through plural marking of nouns (Maoris) or their zero-termination plural, which is often evident
from plural forms of English verbs: “Maori
wear outfits only on special occasions” (emphasis added) (Theunissen 34).
Occasional usages, though, demonstrate the Maori plural forms derived with nga and / or with the preceding
determiner te “the”: “Nga Maori are keenly are keenly alive to
the degradation of exposure” (emphasis
added) (cited in Orsman 470), te gang
“the gang”, nga heavies “the treats”
(Bardsley 192). Even though Maori grammatical markers in NZE are not
regularized, they play an important pragmatic role of emphasis, expression of
irony and playfulness. That obviously provides lexical basis for grammatical
transfers from Maori to English.
Many nonce usages are marked with the
Maori determiner te in NZE, whereas
in Maori English, the English definite article makes up a semantic integrity
with the Maori word kai, turning it
into “a forceful marker of Maori English” (Dupuy 245): the kai “food, a meal”. The fact of the kai collocational stability in Maori English can be partly
grounded by the Maori language interference. In Maori grammar the definite
particle te is the marker of the
nucleus phrase containing the core lexical information in the utterance whereas
grammatical particles are peripheral in the structure. Hence the two main
functions of te in Maori are focusing
on the nucleus information (hemo i te kai,
lit. ‘dead + cause marker + the + food / meal’, meaning “very hungry” (Biggs
“English-Maori”)) and relating the phrase as a whole to the other phrase in the
sentence (Biggs “Let’s Learn Maori” 129). Alike usages of the kai are typical of Maori English when the interlocutors
highlight a general meaning of kai:
“After the kai, aunt Heroina told me
how well used the meeting house was now” (emphasis added) (Ihimaera 1997, p. 181,
cited in (Dupuy 244)).
In contrast to Maori and Maori English,
NZE does not necessarily mark such senses with the definite determiner, though
the collocability of kai is more
varied. Cf. different applications of determiners with kai in NZE signifying the following (hereinafter emphases added):
‘particular amount of food’ – “The evening kai was finished but the
hapu sat on” (cited in Orsman 387), ‘meal, sharing’ – “…an invitation was made to rub noses, shake hands and have kai” (ibid.), ‘food in general,
substance’ –
“to cook their kai” (ibid.), ‘small
or moderate quantity of food’ –
“they could get some kai” (ibid.),
‘portion’ –
“You come down the marae after and have a
kai down there” (ibid.).
As follows, Maori English
prefers the Maori grammatical pattern but chooses the English determiner to
refer to the entity conceptualized as ‘the part’. In comparison with Maori
English uses of the kai, New Zealand
English allows various collocations that agree with the grammatical features of
a mass noun in English. Being conceptualized as both ‘the part / concrete’
and ‘the whole / general’, kai
occurs with zero (kai), definite (the kai) and indefinite (some kai, a kai) determiners. However,
they do not make a semantic integrity with the loan.
Elements of Maori grammar occur in NZE
collocations following the syntactic order Noun +
Adjective as in the noun Pakeha Maori
(also pakeha-Maori, Pakia Maori, Pakiha Mouri, pekeha mauri) “a white European man
living as a Maori; a Europeanized Maori”. The suffixed Maori is an adjective in spite of the
fact that in “modern English use Maori is probably felt as a noun qualified by pakeha (Orsman 569).
Another noteworthy criterion for Maori loans
assimilation in NZE is the activity of borrowings in derivational processes.
Maori stems are involved in all productive and semi-productive ways of word
formation in modern NZE, in particular:
- affixation (Ringatu “the Maori religious movement” > Ringatuism “the doctrines and beliefs of Ringatu” (Orsman 673), kiwi “a bird” > Kiwian, kiwify, kiwiciazation, kiwification “to make a person or
thing New Zealand in character” (ibid. 415), tangi “a lamentation” > tangi-ing
“performing of a tangi” (ibid. 811), anti-Maori,
half-∼, non-∼, pan-∼, philo-∼, pre-∼, pro-∼, un-∼ “adjectives showing sympathy or antipathy with Maori causes” (ibid.
476), tapu > untapued “put under ceremonial restriction; made sacred” (ibid.
814));
- compounding (hui “a meeting house, a marae” > hui-hopper “one who participates in one hui after another”, hui-worker “one who helps with the
preparation for hui” (ibid. 364));
- reduplication (tapu “to impose, be subject to, a religious, or ceremonial
restriction” > tabbatab, tabie tabie
“to forbid, restrict, etc.” (ibid. 814));
- conversion (rangatira n “a high-born Maori” > adj “of superior rank” (ibid. 655), tangi n “a lamentation” > v “to weep over, moan” (ibid. 811));
- shortening (Raritongan > Raro “a
Pacific islander” (ibid. 657)).
There are three significant trends about
morphological derivation in Maorisms. In the first trend, very few Maori bases
generate wide derivational nests (Maori,
kiwi, pakeha).
The second trend refers to the high ability
of many Maori stems to combine with English stems in order to provide direct
references, identify and describe the signified entities. Numerous examples are
drawn from the early names of plants, animals, birds and fish, in whose
structure the Maori loan is (a) the core element of the structure as in tree karamu “a small tree, not a shrub
of C. robusta” (ibid. 395), or
(b) an attribute preceding the headword as in karaka-berry “a berry of a native plant” (ibid. 394). The recent
fashion is to hybridize names of contemporary items (cyberhui “a meeting to discuss the use of electronic
communications”, kaumatua flat
“granny flat” (Bardsley 192), waka-jumping “jumping from a canoe”
(“New Zealand” 72), etc.) and regularly (Aotearoa
New Zealand “a symbolic name coined in the 1980s to represent Maori
and Pakeha components of New Zealand Society and culture (Orsman 14)).
The third trend in hybrids
is to express pragmatic rather than denotational meanings. As a rule, a loan
constituent appears in belittling, dismissive, derogative, or even offensive
applications, when it is needed to express disgust, pungent criticism, contempt
or prejudice, devaluation, irony or mockery: Maori car “an old or decrepit vehicle”, Maori porridge “boiling mud” (Orsman 475), grandfather hapuku “a scorpion fish” (ibid. 335), Nga Bush “uncivilized, from areas remote
from towns” (ibid. 108), kuri dog “a
mongrel, unruly dog” (ibid. 431).
As to semantic variation, Maori stems are
mostly mono- and bisemous, very few of them develop extensive polysemy: kiwi – 26 senses (ibid. 412–416),
Maori – 24 senses (ibid.
469–476), pakeha – 15 senses
(ibid. 567–570). A moderate degree of Maori loans involvement is found in
phraseology: kiwi “a bird” > as hard to catch as a kiwi “very
elusive” (ibid. 415), kauri “a
tree” > in the kauri “in the
backblocks” (ibid. 399), tangi (see
above) > to hold a tangi “to have
a party or meeting, esp. a discussion or analysis after an event” (ibid. 811), haka “a traditional maori
dance” > to dance (do) a haka
“to celebrate, to express glee” (ibid. 328).
With relatively simple semantic structure and
reduced semantic volume, Maori loans are likely to fill particular semantic
fields mainly related to ‘animal’ (purumorua
“Congiopodus leucopaecilus, pigfish”
(ibid. 645)), ‘plant’ (putaputaweta “Carpodetus serratus (fam.
Escalloniaceae”), a small tree with marbled leaves” (ibid.)), ‘object of
culture’ (marae “a communal gathering
place; a meeting house; the center of tribal life” (ibid. 482)) and other types
of ‘artifact’, ‘food’ (hangi “food
cooked in an earth oven consisting of a hole dug out in the ground with the
bottom lined with heated stones” (ibid. 333)), ‘clothes’ (piupiu “a traditional Maori garment consisting of a heavy fringe”
(ibid. 611)), items of Maori ‘spiritual life’ (haka “a dance accompanied by a chant, performed to honour or
welcome someone” (ibid. 328), historical records of social unrest or ‘war’ (tupara Hist. “a Maori adaptation of
two-barrel, a double barreled-gun” – “his mother… fighting in the
earthworks alongside her husband, beating off the pakeha line regiments and
colonial riflemen with rifles and tupara” (Auckland
Weekly News 7 Sept. 1938, 94; cited in Orsman 865)) and some other
conceptual domains. It still remains unclear why some indigenous phenomena are
referred to by Maori names (tuatara
“a large lizard-like reptile”) whereas the others are given English ones, like
the only original New Zealand mammal Ma. pekapeka
is far better known as the bat. In
stark contrast, a very small infesting humans and animals insect, brought from
Europe and not known in New Zealand before the European settlement, is rather
known as Ma. kutu “a body-louse, esp.
a head-louse” than English louse, lice.
Despite the fact that it somewhat restricts Maori loans
frequency of usage in NZE, quite a number of Maorisms, borrowed into English at
the earlier stages of New Zealand history, have turned out important for the
semantic space segmentation.
Firstly, autochthonous borrowings expand to conceptual
domains primarily associated with non-Maori culture and life style and
contribute to the extension of the existing categories by the addition of new
members: haka (1777 – the date
of the earliest recording in the written sources) “a traditional Maori dance”
> (1977) “similar dances of other Polynesian people”; (c1900) “In Non-Maori contexts. A noisy posture dance usu. performed
by males, accompanied by a chant (often in
English or meaningless word forms) to encourage a sports team (esp. rugby
union), to support a school, etc.” (Orsman 328).
Secondly, Maori loans coexist with their English-base
counterparts in NZE and encourage conceptual split and recategorization, hence
enabling further detalisation of the semantic space. For instance, the word Ma.
rimu is mainly used to refer to the
category ‘tree’ including “a New Zealand coniferous tree, distinguished by its
scale-like drooping foliage, flaking bark and great height; also its timber”,
whereas the English name red pine
(1821) refers to the category ‘building material’ and is applied to rimu
timber. Consider the following quotes (emphases added): “Rimu…This elegant tree…”
(1835 Yate NZ (1970) 40; cited in ibid. 671), “The prevailing species of tree are remo, totara…” (1844. Tucket Diary
16 Aug. in Honcken Contributions
(1898) 223; cited in ibid.) and “It [rimu] is this tree which the sawyers call the red pine” (1841. NZJrnl. II 51; cited in ibid.
605), “At work in the forest, … Red Pine,
a finely grained timber which
literally seems to bleed under the saw,
as its red sap flowed out” (1857. Harper Lett.
from NZ 4 Nov. (1914) 45; cited in ibid. 671), “Rime, the native name of
this tree, is now tolerably well
known in Otago. So if professional men
and timber merchants would only encourage its use, it would soon supersede
the vague conventional term of ‘red pine’
” (1877. TrNZ/IX. 163; cited in
ibid.). The list of examples can be widened by pronunciation variants of manuka (see above).
Today, the Maori language is gradually becoming familiar
to more and more people. It brings loans to various types of discourses.
In online social media and networking communication, the
use of Maori words is very high. Many announcements are in bilingual mode
providing parallel translations between Maori and English (in the examples
below, emphases added): “Save our Awa protest –
Wairoa / Te Wairoa hopupu
honengenenge matangirau”, “Nau mai, Haere mai / Come join us” (Kawana & Mcllroy).
In other cases, they offer glosses for Maori words and expressions: “The full Māori name of the river is: Te Wairoa
Hōpūpū Hōnengenenge Mātangi Rau, which
means the long, bubbling, swirling, uneven waters.” (ibid.). A piece
of information in English may contain numerous Maori words and phrases in order
to attract attention to ethnic, ecological and other alarming issues: “For polluting the Waiau
and Wairoa river resulting in
smothered eels, kakahi, invertebrates
and many fish species and plants <…> To date $100,000 is confirmed
to go towards the new Wairoa
Playground and $15,000 to Wairoa
Museum – decided by Eastland & Wairoa
District Council. Not one cent has
gone to cleaning up the river! <…> To
support community river monitoring, to conduct fish surveys, to plan and
initiate riparian margins starting
with marae along the river and
contribute to advocate for the health and safety of the Wairoa river and its people, for our mokopuna. Tihei Mauriora!”
(ibid.). The local activists are protesting against the New Zealand
river pollution, calling the audience to join their campaign and force the
local authorities to divert the investments to clean the river. Being 49 words
and expressions out of 345 in total, the Maori words and expressions function
as addressee-oriented pragmatic devices in this announcement.
In political discourse, the officials intersperse English
with Maori words in their speeches and reports: “However Dame Tariana Turia
doesn’t agree <…>, “You can have 20 Māori MPs in the Labour Party
<…> and their majority vote are not tangata
whenua.” Lizzie Marvelly agreed saying, “What Labour have to do now is step
up for Māori. Māori stepped up for Labour in this Election and now they
have to pay them back.” ” (Koti). The use of tangata whenua instead of ‘local people, local residents’ makes the
speech more expressive and eloquent which is an important thing in public
opinion control. This is to reinforce the suggestive effect and cause the
feeling of high solidarity in the recipient.
In scientific discourse, Maori names are much less
frequent being mainly employed for the sake of direct reference, precision and objectivity of the given facts. They
are particularly important for biological, historical, archeological, anthropological
literature where the contexts require detail-oriented discussion. Maori
expressions help the identification of the items in question by naming
the unique objects and phenomena: “The arrival of Polynesians was a disaster
for the native fauna. Many birds became extinct, including moas <…>. Animals such as tuatara became restricted to the
off-shore islands, <…> but the
Polynesian rat or kiore (Rattus exulans) was the more damaging
introduction.” (emphasis added) (Wardle 7).
Folklore, fiction and poetry embrace Maorisms for their
expressivity, vivid imagery and symbolism. For example, the kokato, a large bluish-grey forest bird,
called by some New Zealanders crow,
became a symbol of self-consciousness. The note of kokato is very peculiar
because it resembles a low, hollow boom such as that of the big bell. The
kokato’s call stands for the call of human power of love in the collection of
poems “The Call of the Kokato” (Boniface).
In legends, the birds of the bush when named one by one
stimulate the spectacular image and richness of colours in the Bush. Their
names borrowed from the Maori language are mostly onomatopoetic, hence serve
their best to romantically reproduce the audial image of the tropical forest
full of mysterious sounds and tones: “…Tanehokahoka, who called all of his
children, the birds of the air together. Tui…Pukeko... Pipiwharauroa…Kiwi… Kiwi
took one last look at the sun filtering through the trees and said a silent
goodbye. Kiwi took one last look at the other birds, their wings and their
coloured feathers…” (“New Zealand Maori Legend – How the Kiwi Lost His Wings”).
A more complex encoding of the New Zealand
society, its unity and diversity is suggested in B. Kemp’s poem about kumera (sweet potato as it is known in
Polenesia). Food is conceptualized as a unifying core of the society. New
Zeland nation that consists of people of many creeds is symbolically
represented as the rekamaroa, one of
several types of kumera (Ballard, Brown &
Bourke 54), and the plant houhere
“ribbonwood, or thousand-jacket, an ornamental shrub with lace-bark that splits
up into thin layers (Morris 87). Kumera, as common food in Polynesia, also
stands for the link between generations (tipuna
“ancestor” (Gilsenan, Hopkirk & Emery-Wittington 8)). The bicultural nature
of life in New Zealand is portrayed by specially selected lexical means
involved into the metaphorical code-switching: (emphases added) “Rekamaroa, / a bed of hot river stones, / under
the earthen blanket, / steam rises, the buttery smell of pork
belly. / Houhere, / creamy fingers to open mouth, /
mīere, mīere, oh mīere / upon a honeyed tongue, spirited tīpuna
sing.” (Kemp). On the one hand, the poem demonstrates a rich introduction
of Maori words into the description of the hangi (a Maori earth oven) in
English and evidences the integration of Maori cultural heritage into the
Pakeha culture. On the other hand, the inclusion of mīere “honey”, a
borrowing from French into Maori (Moorfield & Paterson 65),
demonstrates the interchange between European and Maori cultures.
Unsurprisingly, Maori expressions are also
adopted in colloquial speech: ‘Don’t mind Taipo,’
she said as she ushered me in. I froze… ‘What the devil is it?’ She chuckled.
‘A Beardie.’ ‘Does it bite?’ ” (emphasis added) (1985. McGill G’day Country 122; cited in (Orsman
806)). The Maori word taipo “an evil
spirit bringing death” is employed in the above-quoted context in its weakened
sense “a name given to a dog”. It adds emotionality or even the exasperation
and humorous treatment of the situation.
Code-switching is different, though. For
instance, bilingual English-Maori code-switching takes place, for example, when
a young Maori-leader is giving a talk in English about the needs of his office
co-workers: “oh okay kia ora anō tātou
katoa [“hello again everyone”] first of all it’s good to have a welcome for
a new staff member <…> I hope everything’s going well f- with you too
Albert and the whānau [“family”] so
um kia kaha e hoa [“be strong my
friend”] (Holmes, Marra, Vine). Such hybridization of speech definitely works
for the opening Maori cultural space for the employees who are expected to have
a sufficient level of the Maori expression awareness. From the theoretical
point of view, the analysis of such cases is an acute problem and requires
research into the set of criteria distinguishing occasional borrowings and
code-switching. It seems that code-switching is irregular but when repeated
grows into incipient transfer.
4. Concluding Remarks
The examination of Maori borrowings in NZE brought to light important
observations on the specificity of language and culture contacts between
indigenous (Polynesian) and migrant (European / Pakeha) social groups.
Neither coexistence on a compact geographical territory nor intensive social
interactions have resulted in balanced reciprocal borrowing.
It is noteworthy that the amount of words from the Maori language in NZE
is much higher than, for instance, that of Aboriginal loans in Australian
English. Nevertheless, it is still insufficient which is largely a result of
social conflicts (Maori Wars) and low esteem of the local population by the
first migrants and later arriving colonists. Only for several recent decades
have we been observing the Maori language and culture revival.
Quite a few Maori loans are traced in Common (international) English and
used across varieties (Australian and New Zealand Englishes) whereas in modern
NZE the cognitive and cultural impact of Maorisms continues to grow. Maori
loans are expanding their semantic space being transferred from the domain
‘physical world’ to other, more abstract concepts relating to various aspects
of human experience. There is a clear tendency from sole occurrence of borrowings
to their widespread use in various types of discourse.
Maori borrowings prove a high degree of assimilation in New Zealand
English. At the same time, they tend to retain their original features.
Unassimilated elements found in pronunciation and spelling variants prevail in
Maori contexts dealing with ethnic matters, especially when it is necessary to
specify indigenous ancestry or focus on racial identity. Nevertheless, Maorisms
also frequent non-Maori contexts to express contemptuous connotations. In conclusion,
Maori loans and occasional uses in NZE are markers of the Maori ethnic identity
that stand along with their anglicized variants and English counterparts as the
acknowledgement of the multiculturalism and multilinguialism in New Zealand.
Although there are opposite views on the multicuturalism in Aotearoa New
Zealand, Maori and Pakeha cultures compliment and inspire each other towards
transcultural future.
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List of Abbreviations
adj – adjective
c – circa
ibid. – ibidem
Ma.
– Maori
n – noun
NZE
– New Zealand variety of English
v – verb.
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