Borrowing as an Interface for Multicultural Discourse: Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract.

BORROWING AS AN INTERFACE FOR MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSE: AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND

Tetyana Kozlova

Department of English Philology, Faculty of Foreign Philology, Zaporizhzhia national University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

Abstract

Background: 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.

Purpose: 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.

Results: The Maori borrowings are systemically used in New Zealand English and registered by regional dictio­naries. They normally follow English rules of pronunciation, spelling, grammar. However, they also occur as a variety replicating the original forms.

Another noteworthy feature of 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, compounding, reduplication, conversion shortening.

Despite the restricted Maori loans frequency 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.

Today, the Maori language is gradually becoming familiar to more and more people. It brings loans to various types of discourses.

Discussion: 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.

Keywords: multiculturalism, multilingualism, borrowing / loan, assimilation, discourse, New Zealand English, the Maori language.

Vitae

Tetyana Kozlova is a Doctor of Philology, Assoc. Professor. Professor of the English Department at Zaporizhzhia National University. Her areas of research interests include lingosemiotics, linguistic typology, comparative and historical linguistics, areal linguistics, cognitive linguistics, lexicography, intercultural communication, language ecology.

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.

References.

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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.