“An unrealistic expectation”: Māori youth on indigenous language purism
-
Nathan John Albury
and
Lyn Carter
Abstract
Linguistic purism can play an especially political role in legitimising and authenticating indigenous identities. For languages now undergoing revitalisation after histories of colonial conquest, purism that precludes foreign influences in language corpora and behaviour can be seen as reversing the impacts of language contact and reasserting indigeneity. This is indeed the case for te reo Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, that was suppressed and essentially outlawed by the British but is now undergoing revitalisation. How indigenous New Zealanders feel about such purism, however, has been subject to minimal inquiry. This article analyses the attitudes of around 200 Māori youth, solicited through an online survey, to purism in Māori vocabulary development and to a recurring purist discourse, commonly reproduced by indigenous elders, that criticises errors when speaking te reo Māori. The article reveals a tension between supporting purism for the linguistic self-determination of the indigenous collective, and rejecting purism on the basis this inhibits the linguistic emancipation of individuals. On balance, it appears these Māori youth may hold significantly less purist attitudes than current language policy and locally pervasive ideology.
Funding statement: This work was partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223265.
Acknowledgments
“We give our sincerest thanks to the Māori students at the University of Otago who participated in this research and whose valuable contributions can help guide discussion about the future of te reo Māori. We also give our warmest thanks to the editor for encouraging this paper, and to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions”.
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Articles in the same Issue
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Race, space and commerce in multi-ethnic Costa Rica: a linguistic landscape inquiry
- “I speak English but i am still me” – English language practices in Alter do Chão, Brazil
- Framing the diaspora and the homeland: language ideologies in the Cuban diaspora
- Who speaks what language to whom and when – rethinking language use in the context of European Schools
- “It sounds like the language spoken by those living by the seaside” – language attitudes towards the local Italo-romance variety of Ghanaian immigrants in Bergamo
- “An unrealistic expectation”: Māori youth on indigenous language purism
- Towards an understanding of African endogenous multilingualism: ethnography, language ideologies, and the supernatural
- Language threat in the United Arab Emirates? Unpacking domains of language use
- Transcending networks’ boundaries: losses and displacements at the contact zone between English and Hebrew
- Book Review
- Maria Sabaté i Dalmau: Migrant communication enterprises. Regimentation and resistance
