Māori Gender Non-conforming Identity: Analysing the ‘Takatāpui’ Discourse

Francesca Marino

doi:10.1515/mc-2019-0010

Article

Māori Gender Non-conforming Identity: Analysing the ‘Takatāpui’ Discourse

Francesca Marino graduated in Communication, Modern languages and Cultures (Bachelor’s Degree) in 2015 and she completed her Master’s Degree in Languages and Intercultural Communication in the Euro-Mediterranean Area at the University of Naples L’Orientale in 2018. She was offered a PhD position at the University of South Florida (PhD program in Linguistics and Applied Language Studies) for the academic year 2020-21. She will soon enroll at the USF. As a researcher, her areas of expertise include Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodal Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotics.

Published/Copyright: May 1, 2020

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From the journal Multimodal Communication Volume 9 Issue 1

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the process of reconstruction of Māori postcolonial cultural identity in the twenty-first century which also passes through the reclamation and redefinition of ‘takatāpui’ notion. ‘Takatāpui’ is an umbrella term that nowadays indicates all the Māori with non-conforming wairua (spiritualities, gender identities), sexualities and sex characteristics. It is a culturally specific word which represents a form of intersectionality by identifying people as both Māori and queer.

As a consequence of the increasing spread of the Internet, which has become a virtual place to construe identity and to promote the dissemination of ideas, a Multimodal Discourse Analysis is conducted on a corpus comprising 10 audiovisual texts fully retrieved from the web and exclusively produced by Māori takatāpui activists and/or containing Māori takatāpui activists’ self-narratives or claims.

The corpus is analysed by applying a MMDA (Multimodal Discourse Analysis) framework based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic framework (2006). The analysis is conducted also by taking into account Blommaert’s linguistic and ethnographic framework (2014).

The findings of the analysis show the different strategies through which Māori identities are construed and conveyed reinforcing what the Māori scholar, Tuhiwai Smith (1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: Zed Books Limited, 28), calls “a very powerful need to give testimony to and restore a spirit, to bring back into existence a world fragmenting and dying”.

Keywords: multimodal discourse analysis; takatapui; Maori; postcolonial identity; agency; language; gender; social actors

About the author

Francesca Marino

Francesca Marino graduated in Communication, Modern languages and Cultures (Bachelor’s Degree) in 2015 and she completed her Master’s Degree in Languages and Intercultural Communication in the Euro-Mediterranean Area at the University of Naples L’Orientale in 2018. She was offered a PhD position at the University of South Florida (PhD program in Linguistics and Applied Language Studies) for the academic year 2020-21. She will soon enroll at the USF. As a researcher, her areas of expertise include Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodal Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotics.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my profound gratitude to my mentor professor, Giuseppe Balirano (Dept. of Literary, Linguistic and Comparative Studies University of Naples “L’Orientale”), for supervising this research work and for believing in me more than I actually believe in myself.

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