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Cultural Conceptualisations in Stories of Māori-English Bilinguals: The Cultural Schema of marae

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Advances in Cultural Linguistics

Part of the book series: Cultural Linguistics ((CL))

Abstract

This chapter is informed by ideas that have developed in the field of Cultural Linguistics and have recently been applied to the study of World Englishes. In particular, it adopts the analytical framework of cultural conceptualizations to investigate a set of stories narrated by Māori-English bilingual speakers in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. In view of the close relation between language contact phenomena and cultural conceptualizations, the paper focuses on the analysis of marae. The meaning of the Māori word marae can be rendered as ‘meeting ground’ and a marae represents the centre of Māori tribal life and activities. The term has also entered New Zealand English as a borrowing, which is why its investigation bears important cultural implications for New Zealand as a whole. The study illustrates the richness of marae as a cultural concept that expresses tribal identity and sheds light on crucial aspects of its cultural conceptualization. Findings show that the analysed stories contain revealing instantiations of the cultural schema of marae. In addition, the results demonstrate that marae is closely connected to a range of other cultural categories (e.g. iwi, ‘tribe’; tikanga, ‘correct procedure, custom, habit’) and cultural schemas (e.g. tangihanga, ‘funeral ceremony’), which contribute to build up the superordinate cultural schema of marae.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Of course, this only refers to studies that have explicitly taken the specific perspective of cultural conceptualisations since linguistic research on cultural aspects of world Englishes is large.

  2. 2.

    As a note on terminology, Polzenhagen relies on the notion of cultural model as encompassing metaphorical, metonymic and other non-figurative conceptualsations in a sociocultural group.

  3. 3.

    The author would like to express her heartfelt gratitude to Tom Roa, Haupai Puke and Sophie Nock for having introduced her to the cultural concept of marae from an indigenous perspective. She would also like to extend her thankfulness to all the people at Te Pua Wānanga Ki Te Ao for having invited her to take part in activities, ceremonies and events on the marae.

  4. 4.

    Mead (2003: 95) points out that this is the current meaning of marae and before the 1960s the term only referred to the open space in front of the meeting house (what today is called marae ātea), while the site of the marae was referred to as pā.

  5. 5.

    In each of the quoted passages, transcription mark-up has been removed and emphasis is by the author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Marta Degani

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  1. Marta Degani
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Correspondence to Marta Degani .

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  1. Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Farzad Sharifian

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Degani, M. (2017). Cultural Conceptualisations in Stories of Māori-English Bilinguals: The Cultural Schema of marae . In: Sharifian, F. (eds) Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Cultural Linguistics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_29

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