Metaphors of Land and Sea

Interviews with two Maori leaders

George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

Metaphors of Land

Maori Elder/Native Speaker

• Tell me about your experiences with the Maori language?

It’s been a real hard battle.

Language loss = loss of people, death of people

• Orientational metaphors as cohesion• …Maori population…dropped 40,000 (down = bad) • We had 4 or 5 clever Maoris who became [transformation]

Parliamentarians--…they came into Parliament and they went around [movement] all their people telling them to multiply.[ Growth = good]

• A small family was about 10…they [families] went up to 15. [Up = good]

• Some of them went up to 20. [Up = good]• They [Maori] just multiply…over quarter million now…so

it’s [population] multiplying all the time…(=Very, very good)

• The country was more or less all still in bush…they only cleared certain areas for gardening

• In = container: the people and the land are one

• Cleared certain areas = respect/carefulness

When the Europeans came, it just killed them [Maori].Death both literally and figuratively

Language loss = • change,

• collaboration, and• countering

I think our people may have had something to do with it [language loss] You couldn’t speak Maori in the school grounds—

punished with the cane = Collaboration& Change/causation Because the Maori elders allowed the children to be put in school

Orientational/Causation

• I don’t think the young ones like it [collaboration] very much because they’re getting up and they’re fighting back (take us back to battle = coherence)

•

Collaboration /Conflict (Battle)

• Orientational/Causation• some of them who are educated … are

actually on the government’s side• That’s the worst part of it. It happens

everywhere.

Language = Land

• Maoris have fought for years and years for their land and the government took no notice. = the battle

People’s relationship to the land

Battle

• Of course, they [NZ government] took their marae away. They could’ve moved it, just took it away, locked all the houses. Marae = thing but also a place of spirituality & community; marae is the symbol.

• …our people took their relatives in—no house, just took them in (relatives = things)

• she [mother-in-law] refused to move… she just refused to move. It’s only through her that all this land is still in Maori hands. Mother-in-law =counter-effort

Battle continues to victory

• So in 1976 they [NZ govt.] decided they’d give us the land back after so many court cases…. One case was lost, but the others were won. so they started proceedings to hand the land back in 1976. But …we couldn’t afford the terms…kept on fighting. The land came back in 1984.

Victory begins the revitalization

• she refused to pay the $9,000. Judge set up a trust (structure) And the land was handed back (land = thing)

• We refused…we had the office from the Maori Affairs Department down on his knees (metonymy)…this [return of some of the land] was the start of the movement [land and language] causation

Metaphors of Sea

Maori leader/Second language speaker of Maori

Tell me about your experiences with the Maori language.

Exposure = weather

• My exposure to it [language] was probably a great aunt

• I started school in the fifties, and we would

have exposure—the maximum exposure to the language would be in the school concerts

Exposure/journey by sea

• There was no in-depth exposure to people conversing in the language in the fifties

• Primary use was during the tangi--clearing a pathway for the spirit to go to its final resting place in Hawaiki = journey by seajourney by sea

Journey

• His grandfather handled traditional protocols for the hapu. Ater his grandfather’s death, “he [Taterway] picked up those reins.”

Exposure & Battle

• My first real exposure to the language wouldn’t be until the seventies…language starting to be revived nationally.

• She stuck to her guns.

Coming back to exposure

• And so that’s how much the language had been submerged

• so that’s the exposure

•

Back to the sea

• richness underneath

—the words through the concepts (fluidity)…they [concepts] are all interlinked

Sea

• …there’s depth there [grandfather’s diaries] that you can’t actually grasp

• …unless you’ve got some breadth in terms of understanding the language…

Battle

• have a responsibility to enarm ourselves for the purpose of performing duties at tribal and inter-tribal level

Sea metaphors

•Exposure/depth/breadth•Amoeba-nucleus/integrity•Immersion

Common metaphors •Treasures/birth/passion (PC, Jeanette King, May 8, 2008.

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) posit conversations as arguments. These two samples suggest that personal narratives also present arguments.

• Speaker one actually begins his narrative with a thesis statement: …it’s been quite a battle.

• Speaker two is fairly consistent in his use of metaphors associated with his own experiences with the sea.

References

Halliday, M.A.K. and Ruqaiya Hasan (1976). Cohesion in English. New York: Longman.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Te Maire Tau, Rawiri. (2003) Ngi pikituroa o Ngai Tahu: The oral traditions of the Ngai Tahu. Dunedin, NZ: University of Otago Press.