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The language of settler colonialism, Stephen May, ‘New Zealand is “racist as f**k”: Linguistic racism and te reo Maori’, Ethnicities, 2023

31Jul23

Abstract: A key feature of the confluence of modern nation-state formation and colonization has been the marginalization and denigration of minoritized language varieties, particularly Indigenous languages, over time. Indigenous languages have been actively proscribed in public language domains, such as education, leading to their inevitable shift and loss, in settler-colonial contexts worldwide. This process of linguistic hierarchization has long been recognized in the sociology of language and the sociology of nationalism but the overt and covert linguistic racism attendant upon it had remained relatively underexplored. Recent discussions within sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, however, have addressed this lacuna, particularly through the development of raciolinguistics as a theoretical framework. Linguistic racism, a form of cultural racism, uses discursive constructions of language use and related linguistic hierarchies as a proxy for the racialized discrimination and subordination of Indigenous peoples and other minoritized ethnic groups. Here, I explore discourses of linguistic racism by Pakeha (White) New Zealanders in Aotearoa New Zealand toward te reo Maori, the Indigenous Maori language, in everyday discourses and the media. I focus particularly on the public contestation of the increasing normalization of te reo Maori in contemporary New Zealand society, the result of the successes of the last 40 years of Maori language revitalization, via both overt and covert forms of linguistic racism toward te reo Maori. These discourses act in defense of English monolingualism, the direct linguistic legacy of New Zealand’s settler-colonial history, along with the privileges this history has provided for White, monolingual English-speaking New Zealanders. Interestingly, the racialized opposition to te reo Maori is most evident among older, White New Zealanders. This suggests the
potential for change among younger New Zealanders and New Zealand’s increasingly diverse migrant population, both of whom appear more open to the ongoing development of societal bilingualism in English and te reo Maori.


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