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Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 3:1 (2017) ► pp.1–24

Linguistic landscaping and the assertion of twenty-first century Māori identity

| The University of Waikato

The Base, one of New Zealand’s largest retail and commercial centres, is situated approximately 7 km north-west of the central business district of Hamilton, New Zealand’s fourth largest city. It is built on a block of land which was requisitioned by the New Zealand government prior to World War II and used as an Air Force Base during the war. The land was returned to the Waikato-Tainui Māori tribal confederation in 1995 as part of a package of reparations relating to the Crown’s mistreatment of the tribe, including its misappropriation of tribal lands. The research reported here, located theoretically within the domain of critical discourse theory, suggests that the semiotoscape of The Base, including, in particular, its linguistic landscape, plays a role in the formation and assertion of contemporary Māori indigenous identity.

Keywords: identity, indigenous languages, linguistic landscape, Māori, minority languages
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Aotearoa/ New Zealand: Colonisation, loss and resistance
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Rationale and immediate context
    • 3.2Theoretical and methodological framework
  • 4.The data
    • 4.1Architecture, building materials and naming
    • 4.2Signage
    • 4.3Clientele
  • 5.Discussion: Revisiting the research questions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 29 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.3.1.01joh
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