1. Metaphors of Land and Sea
Interviews with two Maori leaders
George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

2. Metaphors of Land

3. Maori Elder/Native Speaker
Tell me about your experiences with the Maori language?

4. It’s been a real hard battle.

5. 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)

6. In = container: the people and the land are one
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
The country was more or less all still in bush…they only cleared certain areas for gardening
This interplay between in bush and cleared represents the original balance.

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

8. Language loss =
change,
collaboration, and
countering

9. 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

10. 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)

11. 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.

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

13. People’s relationship to the land
[small farmlets] sort of kept the people going = causation

14. 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

15. 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 But …we couldn’t afford the terms…kept on fighting. The land came back in 1984.

16. 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

17. Metaphors of Sea

18. Tell me about your experiences with the Maori language.
Maori leader/Second language speaker of Maori
Tell me about your experiences with the Maori language.

19. 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

20. 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 sea

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

22. 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.

23. Coming back to exposure
And so that’s how much the language had been submerged
so that’s the exposure

24. Back to the sea richness underneath
—the words through the concepts (fluidity)…they [concepts] are all interlinked

25. 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…

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

27. Sea metaphors
Exposure/depth/breadth
Amoeba-nucleus/integrity
Immersion
Common metaphors
Treasures/birth/passion (PC, Jeanette King, May 8, 2008.

28. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) posit conversations as arguments
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.

29. 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.