TE REO MĀORI AND MĀORITANGA REPRESENTATION IN FICTION: A Discourse Analysis of te reo Use in Witi Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider (1987)

Abstract

In recent years Māori culture has gained significant recognition through its depiction in mass media like Disney’s Moana (2016) or Avatar: The Way of Water (2022). Voices within the community had called out against the misrepresentation of Māori culture. This thesis explores Māori language and Māori culture representation in one of the seminal Māori works, the 1987 novel The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. It explores the use of te reo Māori¹ (the Māori word for Māori language) from a socio-cultural, postcolonial context, particularly its impact amidst the backdrop of its release during the Māori Renaissance. This era marked a resurgence of Māori identity and cultural pride, serving as a response to centuries of colonization and urbanization that had marginalized te reo Māori and other indigenous expressions. This analysis of the novel is done through empirical data analysis in the form of coding, discussing the results in a qualitative manner considering code switching practices and postcolonial studies. The study showed that in the novel, te reo Māori is predominantly used within the lexical fields of Māoritanga1 (Māori culture), Whanau (kinship), Te Taiao (nature philosophy) and Māori mythology, which are integral parts of Māori culture. Using native terminology ensures cultural authenticity and accurate representation of Māori culture, like Ihimaera intended.