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Wiglesworth submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology Chair: /1.1 W . 1^. ( Dr. D. B. Koenigoig / Dei 'ate 1996 American University 7£T5* Washington, D C. 20016 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1383676 Copyright 1996 by Wiglesworth, Aileen K. All rights reserved. UMI Microform 1383676 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ©COPYRIGHT by Aileen K. Wiglesworth 1996 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION To the Bilingual Speakers of Cook Islands Maori and Cook Islands Maori English Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COOK ISLANDS MAORI ENGLISH: A UNIQUE LANGUAGE VARIETY FROM THE SOUTH PACIFIC by Aileen K. Wiglesworth ABSTRACT The indigenous Polynesians of the Cook Islands refer to themselves as Maoris and to their ancestral language as Maori. The Cook Islands Maori language has persisted since contact with the West in the early 19th century, through missionary and colonial periods, and since independence which came in 1965. Today, Cook Islanders are predominantly bilingual in English and Maori. The English spoken by Cook Islanders is a unique variety, characteristic of the language contact situation, its speakers call “maroro (gloss: flying fish) English.” My objective in this paper is to establish a compelling argument for the uniqueness of Maori English by providing examples of distinguishing semantic, phonological and syntactic features. I will also refer to historical experiences of Cook Islands Maoris since contact that have influenced their language usage. My underlying theme is the construction of social identity through language choices. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the guidance and support of my committee, Drs. William Leap and Dolores Koenig, and my academic advisor, Dr. Geoffrey Burkhart, of the Department of Anthropology at American University. I am also grateful for the tutelage and encouragement o f Drs. Naomi Baron and Theresa Waldspurger from the Language and Foreign Studies Department at American University, and for his statistical advice, Dr. Austin Barron o f the Mathematics and Statistics Department. Adrienne Kaeppler of the Smithsonian Institution gave me entree to prominent Cook Islanders, who graciously submitted to my interviews, and Karen Peacock, librarian at the University of Hawaii helped me to locate important secondary source materials unavailable anywhere in the continental US. Dr. Susan Hertz, my first professor of anthropology, was generous with her knowledge and her support throughout this project. Cook Islanders who made this thesis possible include Kauraka Kauraka and Papa Mana Strickland who found many hours to lend me their extensive knowledge while I was on Rarotonga, and who have written to answer my questions since my return. I am also grateful to the many other Rarotongans who put up with my questions and freely gave of their opinions and ideas including Papa Tom Davis, Takiora Ingram, Ron Crocombe, Tere Tarapu and the teachers and students of Titikaveka and Mangaia Colleges, though I do not wish to indicate by this acknowledgment that any of these iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. excellent people either approved o f this thesis or contributed to any of its errors. I am most grateful to those who provided me with data, my Rarotongan neighbors. I also wish to thank Australian Volunteer Abroad, Leslie Cooper-Wares, my energetic and inspiring Mangaian hostess, and my brother, Bill Wiglesworth (also an AVA), and sister-in-law, Debbie Wiglesworth, whose invitation and hospitality brought me to the Cook Islands for my first linguistics fieldwork. Finally, I am indebted to Kathleen Milanich for her editorial advice. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................. 1 Statement of the problem .................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................ 4 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 4 Anthropological theory: language pluralism and colonialism ........................ 4 Analysis of languages in contact ....................................................................... II Lexical and semantic analysis .............................................................. 12 Phonological analysis ........................................................................... 13 Syntactic analysis .................................................................................. 14 Pragmatic analysis ............................................................................... 15 Literature review conclusion ........................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DESCRIPTION OF FIELDWORK 17 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4 THE HISTORY OF COOK ISLANDS MAORI ENGLISH................................. 21 Introduction: Description of the Cook Islands and their history prior to contact with the W est.................................................21 Introduction to the history of CIM E .........................................................................23 The missionary period ............................................................................................... 25 The missionaries' r o le ....................................................................................25 The missions and language policy ...................................................26 Restricted relations and isolation .....................................................28 Schooling and literacy .......................................................................31 Cook Islanders and the missionary period ...................................................34 The missionary period - concluded ..............................................................36 The colonial period ....................................................................................................37 The colonial period - the Europeans ............................................................38 The colonial period - the M aoris ..................................................................46 The colonial period - concluded .................................................................. 50 Self-governance .......................................................................................................... 52 Promotion of English since self-governance .............................................. 53 Education ...........................................................................................54 Migration