MacDonald, D. E., & Daly, N. (2013). Kiwi, kapai, and kuia: Māori loanwords in New Zealand English children’s picture books published between 1995 and 2005. In B. Carrington & P. Pinsent (Eds.), The Final Chapters: Concluding Papers of the Journal of Children’s Literature Studies (pp. 44–56). Wizard’s Tower Press.
Abstract
Māori loanwords are a distinctive characteristic of New Zealand English (Deverson, 1991). A previous study of the frequency of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English children’s picture books showed an incidence of 56 words per thousand in a corpus of 13 books published by a single publishing house between 1995 and 2005 (Daly, 2007). The current study determined the frequency, semantic categories, and textual representations of loanwords in a corpus of nearly 500 children’s picture books published in New Zealand between 1995 and 2005. Results showed an incidence of 13 Māori loanwords per thousand words of text. Reasons for this difference in frequency and the potential effects of a relatively high incidence of Māori loanwords in children’s picture books are discussed in terms of the language use of the readers, the changing character of New Zealand English, and New Zealand national identity.
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