From “carefully modulated murmur” to “not a place for sooks”
New Zealand Ways of Writing English
In: The Politics of English as a World LanguageSearch for other papers by Peter H. Marsden in
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Abstract
The dynamic of Aotearoa New Zealand’s political and economic re-orientation away from a geographically remote European ‘Home’ towards an alignment with the Pacific Rim may be seen to correlate with a growing cultural self-confidence, which has among other things a clear sociolinguistic dimension. In many cases the linguistic changes in New Zealand English monitored over the past decade by two landmark studies – Bell & Holmes (1990) and Bell & Kuiper (2000) – have also found their expression in literary works. The trajectory from Mansfield’s sub-Bloomsbury mode to Sargeson’s Kiwi vernacular was dramatic enough but recent decades have seen the curve grow even steeper. Against that background the essay attempts to determine just how linguistically distinctive such ‘national’ voices may be and to what extent they are instrumental in articulating a sense of cultural identity.