Maori or English? The Politics of Language in Patricia Grace’s Baby No-Eyes
In: The Politics of English as a World LanguageSearch for other papers by Michelle Keown in
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Abstract
Since the early 1970s, when a landmark language survey revealed that the Maori language was in serious danger of language death, a concerted effort has been made by Maori and the New Zealand government to arrest the decline of the language. Maori writer Patricia Grace has responded to recent political debates regarding the future of the Maori language in her writing, and she has also incorporated Maori vocabulary and grammatical patterns into her fiction as a means by which to inscribe Maori cultural identity and to challenge the univocal authority of English, the language of the British colonizers (who annexed Aotearoa New Zealand in 1840). This essay explores a variety of linguistic strategies in Grace’s recent novel Baby No-Eyes (1998) with reference to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theories on the subversive potential of bi- and polylingual textual practices.