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In:Variation in Language Acquisition: Unity in diversity
Edited by Laura Rosseel and Eline Zenner
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 34] 2025
► pp. 175–196

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Chapter 9
Words on Walls

A schoolscape study of Indigenous (Māori) loanwords used in New Zealand mainstream primary schools

 | University of Waikato
 | University of Waikato
 | Massey University
Published online: 4 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.34.09bur
Abstract
The language contact situation within Aotearoa New Zealand (A/NZ) has informed many studies on the increasingly salient feature of New Zealand English (NZE): the integration of loanwords from the Indigenous, donor language, Māori, into a dominant Lingua Franca (Hay et al., 2008). This study presents a linguistic landscape (schoolscape) analysis of nine classrooms by examining loanwords arising in educational artefacts directed at primary-aged children (7–11) in an English-medium school setting. Our chapter makes the following contributions: (1) a systematic schoolscape method for analysing contact-induced language phenomena; (2) analyses of loanwords identified in our data; (3) a detailed taxonomic expansion of Māori loanword categories (semantic and syntactic) in NZE.
Article outline
  • 1.Linguistic landscape and the New Zealand classroom
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1(General) Māori exposure
    • 3.2Loanwords exposure
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
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