Alternative headlines: From the Policy Desk to the School Gate; How a new public vocabulary entered everyday New Zealand life; The Words that Arrived Without a Lesson
When institutional language becomes compulsory for everyone
What happens when a vocabulary learned inside universities, ministries and professional development courses becomes the compulsory language of people who never passed through those systems?
What happens when the builder, the farmer and the small trader meet it for the first time not in a policy document, but in their child’s school?
That is where the change in New Zealand has become visible.
For a large part of the professional class, the new moral and organisational vocabulary arrived gradually: through teacher training, public-sector employment, corporate frameworks and ongoing professional learning. It came with explanation, context and institutional reinforcement. It became normal.
For many others, whose working lives are organised around contracts, customers, harvests, workshops and small businesses, it did not arrive at all — until they encountered it in the systems they cannot avoid: early childhood education, schools, councils and health services.
There, the interaction is not optional.
It is about their child.
One side is fluent.
The other is decoding.
The rise of the -tanga register
At the centre of this shift is a particular kind of word: the abstract noun ending in -tanga.
From older roots come modern institutional forms: manaaki → manaakitanga, whanaunga → whanaungatanga, rangatira → rangatiratanga, kaitiaki → kaitiakitanga, wairua → wairuatanga.
These are now presented as the moral and organisational foundations of public life — in education, governance, health and community charters.
They appear on: school gates, strategic plans, embroidered uniform badges, institutional values statements, club constitutions.
They are described as ancient and uniquely indigenous.
But as abstract, systematised governance language, they are recent.
A language that expanded within a generation
William Williams’ 1844 dictionary recorded a language of roughly 5,000 words — rich in concrete description, social relationship and the natural world.
The large-scale abstract noun forms that now dominate institutional discourse do not appear there as headwords.
They emerge, in dictionary form, in the modern expansion of the lexicon — most visibly in late-20th- and early-21st-century compilations such as the comprehensive Māori–English dictionary published in 2005, which reflects a vastly enlarged and systematised vocabulary designed for a modern administrative, educational and legal environment.
The shift is not from silence to speech.
It is from a spoken relational language to a written governance register.
Concepts older than the register
The ethical content carried by these terms is not new.
Care for others.
Collective responsibility.
Legitimate authority.
Stewardship of resources.
Belonging and social cohesion.
These are long-standing principles in Western civic and religious traditions, embedded for centuries in: church administration; parliamentary government; civil service codes; municipal organisation; university statutes; voluntary associations.
What is new is the lexicon in which they are now expressed and the claim that this lexicon represents an ancient and uniquely national moral framework.
The concepts are old.
The register is new.
Where this language was formed
This vocabulary did not develop in playgrounds, on building sites, in shops or in ordinary domestic conversation.
It was shaped in: academia, teacher education, policy development, public-sector administration, and professional training environments.
It is, in origin, a top-down register.
From there it flowed outward — through the education system, through regulatory frameworks, and into the constitutions and charters of community organisations.
Why institutions adopted it
Institutions adopt shared vocabularies for reasons that are not mysterious.
They provide: a common moral language across diverse sectors; a visible framework for legitimacy; a way of expressing national distinctiveness; and a symbolic re-founding after a period of historical critique.
In a country reassessing its past, a new lexicon offers the possibility of continuity without the inherited burden of older terms whose moral authority has been weakened.
It is a re-naming that promises renewal.
The compliance mechanism
In regulated sectors such as early childhood education and schooling, this vocabulary is not simply aspirational.
It is evidential.
Services and schools must demonstrate alignment with national expectations through: charters, policies, internal evaluation, strategic planning, and recorded communication with families.
Those records are reviewed.
The recognised terminology is how alignment becomes visible.
So the language appears — repeatedly — in: Educa entries; SchoolDocs; online newsletters; Board of Trustees minutes; official Facebook pages.
It is the language of compliance.
Where the two language histories meet
This is the point at which the change becomes socially visible.
The parent whose working life has never required this register encounters it in the documentation that governs their child’s education.
For the teacher or administrator it is ordinary professional language.
For the parent it is new, and it appears in a context where clarity matters.
Not in a lecture hall.
At the school gate.
This is not a clash of cultures.
It is a meeting of different language histories.
An opt-in language becomes compulsory
Adult and Community Education offers voluntary pathways into te reo for those who seek them.
But the language of institutional documentation is not opt-in.
It is encountered through: enrolment, permissions, health and safety requirements, and school expectations.
It becomes part of civic life for people who were never introduced to it through formal learning.
That is where the democratic tension arises.
A personal point of departure
This is not, for me, an argument against the Māori language.
I entered this space with enthusiasm.
I have always found the language phonetic, rhythmic and beautiful.
Words such as kaitiakitanga sit easily on the tongue.
What has changed is not the sound of the language, but the historical and institutional framing around it — the presentation of a modern governance register as a timeless moral inheritance, and the expectation that it be received as something uniquely and unquestionably our own.
Not a survival, but a construction
What we are witnessing is not the simple survival of an ancient system.
It is the construction of a modern national vocabulary from older linguistic elements, designed to carry the ethical and administrative needs of a contemporary state.
That is a creative and significant achievement.
But it is not what it is usually said to be.
A question for a democratic society
Every society develops a shared civic language.
The question is not whether this one should exist.
It is how it is introduced.
Whether it is taught as language.
Whether it is translated for those who meet it in essential services.
Whether its history is described accurately.
Whether citizens encounter it as participants — or as outsiders required to decode it.
Because when a vocabulary becomes the medium through which people relate to the institutions that govern their lives and educate their children, it ceases to be merely symbolic.
It becomes part of democratic access.
And that is a matter not of ideology, but of inclusion.
Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.
11 comments:
The question is deeper though than whether we think a language is "rhythmic or beautiful". The question is "who is making these decisions on behalf of all New Zealanders without a mandate?". I learnt three languages at school all of which I found "rhythmic and beautiful". One of course was English, and I remember thinking how lucky we were in this country to learn the universal, world-wide, commonly spoken, accepted language as a right.
This is a political ploy not a cultural one. So, we have a small cohort of people using language to push a political agenda. It basically gives a small group of people superiority over us when it is used in nearly all our public spaces. Let's face it, in reality the Maori language is really just another language or a means of communication for a small group of people....or rather, it should be.
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
H.L. Mencken
It is useful to use AI to analyse this sort of language according to the ‘Milton Model’. For example, Maori words ending in -tanga are nominalisations, about which Copilot has this to say:
“Nominalised “ tanga” terms function as persuasive abstractions: they sound culturally authoritative while remaining vague enough that listeners supply their own meaning. This allows policy language to feel morally compelling without specifying who must act, what must be done, or how outcomes will be measured. The effect is to reduce scrutiny, create an illusion of consensus, and shift discussion from practical governance to symbolic rhetoric.”
I have never encountered Maori language written on a set of building plans ,specifications and regulations . Maori language is for those who want to use at home or in private conversation.
PS It is possible to describe Nominalisations in terms of brain function. Here is Copilot again:
"The persuasive force of these “‑tanga” nominalisations can be understood through the DMN–ECN–SN triad. Their vagueness activates the Default Mode Network, prompting readers to supply their own meaning and assume shared understanding. Because the terms contain no concrete actions or agents, the Executive Control Network has little to analyse, so scrutiny drops away. At the same time, the Salience Network flags the words as culturally weighty, giving them an aura of authority that discourages challenge. The result is language that feels profound and directive while remaining strategically undefined — ideal for shaping governance narratives without exposing them to detailed examination."
What we are saying is, they are messing with your mind and its brain.
The Co Pilot summary very impressive. States succinctly what many of us considered but were hard put to express.
Quite apart from maori twaddle, the teaching profession uses a lot of jargon. Near every contact elicits the word pedagogy, hugely distancing of near all parents at many schools.
When our children move offshore, as they surely will, they will have to learn a new language.
Can you see a NZ trained lawyer making the gaffe in the UK of saying that the " the tamariki did some hard mahi on the motu ".
Todays teachers unashamedly are setting our children to fail in the real world.
I have had more than enough of tinihangutanga, whakatoiatanga, whakanoatanga, koreror tikotanga etc from maori.
Unlike other Anglophone nations NZ cannot be quite so easily flooded with non-Anglophone migrants. On that basis cultural stress here is not so easily generated; unless you can create such stress from an existing source. And voila, we have just that through using a generous supply of native born grifters claiming special privilege, based on all sorts of newly-minted fictions. But don’t worry, the Nats have all this under control… don’t they?
Across New Zealand, school boards are outsourcing policies to a private company called SchoolDocs.
https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/are-school-policy-providers-quietly-re%e2%80%91writing-new-zealands-human-rights-law/
And who would ever have thought that a stone age culture and language had so much to offer? All it needed was someone to record it in written form. The poor Aborigine (of Australia) has nothing on our 'Maori'. While veritable 'blow-ins' by comparison, given their deep knowledge and understanding of the world around us, we should increase their welfare payments and reduce their taxation liabilities -immediately in gratitude. Our children - sorry, tamariki, should bow to the fabulous alter of Maoridom, for they can learn so much from it. As for the likes of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle Euclid, Confucius, Archimedes, Newton, Einstein et al, their Pakeha beliefs don't hold a candle to erh, ahh... never mind, but we need to give thanks - for their waka arrived earlier, well, leastwise before Newton and Einstein.
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