Stage 2: Macro/meso-level codification and standardisation

terminology development for new domains, including Māori-medium schooling, had been created as an outcome of the 1987 Language Act. One of the roles of Te Taura Whiri was to create and/or support the creation of a corpus of terms for the curriculum areas. By the early 1990s, the proliferation of localised mathematics word lists from the regions and the publication of different word lists18 raised educational and Māori

language change issues on a national scale.

I was asked to collate the terms in current use in schools, and to identify the gaps and to present the terms to Te Taura Whiri for discussion. We had no theoretical base to guide the creation of terms and no linguistic brief, and I think we were aware of it. I organised a number of meetings around the country with people I knew who were involved in teaching mathematics in bilingual classes. My memory is that it was then we sought Te Taura Whiri advice. We wrote a report to Te Taura Whiri and said “here’s what we have found, now what?” This led to a meeting between Te Taura Whiri and us to discuss the (many different) terms used by different schools and regions and by the few publications that had emerged. Both groups had definite ideas about the principles to guide the creation of the new terminology. (Informant 3)

The first set of principles, initiated by Te Taura Whiri, stipulated that words must not be loanwords from English and must be short and transparent (Harlow, 1993).

I remember that one of their (Te Taura Whiri) key tasks was to standardise the Māori-medium school mathematics vocabulary up to Year 10. (Informant 1)

The second set of principles was advocated by Te Ohu Pāngarau members concerned with showing the interrelatedness between terms.

Because the set of mathematical terms was a structured group of interrelated words, we thought it would be practical to show these relationships in the terms themselves. There was a lot of data and a lot of

alternatives for many of the words and I think that idea of the whakapapa (schemata-genealogy) came up. (Informant 3)

Te Taura Whiri members who were present at that hui (meeting) expressed concern that some words in the list developed informally were clearly unsuitable and broke the commission’s guidelines for good terminology development practice.

Some of the tensions were probably highlighted in the meetings with Te Taura Whiri about some of the words that were coined were possibly leading to the encouragement of incorrect use of grammar outside the maths classroom. You know we had tauake (positive number) and tauiho (negative number), as positive and negative. (Informant 1)

Ake and iho are directional particles that, among other things, indicate an up-and-down direction. However, students were adding them to terms such as kōrero ake—to mean positive talk. In everyday te reo Māori, kōrero ake actually means to talk in an upward direction. (Informant 1)

Te Ohu Pāngarau group members also had concerns, but for different reasons.

From memory, these included concerns about some terms with dubious meanings, such as reta whakahoki for variable (letter as an answer— however, algebra uses letters to represent unknown quantities), and the lack of an obvious linguistic relationship between terms that were clearly mathematically related. (Informant 3)

Both Te Taura Whiri members and Te Ohu Pāngarau agreed to try to standardise one list for use in government agency publications, and as a reference point for teachers in an ongoing process of development. Haugen (1983) referred to this aspect of corpus planning as codification (standardisation).

I suggest that there were two standardisation activities in the creation of the pāngarau lexicon. One was standardisation of the principles governing the coining of new words (establishing sociolinguistic norms—Te Taura Whiri’s primary responsibility), and the second, the standardisation of the specialised terms themselves. One does not always necessarily lead to the other, but in the case of the lexication of pāngarau it has. For example, Informant 3 asserted that:

We set up five principles: pāngarau terms should be consistent with each other, terms to be as short as possible, words should sound correct to a native speaker, usage to be grammatically correct that was done at one of Te Taura Whiri meetings, probably the first one. These principles have

proved to be really robust principles actually and it was interesting they did survive the rigours or crucible of what was going on. This was the first time that an attempt was also made to formalise Māori syntactic structures to express mathematical meaning. (Informant 3)

These principles are still very much the norm for the development of new terms (see Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 2010) despite the challenge laid down by iwi groups to protect their unique dialect (see Section 9.3.1 for further discussion).

The informants were also asked what were their retrospective views of the codification (standardising) process.

I guess one of the paradoxes is that, whether we liked it or not, we were standardising the language, which in our view had some benefits around children being able to move from school to school and still being able to do state exams. This is the negative effect of standardising a language—you impinge on dialect and all that kind of stuff, you know, you change the language. Whether you like it or not, one of the results was Māori language change. (Informant 1)

We needed some form of standardisation because of the resources for teachers. The Ministry of Education would not fund the development of resources for specific curriculum areas that used different terms. I think from memory, we argued strongly with members of Te Taura Whiri that any dictionary should have in its preface—this is recommended but it’s a work in progress. I support the standardisation of technical terms and I support dialects. One should not necessarily interfere with the other. (Informant 2) Despite the optimism of Informant 2, the tension between the standardising of a language and maintenance of the various te reo Māori dialects remains to this day. In 1990, at a meeting to standardise the terms, a particularly significant decision was made by Te Taura Whiri and supported by Te Ohu Pāngarau to purge te reo Māori of the various transliterated mathematics terms (an example of linguistic purism ideology see Section 9.3.2). As Informant 3 observed:

The number terms used at that time included transliterations such as numa (number), kaute (from “count”), whika (from “figure”). They were all purged and the term “tau” only was adopted for number. It was agreed to use the standard Western mathematics notational system, visual representations, for example, graphs, etc., that all go to make up the mathematics register, and to continue to use proper nouns such as Pythagoras—so [the] theorem of Pythagoras became “Ture a Pythagoras”. (Informant 3)

All the number-related words could be prefixed with tau. For example, multiple became taurea (tau—number, rea—multiply) and taurua (tau— number, rua—second/two) for even numbers. The view was that this

structure should be used so that the vocabulary reflected the subject matter.

By the way, the identification of tau for number has got to be the most brilliant thing that has ever happened. (Informant 3; this is because tau is the root word for over 48 different terms.)

It was in this 1991 publication, Ngā Kupu Tikanga Pāngarau: Mathematics Vocabulary (Ministry of Education, 1991) that tau was confirmed as the word for number (see Barton et al., 1995, for the full story on the term tau). At the time, a decision was also made not to standardise all terms but to keep a few options that were in common use, such as whakarau and whakarea to mean multiply (see Ministry of Education, 1991, p. 13). However, in subsequent developments, most of the variations, such as whakarau (multiply) were eliminated in preference for whakarea because whakarea did not have alternative meanings in pāngarau.