Abstract
Workplaces like government departments have made considerable efforts over the past several years to improve cultural diversity and support of the Māori language. But what have workplaces like universities, the critic and conscience of our society, done to improve support for the workers who want to speak or learn te reo (the Māori language)? And how can we help improve workers’ attitudes towards te reo? This thesis delves into the attitude of non-Māori second language learners of the Māori language working as university staff towards their Māori language use. The workplace is an area where there is a lot of room for growth of the Māori langauge.
This thesis raises questions in several different academic spaces, drawing on research from adult second language acquisition, teaching pedagogy, language revitalisation, social psychology and Māori studies. The thesis contributes to these spaces by researching an area with a large amount of room for growth in terms of support for the Māori language, the workplace. Even though the workplace is not the first context that needs to be focused on, it is a context that is starting to be explored in New Zealand and hopefully this context will become a space where te reo is used regularly in the near future.