Abstract:
Nineteenth-century Maori in New Zealand were guardians and utilisers of a rich oral tradition that was to the fore of their culture at the time they were learning to read and write for the first time. Letter writing was a genre greatly encouraged by their missionary teachers and it became a very popular mode of communication. Of the extant letters composed by Maori in the Maori language during the nineteenth century, many exemplify the way in which customary Maori orality and the new technology of literacy came together in a distinctly Maori style of epistolary composition. A representative sample of these letters, those with a focus on emotion, forms the basis of this thesis.
Investigation of this convergence of orality and literacy is the aim of the thesis, and it takes place largely through the examination of twenty letters of emotion that were penned between 1847 and 1863. There is also examination of the historical and social contexts out of which the letters arose.
Interpretation of the letters through transcription and translation into English allows close analysis of the messages in respect also of the contextual historical information and scholarship on orality and literacy. The specific situations of the composers of the letters and the expression and reporting of emotion are contextual links between all of the letters.
From analysis of these letters of emotion the thesis concludes that orality and literacy did, indeed, converge; the composers brought together customary oral forms of expression and the newly-acquired tools and skills of literacy.