The New Zealand Stories Corpus: Background and first results

In our talk, we will provide an overview of the New Zealand Stories Corpus (NZSC) and discuss some first results drawing on the corpus data. The NZSC is a small specialized corpus that is based on the transcribed audio recordings gathered from speakers of different ethnic backgrounds and multilingual skills in Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been compiled with the intention to investigate differences among Englishes in New Zealand. Choosing from a set of three images of typical New Zealand landscapes (beach, backcountry and lake), the 140 participants, students at the University of Waikato in 2010/11, were prompted to narrate a story connected to one of the images. The participants are spread across four groups: 1) Māori bilingual in English and the Māori language; 2) Māori monolingual in English; 3) Pākehā (i.e. New Zealand European) monolingual in English; 4) Pākehā bilingual in English and another language that is not Māori. The special constellation of the participant groups is tailored towards investigating potential differences in the use of Englishes among the Māori and Pākehā speakers in line with previously described varieties including General New Zealand English and Māori English (cf., e.g., Bell 2000; Bauer & Warren 2004; Holmes 2005; Maclagan, King & Gillon 2008).

            In addition to an overview of the current making of the New Zealand Stories Corpus, which is part of an ongoing project funded by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF), the talk will also discuss first results along two tiers of investigation: a) the type of topics that the images prompted in the Māori and Pākehā participants and b) potential differences in the use of pragmatic markers, with a particular focus on general extenders.