206Marketing the Māori LanguageRangi NicholsonHe kororia ki te Atua i runga rawa,He maunga-a-rongo ki runga i te mata o te whenua,He whakaaro pai ki nga tangata katoa.E nga iwi, e nga reo, e nga mana, tena koutou,tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.Glory to God on high,Peace on earth,Goodwill to all people.To the tribal representatives, voices of the peopleand distinguished persons, greetings. While the New Zealand Government is currently spending millions of dollars to teach the Māori language in preschool language nests, Māori total immersion primary schools, and elsewhere, its language policies are not likely to succeed because it has failed to promoted Māori among Māori and non-Māori to the extent that the language has a sufficiently good image. The results of a market research study and the promotion of the 1995 Māori Language Year indicate that the passive tolerance of the Māori language by New Zealanders in contemporary New Zealand society will allow a more active and explicit promotion of the Māori language. Māori today account for about 13% of the population in New Zealand. The Māori language has been a minority language for over 130 years. Prior to World War II the Māori language was the first language of Māori who largely lived in rural areas. After 1945 large scale urban migration occurred that led to a breakdown in the transmitting of Māori from one generation to another. Māori children began to be raised as monolingual speakers of English (Chrisp, 1997, p. 101). This is very significant because at this time about 60% of the Maori population was under the age of 20. In a linguistic survey completed in the 1970s, it was clear that less than 20% of Māori could speak the Māori language. Despite intensive Māori language revitalization efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, including the kohanga reo or preschool language nests and language radio stations, the latest Māori Language Commission survey conducted in 1995 shows that the number of fluent adult Māori speakers appears to have decreased considerably to about 10,000. Social changes in New Zealand’s history, reflected in urbanization, television, industrialization, and intercultural marriages have allTeaching Indigenous Languages207contributed to the Māori language not being spoken in homes (Waitangi Tribu-nal Report, 1986, p. 16). The low social status of the language in the eyes of its speakers (Crowley, 1984) and the general New Zealand community has also been a factor. In the 1990s Māori still remains an endangered language. Argu-ably, successful Māori language revitalization will depend, at least in part, on the attitudes and commitment of Māori speakers as a whole to maintaining and revitalizing the language in the home, in the neighborhood, in the community, and beyond. There is a real need to market the language to lift its social status and to encourage a higher level of commitment from the largely elderly group of native speakers and younger second language learners as well as the general population (Nicholson & Garland, 1991, p. 395).Marketing paradigm Cooper (1985) outlines how language can be viewed as a product and com-bined with the appropriate promotion to the correct target audience along with appropriate distribution and price (costs in personal energy, potential ridicule from family and friends, and so forth). Language can be planned in a marketing framework to enhance its status. Like any product or service, its enhancement can be planned and the first step in marketing a language, in this case the Māori language, is the so-called situation analysis. Stated more simply, a situation analysis is a review of the current status and circumstances for a product or service. For the Māori language this will involve answering questions such as how many New Zealanders speak the language fluently, how many understand it, who are these people, where do they live, where, when, and with whom do they use the Māori language, and so forth. But equally important is to ascertain New Zealanders’ attitudes to the Māori language and its usage, for only when the magnitude of public support or public opposition to the advancement of the Māori language is known can the Māori Language Commission and other Maori language planning agencies, including tribal agencies, correctly formulate their marketing strategies for revitalizing the language. “Like all marketers, language planners must recognize, identify, or design products which the potential con-sumer will find attractive” (Cooper, 1989, p. 73). Given the situation analysis of Māori language to date, there does not appear as yet to be Māori language products that Māori are finding sufficiently attractive to buy that will change the language’s endangered status. Grin (1990) believes that the first goal of language policy should be to improve considerably the image of a minority language:the minority language needs to have a sufficiently good image. Any language policy that provides money, but avoids sincere commitment to boosting the image of the language, is therefore likely to fail. There seems to be no way around this: for a minority language to survive, its image must be positive. (Grin, 1990, p. 71)Teaching Indigenous Languages208It can be argued that while the New Zealand Government is currently spending millions of dollars on kohanga reo, preschool language nests, kura kaupapa Māori total immersion primary schools, as well as other initiatives, its language policies are not likely to succeed because it has not promoted Māori among Māori and non-Māori to the extent that the language has a sufficiently good image. The Welsh Language Board has recognized the importance of good public relations and effective marketing, namely, “marrying the Board’s strategy with the wishes and activities of most of the Welsh populace” (Welsh Language Board, 1989, p. 2). A marketing program is seen as an indispensable part of any strategy for the future of the Welsh language. It is also an indispensable part of any strategy for the Maori language.Market research study This section draws heavily on an article written by the author and Ron Garland entitled “New Zealanders’ Attitudes to the Revitalization of the Māori Language” (Nicholson & Garland, 1991). In 1990 a nationwide mail survey of 225 New Zealand adults’ opinions was held about the Māori