Gagana olo’o fa’aaogā i Sāmoa: Post-colonial language practices in the Samoan linguistic landscape

Esera, F., & Macalister, J. (2025). Gagana olo’o fa’aaogā i Sāmoa: Post-colonial language practices in the Samoan linguistic landscape. New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics, 31(1). https://doi.org/10.59690/dz30642

Such studies as there have been of linguistic landscapes (LLs) in Pacific island countries have tended to focus on colonised contexts or countries where the indigenous language has been minoritised. Sāmoa, independent since 1962, is not the former and yet it would be naïve to think that the Samoan LL is immune to the global influences found elsewhere and that may result in minoritisation. This study explores two separate LLs, one on each of Sāmoa’s two main islands, to investigate the extent to which language practices reflect an independent Samoan identity and the extent to which they are shaped by external factors. While English emerges as a dominant force in the LL, there is also a strong sense of Samoan identity created in part by icons used on signs and in part by the lexical response to external influences.

Keywords: post-colonial, anti-foreign, anti-Chinese, Sāmoa, Samoan, indexicality, hybridity