Australian varieties Flashcards
Prescriptivists
believe that there exists only one ‘correct’ variety and by maintaining Standard English they are preserving the only right and proper way to speak and write.
Descriptivists
are committed to describing language and analysing new uses as they are interested in how contemporary language reflects social and cultural change.
Redspot Car Rental agreement
In the Terms and Conditions of the Redspot Car Rental agreement, more formal choices are made to ensure clarity and to reflect the legalistic tone and style of the discourse – for example, ‘If You have left a cash bond at the time of rental, the bond will be refunded within 14 days after the Vehicle is returned.’ This sentence employs Standard syntax and orthography as well as the fronting of the conditional clause and use of the passive voice, ‘will be refunded’, which contribute to the serious, precise and authoritative nature of the ‘small print’. The formal register is appropriate given the purposes of the text.
Jenkins review
In response to the Jenkins review into bullying and harassment in parliamentary workplaces, PM Scott Morrison addressed parliament and apologised to former staffer Brittany Higgins in February 2022. Adopting a formal register, Morrison employed a number of features which reflect the carefully planned and crafted nature of this sensitive and serious speech. ‘Over many decades, an ecosystem, a culture, was perpetuated where bullying, abuse, harassment, and in some cases even violence, became normalised.’ In this complex sentence, the fronting of the adverbial phrase creates focus on the extensive time period and prefaces the introduction of the negative culture in the independent clause. The use of agentless passive ‘was perpetuated’ enables Morrison to subtly avoid labelling the perpetrators of this abuse and violence. The listing of the nouns ‘ bullying, abuse… violence’ creates a semantic thread of negatively denotated lexemes, acknowledging the traumatic workplace in which Higgins and others worked.
Galarrwuy Yunupingu
In a media statement released in April this year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged the life and the death of Galarrwuy Yunupingu. Reflecting the reverence and admiration felt for this important Yolgnu man, Albanese employed a formal register and opened with the declarative ‘Yunupingu walked in two worlds with authority, power and grace, and he worked to make them whole — together.’ This compound-complex sentence incorporates the careful listing of abstract nouns with end focus on the adverb ‘together’. The use of the adverb emphasises the metaphor expressed in ‘walked in two worlds’ and reinforces Yunupingu’s efforts to ‘make them whole’. This careful crafting reflects the formality of the statement as well as Albanese’s purposes in honouring this important leader within the Indigenous community.
youth lang
The informal language of young people, incorporating the digitally- mediated discourse and social media language, is a means through which group solidarity and membership is signalled and reinforced. This informal language enables a community of users to effectively share ideas and values as well as reflect and construct a range of identities. As Dr Zappavigna (UNSW) suggests, the way younger language users interact within these social and cultural spaces has become ‘an ongoing performance of identity’. Within youth culture, between friends online or face-to-face, informal more playful choices carry rich semantics: the initialism ‘af’ (as f**k) functions as an intensifier, while the verb/noun ‘slay’ carries the semantics of success and the compound ‘girlboss’ connotes a successful and admirable female. [confirm with students!!]
Marrissa King, Edutopia.org
Exploring the subtleties of social media language and changing writing norms among young people, Marrissa King, Edutopia.org, examined tone, conventions and levels of formality in text messaging and captions. From the simple shift from ‘yes’ to ‘yas’, the sarcastic ‘thanksss’ or the use of multiple full stops ‘punctuating. every. single. word.’ for emphasis, she suggests that in engaging with social media language, young people are able to ‘code- switch between the informal language of social media or text messaging and the formal language required for school research reports’. Rather than diminishing the quality of meaning in their written texts (Cate Munro), these informal choices are more effective and communicate better. As linguist, John McWhorter, suggests, the changing, informal conventions of social media writing are an ‘expansion of [young people’s] linguistic repertoire’.
Benny from Camperdown
In May 2022, ‘You Can’t Ask That’, an ABC television program asking often uncomfortable questions of some of the most marginalised and misunderstood Australians, screened an episode called ‘Bogans’. In response to the question ‘Why do you sound so unsophisticated?’, Benny from Camperdown responded ‘Yeah, nah. Everyone I meet I talk ta people the same no madda who they are. The way I’m talkin to you I’d talk ta the bloody Queen like this, ya know.’ His utterance reveals many distinct qualities of the Broad Australian accent and dialect. Delivered with very little variation in intonation, Benny’s utterance reveals flapping of the medial mid-voiceless consonant ‘t’ in the noun ‘madda’; sound change from /ŋ/ to /n/ in the verb ‘talkin’; and vowel reduction from /u/ to /ɑ/ in the preposition ‘ta’ and the pronoun ‘ya’. Furthermore, Benny prefaces his response with the discourse particle ‘yeah, nah’ and concludes with the discourse tag ‘ya know’. Both of these discourse particles are self-effacing, softening and hedging Benny’s genuine and honest response to the direct question posed. His use of the archetypical adjective ‘bloody’ in the noun phrase ‘bloody Queen’ enhances and affirms his Broad Australian variety.
Spanish Australian English – Miguel Maestre
A significant marker of chef, restaurateur and television presenter, Miguel Maestre’s Spanish-Australian identity, is his particular variety of Australian English. His ethnocultural variety is strongly influenced by his L1, Spanish. In a 2022 marketing campaign for Stocklands, Maestre takes viewers through a recipe where the trilled /r/ phoneme and voiced glottal stop /h/ is particularly evident in the clause ‘the grill needs to be really nice and hot’. Like the Sudanese-Australian variety, Maestre also substitutes the /s/ for the /ʃ/ phoneme in lexemes such as ‘show’, ‘relish’ and ‘fresh’ while final consonants are elided in his description of the lamb cutlet as ‘crumbbut is nofrie’. Miguel Maestre’s popularity perhaps signals contemporary Australia’s awareness of non-Standard varieties as a legitimate and important reflection of the nation’s multicultural identity.
Sudanese Australian English
Ethnocultural varieties may be minority dialects of Australian English, but they are a crucial marker of social identity and ethnic group membership. At a forum in Melbourne discussing Sudanese Australian youth, the ethnolect of Sudanese Australian lawyer and academic, Nyadol Nyuon, revealed particular variation in comparison with Standard Australian English. The most prominent feature was the substitution of the /s/ for the /ʃ/ phoneme in nouns like ‘issues’, ‘situation’ and ‘victimisation’. Nyuon’s experiences ‘as member of South Sudanese community’ was important and valued. In this phrase both the ‘a’ and ‘the’ determiners are ellipted and the /θ/ in ‘South’ is articulated as /s/. These features of the Sudanese Australian English accent contribute to the richness of Australian English. Regardless of the negative attitudes some associate with ethnolects, they are essential and important in reflecting and acknowledging the cultural communities which exist in contemporary society.
Aboriginal English
In a recent episode of ‘AWAYE!’ on Radio National, Rudi Bremer spoke with Pedro Wonaeamirri, a Tiwi artist and winner of the NATSIAA award for Indigenous art. In explaining his win, many features common to Aboriginal Englishes are evident. ‘Winnin’ de award for dis year make me feel bery proud an’ ‘appy and strong. Dis year’s art in NATSIAA I pud fightin’ sticks, also ceremonial ornaments dat ol’ people use to use long time and still today.’ In these clauses, sound change from /ŋ/ to /n/ is evident in the verbs ‘winning’ and ‘fighting’ and substitution of /d/ for /ð/ is apparent in the determiners ‘the’, ‘this’ and ‘that’. Common characteristics of this variety also include the absence of the /h/ phoneme in the adjective ‘appy’; the elision of inflectional present and past tense morphemes in the verbs ‘make’ and ‘used’; the sound change from /v/ to /b/ in ‘very’ and /t/ to /d/ in ‘put’; as well as the elision of the final phoneme in ‘old’. Additionally, Pedro employs the noun phrase ‘long time’ to reflect the importance of his ancestral connections to these objects and their cultural importance to him.
Italian Australian English
Ethnocultural varieties of Australian English differ across the subsystems depending on the influence of the language user’s L1. Often most evident in terms of phonology, ethnolects may add or elide phonemes, may voice voiceless phonemes or alter stress patterns in particular lexemes. For example, an Ethnic Broad (Horvath) Italian Australian English may add phonemes on consonant ending lexemes in noun phrases such as ‘thisa girla’; insert a schwa between syllables in lexemes such as ‘b/r/eak/ə/ fast’; or voice voiceless consonants in lexemes such as ‘lizen’ rather than ‘listen’. Although ethnocultural varieties may be minority dialects of Australian English, they are a crucial marker of social identity and ethnic group membership. Felicity Cox is clear that ‘language is a dynamic symbol of identity and culture.’
alogspeak
In the digital space, language users produce, consume and distribute texts interactively, building social networks and connecting with those who project similar values and ideologies. On social media platforms such as TikTok, Youtube, Instagram and Twitch, solidarity is forged through the use of ‘algospeak’ (Taylor Lorenz, 2022), a shared code, to bypass content moderation. In creative and innovative ways, users employ the noun phrase ‘the opposite of love’ rather than the verb ‘hate’ or non-Standard orthography in ‘seggs’ or ‘se$$s’ rather than ‘sex’ or ‘Le$bian’ rather than writing ‘lesbian’. TikTok users have actually incorporated the noun phrase ‘le dollar bean’ in their spoken discourse as this is the way the text-to-speech feature pronounces the alogspeak term. The solidarity built through the use of digitally-mediated discourse reflects its importance to this community of users. While many would condemn the use of these non-Standard choices in the public domain, digital discourse is shaped by its own sociolinguistic ‘rules’ through which identities and relationships are managed.
Standard Australian English
As the prestige variety, Standard Australian English is a desirable educational target and is used as the norm by leading institutions, such as government, law courts, educational bodies and quality media. It is understood that SAE ‘is the dominant dialect and is used by the vast majority of speakers’ (Australian Voices, Macquarie University). As a consequence, in the context of VCE exams, Standard English serves the important function of providing access for all students by directing them in their final school exams. In the 2023 VCE English Language examination, the use of Standard syntax and orthography in the imperative sentence in Section C, ‘Refer to at least two subsystems in your response’, ensures mutual intelligibility and guarantees that all students are able to understand the instruction. [or something of your own life!] The use of Standard Australian English carries overt prestige and the variety is appropriate in the examination paper of a government- endorsed educational institution.
VCE exams
The Standard is the variety that facilitates mutual intelligibility; it is the most widely disseminated and the most widely understood. As the prestige variety, Standard Australian English is a desirable educational target and is used as the norm by leading institutions, such as government, law courts, educational bodies and quality media. It is understood that SAE ‘is the dominant dialect and is used by the vast majority of speakers.’ (Australian Voices, Macquarie University) As a consequence, in the context of VCE exams, Standard English serves the important function of providing access for all students by directing them in their final school exams. In the 2023 VCE English Language examination, the use of Standard syntax and spelling in the imperative sentence in Section C, ‘Refer to at least two subsystems in your response’ ensures mutual intelligibility and guarantees that all students are on a level playing field.
