Remember the Evidence

Question 1

Australian English

Answer 1

• “The Great Australian Speech Impediment”: Australian politicians have too much drawl, too informal
• Decline of Australian slang and colloquialisms: “Is Aussie slang dying out?”
• Language of Australia Day: “Carno-nationalism and Cultural Lambnesia”
• Real Housewives of Melbourne: limited vocabulary, incorrect grammar and poor pronunciation. “It is oddly worse with an Australian accent” (March 2014)
• Abbott used term ‘Team Australia’ to join people together to fight terrorism. Mixed reception as some people felt the term excluded certain groups. (August 2014)
• Abbott threatened to “shirtfront” Putin (October 2014)

Question 2

Individual and group identities

Answer 2

• Team Australia
• “AFL has a problem with racism, sexism and homophobia” - SMH
• Objections to the proposal to build a mosque in Bendigo with protests mostly based on stereotyping of the group (June 2014)
• Australian rapper Iggy Azalea criticised for adopting a US Southern drawl accent (July 2014)
• Senator Jacqui Lambie not using emotive term ‘burqa’, banning the wearing of ‘identity concealing garments’ when entering public places for security reasons

Question 3

The concept of register (level of formality)

Answer 3

• Abbott re-introducing a system of Dames and Knights in Order of Australia honours list (March 2014)
• Sam Dastyari’s “Game of Tones” speech

Question 4

Social purpose of language

Answer 4

• Victorian Labor Party rebrands Daniel Andrews as ‘Dan’
• Monash University Study 2014 - “We’re a weird mob of unfriendly racists”
• Language of shooting Michael Brown, Ferguson riots - “Black moms shouldn’t have ‘the talk’”
• Frightbat to describe feminist activists - “Will anyone bat for the frightbat, or is it destined to die?”
• Idea of ‘literacy privilege’
• Emma Watson’s UN speech on feminism
• VTAC offering third gender option on registration form
• January 2014 - ALDI forced to withdraw Australia Day items stating ‘Australia Est. 1788’
• Dept of Immigration - ‘illegals’, ‘detainees’, ‘transferees’
• March-May 2014 - Discussions on ‘right to be a bigot’, AG George Brandis proposed watering down protections against racial vilification in Racial Discrimination Act. Free speech vs right to be racist
• October 2014 - Woolworths withdrew product line with Australian flag and logo: ‘if you don’t love it, leave’

Question 5

Attitudes to varieties of English

Answer 5

• Budget 2014 - “Decoding the jargon”. Semantics
• Weird Al Yankovic “Word Crimes” song
• Abbott’s way of speaking: slow, robotic, repetitive and full of ‘uums and aahs’
• Australia Post jargon: community service obligations, regulated mail business, trusted service capabilities, mail industry

Question 6

Modes of language: spoken

Answer 6

• “Young women often trendsetters in vocal patterns”

- “Accentism” - criticism of Australian rappers with US accents

Question 7

Modes of language: written

Answer 7

AG George Brandis makes amendments to punctuation of significant number of parliament and legal documents

Question 8

Modes of language: electronic

Answer 8

• Memes and mockery of iPhone 6
• Leaked email from one of PUP’s MPs referred to voters in their electorate as ‘bogans’. Palmer “spent most of his life as a bogan”

Question 9

Language change

Answer 9

• Oxford Online dictionary: sideboob, YOLO, adorbs, binge-watch, humblebrag, listicle, neckbeard, vape, live-tweet, bro hug, cray, hence, mansplain
• Bureau of Meteorology changing terms used to describe weather. From ‘vague’ terms such as ‘scattered’ and ‘chance’ to more %
• Coles “fresh-baked” controversy
• “Schools ditch jargon for plain English in student reports” - Herald Sun report on changing language of reporting