English in Australia (Varieties of English Around the World)
By David Blair, Peter Collins
* Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
* Number Of Pages: 363
* Publication Date: 2000-12
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 9027248842
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9789027248848
Product Description:
This title explores the English language in Australia, focusing on aspects such as structure, phonology, morphology and lexicon, to variation from Torres Strait English and Aboriginal to ethnic varieties and regional variations.
Language and identity in Australia
Peter Collins and David Blair
1. Introduction
Australians seem to have a perennial fascination with the question of national
identity. In the minds of most citizens (at least, as represented by those social
surveyors and media commentators who report the national mindset), Australia
is still undergoing a process of establishing a clear self-image and a national
sense of purpose. In contrast, there is considerable evidence that Australia’s
linguistic identity was established early in the history of the colony.
According to the late A. G. Mitchell, the founder of Australian English
(henceforth, “AusE”) studies, it is likely that the colony of New South Wales
saw the formation of a variety approximating what we now know as Broad
Australian as early as the 1830s (see Yallop, this volume). It is generally
accepted that the origins of AusE lay in the dialects spoken in the south-east of
England in the late 18th century. Language historians may argue over whether
those dialects were mixed in the London area and then transported to Australia
as a new amalgam, or whether the dialect contact processes that created AusE
took place on Australian soil (Blair 1975; Trudgill 1986); but Mitchell was
almost certainly correct in his view that the process of dialect levelling
produced an identifiable variety within the first 50 years.
Early printed sources give a strong indication that this was so. James
Dixon wrote in 1822 of the “amalgamation of such various dialects assembled
together” which had already produced “a better language, purer, more harmonious,
than is generally the case in most parts of England” (Dixon 1822: 46).
George Bennett visited NSW twice, in 1829 and in 1832, before settling in
Sydney in 1836. He noted that “the English spoken is very pure” and that, as in
the United States of America, it was not “corrupted by so many different
provincial dialects”; the native-born could be clearly distinguished from those
who had emigrated from England, by this characteristic alone (Bennett 1834:
I, 331).
Louisa Meredith (1844: 50) had a very different assessment of the local
dialect:
…a very large proportion of both male and female snuffle dreadfully; just the
same nasal twang as many Americans have. In some cases English parents
have come out here with English-born children; these all speak clearly and
well, and continue to do so, whilst those born after the parents arrive in the
colony have the detestable snuffle. This is an enigma which passes my
sagacity to solve.
Despite the different appreciation, she was at one with both Dixon and
Bennett in noting the clear distinction between the native-born and the English-
born pronunciation.
Three commentators, Peter Cunningham (1827: II, 60), Samuel Mossman
(1852: 19) and Friedrich Gerstaecker (1853: II, 269), reported differently.
They identified the dialect of NSW as Cockney. It is likely that all three, as
Cunningham explicitly acknowledged, were responding to the accents of adult
emigrants: Gerstaecker noted the presence of “broad Irish brogue” as well.
But it should not surprise us that there was a strong London component in the
original version of AusE, even though Australians have been reluctant to
acknowledge the similarities of their pronunciation, in some respects, to that
of working-class London. If Mitchell was right, that the original Broad AusE
was formed in the first 50 years, it is inconceivable that it did not carry a set of
Cockney-related features.
Those features, of course, have been somewhat attenuated over the years,
and AusE progressively expanded its repertoire of variation to include RP-like
varieties. (The dialect is now usually described as having several sociolects, in
an accent continuum which leads from “Broad Australian” at one end to a
more RP-like “Cultivated Australian” at the other; the middle ground is held
by the variety named “General Australian”.) In addition, Australia’s multiethnic
society has recently generated varieties which are associated with
community groups of various non-English migrant backgrounds (Clyne,
Eisikovits and Tollfree, this volume); and together with the English of Aboriginal
communities, these form a distinct subset of Englishes in Australia.
As a result of this, it is now common for linguists to distinguish AusE (or
“Anglo-English”, the unmarked form of English in Australia) in its several
varieties, from Aboriginal English and the other Englishes of Australia.
2. Attitude and identity
Many sociolinguists have argued that language functions as a badge of social
identity. (See Fasold (1984) as a typical example.) It is certainly true that the
many identifiable social groups in Australia are marked by, and can to some
extent be identified by, variation in their language use. Language is part of the
social dynamic, and may undergo considerable modification by individual
speakers and by groups, from context to context. The slightest difference in
language may be detected by listeners and perceived to have social significance
(Giles and St Clair 1979: 17).
This being so, we might expect changes in language and in social identity
to go hand-in-hand. For example, Blair (1993) notes the linguistic consequences
of the shift in Australian national consciousness ushered in by the
election of the a Labor government led by E.G. Whitlam in 1972. Corresponding
to the break with the British-oriented outlook of the previous long-serving
Menzies government and heightened awareness of Australian cultural icons,
claims Blair, there was a greater acceptance of the Broad Australian accent. In
fact a number of ministers in the new Whitlam government spoke with a
Broad accent. It was during this time that aggressively local “Ocker”1 TV
commercials became highly popular, and there was a resurgence of Australian-
produced films portraying an overtly Australian culture and lifestyle.
According to Delbridge (this volume: 310) it was not until the 1940s that
a positive attitude towards AusE began to develop, the only earlier sign being
a temporary surge in national feeling towards the end of the nineteenth
century, “a small manifestation of interest, even pride, in some of the words
and phrases of Australian idiom…”
What is happening today? Are Australians over their ‘identity-crisis’ of
the 1970’s, when they began to lose confidence in the Mother Country, and
began to question their traditional emotional, political, cultural, and economic
allegiances?
3. Lexicon
Arguably, the most transparent reflection of speakers’ attitudes, values and
self-perception is to be found in the lexicon. The Australian vocabulary
embodies the ideals that Australians cherish, those of egalitarianism and anti
authoritarianism, sympathy for the battler and desire for a fair go. The
fondness with which words like mateship have been preserved and the benign
regard for archaisms like cobber illustrate the close relationship between
words and the culture they reflect.
The most significant lexical development in recent decades has been the
influx of words and expressions from American English (“AmE”), reflecting
the increasing influence of American culture in Australia since World War II.
Rapid developments in communication such as the Internet are bringing AusE
closer than ever before to the “now” of AmE.
Taylor (this volume: 334–5) comments on the changing nature of the
exposure to AmE, as “the increasing speed of technological development
brings the inhabitants of the global village even closer together”, and as
younger Australians “communing day in, day out for hours on end with their
AmE-speaking computers are being interactively exposed to that variety in a
way earlier generations never were with passive TV watching”.
Opinions differ as to the extent and impact of American influence on
AusE. Members of the public and journalists constantly bemoan the debasement
of AusE through Americanisation (see Taylor, this volume) suggesting
or at least implying that AusE is merely a passive receptacle for Americanisms.
Butler (this volume) speaks of an “identity crisis” for AusE, a nervousness
in self-image prompted by the feeling that AmE is “taking over”.
Sussex’s studies of radio, film and TV data led him to the conclusion that
Australians “still exhibit the classic signs of cultural insecurity” (1989: 167)
and “don’t seem to place a great deal of emphasis on their variety as part of the
national culture” (1995: 22).
Despite talking of Australians’ linguistic nervousness, Butler (this volume)
observes the operation of a “filtering process” in AusE that blocks the
entry of items from AmE that have no interest or relevance to Australia (e.g.
advanced television, Anita-Hill, attack-fax). In an earlier article she noted
(Butler 1996) that some AmE borrowings, such as bushranger and phoney
have become so integrated into AusE that speakers are no longer aware that
they are AmE in origin. Peters (1993: 25) also argues that Australian borrowings
from AmE are selective, and that show “no sign of going all the way with
the USA.” Corpus evidence adduced by Peters indicates a preference, for
example, for past tense burnt over the form favoured in AmE, burned.
Taylor’s (1989) research shows that AmE influence on AusE has by no
means been limited to the lexical level. Phonologically, Taylor notes, there
has been a tendency for the stress patterns in certain words to move from a
traditional British to an American pattern (e.g. finANCE to FINance,
reSEARCH to REsearch). Graphologically, simplification of digraphs such as
<ae> and <oe> as in medieval and fetal follows American practice. Syntactically,
Taylor notes, amongst other things, the American-influenced elision of
the in structures of the type I play (the) piano.
Let us examine several further lexical trends in AusE and their possible
explanation in terms of Australians’ self-perception and identity. According to
Moore (this volume) there has been an influx of words from Aboriginal
culture since the 1960s which parallels the development of Aboriginal political
and cultural activism and a growing interest in Aboriginal languages and
culture amongst white Australians. Examples are native title and Mabo, which
entered AusE following the High Court decision in 1992 to recognise the
claim by Koiki Mabo, a Mer islander from the Torres Strait, that his people’s
land had been illegally annexed by Queensland. A number of Aboriginal place
names have risen to prominence in recent years beside their European counterparts,
the most well known being Uluru (for Ayers Rock).
Taylor (1989, and this volume) identifies a revival of British influence
from the 1970s, through television series such as Till Death Us Do Part,
Steptoe and Son, Heartbeat, A Touch of Frost, and The Bill, resulting in the
importation of terms such as telly (‘television’), loo (‘toilet’), knickers
(‘women’s underpants’), and cheers (‘goodbye’). The lexical effects of other
foreign influences in Australia have been more semantically restricted. Bearing
testimony to the multicultural identity that Australia has gradually developed
since the commencement of large-scale immigration at the end of World
War II are the many terms for food and drink introduced by migrants from a
large variety of language backgrounds. Terms such as cappuccino, goulash,
souvlaki and hummus have, as Clyne, Eisikovits and Tollfree (this volume)
note, “become a tangible indicator of multiculturalism”.
Finally, as Seal (1999: 235) has observed in his lively account of the
“Lingo”, the continuing vitality and creativity of the colloquial vernacular
wordstock is a constant reminder of how directly the lexicon enshrines the
deep-seated beliefs and ideals of its speakers. The most ardent efforts of
political correctness advocates have not succeeded in curtailing the intrinsically
“incorrect” elements in the Australian lexicon. Alongside trends suggesting
a new pluralism in Australia’s identity there persists a rich array of
terms suggesting intolerance of those who are somehow different: these
include racist expressions such as wog, chink, pom, yank and more recently
ethno. Many Australians today — particularly males — retain a penchant for
the coarse and irreverent, in some cases perpetuating “flash” expressions
originating in early nineteenth century prison contexts (e.g. stink (‘uproar’),
bludger (‘lazy person), sort out (‘fight’)). Australians continue to display
considerable colloquial creativity, building up large sets of expressions using
a single stem: scared shitless (‘very scared’), shit a brick! (expression of
surprise), up shit creek (‘in a difficult predicament’), built like a brick
shithouse (‘strongly built’), bullshit artist (‘one who tells lies’), shit-faced
(‘drunk’).
4. Syntax and morphology
Typically the dialects of a language differ least at the syntactic level, so it is
significant — and perhaps suggestive of an attempt to find a separate identity
— that some syntactic phenomena have emerged in AusE that are different
from those of both BrE and AmE. According to Newbrook (this volume)
AusE allows both singular and plural concord with the names of sports teams
and other singular collective proper nouns (e.g. North Melbourne is/are
playing well), whereas plural concord is favoured in BrE, and singular concord
in AmE. Newbrook also claims that some Australian teachers propagate
a reversed form of the traditional rule governing the use of commas around
relative clauses, resulting in the following types of pattern: Joanne and Jane
who had finished left the hall; Any students, who have finished, may leave the
hall. Peters’ corpus studies (this volume) indicate that contractions (it’s, don’t,
there’s, etc.) are more widely distributed and more frequent in non-fictional
genres in AusE than in BrE and AmE.
Some examples restricted to the syntax of nonstandard spoken AusE and
not attested in nonstandard BrE or AmE, are also adduced by Newbrook (this
volume), including the use of genitive ’s with relative that as in This is the girl
that’s book I borrowed................................................................. |
楼主: 帆帆
honological Spectrum" aim at giving a comprehensive overview of current developments in phonological theory, by providing a number of papers in different areas of current theorizing which reflect on particular problems from different angles. Volume II deals with phonological structure above the segmental level, in particular with syllable structure, metrical structure and sentence-level prosodic structure. Different syllable structure theories, as well as possible relations between segment structure and syllabic structure, and evidence from language acquisition and aphasia are examined in section 1. Metrical structure is examined in papers on foot structure, and, experimentally, on word stress in Indonesian. Finally in this volume, there are three laboratory-phonological reports on the intonation of Dutch.