ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA Varieties of English Around the World General Editor: Edgar W. Schneider Department of English & American Studies University of Regensburg Universitätsstraße 31 D-93053 REGENSBURG Germany [email protected] Editorial Assistants: Alexander Kautzsch, Andreas Hiltscher, Magnus Huber (Regensburg) Editorial Board: Michael Aceto (Puerto Rico); Laurie Bauer (Wellington) J.K. Chambers (Toronto); Jenny Cheshire (London) Manfred Görlach (Cologne); Barbara Horvath (Sydney) Jeffrey Kallen (Dublin); Thiru Kandiah (Colombo) Vivian de Klerk (Grahamstown, South Africa) William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (Athens, GA) Caroline Macafee (Aberdeen); Michael Montgomery (Columbia, SC) Peter Mühlhäusler (Adelaide); Peter L. Patrick (Colchester) GENERAL SERIES Volume 26 David Blair and Peter Collins (eds.) English in Australia ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA Edited by DAVID BLAIR Macquarie University PETER COLLINS University of NSW JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri- 8 can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Cover illustration Cover photograph by Mirjam Medema. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data English in Australia / edited by David Blair and Peter Collins. p. cm. -- (Varieties of English around the world. General series, ISSN 0172-7362 ; v. 26) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language--Australia. 2. English language--Variation--Australia. 3. Australianisms. I. Blair, David, 1942-. II. Collins, Peter, 1950-. III. Varieties of English around the world. General series ; v. 26. PE3601.E54 2000 420’.994--dc21 00-046737 ISBN 90 272 4884 2 (Eur.) / 1 55619 729 2 (US) (alk. paper) CIP © 2001 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia, PA 19118-0519 • USA Contents Introduction Language and identity in Australia 1 Peter Collins and David Blair Section A: English in Australia: structure Phonology Vowel change: synchronic and diachronic evidence 17 Felicity Cox and Sallyanne Palethorpe Variation and change in Australian consonants: reduction of /t/ 45 Laura Tollfree The vocalisation of dark l in Australian English 69 Toni Borowsky Morphology Hypocoristics of place-names 89 Jane Simpson Syntax Syntactic features and norms in Australian English 113 Mark Newbrook Lexicon Australian English and indigenous voices 133 Bruce Moore Australian English — an identity crisis 151 Susan Butler Corpus evidence on Australian style and usage 163 Pam Peters vi CONTENTS Section B: English in Australia: variation Torres Strait and Aboriginal Torres Strait English 181 Anna Shnukal Aboriginal English: adopted code of a surviving culture 201 Ian Malcolm Ethnic varieties Ethnic varieties of Australian English 223 Michael Clyne, Edina Eisikovits and Laura Tollfree Australian English and recent migrant groups 239 Scott Kiesling Diachronic and generational variation The acquisition of colloquialisms by non-native speakers 259 Jane Curtain Changing attitudes to Australian English 271 David Bradley and Maya Bradley A.G. Mitchell and the development of Australian pronunciation 287 Colin Yallop Lexicography and national identity: the Australian experience 303 Arthur Delbridge Australian English in interaction with other Englishes 317 Brian Taylor Regional variation Short A in Australian English: a geolinguistic study 341 Barbara M. Horvath and Ronald J. Horvath Index 357 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 harmo- nious, 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 2 PETER COLLINS AND DAVID BLAIR 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 Eng- lish-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 multi- ethnic 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 Ab- original 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. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN AUSTRALIA 3 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 signifi- cance (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 conse- quences of the shift in Australian national consciousness ushered in by the election of the a Labor government led by E.G. Whitlam in 1972. Correspond- ing 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 Austra- lian-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-