Australia's Many Voices

by Leitner, Gerhard

• ISBN13: 9783110181944
• ISBN10: 3110181940
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Mouton De Gruyter

Summary

Australia's English is at the centre of interest in English and Australian Studies. It is indispensable to an understanding of the development of English world-wide. This book develops a comprehensive, descriptive, and sociohistorical view of mainstream Australian English and of the social processes that have made it possible for it to become the national language of Australia reaching out into the Asia-Pacific region. This study is both of interest for specialists from a range of language and policy disciplines, and for non-specialists with no background in linguistics. Both will find its discursive, non-technical style appealing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
List of illustrations	xi
Notational conventions	xii
Introduction	1	(2)
Chapter 1 Australia's language habitat	3	(42)
1.1 Demographic, cultural and linguistic diversity	4	(3)
1.2 Past approaches to Australia's many voices	7	(6)
1.3 A unified approach to Australia's many voices	13	(28)
1.3.1 Language, languages and language performance	14	(6)
1.3.2 Changing the habitat of languages	20	(15)
1.3.3 The social dimension	35	(6)
1.4 A coherent, inclusive account of Australia's languages	41	(4)
Chapter 2 The demography of Australia's language habitat	45	(42)
2.1 Demography and the demography of Australia	46	(5)
2.2 The growth of Australia's population	51	(9)
2.3 The composition of the population	60	(7)
2.4 A profile of selected communities	67	(18)
2.4.1 Indigenous Australians	68	(4)
2.4.2 British settlers, including Celtic settlers	72	(7)
2.4.3 Migrants from continental Europe and Asia	79	(6)
2.5 Conclusion	85	(2)
Chapter 3 Australian English: The national language	87	(251)
3.1 Attitudes to English: From colonial cringe to epicentre	90	(16)
3.1.1 Dimensions of attitudes to language	91	(1)
3.1.2 Views from without on the English in Australia	92	(2)
3.1.3 Views from within and from the Mother Country	94	(12)
3.2 The British English heritage in mAusE	106	(43)
3.2.1 The accent	107	(10)
3.2.2 The dialect	117	(32)
3.3 English in Australia in contact	149	(71)
3.3.1 Contact with the indigenous language habitat	151	(26)
3.3.2 Contact with migrant languages other than English	177	(14)
3.3.3 Contact with other varieties of English	191	(29)
3.4 Internal stratification of mAusE	220	(43)
3.4.1 Variable patterns in the accent	221	(17)
3.4.2 From the non-standard to the standard dialect	238	(10)
3.4.3 A note on ethnicity	248	(1)
3.4.4 Regional variation	249	(14)
3.5 Standard mAusE and Australia's national language	263	(48)
3.5.1 The Australian Broadcasting Commission	265	(17)
3.5.2 The Macquarie dictionary project	282	(7)
3.5.3 Government and other codifiers	289	(3)
3.5.4 Usage guides, especially newspaper guides	292	(5)
3.5.5 The Style Council	297	(1)
3.5.6 Non-discriminatory language and plain English	298	(11)
3.5.7 The English language industry	309	(2)
3.6 A social and linguistic history of mAusE	311	(25)
3.6.1 The formation of the accents	312	(17)
3.6.2 The origin of stratification of the dialect	329	(6)
3.6.3 Recent change	335	(1)
3.7 The language repertoire of the speech community of mAusE	336	(2)
Chapter 4 An epi-centre in the Asia-Pacific region	338	(9)
References	347	(35)
Name Index	382	(7)
Subject Index	389