Language And Culture in Aboriginal Australia

What are the Australian Aboriginal languages like? How many are there? Where are they spoken? How are they learned by children? Are there dictionaries of Aboriginal languages? What kinds of new language have emerged in the last two hundred years? What is the connection between land, people and language in Aboriginal Australia? How does the use of English disadvantage Aboriginal people? Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia offers answers to these questions by providing a series of studies on different aspects of language and culture in different parts of Aboriginal Australia. Subjects include: why a young Aboriginal woman in rural Australia might end up pleading guilty to a crime she didn't commit; the picture of 'language ownership' which can be drawn from recent research on land rights; what we know of the first white settlers' attempts to learn the language of the Sydney region; the first dictionaries compiled in South Australia; and how Aboriginal languages are now being use

Colin Yallop is an adjunct professor at Macquarie University in Australia. Michael Walsh has researched the Top End of the Northern Territory for the last 30 years, including descriptive and typological studies of Aboriginal languages as well as investigations into language use among indigenous Australians.