Understanding the place of Australian English: exploring folk linguistic accounts through contemporary Australian authors
Affiliation
University of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) (JM)La Trobe University (Victoria, Australia) (CPW)
Issue Date
2018-02-19
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper explores Australian English (AuE), utilising a folk linguistic approach and engaging with its use in novel-writing. It is argued that discussions by contemporary Australian authors about their approaches to writing and voicing characters, and the actual voices authors give to their characters can be used as data to gain new understandings of what language forms have social meanings within AuE. The value of this analytical approach is then illustrated with interview and text extracts from one Australian author, revealing that this type of analysis provides insights into both the folk linguistic understandings of an author and how language variation is employed within the fiction series to index local types. It is concluded that such an approach can be generalised to better understand variation in AuE as accessed by other language-focussed professions and their differing conceptualisations of language, as well as to further understand variation in other varieties of English, and in other languages.Citation
Mulder, J., & Penry Williams, C. (2018). 'Understanding the place of Australian English: Exploring folk linguistic accounts through contemporary Australian authors'. Asian Englishes, 20(1), pp. 54–64. DOI: 10.1080/13488678.2018.1422323.Publisher
Taylor and FrancisJournal
Asian EnglishesDOI
10.1080/13488678.2018.1422323Additional Links
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13488678.2018.1422323?journalCode=reng20Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
13488678ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/13488678.2018.1422323