Australian English Reimagined

Australian English is best known for its colourful slang. This collection provides a much richer account by bringing together leading scholars of this English variety. They provide a comprehensive overview of Australian English's distinctive features and outline cutting edge research into variation and change of English in Australia.

Australian English is perhaps best known for its colourful slang, but the variety is much richer than slang alone. This collection provides a detailed account of Australian English by bringing together leading scholars of this English variety. These scholars provide a comprehensive overview of Australian English's distinctive features and outline cutting-edge research into the variation and change of English in Australia. Organised thematically, this volume explores the ways in which Australian English differs from other varieties of English, as well as examining regional, social and stylistic variation within the variety.

The volume first explores particular structural features where Australian English differentiates itself from other English varieties. There are chapters on phonetics and phonology, socio-phonetics, lexicon and discourse-pragmatics as these elements are core to understanding any variety of English, especially within the World Englishes paradigm. It then considers what are arguably the most salient aspects of variation within Australian English and finally focuses on historical, attitudinal and planning aspects of Australian English.

This volume provides a thorough account of Australian English and its users as complex, diverse and worthy of study. Perhaps more importantly, this volume's scholars provide a reimagining of Australian English and the paradigm through which future scholars may proceed.

Autorentext

Louisa Willoughby is a senior lecturer in linguistics in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.

Howard Manns is a lecturer in linguistics in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.

Inhalt

1. Introducing Australian English Part 1: Features of Australian English 2. Phonetics and Phonology of Australian English 3. Tense, Aspect and Modality in Australian English 4. Negation in Australian English 5. Reimagining Discourse-pragmatic Features of Australian Englishes 6. Lexicon of Australian English Part 2: Internal Variation in Australian English 7. Sociophonetics of Australian English 8. Lexical and Morphosyntactic Variation in Australian English 9. Aboriginal English(es) 10. Ethnolectal Variability in Australian English Part 3: Historical Development of Australian English 11. History of Australian English 12. American Influences on Australian English 13. Codification of Australian English 14. Attitudes to Australian English 15. The Australian National Corpus (and beyond)