VCE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

QUOTES FOR UNIT 4

Below are some quotes that I have gathered over the past few years. Some are media
examples, while some are linguist/lexicographer quotes. By no means is this complete - in
fact this is just the beginning. You need to make sure you do independent research to
attain the highest mark possible :)
1. Regionalisms and Variation in Australian Society
a. Regionally-defined celery/salary pronounced the same way (Cox & Palethorpe
2004; Loakes, Hajek & Fletcher 2010
b. Regional pronunciation:

2. Cultural Values
a. According to Convict Creations, in comparison to other English speakers, Australians
tend to be far more informal; readily using the same language when dealing with a
boss, an elderly person, friend or rapscallion.
b. Author Kel Richards argues the use of diminutives is not only semantic solidarity but
also the Australian way of using informality to puncture affectation and undercut
authority This is verbal signage we belong to the same mob. Many an inflated, smug,
syllable-heavy word gets a quick snip with the Aussie verbal scissors to reduce it to a
bonsai version of its former self.
c. According to linguist Anna Weirzbicka, no worries is a colloquial expression that
exemplifies Australian culture and identity, including amiability, friendliness, an
expectation of shared attitudes (a proneness to easy mateship), jocular toughness,
good humour, and, above all, casual optimism.

d. According to Noriko Seyika from the University of Melbourne, despite there being
many meaning choices for the word, Australians use the term battler with particular
meaning related to their cultural attitudes, such as toughness, informality, modesty
and egalitarianism.
e. This notion of egalitarianism was proven by Englishman George Bennett, who wrote
in 1834, the English spoken is very pure, and it is easy to recognise a person from
home or one born in the colony, no matter what class of society.
3. Accents
a. According to linguist Felicity Cox linguistic change runs parallel with social change.
b. According to Australian National University lexicographer Bruce Moore, [the
development for the Broad accent] was almost an unconscious, instinctive reaction to
the imposition of British standards. However, nowadays, these two extremes are
gradually disappearing from Australian society. Bruce Moore further states that
Australians are becoming more confident with the standard Australian accent and
that means theres no longer the need for those sorts of extreme sounds.
c. The disappearance of the Cultivated accent also reflects a greater desire for
republicanism. According to linguist Felicity Cox, this is evidence of republicanism
and socio-cultural changes perhaps suggesting that Australians repelling values of
the monarchy to forge their own unique cultural identity.
d. Entirely new forms of Australian language are emerging as our accent adapts to the
growing value of multiculturalism, says Fiona Cox, a phonetician from Macquarie
University in Sydney.
i. Changes in accent parallel sociocultural changes, because accent is a
fundamental marker of identity, she says.
ii. Our dialect is still quite young by global standards but as it matures we can
expect some more regional variations and ethnocultural variations to come
into the language.
e. According to Convict Creations, in England, accents vary according to class and
region. In America, they vary according to race and region. Unlike America or
England, Australia has no variance in speaking according to class, race or region.
Instead, the accent varies according to ideology or gender.
f. Kel Richards is the author of the new book The Story of Australian English and is a
credible source for your essays.
i. It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these
people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional
dialect areas across England, he said.

ii. They all spoke differently and they used different words and what they had to
do, in order to communicate with each other, was to level their dialect
variations down.
g. According to Kel Richards, [the importation of the Cultivated accent] started off on
how to annunciate and speak clearly but what they did was pick one dialect, standard
southern English, and they said that is correct.
i. Standard southern English came to be what is called RP, Received
Pronunciation, Oxbridge, that kind of accent.
ii. That was right, everything else was wrong.
h. According to Australian National University lexicographer Bruce Moore, [the
development of the Broad accent] was almost an unconscious, instinctive reaction to
the imposition of British standards, he says.
i. It was a reaction to the kind of cultured speech that was now associated with
a value system that many Australians did not share, Moore says. Australian)
values needed a language in which they could be expressed.
ii. We expressed that through a changing vocabulary, but it wasnt just the
words we were speaking it was the accent that was changing as well.
i. Bruce Moore
i. The notion of Received Pronunciation rules arose during the late 19th century,
so this purity in Britain spread to Australia (elocution lessons etc.)
ii. Cultivated Australia develops as a result of the introduction of RP in Britain
and the calls for a refinement of the Australian accent
iii.Cultivated is associated with prestige and upper class
iv.Broadness may have come from the first world war as people from all different
social groups are grouped together for a long period of time
v. The broad accent is a reaction against the setting up of cultivated
Australian and against the imperialists
j. Felicity Cox:
i. Broadness developed during the first world war and developed throughout the
early 20th century
ii. Our accent is a product of our social history
iii.Australians tried to make themselves more Australian as a way of distancing
themselves from the British in WWI
4. Changing Attitudes to Australian English

a. Australians are becoming more confident with the standard Australian accent and
that means theres no longer the need for those sorts of extreme sounds. - Bruce
Moore
b. The disappearance of the Cultivated accent: according to linguist Felicity Cox, [this
disappearance/reduction of usage]is evidence of republicanism and socio-cultural
changes.
c. I think the Australian accent is ugly and grating on the ear Gilbert Mant, ABC,
1958
d. Bruce Moore states that this is evidence of Australians overcoming the cultural
cringe an idea which states that a country perceives itself to be inferior to other
cultures and so downplays its own culture.
5. Ethnolects
a. Entirely new forms of Australian language are emerging as our accent adapts to the
growing value of multiculturalism, says Fiona Cox, a phonetician from Macquarie
University in Sydney.
i. Changes in accent parallel sociocultural changes, because accent is a
fundamental marker of identity, she says.
ii. Our dialect is still quite young by global standards but as it matures we can
expect some more regional variations and ethnocultural variations to come
into the language.
b. Bruce Moore, head of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the ANU, in his
book, Speaking Our Language, The Story Of Australian English, says that an
ethnolect, "is used consciously to separate the speakers from Anglo-Australian
values, and at its extreme also to separate the speakers from some parts of their own
culture.
c. Santo Cilauro: The reason why European migrants initially spoke with a mixture of
broad Australian and broad Greek (or Italian) was because they worked on factory
floors, so they were immersed into this accent.
i. The wog accent developed out of a mixture of broad Australian (or General)
and the way how their parents spoke
6. Americanisation
a. Professor Pam Peters (Associate Professor in Linguistics at Macquarie University),
noted the results of one linguistics researcher:
i. younger respondents were always more regular users of the American
options, and this, by sociolinguistic principle, suggests the way of the future.
The longer term effect is already evident in the considerable number of
Americanisms, both popular and professional expressions (from OK to
paramedic) which have been absorbed over the last six decades.

b. As Bruce Moore says,

i. Contemporary teenspeak comes from the world of teenage popular culture,
and this culture is largely American... Listen to a teenager speak, and his or
her language will be peppered with Americanisms.
c. Ruth Wajnryb from SMH:
i. American influences were coming our way through TV, advertising, the film
industry and popular music
ii. So, rather than Australian English being "tainted" by American influences, it's
a case of occasional American words becoming Australianised, usually within
a few decades.
iii.You see a process of naturalising or nativising, not of plunder and pillage.
d. Kel Richards: We pick and choose the Americanisms we want to use. The ones we
dont like, we dont pick up
e. Neil Breen: the accent is not as broad now, it is to do with the Americanisation of our
television
i. There may be a flattening out of all of our accents in 100 years time
ii. People embrace America but resist it at a cultural level
7. Gender
a. This notion of social expectations can be proven by linguist Robin Lakoff, who asserts
that gender is for all the bottom line of our sense of identity: from a very early age, the
question of who we are and what we can and should do depends on whether we have
learned in early childhood that we are a girl or a boy.
b. According to linguist Timothy Jay, American English speaking males swear three
times more frequently than females and use stronger obscenities, which can be seen
in lexical examples such as shit, fuck and cunt.
c. Linguists McEnery and Xiao maintain that males were found to use the word fuck
much more frequently than females.
d. According to linguist Robin Lakoff, tag questions "are associated with a desire for
confirmation or approval which signals a lack of self-confidence in the speaker.
e. Linguist Pamela Fishman has stated that women do all of the conversational
shitwork.
f. Ying He (Kristianstad University): It is reported that women use minimal responses to
show their support to the current speaker while men prefer the delayed minimal
responses in order to achieve the dominance in conversation.

g. Lakoff (1975) says that women usually answer a question with rising intonation
pattern rather than falling intonation. In this way, they can show their gentleness, and
sometimes this intonation shows a lack of confidence.
h. The social class: Holmes suggests that women are more-status conscious than men
(Holmes, J, 1992, p.164) and that is because women have an inner belief that the way
they speak reflects their social class in society and, thus, tend to speak more properly
than men. So, women use more standard speech forms as a way of claiming such
status(Holmes, 1992, p.165).

8. Generation
a. As David Crystal maintains, slang is not just a way for younguns to separate
themselves from elders its also a way for them to show unity with their peers. And of
course, it can do this for any age.
b. However, if older people employ contemporary teenage slang, it may sound insincere
and phoney (Keith Allen and Kate Burridge).
c. (HRT) Cynthia McLemore (1991) from the University of Texas, stated that participants
used a rising intonation "to signal identity and group affiliation, to establish what might
be called a linguistic micro-community.
d. According to linguist Clive Upton from the University of Leeds, using "like" in this
way is also about signalling membership of a club, which further demonstrates the
idea of adhering to social expectations of feeling a need to belong (psychologists
Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary).
e. According to Sali Tagliamonte of the University of Toronto, young people are
notorious for an overabundance of intensification in general (Stenstrom, 2000).
Moreover, intensifiers are thought to be increasing in frequency in recent times (e.g.,
Ito and Tagliamonte, 2003)
f. According to Professor Clive Upton from the University of Leeds in the UK, it [teen
language] is quite clearly the way they get along, the way that they signal they belong
in a group, the way that they fit in.

9. Jargon, Slang and Colloquialisms

a. Burridge states that jargon facilitates communication on one hand, but erects quite
successful communication barriers on the other.
b. Harry Clayton, the national director of patients and the public in the United Kingdom,
asserts that the way language is used in the health service is often opaque, alienating
and disrespectful to patients. (Jargon)