Language and Identity Are Inextricably Linked. How Is This Reflected in the Current Australian Context?

Language features, including a variety of figurative and humour devices, have been incorporated to clearly demonstrate how the authors have had similar experiences with contrasting perspectives on growing up Australian.

British linguist David Crystal once said “languages that don’t change are dead ones”, and the evolution of English language; not only in Australia, but on a global scale has developed in such a way that formal language is progressively becoming obsolete, whilst informal language is transforming into an increasingly contemporary form of written and spoken communication. The wide utilisation of informal language especially in modern-day Australian society functions to aid in the building of rapport, as well as enabling an increased association of an individual 's identity with the richness of Australian culture. Although this is clearly evident

In spite of its variations and the reasons behind its current status, this research paper will be focusing upon the four main languages of the Austral realm: English, New Zealand’s and Australia’s sign language, Australian Indigenous language and the Maori language in New Zealand. Each language has impacted the Austral realm in its own way and will be viewed both individually and in comparison within the realm’s two states. English’s history, what constitutes the signs in New Zealand’s sign language, Australian accent… all of them are part of a culture both beautiful and unique and should, therefore, be treated with the same care as one would treat any relic.

How does ‘I’m Australian Too’ support language and literacy for children from diverse cultural backgrounds and home languages?

This is mainly the language which is being used by the refugee groups. These people are not very fluent with the local standard language (Wardhaugh, 1993). In Australia, the ethnolect could be found among the Anglo and non-Anglo speakers. The most significant feature of the “ethnolect” in Australian language is the pronunciation of word “er”. The Anglo speakers have got their background from Greek speakers and hence their pronunciations vary from non-Anglo speakers. Hence in Australia there are different groups of people with various backgrounds speaking in different English language.

'Auslan is a unique language that is used in the Australian Deaf community although it not the same as "spoken or written English" (Deafness and Mental Health Service 2011, ¶ 2). Auslan fits within the Deaf culture as its primary language by using the 'combination of hand shapes, facial expression, orientation and movement of hands, arms or body' (State Government of Victoria 2015, ¶ 1). Deaf people in the community use eye contact 'since a Deaf person cannot hear what is being said as they rely on body language and facial expression for cues' (Deaf Service Queensland n.d, ¶ 5). Body language and facial expressions are an integral part of Auslan' (Deaf Service Queensland n.d, ¶

“The population of the Northern of indigenous Australians is 66,600. The population of Australians about 20 million. ”(Population Distribution, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians Australian Bureau of Statistics 15 August 2007 pdf.) In this 66,600 people, some of the people come from different races. In the different races, they have different languages.

A big part of the ‘laid back’ perception of Australians is due to their extensive application of colloquial terminology, commonly shortenings of original, commonplace lexemes known as diminutives. Most diminutives in Australia are created by the shortening of a name or a noun and usually adding a bound suffix of a, o, ie or y. Nearly one half of Australian diminutives share an “ee” sound as the last syllable, which is common in other English-variants and languages to express endearment, intimacy or informality between speakers. Such examples are the popular ‘barbie’, ‘bicky/bickie’, and ‘ambo’. Notable diminutives are the shortening of the organisation The Salvation Army into ‘salvo’s’ and McDonald's into ‘macca’s’. These slangs have become widespread enough throughout the country that the organisations themselves have adopted their colloquial names for advertisement.

I tell them right away" - What is so uniquely beautiful about Australia ? Is it the golden beaches, the harbours or is it the famous Australian landmarks? The answer, of course, is all of the above. When promoting the country, which language choices will attract people to our nation, that is built upon strong bonds of honesty?

In Australian society, varieties of Australian English create different types of prestige and use and can either be the more standard overt prestige or the more informal and casual covert prestige. Teenspeak is a variety of language that creates covert prestige between groups, while ethnolects are a type of Australian English that leads to a non-standard covert prestige. Broad Australian English is a variety of Australian English in which the accent used also creates large amounts of covert prestige and power. Teenagers are a group of individuals who use language to create an identity.

There are numerous diverse roles that language can participate on a child’s life and development, whether it be throughout the roles that persuade their growth and knowledge of language, the way they are able to establish the many dissimilar forms of language, their knowledge of diverse and standization of their own language as well as others and the impact culture has on a child. The countless roles that language may have on a child could be their understanding of the structural system of language, and they why this shapes their personal and social outcomes. We are able to determine the many different varieties and forms of is through both written and spoken words and having the ability to be able to understand Australians contextual language.

Australian English (AusE) is a new dialect of English that brought to Australian in 1788 with the first generation of children who born and bred in Australia when the British wanted to build up new colonies at coast of Australia. It began as a result of contact between this generation of children and other people who speak different forms of English and mutually intelligible. In addition, they have created this new dialect from elements existing in the speech they heard around them because they were exposed to a wide variety of dialects from all over the British Isles, Ireland and southern England (Lamparielli ,2013). The First World War also was one of the most important factors that leads to develop the Australian English. That is because

At the first glance you might think Australian always are asking question according to their particular intonation, rising the end part of the sentence.

Other forms of the English language are developed from speech communities with an intention, for efficiency and to show inclusion, and to exclude others. It also helps to convey a specific identity of the speaker, with the use of syntactic and phonological differences from Standard English. These modifications form non-standard dialects, transferring the speaker’s cultural background and language to provide a better perception and reflection of identity. The falling intonation accompanied with interrogatives in the Asian ethnolect, such as ‘Gravy?’, is the opposite of the rising intonation used for the same purpose by Australians, and can quickly cause conflict between the two communities due to the missing benchmark in language. Pronoun deletion in ‘No like’ (‘I don’t like it’) is a feature of many ethnolects (Greek, Aboriginal English), and is differing from the Standard, yet still helps to get the message across. Ethnolects develop from Standard English, and helps to express a user’s identity through their language use and in-group solidarity within the speech community.

A great importance is also given to a new kind of generic southern accent: Estuary English, which admits people to the inner circle and acts as a “class barrier”. It’s interesting to note that Margaret Thatcher adopted RP to appear more educated, power, and authoritative to the electorate, while Tony Blair has swapped RP for Estuary English in an attempt to identify more closely with the people he represents. British phoneticians A.C Gimson (1964), A. C. Hughes (1997), estimate that nowadays RP is not homogenous. A.C. Gimson suggests generally distinguish between three different forms of RP: conservative, general, and advanced.