australian style 16 - university of western sydneystc.uws.edu.au/pwe/assets/australian style.pdf ·...

DECEMBER 2001 AUSTRALIAN STYLE 1 APRIL 2009 AUSTRALIAN STYLE 1ISSN 1836-9200 (Online)

I N THISISSUE

A NATIONAL BULLETIN ON ISSUES IN AUSTRALIAN STYLE AND ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA

Australex 2008 3

What’s on the list! 4

SCOSE Notes 6

Word Column 7

Book Notes 8 Speaking our Language

From the Editor 9

Feedback Report 10

Rubicon 12

I N THISISSUE

Volume 16 No 1 APRIL 2009

Australian words have fasci-nated the rest of the worldever since the first Europeans

set foot on our land, but they onlymade it into dictionaries relativelylate. Initial contact between Englandand Australia came too late for Aus-tralian words to be included in earlydictionaries such as RobertCawdrey’s A Table Alphabetical(1604), Nathan Bailey’s Universal Ety-mological English Dictionary (1724), andSamuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the En-glish Language (1755). But Johnsonwas good friends with Sir JosephBanks, and soon after Banks re-turned to England with news of theGuugu Yimidhirr word kangaroo,which he had collected while the En-deavour was stranded at Cooktownfor seven weeks in 1770, Johnson in-troduced the word to British highsociety by impersonating the animalat a dinner party. ‘Nothing could bemore ludicrous’, wrote Boswell,‘than the appearance of a tall, heavy,grave-looking man, like Dr Johnson,standing up to mimic the shape andmotions of a kangaroo. He stooderect, put out his hands like feelers,and, gathering up the tails of his hugebrown coat so as to resemble thepouch of the animal, made two orthree vigorous bounds across theroom’.

Webster’s DictionaryThe first dictionary to include Aus-tralian words was Noah Webster’sAmerican Dictionary of the English Lan-guage (1828). Although manyAustralian words were missing (boo-merang, dingo, koala), Websterincluded entries for kangaroo, platypus,

quoll, wombat, as well as surprisingwords such as vampire, defined as anAustralian ‘species of large bat’, and asense of rude meaning ‘ignorant; un-taught; savage; barbarous; as therude natives of America or of NewHolland’. Webster never once usedthe words ‘Australia’ or ‘Australian’in his dictionary. As was common inthe early nineteenth century, he pre-ferred the name ‘New Holland’, ananglicization of the name used byDutch navigators in the seventeenthcentury. To help his readers under-stand what the Australian wordssignified, Webster made the strangefamiliar, and his definitions were de-lightfully ‘American’ in theirexpression and points of reference:kangaroo is defined as ‘resembling insome respects the opossum’, andquoll as ‘resembling the polecat’.

Colonial impuritiesThe main reason why Australianwords were neglected in so manynineteenth-century dictionaries wasthat lexicographers lacked access toour words because they lacked ac-cess to our literature, and alldictionaries depend on writtensources for their evidence. If lexico-graphers wanted to includeAustralian words, they needed ac-tively to seek readers of Australiantexts in Australia. Not only was thisbeyond the resources and vision ofsome British lexicographers, such asCharles Richardson who publishedA New Dictionary of the English Lan-guage in 1837 without a singleAustralian word, but it also may havechallenged their view of the ‘purity’of the English language which, many

Australian Words in EnglishDictionaries

Sarah Ogilvie is a linguist and lexicographer at the University of Oxford.

nineteenth-century scholars argued,was being ‘corrupted’ by the emer-gence and stabilization of AustralianEnglish and other colonial Englishes.

The first British dictionary to in-clude Australian words was JohnOgilvie's Imperial Dictionary (1848)but this was largely because Ogilvie'stext was based on Webster's ratherthan any deliberate effort on his part.Australian words were not includedin British dictionaries in any deliber-ate and comprehensive way until SirJames Murray's A New English Dictio-

2 AUSTRALIAN STYLE APRIL 2009

ISSN 1836-9200 (Online)

Continued from page 1nary (1884-1928, later known as Ox-ford English Dictionary (OED).Murray was intent on producing adictionary that included all Englishnot just British English. His firsttask, when he became chief editorof the OED in 1879, was to seekinternational readers for the Dictio-nary. Before he published any of theDictionary, he wrote An Appeal tothe English-speaking and the English-reading Public in Great Britain,America, and the Colonies in which hespecifically asked people around theworld to read local texts and send inquotations.

Antipodean readersHundreds of readers responded,including Edward Sugden (1854-1935) and Edward Morris(1843-1902) in Melbourne, both ofwhom - over a period of forty years- sent in thousands of quotations. Inthe 1890s, Morris, who had movedfrom being Headmaster ofMelbourne Grammar School to joinSugden at the University ofMelbourne, realised that he had col-lected enough quotations to compilehis own dictionary of Australian andNew Zealand English. He publishedAustral English in 1898 and sent du-plicates of all his quotations to theOED. He wrote in its preface ‘DrMurray several years ago invited as-sistance from this end of the worldfor words and uses of words pecu-liar to Australasia, or to parts of it. Inanswer to his call I began tocollect...The work took time, andwhen my parcel of quotations hadgrown into a considerable heap, itoccurred to me that the collection, ifa little further trouble were ex-pended upon it, might first enjoy anindependent existence’.

Murray also drew on the re-sources of individuals withsignificant private collections, in-cluding the Australian publisher andbook collector Edward AugustusPetherick (1847-1917) who had theworld’s largest collection of Austra-lian books (housed now in theAustralian National Library where areading room is named after him).Petherick moved from Melbourneto London in 1870 as manager ofGeorge Robertson Booksellers andthe Colonial Booksellers Agency, re-turning to Australia in 1908. Duringthis time, he was in correspondencewith Murray and provided impor-tant etymological information onAustralian words. Petherick’s re-searches enabled Murray todetermine particular Australiansenses of words such as bail up, tosecure a cow while milking, and(said of bushrangers) to rob travel-lers, and to provide detailed andexhaustive etymologies for Austra-lian words such as boomerang.

Morris, Sugden, and Petherickare just three of hundreds of read-ers from around the world whoread local texts for Murray and sentin quotations for the OED. Theyare the unsung heroes of the OED,without whom the Dictionarywould have been no different fromits predecessors. They helped pro-duce a text that remainedunsurpassed in its breadth and qual-ity of coverage of generalAustralian words until the publica-tion of distinctly Australiandictionaries such as the AustralianPocket Oxford Dictionary and theHeinemann Australian Dictionary inthe 1970s, and the Macquarie Dictio-nary and the Australian NationalDictionary in the 1980s.

ContactIf you would like to be added to the emailing list for notification of up-dates, or have any queries or suggestions, you can contact us at:

Phone: 9850 8773Fax: 9850 9199Email: [email protected] address: Linguistics Department, Macquarie University, N.Ryde,NSW 2109.Web address: http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/news/australian_style.htm

Personnel

Editor: Adam Smith

Editorial Assistant: Yasmin Funk

Language Research Consultant:Pam Peters

Webmaster: Sam Perera


Adam Smith reports on Australex2008 held at Victoria University ofWellington, New Zealand, 13-14November.

Faces, forms and functions oflexicography: AustraLex 2008

The Australex (Australasian As-sociation for Lexicography)conference was held in New

Zealand for the first time in 2008.Hosted by the New Zealand Dictio-nary Centre at Victoria University ofWellington, a strong set of local andinternational speakers addressed theworld of lexicography from a vari-ety of angles.

Historical perspectives and localflavoursHistorical lexicography was wellrepresented by keynote speakers Sa-rah Ogilvie (Oxford University), andBruce Moore (Australian NationalDictionary Centre). Both papers re-evaluated the work of particularlexicographers. Ogilvie looked at at-titudes towards the inclusion ofloanwords such as aardvark andbacksheesh in the Oxford English Dictio-nary, with its most famous editor,James Murray, contrary to reputa-tion, revealed to have a particularlyreasoned and inclusive approachtowards them. The New Zealand-born lexicographer Sidney Bakerwas the subject of Moore’s paper,with the use and abuse of his evi-dence to document early Aus/NZslang coming into focus.

New Zealand English was alsothe topic of Tony Deverson’s (NewZealand Dictionary Centre) presen-tation on current challenges inestablishing criteria for recognisingdistinctively New Zealand usage forthe forthcoming Oxford Dictionary ofNew Zealandisms. The Maori languagefeatured too, with Dave Moskovitz(Thinktank Consulting) and HuhanaRokx (Maori Language Commis-sion) reporting on the firstmonolingual dictionary of Te ReoMâori. It was particularly pleasing to

see the recently published dictionary,after hearing of its development overprevious Australex meetings.

Another perspective on NewZealand English was presented byWelby Ings (Auckland University ofTechnology). His lively talk on “thelanguage, history and culture of maleprostitution” introduced the audi-ence to terms such as bogspeak, timamoles and Jack nohi. His was not theonly paper that looked at specialisedvocabularies, with Bernadette Hince(Australian National Dictionary Cen-tre) presenting on a particularlycircumscribed lexicon, Arctic foodwords. We even got to taste someIcelandic “hálfmánar” biscuits filledwith sea buckthorn jam, in the teabreak.

Dictionaries and learnersA recurrent theme within the confer-ence was the pedagogical use ofdictionaries. The learner’s perspectivewas variously addressed by JulieBaillie (Oxford University Press) in“The Words Children Write”, andNoor Ida Ramli (UiTM Malaysia)who investigated the use of corporato inform references designed foruniversity students writing and usingacademic texts in Malay and English.Kerstin Lindmark (Stockholm Uni-versity) spoke on the problemscaused by prepositions for learnersof a language, and the need for across-linguistic database to map theuse of prepositions between lan-guages. Julia Miller (FlindersUniversity) looked at dictionary usefrom a different angle, reporting ona survey of Australian teachers’ un-derstanding of dictionary skills, andposing the question “is there a needto train the trainers?”. The challengeof introducing dictionaries to Africanlanguage classrooms in South Africawas presented by Juliane Klein(Leipzig University).

New modes, new methodsSouth African languages also fea-tured in Gilles-Maurice de Schryver’s

(Ghent University) presentation. Hefocussed on the technological ad-vances made in producingdictionaries for various Bantu lan-guages. New technologies inlexicography were also consideredby Aidan Wilson (University ofSydney) who demonstrated the ad-vantages of mobile phone deliveryfor a dictionary of the indigenousAustralian language, Kaurna.

Dorothy Jauncey (Australian Na-tional Dictionary Centre) looked atthe treatment of Aboriginal languagenames in the Australian National Dic-tionary, with a particular focus onissues of spelling. Broader questionsof categorisation were explored byMary Salisbury (Massey University)in her report on the description offlora and fauna in Pukapuka (north-ern Cook Islands). Cherie Connor(New Zealand Dictionary Centre)showed how methodological issuesconcern lexicographers as much asinter-cultural ones in her account ofattempting to organise a wordlist ofhistorical New Zealand English ma-rine terms.

Lexicographical methodologywas also the topic of Marina Kaul’s(Russian State University of the Hu-manities) and Marcin Ptaszynski’s(University of Aarhus) presentationson bilingual, or “non-monolingual”dictionaries.

The final keynote speaker,Konrad Kuiper (University of Can-terbury) shifted the boundaries oftraditional lexicography by examin-ing the phrasal lexicon, and howphrasal lexical items can be system-atically identified.

The scope of Australex 2008made for a hugely enjoyable andsuccessful conference, opening out-looks on the past and future ofdictionary-making and research thatwill be pursued further at Australex2009. Under the title “Innovations inLexicography”, it will be held atMacquarie University, November16-17. For further details seewww.australex.org.



What’s on the list! The Words Children Write:

Julie Baillie is Research Manager inthe Primary Division, Oxford Uni-versity Press. Her article is adaptedfrom a presentation she gave atAustralex 2008.

The Oxford Wordlist is the re-sult of an extensive and rigor-ous research study designed

by Professor Joseph Lo Bianco andDr Janet Scull from the University ofMelbourne, conducted by OxfordUniversity Press in Australian schoolsand published in 2008. The generalaim of the study was to documentthe words children first write, to ex-amine these choices according to arange of the children’s demographiccharacteristics, and to explore whatthese word choices indicate aboutchildren’s personal identities and so-cial experiences. These words,presented in order of frequency asused by all students, provide educa-tors and publishers with acontemporary word list for Austra-lian students that form the basis formuch of the reading material, spell-ing lists, personal dictionaries, chartsand tests currently used in ourschools. The last study of this typehad been conducted more than 30years ago.

The Oxford Wordlist was de-rived from a list of 167,000 wordscontained in 3776 samples frommore than 1000 children in their firstthree years of school in 95 Australianclasses from schools in urban andrural areas, across a range of socio-economic groups, indigenousbackgrounds, as well as English andnon-English speaking backgrounds.

So what words do our childrenwrite? Has there been a generationalshift in the words young writers use?What important changes in thesocialisation of young people are re-vealed? What does it tell educatorsabout the teaching of reading andwriting when examining children’sinterests, and the impact of influ-

ences such as family or ethnic back-ground, gender or social opportunityor about where they live and go toschool?

Common patterns of languageuse and generational changeIn the earliest stages of school, chil-dren read and write words that mosteasily fall within their spoken lan-guage experiences. Therefore thewords documented in their earliestuse of formal school communicationsuch as their writing, reveal muchabout their oral grammar use, lexicalrange, interests and influences.

It is therefore not surprising to seethe high incidence of past tense verbsin the top 307 words of the OxfordWordlist. Just as children orally retelland recall events, their first attemptsat writing tend to be recounting re-cent activities and events in their ownlives. 52% of the text types written byall students in the study were re-counts; therefore the use of pasttense verbs reflects the dominantgrammatical structure of recounttexts. On 16 occasions the past tenseform of the verb appeared higher inthe list than its present tense pair.

Previous lists have not necessarilyreflected this pattern, with educatorsencouraged to introduce the simplepresent tense form of a verb first andthen introduce the use of -ed as a suf-fix signifying tense change. Forliterate adults this appears to be arelatively easy rule to follow. How-ever considering the cognitive loadfaced by early writers when first put-ting pencil to paper, it does notappear as simple. Our young writerswant to know how to spell played be-fore play, watched before watch and theOxford Wordlist reflects this order.

Other striking patterns in worduse include the high incidence ofwords related to consumer andviewer activity. Shopping has be-come a family outing. Shoppingcentres have become entertainmentvenues. While many families haveboth parents working, going to the‘shops’ is often done on the weekendand children appear to partake in this

activity with their families. Theirwriting includes the use of wordssuch as bought, wanted, new, shop, shops,want and shopping with a high level offrequency as indicated by thesewords featuring in the top 307words.

There is also a range of wordsfeatured to describe viewing activi-ties both in the more traditional senseof viewing shown through wordssuch as watched, watch, saw, TV andmovie and to describe children’s en-gagement with the interactive, virtualworld shown through the use ofwords such as computer. The use ofthe words game and games were alsoused to describe viewing when at-tributed to activities related tocomputers and interactive gameconsoles. Names of people, prod-ucts and brands have not beenincluded in the Oxford Wordlist.Many of the activities that engage ourstudents and consequently feature intheir writing include the use of prod-uct names such as Xbox® orPlayStation®. Although relevant to-day, the impact of fast movingtechnology will ensure that these willbe words of yesterday in a very shorttime. I envisage it won’t be too farinto the future to find a 7-year-oldstaring quizzically as their ‘old’teacher talks about listening to aniPod™.

The Oxford Wordlist also pro-vides insight into the activities ofchildren. In today’s writing Austra-lian children account for a variedrange of organised and leisure activi-ties outside their school life asreflected in their use of the wordsfootball, park, played, playing, soccer,swimming, birthday, party, ball, bike, fun,game, games, won, Saturday, Sunday andweekend. Birthday parties seemed tobe highly anticipated and reportedevents. The desire for parents toprovide entertainment at elaboratethemed birthday parties was particu-larly noted. I did lament the strugglethe parents of today’s 5–8 year-oldswill encounter when hosting their‘child’s’ twenty-first birthday celebra-tion!


When looking at lists formulatedin a similar way 30 years earlier thereis a change of word use to describefamily members. The OxfordWordlist does not feature the wordsmother and father in the top 307words, but parents need not despairas mum and dad are still on the list.Discarding mother and father also goesalong with the diminished use of thetitles Mr and Mrs, reinforcing thepossibility of a more general declinein formality.

The Oxford Wordlist also reflectschildren’s frequent use of the apos-trophe to signal word contractions.In the top 307 words the contrac-tions didn’t, it’s, don’t, I’m, couldn’t andthat’s appear and perhaps show howchildren’s oral language is replicatedin written form.

Influences of genderWhen comparing the word use ofgirls and boys the most marked dif-ferences appear. Although family,friends and computers continue tofigure prominently in the writing ofboth groups, there are some strikingdifferences in boys’ and girls’ lists inrelation to the attributed gender ofanimals, settings and characters, es-pecially related to their mythical,magical and monarchical fantasywriting.

Boys often bring into their texts‘dangerous’ animals such as thesnake, shark, lion and crocodile,whereas the animals the girls refer tomore often are the cat, horse andpuppy. In general girls introducemore domesticated animals intotheir stories and refer to them moreintimately, shown through the use ofsuch words as puppy.

Despite many parents and educa-tors attempting to ensurestereotyping is not evident in thehome or school, the main charactersin boys fantasy writing continue tobe the dragon, monster and pirate,whereas the writing of girls featurethe fairy, mermaid and princess.

Girls also make use of a widerrange of possessive pronouns and al-

locate more detailed considerationto describing how people relate toeach other. Girls refer to boys intheir writing, but the favour is notreturned by the boys.

SummaryThe Oxford Wordlist and the re-search on which it is based highlightsthe importance of considering textproduction for children based ontext production by children. By cap-turing word usage in undirectedwriting of young writers we havebeen able to document the breadthof experience of children from dif-fering demographic groups foundin Australian schools and their en-gagement with written language.

ReferencesLo Bianco, J., Scull, J., & Ives, D.2008. The Words Children Write:Research Summary of the OxfordWordlist Research Study. OxfordUniversity Press: South Melbourne,Victoria.

LinksTo download copies of the OxfordWordlist, the research summary,customisable resources for educa-tors, and to access the online OxfordWordlist interactive tool go to http://www.oup.com.au/primary/learn-ing/thesuccessfulteacher

Oxford Wordlist © Oxford Uni-versity Press 2008. The OxfordWordlist may be used for instruc-tional purposes for students at schooland home. If you wish to use theOxford Wordlist in any other way,you must seek written permissionfrom Oxford University Press.

Oxford Wordlist Research Study



Language researcher Irene Poinkinsummarises recent discussions at SCOSE,the ABC Standing Committee on SpokenEnglish.

The battle against jargonIt’s an uphill battle to get broadcast-ers to recognise and avoidbureaucratese, jargon, cliches andsheer pomposity. Media releases areoften the source of such languagebut reporters who use them shouldweed out and replace any stilted orunidiomatic expressions that theywouldn’t normally use themselves.

A police officer may say, ‘VictoriaPolice have located a man who wentmissing from his home’ but in thereporter’s version the more conver-sational word ‘found’ would bemuch better. The police may say,‘The majority of people got sick in theCommonwealth Bank ...’ but in or-

dinary speech we’d say most of themgot sick.

A politician may say, ‘We expectto see more ships going in and out ofSydney Harbour going forward’. Butjournalists should be aware of howsilly this cliche can make them sound,and realise that it’s redundant any-way.

Spelling & syntaxA story in ABC News Online high-lighted a spelling subtlety:

‘An Iraqi girl wearing an explo-sives vest turns herself into police inBaquba’

Turning oneself into police is notthe same as turning oneself in tothem.

Syntactic oversights can result inambiguous or comical statements,thereby detracting from the message.Here’s one that suggested the NSWDeputy Premier John Watkinswould retire at a press conference:

‘... Watkins has confirmed he willretire from politics at a press confer-

ence in Sydney with Morris Iemma.’Sometimes the word order needs

to be changed completely to avoidambiguity and to put things in theproper order. A story that said, ‘Vic-torian Upper House MPs havedebated a bill to decriminalise abor-tion until late into the night’ shouldn’thave gone to air without an overhaul.A carefully edited version might haveread, ‘A bill to decriminalise abortionwas debated by Victorian UpperHouse MPs until late into the night’.

Pronouns & passivesListeners probably did a double-takewhen they heard this sentence, whichsuggests an exploding dinner:

‘The owner of Islamabad’sbomb-struck Marriott Hotel saysthere was no booking for a govern-ment dinner on the night it wasblown up, despite a ministry state-ment to the contrary.’

The pronoun ‘it’ is meant to referto the hotel but actually refers to‘dinner’, and the crucial issue (ofwhether or not a hotel booking wasmade) is lost because ‘no booking’and ‘statement to the contrary’ aresuch a long way apart. Sentences likethis are hard for listeners to process.If you split them up and remove theconfusing parts (like ‘statement to thecontrary’), the correct information ismore likely to get through to the lis-teners. (Try: ‘The owner ofIslamabad’s bomb-struck MarriottHotel says there was no booking fora government dinner on the night thehotel was blown up. But a ministrystatement contradicts this.’)

On the grammar front we stillhear what one listener described as‘profoundly wrong pronouns’, as in‘... a man who’d broken into herapartment and sexually assaulted sheand her boyfriend’. Assaulted she in-deed! In some ways this kind oferror isn’t surprising – we hear it alltoo often from people from all edu-cational backgrounds – but wemustn’t give up on trying to educatespeakers about the correct use ofpronouns.


Another thing that’s creeping intojournalists’ copy is a kind of doublepassive construction consisting of theadjective ‘unable’ and a verb in thepassive form. A story about a manand his two children drowning at theTathra wharf said that the man ‘wasunable to be revived’. This is illogical,and again the construction seems tobe taken from police statements.ABC journalists have been encour-aged to use the standard English one:‘he could not be revived’ or ‘(paramed-ics, etc.) could not (or were unable to)revive him’.

Word choicesIf you haven’t heard of a ‘temblor’,you can be forgiven. The term is sel-dom used in Australia. The meaningwas fairly obvious from the contextof this report:

‘An earthquake has struck down-town Los Angeles, shaking tallbuildings. The temblor was felt atleast 20 miles away.’

It means ‘earthquake’. The

Macquarie Dictionary labels it as ‘chieflyUS’, and the New Oxford Dictionary ofEnglish says it is ‘from AmericanSpanish’. SCOSE was unanimous indeclaring that broadcasters shouldn’tuse it because it’s unfamiliar to Aus-tralians.

When an ABC presenter used theexpression ‘kick in the guts’, one lis-tener was enraged. He complainedthat it was ‘gutter language’. A pity,because broadcasters will continueto use it where the context calls for it.It’s a good Australian expression. Infact, the presenter was simply quot-ing the Queensland Premier AnnaBligh who had said that ‘this decisionby Qantas [to cut some of its ser-vices] is a kick in the guts for theQueensland tourism industry’.

De-gassing DegasLastly, if you’re planning to go to theexhibition of Degas’s paintings at theNational Gallery in Canberra overthe coming months, you may like toprepare yourself for any hot debates

about the pronunciation. In The7.30 Report’s story on the exhibitionthe reporter, Thea Dikeos, pro-nounced it /duh-GAH/ whileKerry O’Brien pronounced it /DAY-gah/. Kerry O’Brien wiselyended the report by saying, ‘I say“Degas” (“Day-gar”), you mightsay “Degas” (“De-gar”)’. This wasan excellent example of twoequally valid pronunciations in ac-tion, one being the standardanglicised version (/DAY-gah/)and the other the more authenticFrench one. (Degas’s name was infact originally ‘De Gas’, which isalso pronounced /duh-GAH/.)After ten years as the ABC’s Lan-guage Research Specialist the onething I’d wish for is that peoplewould be more tolerant of suchvariations. They’re a natural part ofEnglish.

Having a dekko, taking a squiz or doing a shoofty

The forms of words can sometimestrick us into an assumed familiarity.Dekko and shoofty both sound asthough they could be Aussie slangbecause their endings ally them withthe typically Australian abbreviationsknown as hypocoristics. Dekkomight belong with ambo or arvo;shoofty should really have an -ie endingto go with barbie and of courseAussie. In fact they are from Hindiand Arabic respectively, both enter-ing the English language throughBritish military slang, and both beingforms of the native language verb“to look”.

The typically Australian equivalentof these slang expressions for “look”is squiz, as in “Take a squiz overhere”. Thought to be a blend ofsquint and quiz, it has its origins inDevonshire dialect, according to theMacquarie Dictionary (2005). Though atransported word, squiz has thrived

here and is labelled “Australian andN.Z. slang” in the Oxford English Dic-tionary.

You can take or have a dekko or ashoofty, and even give something asquiz, but what would doing a shooftyinvolve? Former prime minister,Bob Hawke – always a champion ofthe vernacular – employed thisphrase after he’d denied having “de-tailed discussions” with his treasurer,saying his use of the word “detailed”did not mean he was “trying to do ashoofty by adjectivaling my way outof it” (Sydney Morning Herald,17.3.1990). Here it is the adjectiveshoofty in the (uniquely Australian)sense of “shifty” or “cunning” that isbeing put to work as a noun. Theycan be shoofty things, words.

Adam Smith

A version of this article was firstpublished in Campus Review(8.4.08). We would like to establisha regular word column, and if any ofour readers have an original idea fora name for this column, or queries/observations about new words orword origins, please contact us.

Continued from previous page



Speaking our LanguagePam Peters reviews Bruce Moore’sSpeaking our Language: thestory of Australian EnglishOxford University Press 2008.

Dictionary-makers are slavesof the alphabetic system andlargely prohibited from

making connections between thewords listed, except viacrossreferencing. But anyone whoworks with words is aware of thelarger groups among them, and thestories that they tell collectively. InSpeaking our Language, lexicographerBruce Moore liberates himself andhis readers from the tyranny of thealphabet, and brings to life phases ofAustralian culture, society and historysince the days of settlement.

His raw material, in terms ofwords to be discussed and sourcematerials from which they were ex-tracted, comes from the AustralianNational Dictionary (1988) and re-search towards its future secondedition. The dictionary offers richpickings since it contains only“Australianisms”, i.e. words andword senses which “have originatedin Australia, which have a greatercurrency here than elsewhere, orwhich have a special significance inAustralia because of their connectionwith an aspect of the history of thecountry” (AND Introduction, p.vi).The Australian vocabulary projectsthe whole range of novel experiencesencountered by the antipodean pio-neers and settlers, beginning withwords borrowed from Aboriginallanguages such as wallaby, bunyip,mulga; the vocabulary associated withthe convict settlement and the pasto-ral era: muster, station, boss cocky; as wellas the gold rush: fossick, mullock, shiser;participation in two world wars: dig-ger, furphy, plonk; and that greaterindependence from Britain andmulticultural identity found after-wards, before the close of C20.

Apart from using these Australian

words to highlight points of Austra-lian history, Moore often relatesthem to larger themes to remind usof the wider sociocultural context inwhich they were coined. Thus thenomenclature associated with theAustralian environment representedthe pervasive British view of Austra-lia as “down under”, inverted, rawand untamed, as in the numerouscompounds using wild and native, asin wild carrot/fig/tobacco and native cat/hedgehog/porcupine. These phenomenaexpress a “world upside down”,which Moore uses effectively as thetitle for early chapters on the envi-ronment and on early Australiansociety, with its unprecedented con-centrations of convicts, ticket-of-leavemen, emancipists, with whom free immi-grants had to rub shoulders.

As Australian society consolidated,a new ethos emerged with the notionsof currency and sterling, whereby locallyborn Australians of whatever origincould claim superiority over recentlyarrived poms. The combinatory phraseis used in the headings of two of thebook’s chapters: first as currency versussterling which provides a sketch of colo-nial identity in C19, and again ascurrency and sterling, in the account ofthe polarisation of cultural attitudeswithin the Australian population in thefirst half of C20. Moore finds “cur-rency” in the Australian slangassociated with the digger heroes ofWorld War I and popular culture (si-lent films and radio serials such as“Dad and Dave”; and ”sterling” inthe cultural cringe in the 1920s and30s, which found British cultural prac-tices and modes of speakingunquestionably superior.

Australian coinings are used byMoore as narrative cues in twelve outof the fourteen chapters of the book.The other two focus on the originsand development of the Australianaccent, based on recent research byNew Zealanders Margaret McLaganand Elizabeth Gordon, and Austra-lians Felicity Cox and Sally-Ann

Palethorpe at Macquarie University.The earliest comments on the Austra-lian accent (during the first two-thirdsof C19) were positive about it, as a“purer, more harmonious form”than the English regional dialects outof which it had been forged. But thetide of criticism begins to rise withschool inspectors’ reports in the lateC19 and swells with the cultural cringeof the 1930s. This explains why theABC preferred to appoint Britishnews readers until well after WorldWar II. By then AG Mitchell had suc-ceeded in demonstrating that therewas in fact a scale or “spectrum” ofAustralian accents, ranging from thestereotypical broad accent to the“educated” one, and that the latterwas an eminently suitable voice forAustralian broadcasting.

Two of the closing chapters ofSpeaking our Language move awayfrom the notional mainstream ofAustralian English, and focus on (i)regional variation, featuring itemsfrom the regional vocabularies com-piled in association with the AustralianNational Dictionary; and (ii) on“other” Australian Englishes, i.e. eth-nic varieties such as those spoken byAborigines and immigrants. The dis-cussion of the latter is mostly aboutthe assimilation of their speakers, andwords such as wog which are used torefer to them – but in half of a shortchapter it is difficult to do justice tothe topic. The final chapter looksforward into C21 to the potentialimpacts of global English on “ourlanguage”. There Moore argues forthe resilience of Australian English,and its ongoing value as a bearer ofAustralian identity.

The book is stylish in its design,with large red quote marks on frontand back covers (presumably to un-derscore the notion of “speaking” inthe title). Its narrative woven aroundAustralian words will appeal to manyreaders, and Moore’s themes providefresh interpretations of some familiarepisodes in Australian history.


Australian Style is moving intoa new online era, after al-most 17 years and 30 issues

appearing in print. It began as aproject in Australian English, spon-sored by the National Language andLiteracy Institute of Australia(NLLIA), and as part of a set of re-search projects investigating therange of Australian usage, spokenand written, by younger and oldercitizens. The sense of open inquiryhas been maintained in successive is-sues of Australian Style with its articleson current research on English usagein Australia and New Zealand,SCOSE notes on what ABC listenersare saying about broadcast language,reviews of new publications, lettersfrom correspondents on new usagesobserved, and always a Feedbacksurvey on variable aspects of Austra-lian English, to elicit reactions fromreaders to new developments. Thelinguistically adept cartoons of JudyDunn, and the Rubicon puzzles ofDavid Astle are also long-establishedassets of the magazine.

With this mix of ingredients, theAustralian Style readership grewsteadily from about 3000 in the early90s to about 7000 in 1999. By thattime, NLLIA had beendisestablished, and we were glad toacquire new sponsorship from theDepartment of Finance and Admin-istration, which was then andcontinues to be responsible for thepublication of the Australian govern-ment Style Manual. Results from theFeedback surveys were used as inputto the writing of the 6th edition of theStyle Manual (2002), and the surveyattached to this first online editionwill provide evidence on current us-age for the 7th edition. Now as theDepartment of Finance and Deregu-lation, it continues to support thepublication of Australian Stylethrough its AGIMO subsidiary, in aresearch partnership with MacquarieUniversity’s Faculty of Human Sci-ences.

During Australian Style’s printphase I have been continually de-

lighted by the wealth of material wecould publish on Australian English,and the lively responses of our read-ers to it, especially the Feedbacksurveys. It has made it an amazingvehicle for exchanging news andviews on the state of our language.As I retire from the role of Editor,Adam Smith who has worked withme on Australian Style since 1996 willbe taking over, and this first onlineedition on the new website has beendesigned and executed by him. Iknow that as an e-zine Australian Stylewill be in very good hands. Adamwill maintain the tradition of openinquiry into Australian usage throughall the regular features, but will additems of his own inspiration as well,to make the most of the online me-dium. This is of course a virtualhandover, and time for him to intro-duce his plans for 2009 and beyond.

First of all, my thanks to Pam forher role in establishing Australian Styleas a constantly stimulating forum fordiscussing issues of language usage,and an invaluable research tool to in-vestigate trends in Australian English.I’m lucky that she will still be avail-able in a consultative role, to offerhelp, advice and deep reserves ofknowledge.

The feedback we received fromreaders when it was announced thatthe print publication was discontinu-ing was a testament to how muchPam’s work has been valued and ap-preciated over the years. While manyalso expressed disappointment thatthe newsletter would no longer beprinted, I would like to see this as anopportunity to take advantage ofonline resources. Along with theregular features, mentioned above,we’d also like to include occasionalitems such as a word column (forwhich queries and suggestions arewelcome) and correspondence thatcan be updated more regularly thanbiannual print publication allowed.Online links can serve to connect ourreadership to a wider community oflanguage experts and enthusiasts. ThePDF archive of the newsletter sup-

plies a new resource that brings to-gether a rich and varied commentaryfrom a wide range of writers.

Most importantly, the new modeof delivery gives us a chance to inter-act with our readership so that wecan make Australian Style as respon-sive as possible to your needs andinterests. We would welcome anyfeedback on the current content, andsuggestions for what you would liketo see included. I hope that the e-ver-sion of Australian Style will becomeas essential reading as the print ver-sion clearly was for many of you.



Many thanks to all those helpful people who returned copies of their re-sponses to the Feedback 30 on Verbal Variants — more than 400 ofyou from all states and across the age spectrum. Altogether there were187 responses in Age group 4 (65+), 137 in Age group 3 (45-64), 66 inAge group 2 (25-44), and 26 in Age group 1 (10-24). In the results pre-sented below, Age groups 1 and 2 have been put together, so as to createa reasonable base for comparison. The data were carefully processed byAustralian Style research assistant, Yasmin Funk, and computer-analysedby Adam Smith, now the Editor of Australian Style. [PP]

Some of the questions in Feed-back 30 (2007/8) matchedthose used in earlier (2002/3

surveys of variable verb forms(Feedbacks 19 and 20), so it is par-ticularly interesting to see whether theresults are much the same or differ-ent. Here we focus especially onthose where there are notable differ-ences across the age range, ones thatsuggest ongoing trends in Australiaare slightly different from those innorthern hemisphere Englishes.

Feedback 30 asked about the pastforms of several of the shrink/shrank/shrunk, spring/sprang/sprunggroup of verbs, which in standardEnglish present those three forms.But there is a lot of evidence fromC18 and C19 that people were usingjust two forms for them: shrink/shrunk, so that shrunk was used in-stead of shrank for the past tense.Fowler’s (1926) Dictionary of ModernEnglish Usage notes with several ofthem that the third form has beenreaffirmed for the past tense fromC19 to C20, and this accounts for

their status in current written English.But the use of shrunk, sprung, sung, sunketc. for the past tense is noted as avariant in Webster’s Third New Interna-tional Dictionary (1961), and its survivalin American and Australian Englishmay be explained as the speech formstransported by C19 immigrants.

Table 1 below presents the resultsfrom Feedback 30 (n = 428) whichcan be compared with those fromFeedback 19 (n = 1101). First let’sput the spotlight on the use of shrunk,sprung for the past tense instead ofshrank/sprang. In each case the totalpercentage for the u forms is below50%, though closer to it in the earlier,larger survey. But in both surveys theuse of u forms is relatively greateramong younger citizens (Age 1 + 2,i.e. those under 45), and declinesamong the over 45s. In both sets ofdata the usage of those under andover 45 is differentiated, though it ismore pronounced in the resultsfrom Feedback 19, where continu-ous stratification can be seen acrossall three age groups. Yet the level of

acceptance is relatively higher in Age4 (over 65s) in Feedbank 30 than inFeedback 19, especially for sprung.

These results show that there is on-going use of the u past forms in theAustralian community which wouldmove verbs like shrink and spring intothe set to which cling, fling, sling, slink,sting, wring etc. already belong.

Feedback 30 also questionedAustralian preferences on the spellingof past forms of verbs such as burnetc. for which both burned and burntare current. Here the –ed forms arequite regular, and the –t forms are“irregularized”. Research shows thattheir use in the northern hemispherehas fluctuated over the last 300 years,but as the –ed form became estab-lished in the US, the –t form gainedthe upper hand in the UK, especiallyduring C20. Gowers, in his 1966edition of Fowler’s Modern EnglishUsage commented on this. In Austra-lia too, it seems that –t is a popularspelling, though not the dominantone except for spoil, as shown inTable 2 on the next page.

1ELBAT latoT%

2+1egA%

3egA%

4egA%

knurhs )03BF(.ksidynitaotetalpcitsalpeht____taehehT 82 84 42 52

knurhs )91BF(.hsawehtni____repmujylloowdloyM 44 56 13 12

gnurps )03BF(.partesuomeht____tacregnigehT 53 94 52 83

gnurps )91BF(.kaela____pihsehtsaesyvaehnI 74 86 53 42


The data here again from Feed-back 30 (n = 1101) and Feedback20 (n = 731) show that preferencefor –t spellings for the past forms isstronger among the younger re-spondents (under 45), except in thecase of leant (FB30) and spoilt (FB20).Older Australians are less inclined touse –t spellings, except for spoilt,where their level of endorsement isnot very different from that ofyounger Australians. There is no-ticeable age stratification in all

Feedback AcknowledgementsMany thanks to the following, who sent in batches of FEEDBACK question-naires on behalf of others.

Judy Allen, NSW (33); Stephanie Holt, RMIT professional writing andediting, VIC (22); Maggy Ragless, Mitcham Heritage Research Centre, SA(21); Sieta van der Hoeven, UniSA School of Education, SA (18); JuliaErmert, ACT (15); Ann Noble, SA (14); Hans Colla, Nuts, Bolts andWashers of English - U3A, VIC (13); Ian Robinson, Chisholm Institute,VIC (11); Sunset Coast Literati, WA (9); Bill Smith, NSW (8); Gilbert Case,Aspley Classes for Seniors Writing Group, QLD (8); R. McWhinney, QLD(6); Jan Knight, QLD (6); R.G.Kitchenn, VIC (6); Andrew Morgan, NMITwriting and editing, VIC (5); Tom Johnson, NSW (5); Ann Tracey, QLD(5); Clive Tucker, VIC (5); Jillian Dellit, SA (5)

instances but leant (FB 30) and spoilt(FB30), and the two sets of data arealigned in this respect.

With only 5 years between Feed-back 30 and Feedbacks 19 and 20,we shouldn’t make too much of dif-ferences in the levels of endorsementof u and -t forms in the two data sets.In fact they are quite comparable.What is more significant is the factthat in both surveys there is substan-tial, acknowledged use of thesealternative past forms, and that they

are the majority usage for the un-der 45s in 7 of the 12 data sets.The use of u for the past tense ofverbs like spring contrasts withstandard written English, whilethe use of -t goes against the lin-guistically regular spelling for thepast form. In both cases youngerAustralians seem to reserve theright to diverge, and their usage isshared by older Australians aswell.

Please note: Feedback 31, on StylePractices, is available online athttp://www.ling.mq.edu.au/sur-vey/survey.php. Apologies for notproviding a printable copy of thequestionnaire, but having it exclu-sively online enhances the speed andefficiency of processing.

It is intended that results from thissurvey will help to update advice inthe 7th edition of the AustralianGovernment Style Manual, so we re-ally appreciate your participation.

2ELBAT latoT%

2+1egA%

3egA%

4egA%

tnrub )03BF(.syadeerhtroflortnocfotuo____daherifehT 83 24 93 73

tnrub )02BF(.syadroflortnocfotuo____erifhsubehT 63 34 53 23

tnael )03BF(.daorehtrevoylsuoiracerp____daheertehT 73 03 83 83

tnael )02BF(.teertsehtrevoylsuoiracerp____llawehtnoisolpxeehtretfA 74 85 94 93

tnrael )03BF(.tuohtiwodot____lladahyehtnoisserpeDehtnI 05 55 05 84

tnrael )02BF(.esuynafognihton____yehtsraeyowtesohtnI 15 95 45 34

tliops )03BF(.syotevisnepxehtiwdlihceht____yehT 75 06 95 55

tliops )02BF(.surofti____hcihwyrotsehtfodneehtsudlotyehT 85 85 95 65



Solution to Rubicon in last issueWORDS THAT CAN SITBEFORE ‘CONTROL’: damage,remote, birth, crowd, quality,climate

RUBICON, devised by David Astle, is ahybrid of crossword, jigsaw and acrostic.First, solve as many clues as you can andbegin to fit the answers inside the grid.(The scattered letters of RUBICONshould give you a toehold.) When the gridis completed, arrange the clues from thefirst Across to the last Down – their 30initial letters will spell a category. As abonus, which six of your answers belongto the category in question?

I say, “Shackles away!” (15)State of owning two valid passports (4,11)Bosch made the first high-voltage example in 1902 (5,4)Converts to eunuch (9)Flipside of withdrew? (9)Locale saddling southern Chile and Argentina (9)Ones staying true to the existing government (9)Tripoli: Libyan, as Santo Domingo:? (9)Apprehended – mentally or manually (7)Dr Freud’s treatment? (7)Efficacy; knack (7)Elder matriarch, familiarly (7)Extra cover, say (7)Extremist (7)Guffawed (7)Involving Islam’s holy book (7)Nervously – or idly – play with (7)One who rejects religion (7)Receptacle for the brain (7)Recipe (7)Strap-lines crafted by copywriters (7)

Stuff of novels (7)Vernacular for a non-scoring delivery (3,4)Wilful opponent of change – or an ‘action franchise’ (7)Inhume (5)Nitwitted colleague of Doc (5)Overwhelms (5)Reek (5)Roasted brew minus the kick (5)Yielded (5)

D A T A B A S E B A R Q U E E U I P Y U L S O M B R E R O D A M A G E C B T E S T L V R A L P H A U T H O R I S E I E D R L T N B A R O S S A V A L L E Y E L R T A S P H I L O S O P H I C A L

A R G U S L U F R E S H E N U P C L I N G F M T D H R M F A R I S E S D E S O L A T E I U S R W T S R E M O T E D E A D H E A T

R I N C O U B

australian style 16 - university of western sydneystc.uws.edu.au/pwe/assets/australian style.pdf ·...

Documents