Australian Aboriginal English

Ian G. Malcolm

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501503160
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The dialect of English which has developed in Indigenous speech communities in Australia, while showing some regional and social variation, has features at all levels of linguistic description, which are distinct from those found in Australian English and also is associated with distinctive patterns of conceptualization and speech use. This volume provides, for the first time, a comprehensive description of the dialect with attention to its regional and social variation, the circumstances of its development, its relationships to other varieties and its foundations in the history, conceptual predispositions and speech use conventions of its speakers. Much recent research on the dialect has been motivated by concern for the implications of its use in educational and legal contexts. The volume includes a review of such research and its implications as well as an annotated bibliography of significant contributions to study of the dialect and a number of sample texts.

While Aboriginal English has been the subject of investigation in diverse places for some 60 years there has hitherto been no authoritative text which brings together the findings of this research and its implications. This volume should be of interest to scholars of English dialects as well as to persons interested in deepening their understanding of Indigenous Australian people and ways of providing more adequately for their needs in a society where there is a disconnect between their own dialect and that which prevails generally in the society of which they are a part.

1Introduction

1.1English in Australia

For most of its history, the Australian continent has been the domain of languages other than English. In the comparatively short period of about two hundred and thirty years it has been transformed from a land in which some two hundred and fifty indigenous languages prevailed to one in which, overwhelmingly, English has become the dominant language among both immigrant and indigenous populations.

Australian English, the variety spoken most widely in Australia, has been the subject of a good deal of investigation. Emerging from the interaction of a number of overseas social and regional varieties in the environment to which they had been transported, and adapting to the expression of a common history and sense of identity, it eventually went through a process of levelling to become the means of expression of a pan-Australian identity, while accommodating minor markers of regional and social identity in the various states.

What is less well-known is the fact that a parallel but different development took place in those speech communities where indigenous languages had prevailed. Here processes of language contact – in addition to processes of levelling across different English varieties – would leave a permanent mark on the variety of English which was to emerge. Unlike Australian English, Aboriginal English would not have the unifying force of standardization, although it would continue to show continuity in many ways with the indigenous languages which had preceded it, and it would, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, provide a pan-Australian means of the expression of their identity.

English, then, in Australia, has twofold ownership: on the one hand, as Australian English, it provides a sense of belonging to all who live in Australia because of the way in which it has been moulded to express a distinctively Australian experience; on the other hand, by way of Aboriginal English, it carries a more particular sense of belonging in that it embodies, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, a continuing link with their contact experience and their age-old cultures through the distinctive features it has maintained at all levels of linguistic description.

1.2The independence of Aboriginal English

It follows from this that, although Aboriginal English is a form of English spoken in Australia, it would be misleading to call it a form of Australian English, since that name is used for a dialect which represents a different speech community – albeit a speech community in which many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians may have membership by virtue of family orientation or bidialectalism.

One of the reasons for the writing of this volume is to uphold the independence of Aboriginal English – as, indeed, its speakers have done – in the face of continuing pressure to merge it with Australian English. This is particularly prevalent in education and public life where competence in English is assumed – by those in the majority – to mean competence in Australian English, and where this assumption frequently leads to making unreasonable demands on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speakers whose English differs in significant ways from that of the majority.

1.3The unity of Aboriginal English

A second justification for this volume is the fact that Aboriginal English has hitherto been the subject of investigation in many diverse parts of Australia and that there is a need for a co-ordinated presentation of the data from all regions, to enable a fuller picture of this variety and to provide evidence for the view that, though existing in diverse sub-varieties, it is appropriately approached as a single dialect. The present volume attempts to bring together data from some fifty years of research in different parts of Australia, particularly Western Australia, where the bulk of the author’s research has been carried out. It is possible that, over these fifty years, Aboriginal English has been changing, however it has not been the focus of this study to trace such change. Indeed, the first substantial study of variation and change in Aboriginal English, headed by Rodriguez-Louro at University of Western Australia2, is in the early stages of its implementation.

1.4Aboriginal English research

1.4.1The role of Aboriginal researchers

Ideally, research on Aboriginal English should be carried out by members of the speech communities who use it. While some such research has indeed been carried out (e.g. Fesl 1977; Enemburu 1989), the majority of studies have been conducted by non-Aboriginal linguists, though, in many cases (e.g. Eades 1983; Harkins 1994; Kaldor and Malcolm 1979; Malcolm et al 1999a) they have been in close association with Indigenous colleagues and consultants.

1.4.2Queensland

Linguistic study of Aboriginal English, so-called, began in Australia with the Queensland Speech Survey, coordinated by E.H. Flint over the years 1960-1968. This entailed analyses of data gathered from small groups of informants in 30 parts of Queensland. Significant descriptions were provided of varieties spoken in settlements in Cherbourg (Readdy 1961), Palm Island (Dutton 1964, 1965), Torres Strait Islands (Dutton 1970), Yarrabah (Alexander 1965), Woorabinda (Alexander 1968) and North West Queensland ( Flint 1971). An educational project employing psycholinguistic testing provided further data on varieties from Cherbourg and Palm Island between 1968 and 1979 (Department of Education, Queensland 1972). The findings at Woorabinda have been re-examined in the light of extensive socio-historical evidence by Munro and Mushin (2016). In 1983 Eades provided extensive documentation of the use of Aboriginal English in South-East Queensland. More recently Watts (2009) has focused on the interaction of children in Mareeba in Far North Queensland and Bellingham (2010) has studied adult speaker narratives in Cherbourg on the basis of interviews carried out in the 1980s.

1.4.3Western Australia

The focus shifted to Western Australia in 1968, with Douglas (1978) observing a variety of English he called ‘Neo-Nyungar,’ used among Aboriginal people in the South-West. In 1973 a state-wide survey of Aboriginal English among Western Australian schoolchildren was initiated by Kaldor and Malcolm (1979). This, together with follow-up projects (Malcolm 1996), would continue until 1982 and include data gathered from over 40 locations in all regions of the state (Kimberley, Pilbara, Gascoyne, Goldfields, Mid-West, South-West, Great-Southern and metropolitan Perth). Later, with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal research assistants, studies were produced focused on the Yamatji Lands (Rochecouste and Malcolm 2003) and metropolitan Perth (Malcolm 2002a; Malcolm et al 2002; Malcolm and Rochecouste 2000; Malcolm and Sharifian 2002, 2007; Sharifian 2001, 2002a, 2002b). Gibbs (1998) investigated the use of Aboriginal English in literature and Grote (2004) studied the writing practices of female Aboriginal adolescents at school.

1.4.4The Northern Territory

A preliminary study in the Northern Territory was carried out by Jernudd (1971) at Bagot Settlement in Darwin. Subsequently, studies were completed in Alice Springs by Sharpe (1977) and Harkins (1994), at Maningrida (Elwell 1977), at Milingimbi (Elwell 1979), at Darwin (Sansom 1980 and Ford 1984), at McLaren Creek (Gillespie 1991) and Barrow Creek (Koch 2000a). Eades (2013, 2014) has also drawn attention to a variety called “Northern Territory English” described by Strehlow (1947). At the time of writing, a study by Mailhammer and associates of the way in which English is used by Aboriginal people on Croker Island is in progress.

1.4.5New South Wales

In New South Wales, varieties were described (in Darlington, Erskineville, Redfern and La Perouse) by Eagleson (1977, 1978 and 1982) and by Malcolm and Koscielecki (1997) in La Perouse. Fraser-Knowles (1985 [1978]) described the variety spoken in Baryulgil, Sharpe (1990) that spoken in Wilcannia and Hitchen (1992) that spoken in Moree.

1.4.6Victoria

In Victoria, Fesl (1977) described Melbourne Aboriginal English and Enemburu (1989), “Koori English,” though this study drew on sources beyond the Southeast, from which the term Koori derives. In 1995 McKenry described some features of what she called “Koorie English” in Goulburn Valley. A training resource edited by Adams (2014) brings together data on Aboriginal English compiled from Aboriginal speakers across Victoria.

1.4.7South Australia

In South Australia, there were descriptions of varieties spoken in Alberton (Wilson 1996) and Ceduna (Sleep 1996). Aboriginal author Jessie Lennon (2011) provided a useful data base on the Coober Pedy variety by using it in a book-length account of her life experience and Foster, Monaghan and Mühlhäusler (2003) traced early forms of Aboriginal English in South Australia.

1.4.8Wider studies

Other scholars have reworked some of the data of earlier studies, or provided less region-specific descriptions of the dialect (e.g. Pirola 1978, Allridge 1984, Malcolm et al 1999a,b, Butcher 2008).

Despite the number of studies of Aboriginal English there has been relatively little work attempting to provide a comprehensive overview of what all the data have shown. Partial exceptions to this are Arthur (1996), Eades (1993; 2014) and Malcolm (2004 a, b; 2013). There is also a lack of literature bringing together the contributions of studies from diverse disciplinary perspectives (e.g. linguistic, sociolinguistic, cultural linguistic) to the study and use of the dialect. It is hoped that this volume will help to fill these gaps, though, as noted by Munro and Mushin (2016) there remains a need for ongoing sociohistorical study to clarify the relationship between English and contact varieties.

Another gap which remains unfilled at this time is the description of the English of Aboriginal speakers in Tasmania, although there has been some study of the English of the small population descended from Aboriginal people as well as whalers and sealers in the Furneaux group of islands off the north-eastern tip of Tasmania. The form of English spoken on Cape Barren Island would appear to be better described as a regional dialect of Australian English rather than a variety of Aboriginal English (Sutton 1975).

1.5This volume

An attempt is made in Chapter 2 to outline the geographic, demographic, cultural and linguistic setting in which Aboriginal English developed and is spoken. There will be consideration of the functions the dialect performs for its speakers and the ways in which it is evaluated both by its speakers and in the wider society. Attention will be paid to the ways in which the dialect intersects with other world Englishes and in particular with its antecedents.

Chapter 3 reviews findings on the phonetics and phonology of Aboriginal English and chapter 4 those on its morphosyntax. Inevitably, comparison will be made with the other prevailing English variety in Australia from which Aboriginal English continues to distinguish itself.

In Chapter 5 attention is given to the lexicon and semantics of this variety of English and to the ways in which its users employ it for purposes of interaction and to create discourse genres.

Chapter 6 brings together information on the more recent field of the relationship of Aboriginal English to conceptualization, drawing especially on the field of Cultural Linguistics, which has informed much of the investigation reported on.

Having observed the linguistic, sociolinguistic and conceptual features associated with the use of the dialect, an attempt is made in chapter 7 to show the history of its development and the continuities it has with the varieties which have contributed to its formation. An attempt is also made to account for the issue of own...