What up! I'm back again. Sorry to be a massive pain, but I've got another essay I've just done after trying the 2013 VCAA paper. Take a look and let me know what you think (if you feel like it)
Many thanks in advance and good luck to all doing English Language tomorrow!
‘Australian English is inventive and playful, and reflects out national identity.’ To what extent do you agree? (VCAA 2013, Q9)
Australian English is an inventive and playful variety of English that strongly reflects our national identity. Firstly, unique Australian expressions that contain ‘athletic vigour’ pertaining to our well-known national stereotype for being ‘outdoorsy’ (Rose, Age 2013) are commonplace in Australian discourse today. Furthermore, the longevity of historical slang such as Cockney Rhyming Slang (CRS) and swearing has added another dimension to our creativeness and imagination in terms of language expressing national identity. However, there has been a recent shift from the use of Australian English for national identity to generational identity, coinciding with the need to become a more neutral variety of language in English’s ‘global village’ (Crystal).
Australian discourse and lexis have long been regarded as intrinsic features of Australian English that truly reflect out national identity. In particular, it reinforced national stereotypes of relaxed, laidback people. For example, the use of conversational closings such as ‘too easy’, ‘no dramas’ and ‘good on ya’ reflect the casual optimism with which Australians view their lifestyle. In addition to this myriad of unique discourse expressions, Australian English also contains unique functional lexemes and expressions, as seen in the negation displayed in ‘yeah-nah’. This expressions factors into the historical Australian characteristic of mateship, by maintaining social harmony as a hedge for dispreferred responses and by downplaying superiority to a peer, promoting equality and solidarity amongst friends. This mateship identity is once again evidenced in the typical Australian use of diminutives as terms of address, such as ‘Damo’ and ‘Stevo’. The laidback ease with which the /o/ vowel is pronounced increases its common use as a unique Australian term.
In addition to unique discourse and lexis in Australian English, the widespread use of swearing, expletives and Cockney Rhyming Slang have begun to push the modern boundaries of taboo. The relatively high tolerance of swearing in Australian society, whilst certainly creative, inventive and unique, has given the Australian identity negative, unwanted connotations. The creation of expletives such as ‘fuckwit’, ‘arsewipe’ and ‘dickhead’ has slowly become a subject of taboo as Australia looks towards a future with a more neutral, globalised variety of English. This is also evidenced in a recent public example of CRS. Melbourne Demons AFL player Bernie Vince took to Twitter immediately after the 2014 Melbourne Cup to post ‘Admire Rakti’s new nickname…Heinz Tomato Sauce’. While putatively harmless at first, in the context of Admire Rakti having actually died after coming last in the Melbourne Cup, along with the use of CRS ‘Heinz Tomato Sauce’ to reference ‘dead horse’, Vince received heavy backlash on Twitter for his comment. This indicates that Australians have become distanced from the language and CRS that identifies them as being connected to Australia’s colonial past, and are ‘breaking off the shackles’ in search of a globally accepted variety.
Whilst Australian English has always been playful in nature, a recent shift from the presentation of identity on a national paradigm to a generational paradigm has resulted in a more neutral variety of Australian English. The linguistic tug-of-war between becoming a more accepted, understandable variety of English, especially when it comes to CRS, and the maintenance of the Australian flair for language is becoming a more significant quandary. The drivers for language change, widely considered to be teenagers, have resorted to hybrid features of language such as adjective formation seen in the suffixation of nouns using ‘-ey’ and ‘-ish’. The use of these suffixes has made a blur between identifying as an Australian and the ambiguous and colloquial feel these suffixes provide, and the generational tone of modern teens and their pubescent years of angst and uncertainty. In today’s society, even though this is still classified as inventive, playful language formation, it can no longer by indubitably considered uniquely Australian. This can also be proven through the implementation of neologistic acronyms in today’s language, such as ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) and ‘YOLO’ (you only live once). These terms promote both identities, in both a national and generational paradigm; acronyms show the laidback natures of Australians and semantically, the ‘us-and-them’ dichotomy that appears when understanding the use of these acronyms in situational contexts.
Australian English is inventive, playful and one of the most unique varieties of English worldwide. However, the continuous shift of linguistic paradigms towards the representation of generational identity has resulted in a more neutral, globalised variety as Australia moves into the future.