Hi, I'm kinda new to VN
I wrote a practice essay for Eng Lang recently, and I would really appreciate it if I could get some feedback and a score out of 20 for it.
Thank you C:
***
Does Australian English have the flexibility to express our nationhood as well as our individuality? Discuss with references to at least two subsystems.
The fact that a person, a group or a nation of people can be identified in the way they use language is well known. It provides a way for people with similar affiliations to identify themselves as part of the group. As the world becomes more globalised, Australians have found the need to maintain national identity through the use of Australian English, while also reflecting our different backgrounds, ideals, ages and way of thinking. This has resulted in a more versatile dialect of English that has the flexibility to express both our nationhood and our individuality.
Australian English contains many features that set us apart from the rest of the world. We have a lexical wealth that is unique to our national dialect, thanks to the values that we as a nation hold in high regard, and we can incorporate them into our idiolects to give the way we use language a true-blue Aussie flavour. Things we as Australians value, such as strong friendships, our romance with the bush, fairness and equality, an egalitarian society and support for underdogs can be reflected in our speech by the lexical items “mateship”, “going bush”, “fair dinkum” and “a fair go”, “cutting down tall poppies” and “the Aussie battler” respectively. The Australian sense of humour and creativity can also be represented in an Australian’s speech by colourful, imaginative and often fairly graphic idioms, like “technicolour yawn” for vomit, “as dry as a dead dingo’s donger” and “Flat out like a lizard drinking”. Our nation’s relaxed and informal nature is identifiable by our love of diminutives and clippings like “arvo, journo, pollies” that dot our national newspapers, a domain usually reserved for more formal language. The Australian accent is symbolic of our nation as well. Ever since the days of the first fleet, the convicts have melded an accent together to express their unique identity, and this accent has stayed with us ever since. The Australian accent does not come with regional differences, and is in use by Australians of all socio-economic backgrounds, from the tradespeople to the Prime Minister, highlighting our egalitarian society, and the collective Australian identity that all Australians share. This Australian flair has proven more than capable of expressing our national identity on the world stage, so the ability of Australian English to express our nationhood is unquestionable.
However, as time has passed, Australians have grown more and more diversified. We are now a multicultural society whose people feel the need to express not only their sense of national identity, but also to reflect their cultural background, socio-economic status and other facets of their personal identity. The song “We are Australian” captures this sentiment well, with the verse “We are one, but we are many”. It shows the need for Australian English to be flexible enough to show both national identity and personal identity. Many people, like the Australian writer Hugh Lunn, have expressed their displeasure at the way Australian English is being “mangled” by those of the younger generation and losing our distinct “Australian-ness”. In reality, Australian English is merely changing to reflect the present culture of Australia. As more rural Australians leave the bush to seek their fortunes in the big cities, the number of people who spoke in Broad Australian accents declined. As we have stopped looking to England for economic and military support, the number of people who spoke in Cultivated Australian accents declined. Similarly, as the world became more and more globalised, and as more and more migrants came to seek better lives in Australia, the culture of Australia changed, and so language changed with it. To reflect the current zeitgeist of the culture it represents, language is always changing and in flux, and to accommodate this growing need to express personal identity in the way one spoke, many non-standard varieties of Australian English have emerged as a means to express one’s ethno-cultural background, generation, interests, socio-economic status and other affiliations. Therefore, there is no doubt that Australian English is flexible enough to accommodate changes in Australian culture.
Most easily recognised out of all the non-standard varieties of Australian English are the various ethnolects that mark a person’s culture background. In the past, immigrants to Australia were subject to unpleasant experiences ranging from snide comments to overt racist behaviour based on their accents, and so a great deal of effort were put in to fit in and learn to speak standard Australian English, and in doing so sacrificed their cultural identity to some extent to obtain acceptance and avoid being ostracised in society. As the number of immigrants grew, and it became more acceptable to speak non-standard varieties of Australian English, immigrants began to assert both their cultural background and their newfound nationhood in the way they spoke, creating a new variety of Australian English that incorporated attributes from their mother tongue into Australian English, allowing immigrants are able to express not only their Australian national identity, but also their cultural identity. As of now, the most recognised ethno-cultural varieties of Australian English include the inner urban Melbourne ethnolects, commonly known as “wogspeak”, spoken by many first and second generation migrants from Greece and Italy, the Lebanese-Australian ethnolect of Sydney’s Lebanese community (also known as “lebspeak”), and the various emerging Asian-Australian accents that was brought about by the increasing number of migrants of Asian background.
Another non-standard variety of Australian English that has emerged to express personal identity is the sociolect of teenagers, also known as “teenspeak”. In order to distance themselves from older Australians, and to form group solidarity, teenagers have a complex code of communication designed either to obfuscate parents, or just to fit in with the rest of the group. A major component of the teenage sociolect is the torrent of slang that adults seem to have so much difficulty grasping, and can never quite get it right, lexemes drawn from the jargon of cyberspace, such as “pwned”, meaning severely beaten, “GG’ed”, also meaning severely beaten, and “lol”, indicating slight amusement, to lexical items from pop culture, like “like a boss”, meaning to have completed an action with style and flair, and “feeling fly like a G6”, which would indicate that one is feeling exhilarated, excited and in a general state of happiness. “Teenspeak” grants Australian teenagers the ability to show their status of being a teenager as well as an Australian.
As Australians, we use language in a way that is distinct to countrymen of our nation to distinguish ourselves from people of other nationalities. However, Australia is a patchwork of different cultures, beliefs and ideals, united by the common bond of Australian values. Therefore, the only way we have maintained national unity as well as our individuality is the flexibility of Australian English to express not only our national identity, but also each Australian’s unique individual identity.
Home
Help
Search
Login
