In around the mid-17th century it is noted that the Dutch chartered the



western coast of Australia named New Holland which was followed by

the charter of theeastern coastline by Captain James Cook in 1707,

later named New South Wales. It was in the early 19th century the term

Australia was recognized as the name for the continent as a whole. The term

Australian English has not always been used when describing the

language spoken in Australia.

Terms that were previously used include

those of Antipodean English, Austral English and Australasian English,

relecting the language of Australasia as a whole. Prior to the

European settlement in around 1788 there were long periods of

indigenous settlement, that is, Aboriginal. It is estimated that at

the time of the British colonisation around 250 distinct indigenous

languages were in use and well over half of these are no longer in use

today, as noted at, file://A:FATSILAustralian languages.htm.

It is true to say that the accents of Australian English are

stigmatized, even today, especially by middle-class British English

speakers. If one were to research the origins of Australian English

they would probably discover the underlying reasons for this. When

Australia was colonized 200 years ago it was regarded as a convict

colony for Britain which saw the transportation of British convicts

who had, in almost all cases, committed only minor crimes. It is also

the case that these convicts were transported from London and most of

them sentenced there which along with the long journey to the new

continent, meant that there was an overwhelming influence of the

Cockney variety of English amongst the prisoners. It is possible that

this could account for the fact that Australian English appears to be stigmatized by

middle-class British English speakers. Cockney was spoken by all

"Londoners" at one point but this began to change when a new status,

middle-class, was emerging. Middle-class speakers of British English

wanted to portray themselves as such and one way in which they could

achieve this was through speech. This could be seen to be the start

of Standard English which meant that the Cockney variety was now seen

as a language only spoken by the lower classes of London, the poor and

the criminals were then seen as the inferior classes. As this was the

status of the convicts this could explain the stigma attached to

Australian English today.

Due to the geographical isolation of Australia, settlers were under

little or no influence from non-English immigrants. The influence on

Australian English from indigenous languages has been relatively

non-existent with the exception of a few terms. As suggested in The

Oxford Companion to the English Language, this amongst other factors

meant that the term Australian English was not recorded as the

national language until 1940. Even at this time the term was not seen

to be respected. This occurred a few years on in around 1945.

Classification of Australian English

Linguists have distinguished three types of Australian English, as

noted in The Oxford Guide to World English, these are as follows;

(i) Cultivated Australian. Also described as 'acrolect' this type of

spoken Ausralian English is closely associated with the Received

Pronunciation (RP) of British English. As with Britain, this is the

variety that is related to those of a middle-class status, most of who

will be undoubtedly educated, which is portrayed through this spoken

variety. Acrolect holds a certain amount of prestige and as it is a

minority associated with the elite, it is possible that speakers of

general and broad Australian English would see this as disdainful.

(ii) Broad Australian. Also described as 'basilect' this type of

Australian English could be described as the language used mainly

between working-class males, however this is not the exclusive use as

it is sometimes associated with lower middle-class males. Broad

Australian could be seen to portray a notion of comradeship amongst

workers. It is probable that this usage contains more 'local-type'

vowel sounds.

(iii) General Australian. Also described as 'mesolect' this type of

Australian English is as its name suggests, general. Mesolect is

spoken by the majority of AusEng speakers and is a kind of broad

in-between of acrolect and basilect.

It should also be noted that a study by Barbara Horvath (1985)

recognised a further two categories, 'Accented' and 'Ethnic Broad',

which recognised ethnic influences.

Linguistic Features of Australian English

Altough often compared to British English, many linguistic features of

Australian English that are unique and therefore are not associated

with British English. Linguistic features connected with Australian

English include intonation patterns, pronunciation and vocabulary. It

should be noted that there is a distinct lack of grammatical

differences.

(i) Phonetic and Phonological Features

* The Cultivated and General accents of Australia appear to use 24

consonants, 11 vowels and 8 diphthongs

* There is no post-vocalic /r/ within this variety:

hair Speakers of Australian English do not

worker pronounce /r/ in any of these words

* /h/ of 'aitch' is pronounced.

* Fronted /a/. This is a similar feature to that of Southern Irish

and the Liverpool or 'Scouse' variety of British English.

Examples of this include the words dark, calm and heart. This

appears to apply to Australian English vowels in general.

* Neutral vowel suffix's rather than the /i/ of RP. This can be

seen if we look at the words boxes, dances, darkest, velvet and

acid, as suggested in The Oxford Companion to the English

Language.

(ii) Intonation

Another prosodic feature of Australian English and possibly the most

characteristic feature world-wide is that of intonation, a feature

itself of pitch variation.

There are many ways in which to describe the intonation pattern of

Australian English. These include 'Uptalk', Australian Questioning

Intonation and also the High Rising Terminal (HRT). As noted by

Fletcher (2003), the high rising terminal intonation could be

described as a complex fall-rise tune forming part of the intonation

inventory that is a characteristic of Australian English. The HRT

consists of a fall from a relatively high to low pitch level and then

a terminal rise. The final element generally rises to a higher pitch

level, relative to the speaker's normal range.

However, it is true to say that many of the linguistic features

associated with Australian English are not necessarily evident across

all bands. The use of the high rising terminal for example, can be

seen to vary, as seen in a study carried out by Mitchell and Delbridge

(1965).

This particular survey showed that speakers of Broad Australian

English generally used a restricted intonation, that is, more of a

monotonous, narrow pitch range. This in turn shows that the prosodic

feature of intonation in relation to Australian English can be seen to

be of a generic nature. It is possible that the HRT is a feature used

mainly by female speakers. Using such declarative sentences could be

seen as the need for confirmation or reassurance. However, if this

was the case then as we can see from the Mitchell and Delbridge (1965)

survey, Australia would be largely inhabited by insecure females and

of course, this would not account for the masculine use of HRT. It

could be suggested that the use of such intonation is to expedite

speech, to question comprehension maybe.