Australian English in the Media - Identify Features!

July 20, 2020joelleva

Hi everyone!

In today's article, I want to look at an example of Australian English in action and how you can identify features within this text. How will this help you in your upcoming SACs this term? Well, if you know WHY Australian English is the way it is, then you can easily identify features and interlink them to cultural values 🙂 Great for essays! And great for your linguistic awareness.

Firstly, have a good read of the article here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/more-news/footy-fans-survey-have-your-say-on-the-biggest-issues-in-the-game/news-story/83cb2487ee7bc6830e21f6a122e9d881

You would need to look at this article and read the associated text and the watch the video. Of course, after reading the article and watching the video, all of you would confidently say "YES THIS IS CLEARLY AUSTRALIAN!", but some students struggle to ascertain HOW THIS IS CLEARLY AUSTRALIAN.

As can be seen in the above article and video, the following features are evident:

  • Diminutives (morphology)
    • E.g. Footy
  • Inference (coherence)
    • E.g. "Dangerfield" and "Dusty"
  • Jargonistic terms peculiar to AFL
  • Vowel length in the video - phonemic (phonology)
    • Watch the video in the above link; what do you notice about the accent?
What else can you see in the above link?

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joelleva

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