Attitudes, Accents and Advice for the Holidays

This article has been written by Liam McAlary, a Years 7 – 12, VCE Legal Studies and VCE English Language Tutor at Learnmate. If you’re interested in private tutoring from Liam then please check out his page here.

Hey guys, here is my article for July. This article will cover a couple of things related to unit 4 Area of Study 1, being attitudes to different varieties of Australian English (which are useful for your essays), and a very brief overview of the Australian accent. Finally, I will briefly discuss the mid-year school holidays.

Firstly, the attitudes towards varieties of Australian English. The attitudes towards Australian English are unlikely to be an essay topic in their own right (however it is not impossible), although they are something that students can use to strengthen their arguments, such as those related to how acceptable variations are in certain contexts (see question 8 of the 2016 as an example). Additionally, they may also pop up as a supplementary or secondary party of a question, which would then require you to address them.

The two main attitudes towards language that require discussion for the purposes of this course (by that I mean the two that are expressly mentioned on the study design), are prescriptivism and descriptivism.  Prescriptivists are concerned with the use of language that is, “right,” “proper,” or, “correct.” They believe that these rules are inflexible, and they tend to not be particularly tolerant to variations of language. Conversely, descriptivists are more concerned with the language that people do use, as opposed to what they should use. Descriptivists tend to be more tolerant to variation from the Standard and do not judge people for using variations. Descriptivism can be summed up with a simple sentence. “Non-Standard does not mean substandard.”

Please note that no matter how much of a descriptivist your teacher is, they will mark your writing as a prescriptivist.

Examples of prescriptivism and descriptivism are prevalent in the media, although prescriptivism is especially prominent. This article is one such example of prescriptivism in the media: https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-great-australian-speech-impediment-20140801-zzjjx.html#ixzz39NixJZCF.

This article is old (from 2014) so it is not great as an example to actually quote in an essay, however it does give a very good demonstration of a prescriptivist attitude towards language. Some of the things worth noting in this article are how the writer discusses how Steve Irwin’s manner of speaking contained, ‘imperfections,’ and describing examples of connected speech processes as being, “speech mistakes.” Moreover, the writer also says that the standard of written communication is, “unacceptably low,” and that Australia has a national, “speech impediment.”

Secondly, I will now very briefly discuss the Australian accent. There is a continuum of accents, with the broad Australian accent at one end, the cultivated accent at the other, and the general Australian accent (which 90% of Australians speak with) in between. The broad accent places a heavy emphasis on many of the, “classic,” features of the Australian accent, whereas the cultivated accent has a closer resemblance to the British accent (the cultivated accent is exceptionally rare nowadays).

Moreover, the Australian accent is also a significant marker of Australian national identity, and in the Sounds of Aus documentary (which I’m certain you will have watched or will watch very soon), Dr Bruce Moore stated that the accent, “defines Australian language and identity.” I could go into much more detail, but I have a whole article devoted to the accent already, which can be found here: https://learnmate.com.au/the-australian-accent/.

Finally, the school holidays (which will have started by the time you are reading this). These school holidays are a bit different from the others as you are just starting to move into unit 4. My advice would be to use these holidays to revise over unit 3 and to start looking at exam style questions on unit 3 content. Further, I would also try and use these holidays to try and get useful yet time consuming tasks out of the way, making your notes for example (especially for subjects such as legal studies or business management). If you can get a lot of these out of the way, it gives you a good opportunity to use term 3 to do more and more practice questions, to better prepare you for SACs and exams. Of course, it is also important to make the most of the break and to recharge your batteries, as term 3 is exceptionally demanding.

Anyway, that’s all for now and I hope you have found this article useful.

If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: Discussion of Scott Morrison’s election announcement., An Overview of Formal Language and Preparing for your first English Language SAC.

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!

An Introduction to Unit 4 Area of Study 1

This article has been written by Liam McAlary, a Years 7 – 12, VCE Legal Studies and VCE English Language Tutor at Learnmate. If you’re interested in private tutoring from Liam then please check out his page here.

Hey guys, here is my article for June, which will provide an overview of unit 4 Area of Study 1. As you are probably aware, unit 4 focuses on language variation and identity and Area of Study 1 is primarily focused on Australian national identity and the language variation within Australia (especially regional and cultural). Further, AOS 1 also looks at the attitudes of prescriptivism and descriptivism (this article will not discuss attitudes although they are a common essay topic).

The first thing I would like to address in this article is examples. I have said it before and will say it again, examples are absolutely vital if you want to do well in this subject, especially in unit 4 as it tends to be more essay based and many students prefer to write essays on unit 4 topics in the exam. Unit 4 examples are everywhere. Scott Morrison’s speech claiming victory in the recent election is one example, where much of Mr Morrison’s rhetoric was focused on promoting a strong sense of Australian national identity. Examples are also very prominent in popular culture, on social media and in the media in general. My advice would be to always be on the look put for examples and set aside around half an hour per week to actively search form them. A good way to do this is to type in key words from the course into Google News and see what comes up there.

In terms of what to look for when it comes to examples and what you will be discussing in Unit 4 AOS 1, a couple of the key features of Australian English that you will need to be across are (this list is far from exhaustive):

• Slang: Slang is informal language (generally words) that usually relate to a specific demographic. For example, ‘salty,’ is commonly used by people online (usually aged between 15-40) to describe someone who is angry or upset about something (and not food that has been over-seasoned).
• Colloquialisms: Very similar to slang except it is more permanent and less related to generation or social group. For example, ‘mate,’ is a common colloquialism in Australia (please use better colloquialisms than this one in your essays unless you find a really good and current example).
• The high tolerance of taboo language: Australians have a very high tolerance of taboo language and it is quite common in Australian society and people tend not to be offended by it in the same way that people in other countries tend to be (old example, but think back to the, “where the bloody hell are you,” tourism advertisements.
• Diminutives: Where a word is shortened with a suffix such as, “ie,” “y,” or, “a,” (the process is called suffixation), a diminutive is usually created. These are very common in Australia and are frequently used for nicknames among many other things. One example of diminutives is, “parma,” which is a diminutive of, “parmigiana.”

“Parma,” as my example for diminutives was not an accident. It links me onto my next point, which is regional variation. Whilst Victorians tend to use the diminutive, “parma,” when referring to the Italian dish that is very popular in Australia, people in South Australia and Queensland generally prefer to use the shortening, “parmi.” In searching for an example on Twitter, I stumbled across a tweet from a seemingly disgruntled voter (from Victoria) after the election results came out, which stated, “can you really rely on a state that calls it a parmi instead of a parma to help out in an election?” Moreover, there is also other lexical variation around Australia (look up Macquarie University’s Australian voices to find some examples, although it is a bit old), and some phonological variation. Once again, it’s South Australia at odds with the rest of Australia. Although most of Australia pronounces the, “a,” in words such as, “dance,” “chance,” and, “advance,” using, /a:/ (as in words such as trap), South Australians are more likely to use, /ae/ (as is used in words such as bath).

Finally, cultural variations such as Aboriginal English are also important in this area of study. I have already written an entire article on Aboriginal English, which can be found here: https://learnmate.com.au/overview-of-aboriginal-english/

That’s all from me and I will have another article for you in July.

If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: Discussion of Scott Morrison’s election announcement., An Overview of Formal Language and Preparing for your first English Language SAC.

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!