School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemDestabilizing Racial Discourses in Casual Talk-in-interaction(Oxford University Press, 2022)Racialized descriptions are a constant practice in our societies and a fundamental aspect of racial discourses. This paper uses conversation analytic tools within a Foucauldian perspective on discourse to investigate how discourses of race are (re)produced, and consequently navigated, in talk-in-interaction among speakers of Chinese. Four instances of racialized person description, taken from a larger corpus of 16 hours of casual conversation among Chinese migrants in Melbourne and their acquaintances, are explored in detail. The analysis identifies two interactional sequences, joking and accounting sequences, which allow participants to resist racialized descriptions while still orienting to the interactional preference for sociality in casual conversation. The paper argues that casual and friendly interaction may provide empirical evidence for how discourses of race are destabilized at the level of talk-in-interaction.
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ItemThe Acquisition of Quotatives and Quotative Be Like among Chinese L2 Speakers of English in Australia(MDPI, 2022-06)This study explores the acquisition of the English quotative system and the innovative quotative variant be like among Chinese L2 speakers of English residing in Melbourne, Australia. The L2 speakers’ use of quotatives such as say, go, be like, and quotative zero is compared with quotatives used by native speakers of Australian English (AusE) in Perth and Sydney, as well as with a group of Polish L2 speakers in Ireland. A quantitative analysis of the Chinese L2 speakers’ sociolinguistic interviews shows that their distribution of quotatives is dramatically different from native AusE speakers, primarily because of their overall low proportion of be like and their high proportion of quotative say and zero. The L2 speakers also show neutralization (no preference) for language-internal constraints, which have traditionally shown be like to be preferred in first person contexts and for reporting inner thoughts, differing from patterns for AusE observed in Perth and in a recent study of second generation Chinese Australians in Sydney.
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ItemWillingness to Communicate and Second Language Fluency: Korean-Speaking Short-Term Sojourners in Australia(MDPI, 2022-05-06)The current mixed-method study investigated two groups of Korean-speaking short-term sojourners in Australia. One group (students) was composed of learners enrolled in English training programs, whereas the other group (workers) was of learners in the workplace. We administered questionnaires and a semi-structured interview to examine their willingness to communicate (WTC) in English as their second language (L2) and explored the relationship between this variable and the sojourners’ amount of L2 contact and their oral fluency in English. Our quantitative analyses show that the student group showed a higher level of WTC and amount of L2 exposure than the worker group. For both groups, WTC significantly predicted sojourners’ amount of L2 exposure. However, oral fluency was found neither to be associated with WTC nor with the amount of L2 exposure. Qualitative theme-based analysis suggests that the two sojourn groups demonstrated similarities and differences in their attitudes and motivations related to WTC and unwillingness to communicate (unWTC). The students demonstrated a stronger tendency to engage in L2 interaction than the workers, aligning with their significantly higher frequency of reported L2 exposure. The workers’ attitudes were characterized by feelings of ambivalence, with co-existence of both WTC and unWTC.
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ItemThe attitudes of recently-arrived Polish migrants to Irish English(Wiley, 2017-06-01)ABSTRACT This article presents a case study of six Polish migrants residing in Dublin, Ireland and examines their language ideologies through an analysis of the metalinguistic discourse surrounding Irish English, world Englishes, and notions of ‘standardness’ that arose in the course of six extended interviews in 2012. Adapting Bucholtz and Hall's concept of markedness or ‘hierarchical structuring of difference’, this study structures the migrants’ views towards world Englishes as operating along two axes of markedness and desirability. Overall, the migrants exhibit three broadly differing views of Irish English: positive, negative and ambivalent, and at times explicitly articulate their views in comparison with those of traditional Inner Circle varieties, such as British and American English.
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ItemDiscourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English: New Methods and Insights(Wiley, 2017-04-01)
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ItemAusKidTalk: An Auditory-Visual Corpus of 3- to 12-Year-Old Australian Children's Speech(ISCA, 2021)Here we present AusKidTalk [1], an audio-visual (AV) corpus of Australian children’s speech collected to facilitate the development of speech based technological solutions for children. It builds upon the technology and expertise developed through the collection of an earlier corpus of Australian adult speech, AusTalk [2,3]. This multi-site initiative was established to remedy the dire shortage of children’s speech corpora in Australia and around the world that are sufficiently sized to train accurate automated speech processing tools for children. We are collecting ~600 hours of speech from children aged 3–12 years that includes single word and sentence productions as well as narrative and emotional speech. In this paper, we discuss the key requirements for AusKidTalk and how we designed the recording setup and protocol to meet them. We also discuss key findings from our feasibility study of the recording protocol, recording tools, and user interface.
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ItemClaire Kramsch: Language as Symbolic Power(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2022-06)
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ItemAttitudes to English in contemporary Malaysia(Wiley, 2023-09)This article examines the attitudes that Malaysians of different backgrounds hold towards the English language in Malaysia, as well as how they perceive ‘Standard Malaysian English’ and ‘Colloquial Malaysian English’, in terms of status and solidarity. The study administered an online questionnaire, which included an embedded matched‐guise experiment, to 77 Malaysian respondents in Malaysia and Australia. Findings indicated a range of divergent and at times contradictory views of Malaysian English, illuminating how Malaysians are in different stages of acceptance of Malaysian English as a legitimate variety of English. Through an examination of individual participant responses, the study also shows that Malaysians are attuned to and hold certain stereotypes towards ‘ethnic’ varieties or ‘ethnolects’ of Malaysian English, providing insight into how issues of race and ethnicity, embedded within the broader socio‐political context and language ecology of the nation, have influenced contemporary language attitudes.
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ItemYou know and like among migrants in Ireland and Australia(Wiley, 2021-12)This study investigates the use and adoption of the discourse-pragmatic markers you know and like among L2 speakers of the Expanding Circle (Poland and China) who move to Inner Circle countries (Ireland and Australia) as migrants. Adopting a quantitative analysis, findings show that rates of use of you know are commensurate between both L1 (Inner Circle) groups, despite speaking different varieties of English. No significant differences in the rates of use of you know and like are found between L1 and L2 speakers, although when broken down by nationality, Polish L1 speakers use more you know than any other group. Having an all-Chinese social network is not found to be an inhibiting factor towards the use of you know among the migrants in Australia. In Ireland, migrants with a length of residence of more than six years approach, but do not attain, L1 speaker levels of use of clause-final like in particular.
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ItemNew insights into /el/-/Æl/ merging in Australian English(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2021-01-02)A merger exists in Australian English in which /el/ is realized as [æl] for a number of speakers, particularly in Victoria. There have also been some observations of /æl/ raising to [el], termed “transposition”. Although thought to be characteristic of older speakers, empirical evidence for transposition is scant. Here we report the discovery of substantive degrees of merging in thirteen older speakers, aged between 51 and 80, from Ocean Grove, Victoria. Auditory and acoustic methods showed bidirectional vowel movement, with speakers converging on both the /æ/ and /e/ phonemes. Increasing velarization of the lateral has been posited as a factor in the development of the merger in Victoria, and thus /l/ quality was also investigated, with null results in terms of direct factors. The lateral, however, was shown to be dark in both syllable onset and coda positions, with evidence for /l/ being clearer in this age group when compared with younger speakers. Lexical frequency and orthography were also investigated as factors, the latter showing a significant effect and suggesting a role for velarization as a contrast maintenance strategy.