Documenting unacknowledged inheritances in contemporary Australian English

Abstract

The development of Australian English (AusE) has been well-documented but some features dwelling on the margins of the ‘standard’ have also remained on the fringes of research. These inheritances are unacknowledged not only with respect to their origins but also, in many cases, their transported stigma. This paper outlines the approach of our ongoing project to thoroughly document these ‘non-standard’ and ‘marginal’ morphosyntactic, syntactic and discourse features. Through a discussion of youse, (embellished) clippings and final particle but we aim to demonstrate the value of wholly documenting features, studying their descriptive and interactional aspects and their social evaluation using diverse data. As it continues, this work will not only provide us with a much fuller understanding of these features and their place in contemporary AusE, but it will also serve as a model for inclusive linguistic research linking micro linguistic detail and whole cultures.