Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free online live stream presentation at 9pm Bangkok time on Wednesday, 25 August 2021 on Key Ideas and Challenges in Standard Australian English.
The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books on different aspects of Standard Australian English.
The event is presented by the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.
Students may register for the event at this link:
The conference will be live streamed on YouTube.com.
As the event website explains,
Join Professor Kate Burridge and Dr Howard Manns as they present the histories, structures and debates surrounding Standard Australian English in contemporary society.
Professor Kate Burridge will outline the history and processes associated with English standardisation while addressing the many pressures currently on Standard English, both in the community and in the classroom. She will discuss how processes like colloquialisation, technology and globalisation create tensions with the standard while demonstrating that these processes are nothing new – people’s view of so-called linguistic ‘barbarisms’ have always been arbitrary, fluid and often inconsistent.
Dr Howard Manns will further examine how Standard Australian English relates to standard English elsewhere in the globe and its impact on English classroom practices and testing. Dr Manns will draw attention to the relationship between Standard English and the varieties of English spoken in places like Europe and Southeast Asia. He will question the degree to which Standard English is the best variety for English speakers outside of Australia, the UK and the USA.
You will have the opportunity to not only learn about current research findings about Australian English used in various social domains, but will also be presented with content for teachers of VCE English language.
Professor Kate Burridge is Professor of Linguistics at Monash University and Fellow of both the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
The TU Library owns a number of her books.
She completed her undergraduate training in Linguistics and German at the University of Western Australia. This was followed by three years postgraduate study at the University of London. Kate completed her PhD in 1983 on syntactic change in medieval Dutch. She also taught at the Polytechnic of Central London before joining the Department of Linguistics at la Trobe University in 1984. In 2003 she took up the Chair of Linguistics in the Linguistics Program in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.
Her main areas of research are language change (focus on changing vocabulary and grammar), the notion of linguistic taboo, the structure and history of English.
Among other speakers will be Dr. Howard Manns, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Monash University. The TU Library owns a book coedited by Dr, Manns. His webpage explains:
My research explores language and meaning-making in interaction, with a focus on what happens when speakers from differing backgrounds (societal, cultural, linguistic) come into contact. I have a particular interest in how through such contact language meanings and social identities evolve over time.
My work falls with the “third wave” of sociolinguistics in that it brings together traditional sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology to better understand the evolution of language meanings and social identities. My approach to language study is informed by Conversation Analysis techniques, but also draws on interviews and ethnographic methods to provide a full account of how people view and use language, and assume and ascribe identities.
My particular strength may be found in multilingualism and my work across linguistic contexts, including a professional background in Persian linguistics (with the US military), and a research background in Indonesian linguistics, sign language linguistics, and a burgeoning portfolio in Australian/World Englishes.
Also speaking will be Dr. Anna Filipi, Senior Lecturer at the School of Curriculum Teaching & Inclusive Education of Monash University, whose research interests include conversation analysis, the interactional properties of first and second language acquisition and learning, early childhood interaction, classroom interaction, bilingualism, language assessment, and spatial discourse.
TU students interested in the English language and linguistics may find it useful to look at an informative chapter on Standard Australian English in the book Standards of English: codified varieties around the world edited by Raymond Hickey.
The book is available at the TU Library and also may be downloaded free using TU WiFi ID.
The book notes, in part:
Australia is unmistakably a diverse multicultural society with approximately 40 per cent of its inhabitants either born overseas or with at least one parent born overseas. The multicultural character of the nation has increased markedly since the dismantling of the White Australia framework and the inception of multiculturalism as government policy in 1978. These changes have led to increased linguistic diversity within the Australian community which boasts over 200 commonly used languages including many endangered, but some robust, indigenous languages. Australia does, however, remain overwhelmingly Anglo-dominant, with 83 per cent of the population speaking only English at home. The vast majority of speakers use AusE as their native language as this is the variety of those who are born and/or raised in Australia and it remains a powerful symbol of Australian national identity. Variations that occur within this national variety serve the dual social function of symbolising sociodemographic as well as ethnocultural group membership.
Amongst AusE speakers, we can identify three main subgroups: Standard Australian English is used by the majority; Australian Aboriginal English is used by many indigenous Australians; and various ethnocultural varieties which exist as an expression of non-mainstream or ethnic identity in the Australian context…
The journey towards a new variety of English began at Sydney Cove during the year 1788 following the establishment of the British penal colony. The Australian continent was already rich with indigenous linguistic and cultural diversity as the home of between 300,000 and 750,000 people speaking more than 200 mutually unintelligible languages. European settlement had a calamitous effect on indigenous Australians and today only ten of the original languages have more than 1,000 speakers. There is no evidence that Aboriginal languages have influenced the phonological features of AusE but it is possible to identify over 400 lexical borrowings. Many words, particularly from the Dharuk language spoken in the area around Sydney, are found in commonly used names for flora and fauna, such as dingo and koala…
Language is a dynamic system which constantly changes to meet the fluctuating needs of the community and is greatly affected by social and political change. AusE today has evolved in concert with sociopolitical change to become a mature and independent variety with its own internal norms and standards.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)