Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 21, no. 2 (2001)

Articles

Anna Wierzbicka and the trivialization of Australian culture	W. S. Ramson	181-194
Australian culture and Australian English: A response to William Ramson	Anna Wierzbicka	195-214
'Capturing a sound change': A real time study over 15 years of the NEAR/SQUARE diphthong merger in New Zealand English	Elizabeth Gordon & Margaret Maclagan	215-238
The indigenous linguistic response to missionary authority in the Pacific	Terry Crowley	239-260

Book reviews

Women changing language (Anne Pauwels)	Annette Harres	261-263
The Longman grammar of spoken and written English (D. Biber, S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad & E. Finegan)	Peter Collins	263-267
Dread Talk: The language of Rastafari (Velma Pollard)	Peter Peterson	267-270
Presumptive meanings (Stephen Levinson)	Alessandro Capone	270-276
Introducing English semantics (Charles W. Kreidler)	Alan R. Libert	276-281
Spontaneous spoken language: Syntax and discourse (Jim Miller & Regina Weinert)	Peter Collins	281-285

Abstracts

Anna Wierzbicka and the trivialization of Australian culture

W. S. Ramson

Abstract: This article takes issue with Anna Wierzbicka's use of examples from Australian English to demonstrate that language reflects culture. It makes no comment on her use of other languages. Specifically, it argues from a necessarily close exegesis of two chapters of Wierzbicka's Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words (1997) that she either misunderstands or misuses the principles of historical lexicography, and that her conclusions are likely to be invalidated because her methodology is thus flawed. It argues also that her choice of key Australian words is eccentric, and that it trivializes Australian culture.

Australian culture and Australian English: A response to William Ramson

Anna Wierzbicka

Abstract: In addition to responding to a polemic from Ramson, this paper seeks to address the issue of Australian culture and its relation to Australian English. Ramson seems to deny the existence of any Australian culture and identity, and of any significant links between culture and language (hence his dismissive attitude to the great pioneer in the study of Australian English and "national character", Sidney Baker). This paper defends the notion of Australian culture, and shows how modern semantics can help to analyze it in accurate and revealing ways. It also demonstrates the links between modern semantics and modern lexicography, and the need to go beyond the nineteenth-century methodology of James Murray.

'Capturing a sound change': A real time study over 15 years of the NEAR/SQUARE diphthong merger in New Zealand English

Elizabeth Gordon & Margaret Maclagan

Abstract: Since 1983, the Canterbury NEAR/SQUARE study has tracked the on-going merger of NEAR and SQUARE in New Zealand English. This paper reports on four repetitions of the study. The results indicate that the two diphthongs are falling together on a close realization which is labelled as NEAR. Factors affecting the process of the merger, such as sex and social class of the speakers, and degree of stress on the test words are discussed, as are the difficulties of carrying out a long-term study of a sound change in progress.

The indigenous linguistic response to missionary authority in the Pacific

Terry Crowley

Abstract: Views have been expressed about the structural homogenization of Pacific languages in the direction of English, and the ultimate replacement of these languages by English (Mühlhäusler 1996). It has been argued that one of the primary agents of linguistic change has been the imposition of literacy by European missionaries, which has involved the imposition of standard written varieties over original linguistic diversity. This paper discusses the situation on Erromango (Vanuatu), where a structurally aberrant - and somewhat English-looking - variety of the language produced by missionaries has come to represent the norm in the translated written literature. However, rather than influencing the spoken language and threatening its structural integrity, this aberrant variety was adopted by Erromangans to suit their own purposes, showing that literacy, rather than representing a colonial imposition, has actually been successfully indigenized.

Last update: 24 February 2002
Comments to Tim Curnow