The Story of the Aussie Accent

The Story of the Aussie Accent A STUDYGUIDE BY KATE RAYNOR www.metromagazine.com.au www.theeducationshop.com.au G’Day Mate, How Ya Goin’? The Sounds taken to indicate something accent are vigorously debunked important about the emergence and a varied range of people of Aus – of a shared Australian identity contribute to the film, from very early in the country’s white speech coaches to academics, settlement. The film ranges actors and filmmakers. The film Study Guide across two hundred years of is to be credited for the ways colonial and cultural history, in which it broadly embraces with every issue and event a host of ideas about what refracted through this central constitutes Australian-ness – the theme. This is truly oral history, son of a Lebanese migrant is as ‘They speak as with each significant detail important here as that Ipswich though they have emerging from someone’s fish and chip shop owner. mouth and the unique sounds a piece of barbed produced therein. From the First Fleet and the early days of the wire clamped on colony to Federation and the World Wars, the film traces the each side of outlines of the country we were and of what we have become. their jaw.’ Particularly entertaining is the sequence on the late post-war Introduction years, when our accent became The Sounds of Aus tells the a source of humour rather rollicking story of the life and than cultural shame (think of times of the Australian accent, the incomparable Dame Edna described by the narrator, Everage, Ray Lawlor’s Summer with tongue firmly in cheek, of the Seventeenth Doll [1956], as ‘hauntingly beautiful’. The Jack Hibberd’s Dimboola fact that this narrator is none [1967], the burgeoning local other than John Clarke, one theatre scene with venues such of New Zealand’s greatest as La Mama, and a resurgent exports, highlights the film’s wry film industry producing ocker sensibility. While chronicling the classics such as The Adventures peculiarities of the Australian of Barry McKenzie [Bruce accent, the film investigates Beresford, 1972]). the complex nature of national The Sounds of Aus is at once identity, arguing that ‘our entertaining and informative. accent is a product of our It illustrates how the way we social history’. The existence sound is a rich site for conflicts of one basic accent stretching over identity. Myths about the across this huge continent is SCREEN EDUCATION 2 Investigating our accent deepens understanding of how we see ourselves as Australians, what that might mean, and the influences that have shaped our national character. At a time when too many people drape themselves in the Australian flag for all sorts of dubious reasons, an examination of who we are, identity. It also offers scope for dictionary where appropriate. well leavened with humour, is a range of Speaking & Listening, Ask students to suggest other most welcome. Viewing and Drama teaching important terms that arise from and learning activities, with their viewing of the film. Curriculum Links opportunities for engaging • received pronunciation The Sounds of Aus would exercises on language and the work very well in a variety playful properties of colloquial • cultivated accent of classroom contexts. It speech. • elocution has relevance to upper • phonics primary and junior secondary Activities & English, Australian History, Discussion • cultural cringe Studies of Society and Suggestions • register Environment (Human Society in Environment), and Cultural Language Issues: • strine Exploring Key Terms Studies. It provides an • creole entertaining and accessible Devise definitions of the • ocker forum in which to debate issues following terms, using the about cultural and national • soft palate • cockney • dialects • rising inflection • multiculturalism • empire • globalization • What do we mean by the idea of ‘mother tongue’? • What is meant by the term ‘cultural imperialism’? • What is meant by the term ‘Australian register’? • What is a diphthong and what significance does it have for the Australian accent? • What is meant by ‘the theatre of identity’ and how is accent an expression of this? SCREEN EDUCATION 3 History Issues: Who Were We Then? • Make a list of the cultural and historical forces that have influenced the Australian accent. • Dr Bruce Moore says that in the first twenty to thirty years of the colony there was a functioned as a marker of our • Discuss the idea of the ‘foundation accent’. What connection to empire? cultural cringe. Is it still an does he mean by this term? issue today? Prompt students • Historian Michael Cathcart to consider whether they • What happened to the claims that ‘The First World assume popular culture or Australian accent after War divides Australia’. consumer products from Federation? (Consider Discuss how and why this overseas are superior to issues such as the increased might be the case. Why home-grown products. importance of Empire, striving might there have been a rise for a ‘better’ Australian in class-consciousness after • One commentator says of the English, more emphasis World War One? late 1960s that finally ‘being on cultivated/received Australian was OK, you didn’t • What is the paradox inscribed pronunciation, emphasis on have to apologise for it’. Why in the ANZAC legend? What elocution in school inspectors’ might Australians have once do ANZAC and AIF stand for? reports, etc.) In what ways wanted to sound like they can accent be considered • There are accounts of World came from elsewhere? Is this a marker of ‘learning and War One diggers trying to still an issue? civilization and the qualities of ‘sound more Australian’. Why • It is suggested that the empire’? In what ways has the might they have wanted to cultural cringe really took hold Australian accent in particular distance themselves from the in the 1940s, exacerbated in British? SCREEN EDUCATION 4 part by the ABC. What was happening in the Australian film industry at this time? (It was in a state of collapse.) Can you see a connection between the two phenomena? • When the ABC was first established, three quarters of its announcers were British, and it was clear the national Melbourne theatre scene in History Issues: Who Are We broadcaster was intent on the late 1960s that there was Now? a ‘sense of a laboratory’. mimicking the BBC. Why? • What makes us who we are? What is a ‘toffy Oxbridge What does he mean by this? • Make a list of current youth accent’? What events marked the so-called Cultural Revolution expressions and slang • Max Gillies says that up in Australia (c.1968-1972)? (nothing obscene allowed!). until the Second World War, What is meant by the idea of a Where do these expressions actors tried to sound English; ‘deregulation of the culture’? derive from? Are most of after it, many tried to sound these expressions American • What can you find out about American. Discuss. Make a in origin? What accounts for Youth Speaks for Australia? list of actors who you think this influence? sound distinctively Australian. What are some of the public speaking organizations • In what ways might the • Elocution lessons were part of around today? How important Australian Oxford Dictionary Australian children’s schooling is accent in the way oral differ from its British from Federation until the presentations at school and counterpart? 1950s and 1960s. What do in the wider community are • Do you think the United you think these lessons might assessed and evaluated? States or the United Kingdom have involved? Why might has had a greater influence they have been abandoned at • Compare and contrast the on the Australian accent? this particular point in time? accents of Prime Ministers Malcolm Fraser and Bob One speaker says that ‘we’re • Jack Hibberd says of the Hawke. at the arse-end of the world, SCREEN EDUCATION 5 heads turned like sunflowers towards America’. What does she mean? Do you agree? • Discuss the influence of hip hop. Is it a ‘form of dishonesty’ or ‘selling out’ for Australian hip hop artists to simulate American accents? • What is meant by the idea of • ‘Accent is a marker of class.’ • What does Australian-Turkish the ‘world getting smaller’? Discuss. student Erdem Koc say about his experiences at high • John Clarke muses • What effect has the influx of school? (He says that Anglo ‘How much international migrants had on the Australian students were in the minority influence can an accent accent? withstand?’ What effect and came to adopt the ‘wog’ • How would you describe the might globalization have on accent.) ‘wog’ accent? the Australian accent? One • What is Aboriginal English? perspective on the Australian • ‘Your accent is a tribal calling Stan Grant says the accent accent is that it is under card.’ Discuss. he uses now as an SBS threat. What is your opinion • How does Santo Cilauro newsreader is ‘a long way on this? What stance does account for the peculiarities from the accent that I started the film take on this? (The of the Italo-Australian accent? life with’. Discuss his obs Australian accent is described (He says many of the Italian ervations on his accent and variously as: ‘utterly resilient’; migrants were working in the influences on language in ‘bullet proof’; it ‘simply factories alongside working- the Indigenous community in ‘refuses to change’; it exists class Anglo-Australians with which he grew up. ‘in defiance of’ the juggernaut very broad accents.) of American popular culture. And yet the film also shows how the accent has evolved …) • Are we more comfortable with who we are now as Australians than we were 100 years ago? • The United Kingdom has a range of very distinct regional accents, as does the United States of America. Why do you think these variances are more marked than in Australia? Screen segments of My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) to elucidate the relationship between class and accent.

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