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.
SCREEN EDUCATION 6 How We Sound: Accent and ‘Cultural DNA’ • ‘Accent is about how you perform yourself.’ Discuss. • ‘There is one unifying voice underpinning our accent.’ Discuss. • Do you agree with John Clarke that the Australian produce new dialects, as if to • What qualities do you need accent is ‘hauntingly say ‘we belong here, we are to effectively mimic other beautiful’? the children of this place’.) accents? • In what ways is the Australian • How different was the • Screen a brief segment of accent unique? Australian accent of the late Holy Smoke (Jane Campion, 1800s to that of today? (It was 1999), in which Kate Winslet • What sort of accents would not very different, closer to adopts an Australian accent have been heard on the First today’s general accent than for her performance. (Victoria Fleet? (John Clarke describes the broad, ocker accent.) Mieleskwa, the voice coach it as a ‘dog’s breakfast’ who is interviewed in the that then evolved into ‘the • Is there a difference between documentary taught Kate to mongrel’ Australian accent. rural and urban Australian do the Australian accent in Most of the dialects were from accents? Holy Smoke). How successful the South East of England and • Bruce Beresford’s father told is her performance? What London.) his son that ‘no-one wants does she do with her voice • What role did children play to hear Australians talking and her pronunciation? in the development of the because they sound “funny”’. For comparison, look at Australian accent during the What do you think he might Meryl Streep’s depiction period of early settlement? have meant by ‘funny’? Why of Lindy Chamberlain in (According to one historian, might he have thought this? Evil Angels (Fred Schepisi, children are the instigators How did his son react? 1988). Streep’s slightly of change in accent; they unusual Australian accent is
SCREEN EDUCATION 7 based upon her attempt to accurately represent Lindy Chamberlain’s slightly New Zealand-infused accent. (For truly dreadful accents it is still difficult to go past Dick van Dyke’s Bert in Mary Poppins [Robert Stevenson, 1964], while Keanu Reeves is also shocking in Bram natured, playful, irrelevant, the myths about the Australian Stoker’s Dracula [Francis Ford rebellious, like a flock of accent that the film challenges Coppola, 1992].) Have a look ducks). or debunks (for example, that at a segment of Kath and Kim there are distinct regional • What is a rising inflection? for a contemporary version of differences; that the accent What theories are used to the broad Australian accent. developed in response to the explain it? • Give students a week in which climate, pollen or flies; that it • Compare the Australian, New to record from the television derived from cockney). How Zealand and South African examples of the broadest many of these myths had you accents. (The documentary Australian accent they can heard? Why might they have does not provide these find. Screen the videotapes arisen? (i.e. how effective are comparisons. You may need in class and have students they in explaining some of the to do further research to vote on the ‘most Ocker’ peculiarities of the Australian define the specific linguistic speaker for a prize. Particular accent?) characteristics of each.) students could be designated • ‘It’s not what he says, it’s the to hunt for other accents on • Analyse Paul Hogan’s use way he says it.’ Discuss. commercial TV – Indigenous, of the Australian accent. • One of the Adelaide matrons ethnic, etc. Consider the idea of the says that John Howard ‘brand’ and of identity as a • Divide the class into pairs sounds ‘peasant-ish’. What marketing tool: the broad and have each pair devise a do you think she means by ocker accent as one of our comic dialogue between an this? Do you agree? What most successful exports. Australian and an overseas impression does she create? tourist. The dialogue is • Myth Busting: make a list of to be structured around misunderstandings caused by the Australian accent. See the web sites listed at the end of this guide for some starting points. (For example, a British tourist who was hospitalized during her trip here was alarmed when a nurse told her ‘You’ll be going home today’ – and she heard, ‘You’ll be going home to die’.) • Make a list of the qualities/ adjectives associated with the Australian accent by various speakers in the film (for example, warm, good-
SCREEN EDUCATION 8 • ‘Education is more important than accent.’ Discuss. • Does everybody have an accent? Describe your own accent. What cultural influences can you identify within your class? • Tape record each student reading (from the class text, Select some examples of • One commentator, Victoria their own writing or a selected classic Australian poetry Mieleskwa, notes that ‘The poem). Discuss how each (for example, The Man from Australian accent takes a student sounds, the qualities Snowy River, The Sentimental number of different faces. of their voices, the types of Bloke; see reference list at There isn’t one classic accents. (This is an important the end of this guide for Australian accent’. Political opportunity to build student further suggestions) and have commentator, George skills in constructive criticism: students experiment with Megalogenis argues that students need to learn how reading aloud using different the range of Australian to offer each other honest accents. accents asserts different but encouraging feedback versions of Australia, and • Have the students experiment and teacher modelling is very that Pauline Hanson and Nick with some of the elocution important here. For example, Giannopoulos speak with passages recited in the film ‘your performance would equally authentic Australian – ‘ask the master to pass the be even better if you slowed voices. Discuss. Make a list banana’; and ‘poor old Joe, down a little for dramatic of Australian public identities broke a hoe on his toe’. Take effect’ is preferable to ‘you and organize them into some a poll: who says ‘dance’, spoke too fast, no one could kind of schema according ‘darnce’; ‘castle’, ‘carstle’? understand you’.) Are students to their accents and what is surprised by how their voices known about the influences actually sound to others? on their accents.
SCREEN EDUCATION 9 Talking Pictures: The Film Itself • Discuss the role of the narrator in the film. Why might the filmmakers have chosen John Clarke for this role? What does his persona and voice add to the film? How different might the of Aus. Events to consider retired newsreader, Jim film have been with another including on your timeline: Dibble; well-enunciated queen narrator? Consider alternate The First Fleet, Federation, of etiquette and deportment, narrators, such as John Laws, World War One, post-war June Dally-Watkins; social Ray Martin, Bud Tingwell, influx of European migrants, analyst, Bernard Salt; political John Flaus, Gina Riley, Mary the Whitlam Government, the commentator, George Kostakidis, Noel Pearson and Vietnam War. Annotate your Megalogenis; actors and Lowitja O’Donohue. In what time line with analysis of what comedians Max Gillies, ways might it be considered these historical moments Rachel Griffiths, Denise fitting to have a migrant meant for the Australian Scott, Mary-Anne Fahey, narrating The Sounds of Aus? accent. Bert Newton and Barry Write a fifty word synopsis of Crocker; and filmmaker Bruce The Sounds of Aus. • Make a list of the people who Beresford). Can you think of contribute to the film and • Suggest three other possible other people who might have their various backgrounds. titles for this documentary. developed other aspects of (For example: voice the topic? • Write a review of The Sounds coach, Victoria Mielewska; of Aus to be published in a phonetician, Felicity Cox; • ‘This film isn’t really about national daily newspaper. historians, Michael Catchcart the Australian accent at all.’ • Design a timeline detailing the and Joy Damousi; editor Discuss. historical and cultural events of the Australian Oxford touched on in The Sounds Dictionary, Bruce Moore;
SCREEN EDUCATION 10 Paying Attention: Film Comprehension Encourage students to take notes during the screening of the documentary. Questions 1. Who was James Dibble? 2. Why was 1932 a significant 8. At what period was the the national broadcaster, the year? divide between broad and ABC, was launched. 3. What happened to Banjo cultivated accents the 3. He was fired because he Paterson at the ABC? What greatest? sounded too Australian! does this tell us about our 9. When were elocution lessons Barry Crocker explains there culture at that time? dropped from the standard were complaints: ‘it was too 4. What are the three general school curriculum? awful to hear this Australian types of Australian accent accent’. It reveals the depth 10. The Australian accent described in the film? of the ‘cultural cringe’. developed in response 5. What is the most common to particular aspects of 4. i) broad ocker; Australian accent today? the Australian condition, ii) general Australian accent including the harsh sun, (more neutral than ocker); 6. How many children were on pollen and the huge number and iii) cultivated or received the First Fleet? of flies. True or false? pronunciation (‘posh’). 7. What does Stan Grant Answers 5. The general Australian identify as some of the accent is the most ingredients of Aboriginal 1. James Dibble was the commonly spoken today. creole? (Stan’s father is first Australian television Wiradjuri and his mother is newsreader (1956). 6. It is estimated there were from Kamilaroi country in forty children on board the 2. 1932 was the year in which northwest NSW.) First Fleet. 7. Stan Grant says you can trace elements of Scottish and Irish accents in certain Indigenous communities, reflecting the patterns of population in particular regions. 8. The divide between broad and cultivated accents was greatest after World War One. 9. Elocution lessons were dropped on the whole from the standard school curriculum in the 1960s. 10. False.
SCREEN EDUCATION 11 Considering Our Cultural Artefacts • The Bulletin was a very important magazine, largely because it promoted Australian stories and Australian voices. See what you can discover on the Internet about the magazine’s Alphabetical Order) Discuss history. EXTENSION terms such as Emma Chisit ACTIVITY • Leonard Maltin suggested The (how much is it?) and compile Adventures of Barry McKenzie a class list (see web sites Towards Semiotics: The was ‘a bit much for American listed at the end of this guide Signs of Everyday Life audiences’. Screen segments for examples). • The Sounds of Aus can be of the film and discuss its • Introduce students to rhyming considered an accessible reception. slang and compile a class example of semiotic • Why did Bruce Beresford catalogue of terms. Have the studies. To build on this resist efforts to dub or students write a short story foundation, teachers could re-voice his film Breaker incorporating appropriate touch on Roland Barthes’ Morant (1980) with American examples of rhyming slang. seminal Mythologies, which voices for the US market? Share these with the class. analyses the quotidian, those everyday elements of life • What can you find out about • For additional relevant audio such as accent that are so Let Stalk Strine (published and visual material, visit the commonplace we regularly in 1965)? In Let Stalk Strine, National Film and Sound fail to notice them. Semiotics the term air fridge means Archive, ScreenSound is the study of signs, of the what exactly? (average) What Australia at
SCREEN EDUCATION 12 of significance about who we are and how we see and experience the world. The studies that make up Barthes’ collection are brief, only a few pages each, and range across topics such as toys, milk, soap powder and plastic; students could select one, read and analyse Resources Queensland Press, St Lucia, it, and then conduct a similar 1976. semiotic investigation into Roland Barthes, Mythologies, A.B. Paterson, Mulga Bill’s an aspect of their daily lives Paladin, London, 1973. Bicycle, ill. Kilmeny and … (For teachers adopting Harry Heseltine (ed.), The Deborah Niland, Collins, Luke and Freebody’s Four Penguin Book of Australian Sydney, 1973. Roles approach to Reading Verse, Penguin, Ringwood and Writing, this provides a Victoria, 1972. Useful Web Sites rich opportunity to develop Henry Lawson, Portable Poet: Henry Lawson knowledge and skills in the Australian Authors, (ed.) http://www.poemhunter.com/ fourth role of text analyst.) Brian Kiernan, University of henry-lawson/
Banjo Paterson Poems http://www.wallisandmatilda. com.au/banjo-paterson-poems. shtml
Banjo Paterson’s Poems of the Bush http://www.middlemiss. org/lit/authors/patersonab/ poemsbush.html
Dorothea Mackellar, My Country http://www.imagesaustralia. com/mycountry.htm
Dictionary of Australian Slang http://www. australiatravelsearch.com.au/ trc/slang.html
Australian Rhyming Slang http://goaustralia.about.com/cs/ language/a/rhymingslang.htm
Strine: Dictionary of Terms http://www.strine.org.uk/Dict. html
SCREEN EDUCATION 13 Speak Australian Ya Mug! http://www.australianbeers.com/ culture/generallingo.htm
Australian Language http://members.ozemail.com. au/~macinnis/syd/language.htm
Overview of Australian English Accents http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/ Home_Yan_Qin/intro/intro_au.htm
The Sounds of Aus 2007 Duration: 53 minutes 32 seconds Writer/Researcher/Associate Producer: Lawrie Zion Producer/Script Editor: Yael Bergman Director: David Swann Editor: Mark Atkin ASE Cinematographer: Justin Brickle Executive Producer: Laura Waters Production Company: Princess Pictures
This study guide was produced by ATOM © ATOM 2007 [email protected]
For more information on Screen Education magazine, or to download other free study guides, visit
Distributed exclusively by ABC Commercial
For a custom copy of Bomb Harvest phone ABC Commercial on 1300 650 587 email progsales@your. abc.net.au or visit www.abc.net.au/programsales
SCREEN EDUCATION 14