Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide a general picture of the pidgins and creoles spoken in Australia. Outside its scope are descriptive and historical accounts of individual languages as well as Aboriginal English, the history and structure of which differ in a number of significant aspects from that of English-derived pidgins and creoles, and are dealt with in other chapters of this volume (see Kaldor and Malcolm, Eades, and Koch).

The greatest need in an overview of this kind seems to be clarification of basic terminology. As pointed out by Sandefur (1985b), ‘the terms “pidgin”, “creole” and “Aboriginal English” have been used with a great deal of ambiguity in recent years’. This ambiguity reflects an insufficient understanding of the phenomena at hand as well as the continuing influence of folk labels for varieties of speech used by non-mainstream Australians. One view, in particular, that has continued to survive even in quite respectable publications is that there are underdeveloped languages with few or no abstract terms, and that pidgin and creole languages are corruptions of true languages. Hence we find Pidgin English referred to as a ‘quaint and macaronic jargon’ or ‘English perverted and mangled by the natives’ or, from a different perspective (Strehlow 1947: xviii) ‘English perverted and mangled by ignorant whites, who have in turn taught this ridiculous gibberish to the natives and who then affect to be amused by the childish babblings of these “savages”.’

Australia is a geographically isolated and largely English-speaking continent surrounded primarily by non-English-speaking neighbours (apart from New Zealand). The story of its languages presents an intriguing case study for sociolinguists. While most Australians today are English monolinguals, the English language is a recent arrival. The majority of the country's original inhabitants were largely multilingual and many still are. The chapters in this book give a comprehensive overview and summary of what is known about the sociolinguistic situation of Australia's major language varieties.

In my introduction I aim to provide a sociohistorical background to the evolution of the major varieties of language now found on the Australian continent. One of the most interesting developments I attempt to trace is how a new ideology of pluralism arose in the 1970s in response to social and political changes. This was in direct opposition to the earlier ‘White Australia’ policy, which projected an image of an ideal Australia which was monocultural, monolingual and monoracial. I also document how Australian attitudes towards language and linguistic diversity have deep historical precedents in the cultural ideology of western Europe and are paralleled in the major Anglophone nations, particularly Britain and the United States. Oppressive policies towards linguistic minorities were practised by the British for a long time ‘at home’ and transplanted to new colonies elsewhere.

Introduction

The label ‘Aboriginal English’ usually refers to a range of varieties of English spoken by Aboriginal Australians, which are not identical either with Standard Australian English or a creole. While in recent years the number of speakers of Standard Australian English has increased among Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal English continues to be used by many in a variety of functions, as either a first or second language. In this chapter we will identify some of the features of Aboriginal English, noting in particular the differences between Aboriginal English and the creoles on the one hand, and between Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English on the other, and examine its functions in contemporary Australian society. We will also consider likely trends, and finally, point out areas for further research.

Studies of Aboriginal English

Up to the late sixties little scholarly attention had been given to any English-based variety spoken by Aboriginal people, though the existence of such varieties was well known from the earliest times of European settlement and even documented by many lay observers. These speech varieties were generally lumped together under such labels as ‘pidgin’, ‘jargon’, ‘perverted’, ‘corrupt’, ‘disjointed’ or ‘broken English’. At best, they were dismissed as quaint manifestations of valiant but not quite successful attempts by Aboriginal people to speak English, and at worst, seen as varieties to be ridiculed and eradicated.

Introduction

This chapter will provide a brief sketch of the sociohistorical background and general structure of Queensland Kanaka English (see also Dutton 1980; Dutton and Mühlhäusler 1984; and Mühlhäusler 1986). I will also explore how this language relates to some crucial aspects of pidgin and creole linguistics, in particular Hall's (1962) model of the life-cycle of these languages and, secondly, the role of universals in its formation and development.

The origins of Queensland Kanaka English date back to the period between 1864 and 1904 when more than 60,000 Melanesians were brought to Queensland to work on the sugar plantations and in other rural industries. The recruiting pattern for the Queensland plantations was similar to that for the other Pacific plantation centres, that is, a continuous shift from south to north, beginning with the Loyalties in the 1860s and ending up in the northern Solomons of New Guinea in the 1880s. It thus seems likely that some kind of Loyalty Island Pidgin English formed the foundation of Queensland Kanaka English. As the recruiting grounds shifted, considerable numbers of non-speakers were blackbirded. These non-speakers in all likelihood modelled their pidgin on existing varieties. Recruiting from previously uncontacted areas ceased around 1885, after which date the majority of recruits could speak Pidgin English, many having been recruited for a second time, after serving a term of contract in Queensland itself or on some other plantation in the Pacific.

Introduction

In this chapter I will present evidence to show that there is little difference between secondary-school children from various social backgrounds in England and Australia in terms of access to high status and specialist lexes of the language.

The written language of Australia and its specialist oral counterpart has developed in parallel with the written language elsewhere. Turner (1966: 67), for example, writes: ‘the coincidence of English and Australian written idiom is not a natural phenomenon, but is cultivated by literature in its widest sense’. For much of Australia's history, most books and even most magazines encountered by children were written and produced in the United Kingdom. More importantly perhaps, the examples of diction found in those sources were routinely pointed to as exemplars of ‘good English’ to be adopted in schools and in later life. Increasingly too in the twentieth century, Australian English made contact with other branches of English. Ramson (1972: 44) points to the lexicon of the scientist as the greatest single influence on the vocabulary of English: ‘And it matters little whether the scientist is English, American or Australian. The specialist vocabulary of his particular branch of scientific enquiry acknowledges not regional but professional boundaries.’

Facing facts and facing theories

If nothing is done about it, almost all Aboriginal languages will be dead by the year 2000. Even the two most likely survivors, the Yolngu languages of north-east Arnhem Land and the Western Desert language may not last long beyond that date. Most of us who have worked for some time in the field of Aboriginal languages would agree with statements like this. However, if we were asked to show why we thought a particular language was going to die, we would often not be able to give a very coherent account of our reasoning. Nor would any two researchers necessarily come up with the same kinds of answers about how and why a language dies.

In recent study of a dying language in Australia, Schmidt (1985) was unable to give any general theory of language death that would fit the many different linguistic and sociocultural features of the different languages that have died or are dying. She points out that linguists can predict neither when nor what types of changes will occur in language contact situations generally, despite some decades of impressive work on the subject. She also notes that sociocultural factors are more important than linguistic factors in determining whether a language survives or not.

Introduction

Explicit concern for an official language policy in Australia is of recent origin. It has been a focus of attention for language professionals, policy makers and others for only the last decade. However, language policy has had a longer history in Australia, and during the learly part of this century, when previously multilingual elements in the Australian population were overwhelmed by an assertive Australian monolingualism (see Clyne, chapter 14 this volume, and Walsh, this volume), language policy was one of many methods of control of both Aboriginal and migrant populations (see Fesl 1988).

In the case of migrant languages, extensive controls over their institutionalisation evolved not only from general social antipathy towards alienness, but also more specific worries over alien languages and populations in wartime. Clyne (chapter 14, this volume) has summarised the pre-World War II restrictions on ‘foreign languages’ in school systems, school curriculum, and publishing of newspapers. Libraries stocked almost exclusively English language publications, and interpreting services were nonexistent. Following in the spirit of these policies, restrictions on the use of foreign languages in broadcasting were introduced in 1952.

These policies were based upon a particular view of the nature of (white) Australian society, and a belief that monolingualism was essential for social cohesion.

Language shift

In the 1986 Census, about 430,000 out of almost a million people of Italian descent declared that they used Italian regularly. From these figures alone, language shift to English appears to be rapid, particularly in the Australian context, where Italians are the largest non-English speaking ethnic group. They also tend to live close to one another in dense concentrations, and have a long history of immigration. Shift seems even faster if patterns of language usage are analysed in more detail. From Clyne (1982: 27–56) we learn that in the first generation language shift increases from 5.4 per cent among the older population to 11.7 per cent among the younger immigrants. In the second generation, it increases from 18.5 per cent among children of intra-ethnic marriages, to 81.2 per cent among children of inter-ethnic marriages. Furthermore, in the second generation, language shift increases with age, dramatically so when children leave home in their twenties, and to an even greater extent in their later years when their parents die. Thus, Italian is mainly a language used by older parents and younger children. Given that Italian immigration almost ceased some ten years ago, we might easily predict that when the former die and the latter grow up there will be little Italian regularly spoken in Australia.

Introduction

The distinctions Australian Aboriginal people make amongst their own language varieties are couched principally in the idiom of local geography. Other linguistic distinctions are typically framed within speech etiquettes focused on kinship relations, ascribed ceremonial and other social status or the temporary ritual condition of individuals. These practices are fairly typical of recent hunter—gatherer and shifting horticulturist societies and in many ways unlike those of agrarian and industrial societies.

Classical or precolonial Aboriginal culture did not, for example, distinguish language varieties associated with institutions such as social class, caste, occupational group or nation state. It did, however, distinguish varieties associated with territorial groups, or regionally specific sets of such groups, and in this it has seemed to resemble closely the language/state model of much of Europe and some other parts of the world, at least to some scholars (see e.g. Dixon 1976, who argues for a tribe/state analogy in the Cairns region of north Queensland).

This resemblance has been much exaggerated. One of the most profound differences between Aboriginal linguistic culture and that of so many other people in fact lies in this very domain. In Aboriginal Australia a large number of languages were spoken by a very small number of people.

Introduction

The German and Dutch speech communities in Australia appear outwardly similar. Both are socioeconomically well established (Derrick, Pyne and Price 1976: 31), relatively large, and fairly assimilated. According to the 1976 Census (adjusted figures, Clyne 1982: 12), Australia then had 170,644 regular users of German (54,824 in Victoria) and 64,768 regular users of Dutch (20,606 in Victoria). The languages and cultures do not diverge markedly from those of the dominant Anglo—Australian group and, incidentally, resemble each other. In comparison with some other communities, such as the Greeks, the German—Dutch similarities hold true but in comparison between them, the German and Dutch speech communities show some marked differences.

I shall be focusing here on two aspects: the structure of the German and Dutch languages as used by postwar immigrants and their children and patterns of language use and maintenance of the two languages. I will explore possible interrelations between structure and language use, taking into account migration history and community dynamics and demographic factors (notably settlement patterns).

Language maintenance and community dynamics

Every study so far conducted in Australia on language maintenance and shift, whether small-scale and detailed or large-scale and superficial, has found that, of all the speech communities in Australia, the Dutch speakers have experienced the most rapid shift to the use of English only, both within the home and elsewhere (see, e.g. Harvey 1974; Clyne 1977b, 1982, and chapter 14, this volume; Pauwels 1980; Smolicz and Harris 1976; ABS 1976, 1983).

The impetus for this book came from the publication of Language in the USA (Ferguson and Heath 1981) and Language in the British Isles (Trudgill 1984). This volume is a companion and complement to these two. The purpose of Language in Australia is to provide a comprehensive account of the present linguistic situation in Australia, primarily from a sociolinguistic perspective. There are at present no other books which offer such a broad survey of the language situation in Australia, although there are now works which cover selected aspects of it, for example, Clyne (1976), a sample of studies on Australian English, migrant and Aboriginal languages, Clyne (1982) on the position of community languages, Clyne (1985) on language contact, Blair and Collins (1989) on varieties of Australian English, and the surveys of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages by Dixon and Blake (1979), Dixon (1980), Blake (1981), and Yallop (1982). These and other publications are, however, important indications of the recent considerable interest in the languages of Australia.

This volume is divided into five parts. The first four contain chapters dealing with Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous languages and the fifth is devoted to public policy and social issues related to the languages of Australia.

Introduction

There are almost 320,000 Greek-speaking Australians settled in all States, 150,604 of whom were born in Greece (ABS 1981 Census; Price, 1984; see also table 17.1). Even though traditionally there has been a high regard for the classical era of Greek culture, up until the 1960s most Australians (and even Hellenists) had little appreciation for the language and culture of modern Greece. Immigration intake policies of the 1950s, settlement patterns of Greek migrants and government policies towards ethnic communities, especially during the Whitlam era, all helped to reverse attitudes of suspicion, prejudice and animosity experienced by prewar Greek settlers.

Bilingualism within the Greek community in Australia

The 1986 Census confirmed that Modern Greek (MG) is still the most widely-used community language in Australia after Italian (see table 17.1). As Clyne (1982) attests, community languages have suffered substantial losses within their respective communities. However, Greek-born claimants showed the strongest language maintenance in Australia: 98 per cent of overseas-born Greek Australians claimed to use MG regularly, while 19.7 per cent (the largest proportion in Australia) claimed not to use English regularly. The self-report data in Tamis (1985a, 1986) suggests that 64 per cent of Greek—Australians used MG as their main language, 34 per cent spoke both MG and English depending on the occasion, and 4 per cent used English almost exclusively.

Introduction

Kriol is an English-based creole, widely spoken by Aboriginal Australians in the ‘Top end’ of the Northern Territory and adjacent regions. Emerging early this century but derogated or ignored until just over ten years ago, Kriol has since become better documented. It is now the subject of considerable interest and debate, due largely to its expanding use in education and in the Christian church (see Harris and Sandefur 1985b; J.W. Harris 1986b).

Kriol is of more than local interest because it is probably the latest creole to be comprehensively described linguistically (Sandefur 1979; Sandefur and Sandefur 1979a; and Sandefur, this volume), sociolinguistically (Sandefur 1984b), and historically (J.W. Harris 1984, 1986a). It is also of importance because the circumstances in which Kriol arose differ from those in the plantation and post-plantation societies from which so many other creoles have emerged. I outline briefly the history of Kriol in four broad stages: its pre-European background, the eras of pidgin genesis and stabilisation and the modern period of creolisation and extension.

The pre-European context

Speech communities consisting of large numbers of overlapping language communities are typical of Aboriginal Australia (Rigsby and Sutton 1982; and Sutton, this volume), particularly in areas such as North Australia where favourable natural environments are able to support large numbers of people organised into small groups (White 1978: 48).

The study of sex/gender differences in language

Prior to the emergence of ‘feminist linguistics’ in the mid-1970s the exploration of the differences in linguistic behaviour of the sexes had featured primarily in anthropological and later in sociolinguistic studies. Anthropologists observed some phonological, grammatical and lexical contrasts in a range of ‘exotic’ languages where the sex of the speaker or addressee determined the choice of the linguistic form. Such differences were usually referred to as sex-exclusive differences (for a more detailed account, see, e.g. Bodine 1975; Brouwer et al. 1978; and Coates 1986). Sociolinguists studying urban dialects of European languages presented evidence of sex-preferential differences at the phonological, syntactic and prosodic levels (for a selective survey of English language studies, see Coates 1986). Despite various shortcomings of explanatory and methodological nature in earlier anthropological and sociolinguistic studies with respect to the gender issue (see Cameron and Coates 1985; Coates 1986; and Milroy 1987), such studies provided and still provide a substantial database for the analysis of gender differences in language within a feminist linguistic framework.

Over the past 15 years psycholinguists, pragmalinguists, conversational analysts, etc., have also increasingly become interested in a more serious study of the differences and similarities in the linguistic behaviour of the sexes (see Thorne, Kramarae and Henley 1983).

Introduction

In linguistic terms, the city of Belfast (like many other areas in the British Isles) is what Johnston (1985) has called a ‘divergent dialect’ community. Not only is the city vernacular highly divergent from what we usually call ‘standard English’, but also the range of variation within the city is very wide. In such communities, many of the patterns observed are discontinuous, and these do not fit comfortably into unidirectional scales of variation corresponding with the socioeconomic class of the speakers (of the kind used by Labov, 1966, in New York City). For example, whereas in Belfast back-vowel realisations of /a/ (pronouncing, e.g., man as ‘maun’) are favoured at one level of the social hierarchy (and people are moving towards back /a/), a higher status level reverses the trend and favours fronting of /a/ (J. Milroy 1982). Thus, the socioeconomic class pattern revealed is not unilinear, but is a zig-zag pattern, incorporating a reversal of evaluation. Lower status speakers are moving away from front values of /a/ towards back values, whereas the middle to upper status groups are reverting again to front values.

There are other respects in which the variation revealed fails to conform with the predictions of the Labov model (1966, 1972). The zig-zag pattern, for example, is frequently replicated in the stylistic continuum.