Ways of Being, Ways of Talk
TITLE:
Ways of being, ways of talk
SCIS NO. 1331503
ISBN
978-0-7307-4248-7
© Department of Education 2002
Published by the Department of Education and Training 2007
Reproduction of this work in whole or part for educational purposes, within an educational institution and on
condition that it is not offered for sale, is permitted by the Department of Education and Training.
This material is available on request in appropriate alternative formats including Braille, audio tape and computer disk.
Department of Education and Training
151 Royal Street
East Perth WA 6004
Further information please contact: [OPTIONAL]
[name/branch]
Telephone: +61 8 9264 [extension]
Facsimile: +61 8 9264 [extension]
[name/branch]@det.wa.edu.au
Email:
http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/[branch]
URL:
Ways of Being,
Ways of Talk
These resource materials were made possible
through the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning
project, funded jointly by the Department of
Education and Training, Western Australia and the
Commonwealth Department of Education,
Science and Training.
Foreword
For the past seven years, the Department of Education and Training, Western
Australia has supported a unique research effort by a collaborative team of
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers from the Department and from Edith
Cowan University.
The aim of this work has been to make education more appropriate and
effective for students who speak Aboriginal English, using an inclusive
approach that will benefit all students.
Through Language and Communication Enhancement for Two-Way Education,
Towards More User-Friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English, Deadly
Ways to Learn and ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning, Aboriginal English has
been investigated on many levels, providing new insights into its linguistic,
cultural and conceptual features and their implications for Aboriginal students.
Central to the research process and to subsequent training have been efforts to
adopt a two-way approach, where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ways of
thinking, learning and communicating are given equal weight and respect.
On the basis of this research, team members have conducted training for over
two thousand education staff in Western Australia alone. Resource materials
such as Solid English, Two-Way English and the Deadly Ways to Learn kit have
assisted educators to begin finding ways to capitalise on the existing linguistic
and cultural strengths of Aboriginal English speaking students. Trainers have
used these resources and have focused on raising awareness about Aboriginal
English and its pedagogical implications.
The increased understanding of the existence of Aboriginal English and its
significance is having a far-reaching impact on teachers and learners. It provides all
students with the opportunity to be exposed to a range of language systems and
assists teachers to differentiate dialect difference from language ‘mistakes’.
This ensures Aboriginal English speakers’ self-esteem is kept intact and promotes
bidialectal capacities. It enhances teachers’ capacity to assist students to broaden
their linguistic repertoires and to achieve full control of their language use for a
wide range of purposes.
It is my pleasure to commend to you Ways of Being, Ways of Talk, a video series
that offers a window into many of the ideas that have arisen in the course of this
work. I am confident that it will provide a valuable means of raising awareness of
the complexities of Aboriginal English, how it differs from Australian English and
what impact this has on communication.
PAUL ALBERT
DIRECTOR GENERAL
June 2002
i
Contents
Page No:
Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................................................2
SECTION 1
Users’ Guide to the Ways of Being, Ways of Talk videos .............................................................................................5
Glossary of terms ....................................................................................................................................................10
Overview of content of the videos ...........................................................................................................................12
Other related resources and recommended readings...............................................................................................14
Related and recommended Websites .......................................................................................................................17
SECTION 2
Video Scripts
•
A Shared World of Communication.....................................................................................................................20
•
Now You See It, Now You Don’t .........................................................................................................................29
•
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power ........................................................................................................39
•
Moving Into Other Worlds...................................................................................................................................48
SECTION 3
Background Papers
•
A Shared World of Communication .....................................................................................................................61
•
Now You See It, Now You Don’t..........................................................................................................................67
•
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power.......................................................................................................106
•
Moving Into Other Worlds .................................................................................................................................125
Index.....................................................................................................................................................................139
1
This package would not have been possible without
the two-way commitment and input of Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal researchers and educators.
Joint Project Coordination:
Patricia Königsberg and Glenys Collard
We would like to especially acknowledge the following people:
To Professor Ian Malcolm, without whose assistance, knowledge, expertise and
inspiration this work would not have been possible.
To Ken Wyatt, for his support of the Aboriginal English research and all related
educational initiatives.
To Kathy Melsom, for her continued professional support throughout this project.
Special thanks also:
To Dr Judith Rochecouste, Alison Hill,
Dr Farzad Sharifian, Ellen Grote,
Eva Sahanna and Louella Eggington
for their assistance with the background
research to these videos.
To Dr Yvonne Haig for creating this line
of work within the Department of
Education and Training’s Central Office
Acknowledgements
and for her early vision and drive.
To Majella Stevens and Helen Tew for
their tremendous collegial support.
We are thankful also to all those who have given further
input and support to this work:
To Rosemary Cahill for her support and
Community:
contributions to the development of
Michael Aylward-Smith, Don Collard, Sylvia Collard, Bert Eades, Robert
related teacher resources.
Eggington, Dennis Eggington, Alan Mitchell, Scott Fatnowna, Marianne
McLaughlin, Ted Wilkes.
Aboriginal Education and Training Council
May O’Brien.
Researchers (Edith Cowan University)
Georgina Dodson, Glenys Hayes, Christine Heslington, Angela Kickett,
Kevin May, Alison Newell, Lloyd Riley, Allery Sandy, Alison Smith,
Fred Taylor and Tanya Dorizzi (nee Tucker).
2
Aboriginal Education Coordinators and
Liaison Officers
Marion Baumgarten, Sue Beath, Zeta Binge,
Mark Bonshore, Maude Bonshore,
Ron Bradfield, Tracey Dhu, Wayne Coles,
Acknowledgements
Harley Coyne, Shane Cumming,
Charmaine Dershaw, Michelle Forrest,
Cathie Fraser, Cindy Garlett, Tanya Garlett,
Lyall Garlett, Corel Gillespie,
Department of Education and Training, Central Office
Maxine Gossland, George Hayden,
Margaret Banks, Glen Bennett, Liz Carter, Catheryn Curtin,
Geri Hayden, Aaron Hubert, Merv Kelly,
Fred Deshon, Sue Ellis, Aimy Faleiro, Carol Garlett,
Donna Kickett, Jenny Kniveton, Alana Loo,
Warren Grellier, John Gougoulis, Connie Hanscom,
Sharon McGann, Erica McGuire,
Dawn Holland, Jayne Johnston, Dianne Kerr, Kevin O’Keefe,
Albert McNamara, Lois May,
Rosa Logan, Robin Lukosius, Neil Milligan, Pam Moss,
Sharmaine Miles, Monti Mitchell,
Linda Quartermaine, Lucy Reger, Celia Richards, Cam Rielly,
Geralt Moody, Nicki Patterson, Albert Pianta,
Grania Talemaitoga, Gwenda Steff, Nathalie Tarr,
Bernie Ryder, Jedda Trueman, Louise Ward,
Dianne Tomazos, Glenda Trainer, Verna Vos, Kim Ward,
Robyn Weston, Maxine Williams, Eric Wynne.
Yvonne Wiffen, Dave Wood.
Curriculum Improvement and Student
Schools
Services Officers, Managers and
Beth Aitken, Ken Armstrong, Stephanie Armstrong, Kayleen
Coordinators
Arnold, Marion Cheedy, Nora Cooke, Delene Corunna, Lucina
Lis Alden, Gail Barker, Anjie Brook,
Cross, Joanna Dagleish, Lucy Dann, Linda Dawson, Rachael
Julie Buist, Suzanne Cooper, Chris Gostelow,
Dean, Linley Duboy, Merv Hammond, Ian Hastings, Patricia
Liz Healy, Barb Horan, Penny James,
Hewett, Neil Hunt, Eirlis Ingram, Linley Juboy, Justine Kickett,
Sue Knight, Steve Milton, Rachel Monamy,
Sue Knight, Bill Mann, John Masters, Anne Mead, Erica McKnight,
Yvette Moran, Gavin Morris,
Amanda Payne, Denise Powdrill, Coleen Sariago, David Sharp,
Gordon Murdoch, Jenny Nunn, Frank Pansini,
Caroline Snook, Sue Sommerville, Edie Wright.
Alan Plumb, Pam Pollard, Sherina Renton,
West Australian Department of Education and Training’s
Linda Villanova, Lynne Whisson.
District Directors
John Garnaut, Alby Huts, Rod Lowther, Barrie Wells.
Curriculum Council, WA
Aileen Hawkes, Penny McLaughlin, Nichola Davidson.
Catholic Education Office of Western Australia
Norman Brahim, Julie Hillin.
Association of Independent Schools of WA
Les Mack, Kate Mullin
3
Many thanks also to staff and students
at Dryandra Primary School and
Girrawheen Senior High School and to
all other education and non-education
personnel who have worked with us
and supported us through this process.
Thanks also to:
The staff and students at ABMUSIC, Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre, Dumbartung
Aboriginal Corporation, Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, The Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Geoff Oliver, Compass Films, Kevin
Dolman, Indigenous Support Services, Survival Concert 2002 organisers.
We are grateful to members of the community who generously gave their time to
view and comment on the videos prior to the final edit.
ABC Television Production:
Videos Presented by: Michelle White and Narelle Thorne
Actors: Dereck Nannup and Kylie Farmer
Archives: Rachel Franklin
Graphics: Kym Skipworth
Additional Artwork: Ab Collard
Camera: Robert Koenig-Luck and Leigh Northcott
Editing and Sound: Gary Shepherd
Film Production Manager: Anne Dutton and Sally Harding
Director: Andrew McWhirter
Film Producer: Michelle White
National Manager ABC Productions: Stephanie Werrett
4
Users Guide to the
Ways of Being,
Ways of Talk
videos
5
DESCRIPTION
Ways of Being, Ways of Talk consists of a series of four, fifteen to
twenty-minute videos, supported by scripts and resource papers.
The individual videos are entitled:
•
A Shared World of Communication
•
Moving into Other Worlds
•
Now You See it, Now You Don’t
•
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Each video deals with a discrete topic, but also links to the others in the series.
The videos are designed to assist:
•
teachers wishing to engage students in the critical analysis of language difference and literacy;
•
presenters wishing to facilitate professional development in Aboriginal English;
•
non-Aboriginal service providers who work with Aboriginal clients and Aboriginal service providers who work with
non-Aboriginal clients.
The videos are intended for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal audiences. Each video is designed to stimulate a
curiosity about the whole series. The issues raised in the videos are developed and illustrated more fully in the
resource papers which have been indexed for convenience of reference.
WHY THESE MATERIALS WERE DEVELOPED
The driving force behind the development of these videos came from feedback from over two thousand Western
Australian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal education personnel. Many of whom expressed a need for more immediate
access to research and information provided through ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning Project 1 professional
development workshops. Comments received from community people and members of other agencies further
shaped the content, the language, and the form of presentation used in these videos.
HOW THESE MATERIALS CAME ABOUT
Since 1994, personnel from the Department of Education and Training, Western Australia have joined forces with
researchers from Edith Cowan University to collect and analyse data and to develop materials. Through the Language
and Communication Enhancement for Two-Way Education, the Towards More User-Friendly Education for Speakers of
Aboriginal English, and the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning projects, the team has investigated Aboriginal
English in depth. It has gained new insights into the linguistic, cultural and conceptual features of Aboriginal English
and the implications for Aboriginal students’ success in an Anglo-Western education setting. While they have been
designed to have a broad appeal, the videos were specifically initiated to support district-based Aboriginal and nonAboriginal personnel who requested help with this new research-based knowledge. The videos strongly support the
implementation of the Western Australian Curriculum Framework and link directly to the Two-Way English, the Solid
English and the Deadly Ways to Learn teacher resource materials.
1
The project derives the ABC element of its title from the following foundation principles: A - accept Aboriginal English (AE);
B - bridge to Standard Australian English (SAE); and C - cultivate Aboriginal ways of approaching experience and knowledge.
6
The topics chosen for these videos were guided by the above research and by information received from Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal participants in ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning workshops. Background papers were written
by members of the Aboriginal English research team based at the Centre for Applied Language and Literacy
Research, Edith Cowan University. Video scripts were developed from these background papers in collaboration with
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers and education personnel from Curriculum, Aboriginal Education and
Student Services sections from the Department of Education and Training’s Central Office, district offices and schools.
WHAT THESE MATERIALS ARE FOR
The videos, scripts and background papers will provide viewers with vital information on Aboriginal English and its use
within the wider community and help to debunk the myth that Aboriginal English is a deficient way of speaking. They
will assist in providing a better understanding of how Aboriginal English and Australian English differ, on the basis of
their differing histories and associated underlying conceptualisations. It is intended that those viewing the tapes will
extend discussion of these implications according to their common interests and local needs. These discussions will
be enriched when both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants can exchange their views.
HOW THESE MATERIALS ARE TWO-WAY
It is significant that all projects related to this work have adhered to a two-way
principle, whereby Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators and researchers have
worked as equal partners in teams. This approach ensures that Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal voices, perspectives, ways and expertise are jointly incorporated
into curriculum, pedagogy and professional development. It has attracted
international recognition and considerable interest among academics and
education systems in other States and overseas.
Great care has been taken to avoid stereotyping either Aboriginal or nonAboriginal people, although it has been necessary to be aware of the meanings of the differences which they have
brought to English. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can only begin to learn the richness of their respective
dialects on the basis of mutual understanding through two-way communication.
At times, the viewer may feel that the content does not always follow a logical sequence, or indeed, that the
materials presented are irrelevant. Such interpretations are to be expected when operating two-way since the two
dialects may follow different ‘logics’ in ordering, interpreting, and foregrounding information. ‘Relevance’ is also a
notion which is constructed with reference to personal as well as cultural perspectives, and thus a particular scene
which appears relevant to an individual or people from a particular culture may appear irrelevant to others. For that
reason, speakers of both dialects may, on occasions, experience frustration and anxiety when operating in a two-way
mode. Those differences will be a discussion point when the videos are viewed by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
people together.
7
HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF THESE MATERIALS
Two-way processes have been central to all research and professional
development upon which these videos have been based. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ways of thinking, learning and
communicating have been given equal weight and respect throughout. We strongly recommend that these two-way
approaches also be adhered to in the delivery of professional development and when viewing the tapes. We
recommend that these tapes be viewed with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people present so that differing
interpretations of knowledge and experience can be shared and exchanged. Viewers in mixed groups will benefit
most if everyone has a chance to speak and be heard if they want to.
Education sector
These videos will raise awareness in non-Aboriginal people about the complex situations most Aboriginal people
encounter in trying to negotiate life in a non-Aboriginal context. They will also help Aboriginal English speakers
become clearer about why non-Aboriginal people may not always understand what they are trying to say.
Such two-way awareness is essential for effective communication between speakers of the two dialects and for the
provision of an inclusive curriculum for the students with whom they work. It will not only change people’s
perceptions of each other, but also lead to improved educational outcomes for all students.
The videos are a rich resource for engaging students in critical analysis of language and cultural difference. Not only
are these understandings fundamental to key strands of the English learning area and development of critical
literacy, but also to strands and major learning outcomes of all other learning areas. To help teachers make these
understandings more salient for their students, they are encouraged to draw on explanations outlined in the Two-Way
English book and on ideas and suggested strategies as described in Solid English and the Deadly Ideas book of the
Deadly Ways to Learn package. These latter materials provide ideas for teachers about how they might teach about
language, teach through language and explicitly explore the conventions of Aboriginal and Australian English. All the
above resources are fundamentally about developing understandings of how language, culture, worldview and identity
are inextricably linked – understandings which are essential to the following Overarching Learning Outcomes from
the Western Australian Curriculum Framework (Curriculum Council of WA, 1998:pp18-19):
1. Students use language to understand, develop and communicate ideas and information and interact with others.
3. Students recognise when and what information is needed, locate and obtain it from a range of sources and
evaluate, use and share it with others.
7. Students understand and appreciate the physical, biological and technological world and have the knowledge and
skills to make decisions in relation to it.
8. Students understand their cultural, geographic and historical contexts and have the knowledge, skills and values
necessary for active participation in life in Australia.
9. Students interact with people and cultures, other than their own and are equipped to contribute to the global
community.
13. Students recognise that everyone has the right to feel valued and safe, and, in this regard, understand their rights
and obligations and behave responsibly.
8
Other important links to the Curriculum Framework are as follows:
•
the inclusivity principle (p 17);
•
the recognition of language and dialect variations (pp 20, 83);
•
valuing different world views (p 24);
•
developing skills in cross cultural communication (p 24); and
•
tolerance (pp 26, 35)
Issues addressed in these videos relate directly to the 21 goals of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Education policy and provide assistance with efforts relating to MCEETYA priorities which seek to address the needs
of Aboriginal people across Australia, namely:
1. To establish effective arrangements for the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in
educational decision making;
2. To increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people employed in education and training;
3. To ensure equitable access of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to education and training services
4. To ensure participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in education and training;
5. To ensure equitable and appropriate educational achievement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students;
cultures and languages to all Indigenous and non-Indigenous students;
6. To promote, maintain and support the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies; and
7. To provide community development training services including proficiency in English literacy and numeracy for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults.
Other service providers
The voices of Aboriginal people have, until recently, been largely unheard by non-Aboriginal people. The stigma
associated with Aboriginal English has often meant that what Aboriginal people have to say has only been listened to
when it has been expressed in Standard Australian English.
Most service provision is heavily dependent on spoken and written communication. Clients and service providers on
both sides of the cultural divide often find each other’s ways of communicating strange and alienating. This frequently
leads to judgements of the other group as uncommunicative, uncooperative, impolite, evasive, ignorant or even
devious. The Ways of Being, Ways of Talk materials will assist in raising awareness about the importance of knowledge
relating to cross-cultural communication. They will provide a research-based explanation of why the communicative
patterns of each group may not correspond to the expectations they have of the other.
Community groups
Community groups may find these materials useful in the process of reconciliation
between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
If you are using this resource in the community, please note that sensitivity must be
exercised to value and understand that different people have different experiences and
may view the world in different ways. What is seen as ‘right’ from one cultural point of
view, may be perceived as ‘wrong’ from another. Different issues and viewpoints affect
people in different ways. In order for two-way communication and understandings to take
place, people must develop an acceptance of difference without trying to convince the
other to become, to believe or to think like oneself.
9
Glossary of Terms
Aboriginal English: A complex and rule-governed dialect of English spoken widely by Australian Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal English differs from many other dialects of English in systematic ways at all levels of language including
underlying conceptual systems and is associated with different patterns of interaction.
Accent: This refers solely to pronunciation. The way speakers of different dialects pronounce words.
Creole: A language which has evolved from a pidgin. A creole has native speakers.
Dialect: A regionally or socially distinctive variety of language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical
structures. A dialect refers to every aspect of language. It is a subdivision of language and is determined by its user.
A dialect shows who the speaker relates to.
ESD: English as a Second Dialect. This is sometimes used to refer to the learning of standard English as a second
dialect or to the teaching of standard English to students whose first dialect is not a variety of the standard dialect.
The more accurate term is SESD (Standard English as a Second Dialect).
ESL: English as a Second Language. Commonly refers to the learning of English as a second language or to the
teaching of English to students who speak another language as their first language.
Idiolect: The linguistic system underlying an individual’s use of language in a given time and place.
Kriol: The creole spoken by Aboriginal people in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and in the northern
regions of the Northern Territory is called Kriol.
Language: A term used by linguists to refer to the shared linguistic variety/varieties of a community of speakers
viewed as autonomous or undefined.
Metaphor: A linguistic construction which is based on mapping from one domain to another. For instance, the expression
‘the prices are skyrocketing’ is a result of mapping from the domain of ‘space travel’ to the domain of ‘money’.
Pidgin: A new variety of language created for practical and immediate purposes of communication by people of
differing language backgrounds. It has no native speakers.
Register: The form of language as determined by its context of use. People chose a register appropriate to the
purpose, the subject matter, the means by which communication takes place and their relationship to the person(s)
they are interacting with. A register shows what the speaker is doing. For example, the speech of football
commentators, or the football commentary register, has a distinctive set of words, meanings, and even structures.
10
Glossary of Terms (continued)
Schema: Schemas are the building blocks of our knowledge. These are derived from our various experiences and
guide us in our interpretations and communication. For example, people may have a schema for ‘restaurant’ in their
mind, which is based on their various experiences of going to different restaurants. So, if a person says, ‘that’s a very
expensive restaurant’, we usually interpret that to mean the food is expensive and not the building. This
interpretation is facilitated by the schema we have of restaurant, as a place where food is served.
Sociolect (or social dialect): A variety of language marking its speakers’ membership of a particular class, gender
age, ethnic or other social group.
Standard variety of language: A standard dialect or language results from an elaborate process of direct and
deliberate intervention by society. The variety must be chosen and codified by an authoritive body so as to become
the agreed and institutionalised norm to be used for all societal functions, including bureaucratic, educational,
scientific and/or academic. It must have written dictionaries and grammar books to dictate a ‘correct’ form of use.
Varieties of a Language: Any one manifestation of communication, a set of linguistic items with similar social
distributions. This includes examples of languages, dialects and registers. This is a term which is used, collectively, to
refer to regional dialects, social dialects and other subsystems of a language spoken by various societies and subsocieties.
Wadjella: Aboriginal English word. Any non-Aboriginal person.
PLEASE NOTE: These definitions are very much simplified in an attempt to provide a first, very basic
explanation. We advise readers to refer to the list of references in order to get a more thorough
understanding of what are often very complex linguistic notions.
11
Overview of Content of Videos
A Shared World of Communication
1
2
3
An ecological view of communication
-
a variety of inter-connecting communicative systems
-
each system needs to be understood both in its own right and in relation to the whole.
How Australia’s communicative ecology has evolved from both Indigenous and introduced sources
-
explanation of the concept of language
-
how pidgins and creoles developed
-
parallel development of Australian English and Aboriginal English
-
understanding Aboriginal English in the light of its history.
How two cultures have been maintained in the shared world of communication
-
the ambiguous world of Aboriginal Australians
-
examples of Aboriginal cultural interruption and maintenance
-
the relation of Aboriginal English, Aboriginal languages, culture and arts to the evolution of contemporary
Aboriginal culture.
4
How Aboriginal English and Australian English coexist in contemporary Aboriginal experience
-
code switching
-
Aboriginal use of contemporary media
-
contemporary Aboriginal literature
-
Aboriginal people in higher education and the professions.
Moving Into Other Worlds
1
The Aboriginal world prior to European arrival
-
2
3
12
an ancient culture, complex languages
-
intergroup relationships, including Macassans
-
union of language, land and worldview.
Two worlds collide: Europeans and Aboriginal people
-
initial contact: both groups attempt incorporation of other
-
communication and worldview clashes
-
violent conflict, language death
-
‘Protection’ and ‘Assimilation’, Stolen Generations
-
language suppression.
Aboriginal responses
-
culture and language shift
-
culture switching
-
maintenance of Aboriginal culture and language through Aboriginal English.
Overview of Content of Videos (continued)
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
1
2
3
How Aboriginal English differs from Australian English
-
lexical level
-
grammatical level
-
pragmatic level.
Why Aboriginal English is different from Australian English
How human beings use mental images to understand their world
-
categories
-
schemas
-
metaphors.
4
How Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal users of English may miss one another’s meanings
5
How mental images affect the use of language
-
lexical level
-
grammatical level
-
discourse level.
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
1
2
The fact and effects of one-way learning
-
Dominance of Anglo view of Australian history
-
Dominance of Anglo knowledge
-
Dominance of English and standard English modes of expression
-
Effects of this in Aboriginal students’ experience of exclusion, devaluation.
The principles of two-way/both ways education
-
3
4
Two-way education and identity
-
importance of learning by way of first language
-
importance building from the known to the unknown
-
importance of recognising existing knowledge and skills.
Two-way education and power
-
5
relevance to bidialectal as well as bilingual education.
the right of Aboriginal English speakers to access power in the wider world through standard English
-
the equal right of Aboriginal people to recognise power in Aboriginal contexts
-
the need for recognition of Aboriginal knowledge, skill and status by non-Aboriginal students and teachers.
Principles of the implementation of two-way bidialectal education
-
receptive and productive competence in Standard Australian English for Aboriginal English speakers
-
receptive competence in Aboriginal English for all students
-
accommodation to Aboriginal ways of approaching experience and knowledge.
13
Other Related Resources and
Recommended Readings
Aboriginal Education and Training Council & Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Curtin University of Technology (1997).
Our Story: An Aboriginal Cross Cultural Awareness Training Program. Perth, WA: Department of Education Services.
Arthur, J. (1996). Aboriginal English: A Cultural Study. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. [The closest thing available
to a dictionary of Aboriginal English, based on written sources.]
Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project. (1996). Australia’s Indigenous Languages. Wayville, SA: Senior
Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia. [Includes a chapter on Aboriginal English and Australian creoles]
Berry, R.& Hudson, J.(1993). Fostering English in Kimberley Schools (FELIKS) Professional Development Package.
Broome, WA: Catholic Education Office of Western Australia.
Cahill, R. (1998). Solid English. Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia.
Cahill, R. (2000). Deadly Ways to Learn Package. Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia, Association
of Independent Schools of Western Australia and Catholic Education Office of Western Australia.
Clayton, J. (comp.) (1996). Desert Schools: An Investigation of English Language and Literacy Among Young People in
Seven Communities. Hectorville, S.A.: Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs & National
Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia.
Curriculum Framework for Kindergarten to Year 12 Education in Western Australia. Perth, WA: The Curriculum Council
of Western Australia (1998).
Aboriginal Perspectives Across the Curriculum (1995). Adelaide, SA: Department of Education and Children’s Services (1995)
Department of Education, Training and Employment. (2000). Aboriginal Voices: activities and resources. Perspectives
of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Curriculum Resources Unit, Seacombe Gardens, SA.
Eades, D.(1993) Aboriginal English, Pen Note 93, Newtown, NSW, Primary English Teaching Association.
Eades, D. (1992). Aboriginal English and the Law: Communicating with Aboriginal English Speaking Clients: Handbook
for Legal Practitioners. Brisbane: Queensland Law Society.
Eagleson, R. D., Kaldor, S. & Malcolm, I. G. (1982). English and the Aboriginal Child. Canberra: Curriculum
Development Centre.
Goulburn Valley Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (1998). Deadly eh, Cuz: Teaching Speakers of Koorie English.
Shepparton, Vic.: Goulburn Valley Aboriginal Education Consultative Group.
Haebich, A. (1988). For their own good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900-1940.
Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press.
Harkins, J. (1994). Bridging two Worlds: Aboriginal English and Cross-cultural Understanding. St Lucia, Qld: University
of Queensland Press.
Heath, S. B. & Mangiola, L. (1991). Children of Promise: Literate Activity in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse
Classrooms. Washington, DC: National Education Association.
14
Keen, I. (ed.) Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in Settled Australia (pp. 97-115). Canberra: Aboriginal
Studies Press. [Includes Diana Eade’s insightful chapter on Aboriginal English, ‘They don’t speak an
Aboriginal language, or do they?’]
Lo Bianco, J., Liddicoat, A. J. & Crozet, C. (eds) (1999). Striving for the Third Place: Intercultural
Competence Through Language Education. Melbourne: Language Australia.
Malcolm, I. G. (1995). Language and Communication Enhancement for Two-Way Education. Report to
the Department of Employment, Education and Training. Perth: Centre for Applied Language Research,
Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I.G. (2000). Aboriginal English research: an overview. Asian Englishes 3 (2), 9-31.
Malcolm, I.G. (2001). Two-way English and the bicultural experience. In B. Moore (ed.) Who’s Centric
Now? The Present State of Post-Colonial Englishes. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 219-240.
Malcolm, I.G. (2001). Aboriginal English: adopted code of a surviving culture. In D. Blair and P. Collins
(eds.) English in Australia. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 202-222.
Malcolm, I.G. (2001). Aboriginal English Genres in Perth. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language
and Literacy Research, Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I.G. (2002) Fixed and flexible framing: literacy events across cultures. In C. Barron, N.
Bruce and D. Nunan (eds.) Knowledge and Discourse: Towards an Ecology of Language. London:
Longman, 267-283.
Malcolm, I.G. (2002). Aboriginal English: What you gotta know. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years,
10 (1), 9-27.
Malcolm, I. G., Haig, Y., Könisgberg, P., Rochecouste, J., Collard, G., Hill, A. & Cahill, R. (1999).
Towards More User-friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. Mount Lawley: Centre for
Applied Language and Literacy Research, Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I. G., Haig, Y., Königsberg, P., Rochecouste, J., Collard, G., Hill, A., & Cahill, R. (1999).
Two-way English: Towards More User-friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. Perth, WA:
Education Department of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I.G. and Königsberg, P.(1995). Some features of Australian Aboriginal English. In McRae D.,
Langwij comes to School: Promoting Literacy Among Speakers of Aboriginal English and Australian
Creoles. Canberra: Department of Employment, Education and Training, 30-31.
Malcolm, I. G., & Koscielecki, M. M. (1997). Aboriginality and English: Report to the Australian
Research Council. Mt Lawley, WA: Centre for Applied Language Research, Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I. G., & Rochecouste, J. (2001). Aboriginal English Genres in the Yamatji Lands of Western
Australia. Revised edition Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research, Edith
Cowan University.
Malcolm, I.G. & Rochecouste, J. (2002). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literacy in higher
education. Commissioned paper for the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Australian Research
Consortium Workplan. Melbourne: Victoria University.
15
Malcolm, I.G. and Rochecouste, J. (2000). Event and story schemas in Australian Aboriginal English. English
World-Wide, 21 (2), 261-289.
Malcolm, I. G., & Sharifian, F. (2002). Aspects of Aboriginal English oral discourse: An application of cultural schema
theory. Discourse Studies, 4(2), 169-181.
Matwiejcyk, R. et al. (1993) ESL in the Mainstream Teacher Development Course. Adelaide, SA: Department of
Education and Children’s Services.
Nero, S. (2001) Englishes in Contact; Anglophone Carribean Students in an Urban College, Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press.
NSW Board of Studies (1995). Aboriginal Literacy Resource Kit. Sydney: NSW Board of Studies. [Includes a booklet on
Aboriginal English by Diana Eades].
Palaca, A. (2001) Liberating American Ebonics from Euro-English. College English 63 (3), 326-352.
Reynolds, H. (1998). This Whispering In Our Hearts. St. Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin. [Stories of early settlers who
opposed injustices towards Aboriginal people]
Reynolds, H. (1999). Why Weren’t we Told?: Personal Search for the Truth about our History. Ringwood, Vic.: Viking. [An
engaging autobiography, covering the major issues which Reynold’s other books deal with in a more academic fashion].
Reynolds, H. (1990). The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European invasion of Australia (rev. ed.).
Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books. [Reynold’s ground-breaking book bringing key historical documents back to the public eye.]
Ryder, B., Rider, L. & Brandon-Stewart, G. (1996) Aboriginal Studies Curriculum: A Teachers Guide for Western
Australian Schools., Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia.
Sharifian, F. (2001). Schema-based processing in Australian speakers of Aboriginal English. Language and Intercultural
Communication. 1 (2), 120-134
Sharifian, F. (2001). Association-Interpretation: A research technique in cultural and cognitive linguistics, Applied
Language & Literacy Research (ALLR), 2 (1), Available:
http://www.cowan.edu.au/ses/research/CALLR/onlinejournal/2001/Sharifian01.htm
Wolfram, W., Christian, D. & Adger, C. (1999). Dialects in Schools and Communities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [A book for
teachers based on long-term work in bidialectal education in the USA]
Wray, A. Trott, K., & Bloomer, A. (1998). Projects in Linguistics: A Practical Guide to Researching Language. London: Arnold.
16
Related and
Recommended Websites
The Aboriginal English Website of the Centre for Applied Language and Literacy
Research at Edith Cowan University.
www.cowan.edu.au/ses/research/CALLR/AENG/entry.htm
University of New England Aboriginal English Website (part of a site on Language
Varieties)
www.une.edu.au/langnet/aboriginal.htm
Developing Two-Way Bidialectal Education – the Website of an ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning professional
development conference
members.iinet.net.au/~lingwa/ABC/menu.html
Center for Applied Linguistics (USA) site on Dialects and ‘Ebonics’ (African American Vernacular English)
www.cal.org/topics/dialects.html
Handbook of WA Languages South of the Kimberley
coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/AborigPages/LANG/WA/wahbk.htm
Aboriginal Languages of Australia map – a sample provided on AboriginalAustralia.com
www.aboriginalaustralia.com/Culture/nations/horton.cfm
Aboriginal Languages of Australia, WWW Virtual Library
www.dnathan.com/VL/austLang.htm
Australian Aboriginal Writers
www.vicnet.net.au/~ozlit/aborigwr.html
Aboriginal Studies Press
www.aiatsis.gov.au/archprod/aspc/aboriginal_studies_press.htm
Magabala Books – publishers of many books by Indigenous Australians, including a number in Aboriginal English.
www.magabala.com/
WWW Virtual Library – Aboriginal Studies
www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Aboriginal.html
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
www.aiatsis.gov.au/index.htm
Reconciliation Australia
www.reconciliationaustralia.org.au
17
18
Video
Scripts
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
MICHELLE WHITE – Journalist:
Hi there, I’m Michelle White. I’m a Nyungar journalist here in Perth, in fact,
I was one of the first Aboriginal cadets taken on by the ABC.
As a journo it’s my job to write and present news stories in Standard
Australian English, but when I’m yarning with my family or with my mates, like
my colleague down in Bunbury, Narelle Thorne, I don’t talk like this. I use
Aboriginal English.
Imagine if we were able to read the news using home talk.
(Location: Radio Station – Narelle Thorne reporting in Aboriginal English.)
NARELLE THORNE – Journalist:
“Ay ya you mob, big fire was in town t’day they called 35 firefighters to pud id out. After the big fire
there big storm. It’s comin in da town, you fellas bedder move out or ya get blown away!!!”
(Home scene showing stereo, non-Aboriginal person listens with pained, puzzled expression and turns back to
his newspaper.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Aboriginal English, that might’ve sounded ‘funny’ or ‘wrong’.
Some people even dismiss it as just an inferior way of speaking. But for us, it’s normal. It’s the way
we’ve grown up learning to speak. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just the way it is.
We hope this series of videos will help give you a greater understanding of how Aboriginal English has
evolved and why it’s so important to value and accept it as a language in its own right.
Let’s start by looking at how Australian English and Aboriginal English have developed.
(Overlay of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal child)
(Graphic model of how Aboriginal and Australian English have evolved.)
Before colonisation, there were over 250 Aboriginal languages, with at least
as many dialects spoken in Australia.
(Scene depicting Ningale Lawford singing in traditional language.)
(Illustrations of first contact between Aboriginal people and nonAboriginal people.)
20
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
When the British colonised this country Aboriginal people used
their own pronounciation and rules when communicating with
English speakers. Out of this communication, in which neither
side knew the language of the other, developed a pidgin.
(Archival footage of non-Aboriginal man talking to a group of Aboriginal
stockmen in pidgin.)
In some settings, when pidgin was used more widely, children
grew up using it as their first language and so it expanded into
a new language – a ‘creole’.
In Australia, forms of creole spread right across the top of the continent. In WA it’s mainly spoken in
the Kimberley.
(Nigale Lawford speaking creole.)
But in regions where Aboriginal people have had more concentrated contact with the English speaking
settlers or where their traditional languages were forbidden, Aboriginal English developed instead.
(Scene of Don Collard at BBQ speaking Aboriginal English)
(Survival Concert scenes.)
Aboriginal people soon made English their own and maintained this new language to replace their
traditional languages they were often not permitted to use.
This language became the vehicle in which their identity and
culture could be maintained.
While the distinctiveness of Aboriginal English has made it a
carrier of identity for Aboriginal people, for other Australians it
may be just seem like a slang or a lazy way of speaking.
It’s important to note that Aboriginal English has evolved
separately but at the same time as Standard Australian
English which is now this country’s official accepted language
of education, literature and the media.
So, in Australia, we can say we have a language ecosystem: that is, a combination of languages which
exist along side each other.
21
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
(Location: ABMUSIC. Students present their points of view)
Each language system is –
SPEAKER 1
“a vehicle for carrying the culture and identity of it’s speakers”
SPEAKER 2
“a successful tool for communication”
SPEAKER 1
“a mother tongue and home language”
SPEAKER 2
“and it has its own ways of working”
SPEAKER 3
“each language changes according to the needs of those who use it”
SPEAKER 4
“each language represents the mind set of the people who use it”
SPEAKER 3
“but it maintains links with the parent language”
SPEAKER 4
“each language continues to change, only dead languages don’t evolve.”
(Scene of Aboriginal people at Survival Concert.)
(Scene of non-Aboriginal people in mall.)
In the case of Aboriginal people, at least when they speak to each other, they
use Aboriginal English.
Non-Aboriginal people use varieties of Australian English.
Over time, the gap between these two dialects has widened and the two
cultures and their two meaning systems have existed independently of each
other, rarely overlapping, but frequently colliding when miscommunication
leads to misunderstanding.
(Scene of the Collards and the research team at Wave Rock and Hippo’s
Yawn)
SYLVIA COLLARD:
“To us it was very spiritual. We come here, we come and we meet our people, that was gone before us and it make
you very angry when you come here and there’s nothing left. Make me angry.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Sylvia and Don Collard have been camping at this cave in Hyden known as
Hippo’s Yawn for decades. Throughout that time they have continued to
watch over this place. They say it’s a tradition to leave your mark to let others
know that you’ve passed through.
GLENYS COLLARD:
“All us kids left our names here, our names been here.”
22
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
SYLVIA COLLARD:
“The two boys I lost from Sister Kate’s, their names’ were here. They were taken from here and they’re still gone off
here now. Nothing.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In recent times instead of leaving traditional marks like the hand prints at
nearby Mulka’s cave, visiting Aboriginal people wrote their names in English.
But the local council viewed these markings as graffiti and cleaned up the
cave for the tourists.
SYLVIA COLLARD:
“I couldn’t explain how we feel inside. I cried when I come here and looked
here, not a thing here, there was nothing here for us.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
It’s ironic that while the Hippo’s Yawn names have been lost forever the
Collards claim many of the handprints at nearby Mulka’s Cave were put there more recently, yet they remain for the
tourists to enjoy.
PATRICIA KONIGSBERG – Educator/Linguist, Department of Education and Training:
“Just like the graffiti’s been removed from the cave so Aboriginal English is being ignored. In schools and society in
general, people like to pretend it doesn’t exist and when it does exist they dismiss it as just some rubbish talk, just
as they dismissed the graffiti.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
For many Aboriginal people the destruction of the these markings at Hippo’s Yawn, Hyden is symbolic of the
constant struggle Aboriginal people face to be understood in their own country.
(Overlay illustration of the Warygul and of Aboriginal hunters.)
Of the 200 – 300 languages spoken before white contact,
only about 90 are still alive today and of these, less than
20 are in a relatively healthy state.
Aboriginal people are losing their traditional languages at
the rate of about 2 per year.
23
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
PATRICIA KONIGSBERG:
“Aboriginal English is a dialect just as much as Singaporean English or
Black American English is a dialect of English. So also is Standard
Australian English a dialect of English. There is however a big difference
between Standard Australian English and Aboriginal English because of
conceptualisation. Aboriginal English carries a world view that is
significantly different to the Western world view that is carried by people
who speak Australian English.”
(Scene: Kevin Dolman, Indigenous Support Services, in office.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In order to try and survive in both worlds many Aboriginal people have
adopted a practice called code switching. They change the way they speak depending on whom they’re speaking to.
KEVIN DOLMAN – Lawyer:
“Language is one of the strongest parts of your culture and so keeping Aboriginal English alive. It’s not a matter of
keeping it alive, it stays alive and it’s a way of communicating – it’s there all the time.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Law graduate Kevin Dolman will use ‘flash talk’ at work but when he’s at home or in the community he knows it’s
not appropriate.
KEVIN DOLMAN:
“Absolutely. And if I say that word “absolutely” or... I remember one time I said “fantastic” over something and .... this
old bloke looks at me and goes “fantastic – what does that mean?” Yeah, you do become accountable for your
language and it does take time to warm up especially when I go home. I suppose it’s harder as well because I should
actually know my language, the Aranta language.”
(Scene: Kim Farmer introduces himself to Abmusic class.)
KIM FARMER:
“Morning class, I’m Kim Farmer. I’m a trainee lecturer at Abmusic. I ‘ve
studied a course ‘ere for the three years, I’m in my second year of training.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Code switching is quite common amongst Aboriginal people, the way they
speak to each other, is different to the way they’d speak to a nonAboriginal person.
Abmusic College in Perth has Aboriginal students of all ages, from all over
Australia. They’re from a variety of language groups and country, yet they
all speak Aboriginal English.
24
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
(Scene: Kim Farmer talks to class.)
“Yeah, I feel if you’re gonna be shame, you’re not gonna get anywhere
I suppose. I mean, I’ve always sorda realised like nah, sorda, I don’ wanna do
this, it’s too much shame you know.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
The College encourages students to code switch all the time. They can use
hometalk or Standard Australian English to express themselves.
MARTIN SMITH – Director, Abmusic:
“One of the courses we do run here is called “Public Speaking” and we use
Ernie Dingo as a classic example.”
(Scene – Ernie Dingo doing a television commercial promoting Western Australia)
“What makes Ernie so attractive in a sense is that Ernie’s Ernie and he talks like an Aboriginal person but he’s also
able to use the codes as well, very well and he’s a classic example.”
(Scene – Abmusic musicians)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
But it’s important to note that when an Aboriginal person code switches, it’s not just a matter of just changing
grammar or pronounciation, it requires a fundamental change in cultural perspective to be able to move successfully
in both worlds.
MARTIN SMITH
I recall when I was working in the school system, I remember that when I’d
worked throughout the term, now towards the end of term I’d start to talk a
lot like the teachers but during the holidays I would then start to talk a lot
like, you know, back to like how I normally talk, as a Nyungar person. But
then, when I came back to school from the holidays they’d be saying well,
you’re talking a lot like a Nyungar now. My family would say that to me too,
you have to be a bit careful about the way you talk. Because it’s not good to
try and put the talk on when you are in a Nyungar setting as they’d be saying
like “who does this bloke think he is?”. You know, those sorts of things.
(Scene – Abmusic singer)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Some people might think that Aboriginal English is just a slang or an accent. A non-Aboriginal person might even say
that they code switch too, that they speak more informally around their family and friends. But there is a difference...
25
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
KEN WYATT – Director of Aboriginal Education, Department of Education and Training:
“It’s not just the words, it’s the body language that goes with it. So it’s the
combination that makes Aboriginal English powerful – and there are
expressions and terms that we use that have a very particular meaning.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
However, for some Aborginal people code switching is just too hard and that’s
why services which deal specifically with Aboriginal people are so important.
(Noongar Alcohol Substance Abuse Service [NASAS]/Aboriginal Legal
Service [ALS] overlay)
An Aboriginal person might not be able to get their message across to a nonAboriginal doctor or lawyer. So they go to the Aboriginal Legal Service or Medical Service because they know they’ll
be understood.
(Scene from play ‘One Day in ‘67’)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In recent years, Aboriginal English has gained more recognition. It’s even been used more often by Aboriginal writers.
But the extent to which Aboriginal English is used is really determined by the audience the author is trying to reach.
For instance, if the Aboriginal writer wants to push a message home to a non-Aboriginal audience, then they have to
write in a way that their audience can understand.
(Scene from play)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
This play, One Day in 67, was written by Mitch Torres and tells the story of the ‘67 referendum through the eyes of
three north-west Aboriginal women.
DAVID MILROY – Artistic Director, Yiira Yaakin:
“Well I don’t think it was that difficult for audiences to understand what the
language was. I think they could follow the language. And it’s wonderful to sit
in an audience and hear the Aboriginal audience cracking up and laughing at
some of the jokes or the language in there and seeing how the nonIndigenous audience is thinking ‘Should we laugh at this or should we keep
our mouths shut’. So it is empowering in that sense.”
26
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
(Scene from play.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
David Milroy believes it’s imperative Aboriginal stories be told by Aboriginal
people.
DAVID MILROY:
“With Aboriginal writers, they’re going to go back to their families and make
sure what they’re telling should be aired publicly. If we’re talking about
cultural issues and social/political issues, it is often important that the writer
goes back and checks those with the families and communities first before it
gets put out onto the stage. Unfortunately, when we get non-Indigenous
writers doing that, they don’t have any need to do that, you know, there’s no sort of responsibility back towards the
community, so if it does go horribly wrong, it’s generally the community that suffers not the writer.”
(Scene from Survival Concert 2002.)
Aboriginal people hold all sorts of jobs and positions of power. When they’re dealing with issues such as Native Title,
cultural rights, state and national politics, health, education and housing, they’re often using their own personal
points of reference just as non-Aboriginal people do.
ROBERT EGGINGTON – Director, Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation
“Some people would go as far as saying language is the most basic
foundation of culture and that without language culture doesn’t exist.
Language is also one of the very first aspects of our culture that they
destroyed in the sense of prohibiting Aboriginal people from speaking
language, thereforth breaking down those cultural foundations and, you
know, the spirtual core of our life.”
(Scene from Survival Concert 2002)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In summary, Aboriginal people would say that if you honour our culture you
must honour our language and you have to remember that it’s easier to learn
another language if your home language can also be used.
PRESENTOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
“We hope this video has given you an insight into how Aboriginal English has evolved.
This video is one in a series of four. If you’d like to learn more about Aboriginal English have a look at our other programs.”
27
Video Scripts
A Shared World of Communication
(Overlay of title: WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF TALK
A Shared World of Communication
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Moving Into Other Worlds)
END OF SCRIPT
28
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
NARELLE THORNE – Journalist/Newsreader:
“Hello, I’m Narelle Thorne, I’m a journalist and newsreader
with the ABC in the south west of WA, but my mob isn’t
originally from here, we’re from up Cue way.
In this video we wanna tell you about how Aboriginal English
expresses the way we think and view the world; in other words
it’s about the conceptual dimensions of Aboriginal English.
(Scene from Surivial Concert 2002.)
You see, how my people see the world is reflected in the way we speak. We hope that by telling you a
little bit about how and why Aboriginal English has developed you’ll understand why it’s important to
us that others accept and value the way we talk.”
(Scene of river with overlay map of Australia.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Before European settlement, Australia was a rich
tapestry of different speech communities. It’s estimated
there were about 250 different languages and perhaps
the same number of dialects.
But as we know, most of those languages have been lost
and English is now the most common language spoken
by Indigenous Australians.
However, it’s not the same English as that used by most
other Australians. It’s a new English – Aboriginal English.
(Acting Scene, location – Perth, on a bench)
DERECK:
KYLIE:
“‘ow ya goin Siss, what you up to?”
“Naah – nothin much … I’m waitin for this girl da ‘urry
up …. she’s comin from de hospital dere she’s takin
‘er time.”
DERECK:
“Yeh you know they drag their feet all de time.”
KYLIE:
“True…”.
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Edith Cowan University Professor of Linguistics, Ian Malcolm, explains
to us how Aboriginal English has evolved separately to Australian English.
29
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
PROF. IAN MALCOLM – Edith Cowan University:
“We have on the one side one formant of Aboriginal English and that’s
Aboriginal. On the other side we have – English. To start off with they were
both completely separate. Now the British came bringing many different
Englishes with them. The Aboriginal people were still on this side of the line,
but eventually the Aboriginal people started to use some of the English words
in order to communicate with the settlers.
(British Flag overlay.)
(Montage of stolen generation images, old photos of people in chains.)
What happened was, not that they changed their whole way of thinking to this
way of thinking, but that they clothed these thoughts with words from the
various Englishes that they were exposed to. Eventually however, things
stabilised into what we call a pre-pidgin.
Now around about that time was when the Aboriginal people needed a means
of communication with one another because more Aboriginal peoples were
coming from the lands they had been displaced from and they needed to have
a means of communication and they couldn’t communicate across the
Aboriginal languages. So English started to serve an Aboriginal purpose.
That was the fundamental thing that set Aboriginal English in motion.
Aboriginal English, I would say, still exists mainly on this side of the line and
has been maintained because it is useful for Aboriginal communication.”
(Scene of Aboriginal people walking in bush & standing under trees by car.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Some Indigeous Australians are bidialectal. They’ve learnt to use two different Englishes – the one
they use at home or with their community, and the one they use in school or in non-Aboriginal society.
(BBQ scene & children playing.)
A lot of people dismiss Aboriginal English as slang, or just a lazy way of speaking. They assume we all
speak the same English and that it’s just that some people are better educated and have a better
command of the language.
But when this assumption is made, Aboriginal people are greatly disadvantaged because they don’t
conform to what’s considered ‘normal’.
The way they speak is treated as inferior and they’re classed as non-achievers.
30
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
KEN WYATT – Director of Aboriginal Education, Department
of Education and Training, WA
“I’ll tell you what one of the problems is and it’s a mind set
that’s developed that we can’t speak properly.
Aboriginal English today is as significant as it was when we
grew up as children. It hasn’t changed. It’s still dynamic.
The other thing, it keeps our identity as a people and I think
that’s very important and the other part too would be that
teachers need to be mindful that that’s our cultural identify
and it’s not just a home language, it’s a language we use in
the context of our interactions with our people and our families.”
(Survival concert scene.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
It’s not surprising many non-Indigenous Australians get confused by the English of Aboriginal
Australians because it basically sounds the same. In reality, though, it’s very different. In this series of
videos we want to show you just how different it really is.
On the surface it does sound the same as standard Australian English, but how much of this
conversation can you really understand?
(Acting Scene: Kylie meets Dereck walking down the street.)
KYLIE:
“Hey, never seen ya for a long time broder,
where ya goin?”
DERECK
“Where ya goin?”
KYLIE:
“Hey, na, I’m just goin up ere to see one of my
aunnies. I just came down from there
…downtown.”
DERECK:
“I’m just goin down to do some buskin.”
KYLIE:
“Wherebout”
DERECK:
“Well… I’ve got ma hole, broke.”
KYLIE:
“Jeez, broke again.… every time I see you’re
broke again.”
DERECK:
“Tell me aboud it.”
31
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
PROF. IAN MALCOLM – Edith Cowan University:
“Well how much of that conversation did you really understand? The young
man was telling the young lady that he met, that he was broke and that he was
going to do some busking. But did you notice she called him brother? And that
is not what might have been understood by a non-Aboriginal speaker.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
When Aboriginal people use ‘home-talk’ – their own English dialect –
non-Aboriginal people constantly misinterpret what they’re saying...
Take this scenario for instance...
(Acting Scene, location: Office situation – continues to cafe.)
KYLIE: (Walks past desk and says)
“I’m going to lunch now.”
MICHELLE: (Looks up from working at desk)
“OK.”
KYLIE:
“OK, bye.”
KYLIE: (eating lunch by herself)…
MICHELLE: (walks up and says)…
“Hi Kylie.”
KYLIE: (eating lunch)…
“Mm.”
MICHELLE:
“I didn’t know you came here to this café.”
KYLIE:
“Mm.”
MICHELLE:
“Do you mind if I join you?”
KYLIE: (waves her hand)
“No, that’s OK”.
MICHELLE: (takes seat)
“Cool. I didn’t know you come here for lunch.”
KYLIE:
“Yeah, yeah. I norrmally come in here for lunch.
I keep asking you to come with me but …..”
MICHELLE:
“When did you ask me?”
KYLIE:
“All the time. I say I’m going for lunch now.”
MICHELLE:
“I didn’t realise you were asking me. I just
thought you were telling me that you were
going.”
KYLIE:
“No….. Yeah……Ah… (wave of hand)
doesn’t matter.”
32
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
(Overlay grab of women playing cards.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Aboriginal English is something of a mixed blessing for
Indigenous people because it really has no currency beyond
their community.
That’s why people who speak standard Australian English
treat Aboriginal English speakers like they have a language
deficiency.
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“Yes, well I think this is the irony of the situation. Aboriginal
people, in most cases, are managing two dialects in the course of their everyday living…and the
people very often, who criticise the way in which they use language, are themselves mono-dialectal,
so that actually, Aboriginal people are managing a more complex linguistic situation than those who
criticise them sometimes.”
(Acting Scene: Kylie, Dereck and Michelle (reading newspaper) sit at bus stop).
KYLIE: (Pointing to photo on paper/magazine)
“Um, ‘cuse me, ‘ose that woman on the front
dere?”
MICHELLE:
“Sorry?”
KYLIE:
“‘ose that yorga on the front?”
MICHELLE:
“Yorga? What’s a yorga?”
KYLIE:
“Don ya know what I’m sayin? ‘ose that woman
on de front, ya know?”
DERECK: (pointing)…
“‘ose this person ‘ere’”
MICHELLE:
“Do you want it?” (paper)
DERECK:
“Ah, no, no, no, no, no. I jus, we just wonered
‘ose on the front, tha’s all.”
(Michelle scuttles away from bus stop)
KYLIE:
“Hey right, aaaahhh….”
DERECK:
“We’re not gonna bite ya!”
DERECK:
“Wadda wadda.”
KYLIE:
“They take off straighd away ‘ay’.”
DERECK: (smelling under both arms)…
“Must be me ‘ay’.” (both laugh)
KYLIE:
“You got no sense.”
DERECK:
“Never mind.”
33
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“This kind of stigma that is attached to the way Aboriginal people speak is
something that they have to endure very often in public situations.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Through decades of research both here and overseas we know that
conceptualisation, the way people interpret the world, forms and transforms
language rather than the reverse. This breakthrough offers us a new way of
thinking when it comes to understanding Aboriginal English.
(Scene of people cooking bardies on BBQ.)
(Montage of stolen generation images, old photos of people in chains.)
Aborginal people have been displaced, abused, used and treated as second-class citizens in their own
country. They’ve suffered immensely and struggle constantly to maintain their culture and identity.
But even though the majority of their traditional languages are now extinct, they’ve created a new
dialect, one that expresses a distinctly Aboriginal view of the world.
(Archival footage of Aboriginal children singing in educational setting.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Language is a living, breathing thing – it’s constantly evolving – it’s not controlled by books, linguists,
community leaders or even the Government. As a language community, our way of speaking is our life –
language is controlled and driven by how we use it. This has been shown by recent cognitive research.
DR FARZAD SHARIFIAN:
“It’s a new approach to the study of language which looks at language as
reflecting and expressing deeper conceptualisations. So we found it quite
insightful and we applied it to the study of Aboriginal English and it really has
shown, it has really worked quite well in sort of, helping us understand the
conceptual levels of Aboriginal language.”
(Archival footage of beach scene followed by contemporary city mall scene.)
34
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Language reflects the way we see and structure our world; in
other words, our language reflects our worldview.
So by looking at the language, we can relate to the lived
experiences of the speakers, to try and understand the
reason why people speak the way they do.
People from different cultures may conceptualise the world
differently and over time, they map the way they see the
world onto the way they speak.
(Scene of Don Collard with grannies.)
(Categories, Schemas and Metaphors overlay.)
DR FARZAD SHARIFIAN:
“By conceptualisation we mean the way we categorise experiences. Also, the way we visualise and
package reality and also the way we make blends from different domains and sort of, come up with
metaphors. So different processes are also included in the conceptualisation.”
(Overlay of Aboriginal boy and non-Aboriginal girl smiling.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Take for instance categories. We need to categorise things in order to understand them but the
categories an Aboriginal person uses might be totally different
to a non-Aboriginal person.
What image does the word kangaroo conjure up?
(Overlay of kangaroo being cooked.)
Research has shown many Aboriginal children categorise the
kangaroo as food while non-Aboriginal children see it as
something cute and fluffy.
Another tool of conceptualisation is by using schemas.
DR FARZAD SHARIFIAN:
“Schemas are mental pictures or templates, that we use in order to organise or package our view of
the world.”
35
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
(Scene of non-Aboriginal home.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
What about the word home?
Does it conjure up an image of where you live... your house and yard ?
(Scene of Aboriginal home situation.)
Or does it make you think of the people around you – your family?
GLENYS COLLARD:
“The home’s everywhere where your family is. So that even that concept
doesn’t fit in with the house and the bed. You know, it doesn’t matter if
there’s three or four kids in the bed and ya get the Wadjella teachers sayin’
it’s really, really sad the kids can’t even do their homework because there’s so many people at the
house and, ya know, there’s so much noise and we’re born into that.”
(Overlay of Wave Rock)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
The way a non-Aboriginal and an Aboriginal person perceive this famous Western Australian landmark
would depend on what schema they’re using.
(Scene of Wave Rock.)
(Glenys Collard and Dr Farzad Sharifian, near campfire.)
FARZAD:
“Yeah they said, you know, it’s an overhanging curve which has been caused by water
GLENYS:
“The Wadjellas reckon?”
erosion and weathering over many centuries.”
FARZAD
“Yeah.”
GLENYS:
“No, that’s not, not our mob though.”
FARZAD:
“Ooh, what do you reckon then?”
GLENYS:
“That’s the Wargyl, ya know, come from the
Swan River, come right through.”
36
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
(Overlay of Wargyl drawing.)
(Grass tree overlay.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
We could use these two grass trees, or balga bushes as
another example.
What do you see?
FARZAD:
“I can see two er, balga trees, they’re called
balga trees, they’re just two trees.”
GLENYS:
“Well they’re trees but they’re people. This eh
big tall one is a Nyungar man and the smaller
the Nyungar woman.”
(Metaphors overlay.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Finally, we use metaphors in conceptualisation.
But again, the way Aboriginal people use metaphors is different to the way someone who speaks
Australian English. For example, in Aboriginal English the boundary between animal, human and land
is less clear than in Australian English.
(Professor Ian Malcolm and Glenys Collard sit around talking by camp fire.)
IAN:
“So when are the boys coming, Glenys?”
GLENYS:
“They’ll be here drekly when the moon jumps
IAN:
“Oh, you means when it rises higher in the
GLENYS:
“Yeah, in a minute, drekly they’re comin’, but
up a bit more.”
sky?”
then, ya know, it jumps righd up, but that’s
lader on.”
IAN:
“Ahh.”
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“Aboriginal language works in different categories and you
often find that the categories that seem to fit in standard English just don’t correspond to the way in
which Aboriginal people picture things. Another obvious example would be the case of the term ‘he’,
or ‘she’ or ‘it’ which we use to refer to a subject whether its male or female or non-aminate or, or
perhaps non-human. In Aboriginal English very often these merge so that just one term (‘he’) can
suffice for all of them.”
37
Video Scripts
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
(Categories, Schemas and Metaphors overlay.)
(A walk in the bush: Alison Hill, non-Aboriginal person.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Categories, schemas and metaphors are the three main ways language and
thought work together, for example, researchers have found that the
Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people visualise a walk in the bush is
very different.
(Aboriginal family walking through the bush.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
What we’ve tried to show you in this video is that even though the two
dialects often sound the same, Aborginal English and Standard Australian
English are very different and that the greatest differences between these two languages is at the
conceptualisation level, the “unseen” level.
NARELLE THORNE – Journalist:
“The way our mob has formed language is the way we see the world and the way we see the world is
not likley to change.”
(Scenes of Aboriginal children playing, laughing and sitting at a table.)
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to recognise and respect each other’s ways of thinking. If we
help all children take into account these differing world views, they’ll be better able to communicate
with people of all different cultures and they’ll gain a
richer experience of the world. Aboriginal children will
find it easier to learn Standard Australian English and
non-Aboriginal children will have valuable experience in
understanding different ways of thinking and talking.
If you want to learn more about Aboriginal English
there are three more titles that you might want to
check out.
See you later fellas.”
(Overlay of title: WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF TALK
A Shared World of Communication
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Moving Into Other Worlds)
END OF SCRIPT
38
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
NARELLE THORNE – Journalist:
“Hello, I’m Narelle Thorne, I’m a journalist and newsreader
with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation here in Bunbury.
I’m not local but my mob are from the Murchison area.
But if you’ve seen any of the other videos in this series,
you’ll probably know me from there.
The video you’re about to watch is one of four in a series
about Aboriginal English.
We’re going to give you an insight into how and why
Aboriginal English has evolved and what can be done to
develop and foster both-ways learning.”
(Archival video of land rights march – ’70s.)
JENNY NUNN – Coordinator, Student Services, Department of Education and Training:
“So Ron, I didn’t do any Aboriginal studies when I was at primary school or university actually and I’ve
been working in education now for 20 years. So what do you see in some of the books that are being
used in schools to teach kids?”
RON BRADFORD – A/Corordinator, Aboriginal Education:
“I don’t see very much in our textbooks at all.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
You only have to look in the history section of your local
library to understand why Aboriginal people believe many of
these books are offensive. It might also explain why so many
people hold such strange ideas.
(Scene of Jenny and Ron in library.)
RON BRADFORD:
“This is talking about the battle of Pinjarra and from an
European point of view it’s being presented as battle of
Pinjarra whereas from an Aboriginal point of view, Nyungar,
from around the area would present it as a massacre.”
39
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
PATRICIA KONIGSBERG, Educator/Linguist, Department of Education and Training:
“In the material today used within schools most of the materials were written
by non-Aboriginal people taking a Western world view, and a western point of
view about the events that have happened. So this is insulting to Aboriginal
people because it never takes into account their feelings or their real
experiences that have happened.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Even today there are many examples of how Aboriginal history is still being
misrepresented from an Anglo-Australian viewpoint.
(Classroom scene.)
Is it any wonder Aboriginal students may feel alienated in the classroom? To expect Aboriginal
students to learn from textbooks and a school curriculum that comes solely from the dominant Anglo
culture is to ask them to accept their own irrelevance.
(Scene from Girrawheen Senior High School: boy reading Standard Australian English.)
“Grandmother asked, ‘Where are all you children going?’ The children replied, ‘Grandma, Lana’s found
a new place where we can play and it’s not very far away. She’s going to take us all to this new place
so we can all play.’”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
How often do you hear or see Aboriginal English used in the media or literature? How often is it used
in class?
(Scene from Girrawheen Senior High School: girl reading Aboriginal English.)
“Where all you liddle fullahs goin?” “We jus goin over ere cause Lana wonna show us somethink.
It’s not a long way away Nan hits jus ere.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Aboriginal English texts, whether written or oral, contain rich traditions and
values. They’re often told jointly by a few people. They’re not linear and the
experience is more important than the form. These texts are often multilayered and cyclical.
Basing an education system only around the written word is unfair as
Aboriginal people pass on their history orally and books written by nonAboriginal peole can’t give the core meaning of Aboriginal culture – Aboriginal
yarning does.
40
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
GLENYS COLLARD – Consultant, Aboriginal English, Edith
Cowan University:
“I did the spiral to try and represent how the past is the
present and the present is the future by using the spiral.
(Overlay of spiral)
It’s family, it’s time, it’s knowledge. It’s the rules, a lot of rules
come from that. Telling us what we can and what we can’t do.”
(Classroom scene)
PATRICIA KONIGSBERG:
“The onus has always been on Aboriginal people to learn standard Australian English. Society has
never tried to work the other way to take into account and accommodate different ways of speaking.
So basically, there was a real true shut off instead of trying to have a flow of real communication
going, there’s usually a real shut off of ‘You don’t speak my way so therefore I won’t listen to you.’”
(Classroom at Dryandra.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
From the moment an Aboriginal child enters the classroom he or she may feel left out, the entire
structure is different.
The langage that is used in school is an issue, it’s linked to
middle-class Anglo culture. It’s more familiar to the nonAboriginal students in the classroom because it’s more likely
that’s how they speak at home.
But the Aboriginal student has grown up speaking another
type of English – Aboriginal English. It’s the way they’ve heard
family and friends talk all their lives. It’s an important part of
their culture and identity.
(Scene of Aboriginal kids at home in Kondinin.)
The misinterpretation of words is another example of how
messages in one dialect often take on a totally different meaning in the other.
41
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
GLENYS COLLARD:
“All the kids were sitting down while this teacher’s reading this story from
the book and then he, he was listening but, the little fella he got up and
started hopping around there a bit and she’s saying ‘sit down, sit down’ and
then he got up again and he started hopping towards the doorway and she
said: ‘Hey, where you going?’ And he said: ‘I’m goin da have a piss Miss.’
And she said: ‘Oh! I beg your pardon – and you keep going, you go and see
Mr ‘such-and-such’.”
(School grounds scene.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Because the teacher didn’t tell him using this word in this way in the
classroom was inappropriate he didn’t know why he was being punished.
(School classroom scene.)
TEACHER:
“Can you think of a good word beginning with ‘m’? Jasmine, would you be able to think
of something that you could tell me?”
(Jasmine shakes head.)
TEACHER:
“Can’t think of anything”?
(Jasmine shakes head.)
TEACHER:
“OK, who can help Jasmine? Antony?”
ANTONY:
“Marshmellows?”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
This is a classic example of shame. Aboriginal people often don’t like being
singled out to answer a question. From an Aboriginal point of view it’s too direct
and confrontational. A group discussion works better for Aboriginal students
because they’re used to yarning – telling stories together, not individually.
West Australian Deptartment of Education statistics show that in 2001 62.8%
of non-Indigenous students completed high school in government schools but
in the same year only 18% of their Aboriginal peers did.
42
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
MICHELLE WHITE:
“Did you feel like you were getting
singled out?”
ABMUSIC STUDENT 1: “Yeah, in a way yeah, and I felt lonely
and I didn’t like it, so ......”
MICHELLE WHITE:
“Did it make you not want to go?”
ABMUSIC STUDENT 1: “In a way, yeah, it did, but I just
thought ‘stuff em’, this is me, I am
Aboriginal, I don’t care what yous
think . We’re all equal.”
ABMUSIC STUDENT 2: “For a while I went to Senior High
School and, like, I had to change my
tone a bit, sort of like talk differently...”
ABMUSIC STUDENT 3: “You wanna express yourself and the only way you can express yourself is the
way you know how, and it’s just a matter of people trying to understand and
accepting the fact you are what you are and they can’t make you into
something you’re not.”
KEN WYATT – Director of Aboriginal Education, Department of Education and Training:
“I think it’s critical if we want children to progress and acquire the Australian Standard English
standards that we seek as education providers then it’s important too that the teachers understand
Aboriginal English, Aboriginal languages and then how that fits in context with language and literacy
development. Because if we don’t understand that we will lose our way forward in education.
But another thing I think that’s important, when we go
through teacher training we’re told to start teaching from the
point of where a child is at and if our children speak
Aboriginal English, then that two-way process must
incorporate that understanding and be taken forward from
there.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
(Scene from ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning Workshops.)
Western Australia is leading the nation in the development of
two way learning strategies. The West Australian Department
of Education and Training and Edith Cowan University have
joined forces to create the ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning Project.
Since 1995, experts in the field have been holding workshops around the State working with
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal education personnel and offering educators the chance to learn more
about two-way learning.
43
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
(Scene from ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning workshops.)
NON-ABORIGINAL GIRL: I hope that this conference will help you in your work with teachers so they
can help us learn from each other.
ABORIGINAL GIRL:
I’d like ta welcome everyone here t’day to our country, Nyungar country…”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
It’s much harder to learn in a language you do not understand than it is in your own language, but
that’s exactly what we expect from Aboriginal students.
PATRICIA KONIGSBERG:
“What is happening now is that in schools the Aboriginal speakers won’t use
Aboriginal English so they’re not showing the wealth of experience and
knowledge that they have. Their speech is getting cut off and they are not
being enabled to express themselves with feeling, with the language that
comes from their very heart.”
(Scene: Patsy Königsberg and Glenys Collard at Wave Rock.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Patricia Königsberg and Glenys Collard are two of the key people behind
the Two-Way Literacy and Learning Project. They’re a living example of how a both-ways approach
can be effective.
(Patricia and Glenys draw two-way learning diagram in the sand.)
PATRICIA:
“......we see two layers, two people learning both ways so that this person learns from
this person, this person learns from this person. While this is happening this person is
learning about themselves and this person is learning about themselves and they’re
learning to communicate with each other, to communicate together.”
GLENYS:
“For me it’s like – I’ve got to learn this way here and these fellas, it doesn’t matter –
they don’t need to learn about me. That’s
the way it is at the moment.”
44
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
(Dryandra class and Girrawheen class overlay.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
When an Aboriginal child comes to school, he or she has
already acquired a whole language in its own right that meets
their needs and serves them well. It’s important to
acknowledge that by spending time to better get to know
each other. It’s a two-way learning and two-way teaching
situation that ensures a positive learning and teaching
relationship.
AMANDA PAYNE – Teacher, Dyandra Primary School:
“I think that Delene’s been invaluable in the fact that she has a lot of background on the children I’m
working with. But also, I think, my main problem has been assumptions that I’ve made about the
home life of many of the children. Such things…I was speaking to a child the other day and
mentioned to him about doing something in his bedroom to which he replied that he didn’t have a
bedroom, he slept in the lounge and I thought well – that’s really my, I suppose, values being placed
upon them where I’m assuming that all these children go home, you know, and have a nice bedroom
to work in or whatever, so things like that you have keep check of.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Teachers Delene Corunna and Amanda Payne work in a two-way fashion to make sure their
classrooms are inclusive of all students.
DELENE CORUNNA – Teacher, Dyandra Primary School:
“I think another thing to make aware many families have
issues outside of the school that may impact on the child’s
attendance and learning and education may not be a priority
for them so we have to work with that.”
(Scene of lineup of kids outside classroom.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
We’ve got to remember that when most Aboriginal students
start school they assume everyone speaks the same as them
and if teachers are not familiar with Aboriginal English, it’s
likely they’ll assume the Aboriginal student has a language deficiency.
MICHELLE:
“Can you see the value there in using how they speak at home to build?”
AMANDA:
“Absolutely, I can. I think, you know, it’s essential you tune in to your children and so I
think, you know, this is an obvious way of doing it.”
45
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
You have to remember that language is the carrier of culture and identify. If we don’t recognise and
value this, it can undermine a child’s self esteem, self concept and ultimately affect reconciliation.
By giving Aboriginal English due recognition, Indigenous people have a far
greater chance of developing higher competency in Standard Australian
English as they no longer see it as a threat to their cultural maintenance.
(Scene of imposing looking office and bank buildings.)
Aboriginal people want their children to learn Standard English so they can
use it as a ‘tool’ to access Western institutions, such as health, education,
finance and politics in a more powerful way so they can take control of their
own lives within the non-Aboriginal system.
KEN WYATT:
“Our communities and our families operate on a survival basis and you adapt, but you don’t have to
surrender your culture and your way of speaking in totality.
I think what we have got to do as educators is be astute enough to allow both to co-exist because if
you want work within Australian society you’ve got to have Standard Australian English but it doesn’t
mean to say we diminish the importance of Aboriginal English.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
If students look at the grammatical features of Aboriginal English and then compare it to other
dialects they can start to challenge the belief that one is inferior to another.
(Scene: students in class.)
(Scene of Aboriginal homelife.)
By learning to accommodate Aboriginal English and Aborginal ways of learning
and experiencing the world not only do the Indigenous students reap the
benefits, so do all the other students. It’s not sink or swim any more,
it’s all-inclusive.
46
Video Scripts
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
NARELLE THORNE – Journalist:
“Well, there you go. Something that starts in the classroom
can spread from there. We can change the misconceptions
and attitudes about my people and help bring our worlds
together.
If you want to learn more about Aboriginal English there are
three more titles you may want to check out.
See you later fellas.”
(Overlay of:
WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF TALK
A Shared World of Communication
Now You See it Now You Don’t
Moving Into Other Worlds.)
END OF SCRIPT
47
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
MICHELLE WHITE – Journalist:
“Hi there, I’m Michelle White. I’m a journalist here in Perth, in fact, I was one
of the first Nyungar cadets taken on by the ABC.
The video you’re about to see is one in a series of four on Aboriginal English.
In this program, we’re going to have a look at what’s happened to my people
in the past and see how those events have shaped the way that we talk.
By looking back in history, you’ll be able to see how two dialects of English
have evolved in Australia – they are standard Australian English and Aboriginal
English. Both dialects have evolved side-by-side, but separately of each other.
We hope it’ll help you understand that by respecting the way we talk you’ll
also be respecting us and our culture. Let’s have a look.”
(Archival sketches.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
To try and understand how Aboriginal English has evolved we need to look at how the events that
have shaped history have also given rise to this dialect. Aboriginal English is what it is today because
of what its speakers have been through.
GLENYS COLLARD – Consultant, Aboriginal English, Edith Cowan University:
“Every Aboriginal family has been affected in some way, whether it’s been from removal of children
(the Stolen Generations) or movement from their traditional country.”
(Mungo Man – file story.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In 1968, the remains of an Aboriginal woman were discovered in a dried up
lake bed in New South Wales: she was to be known as Mungo 1.
Scientists believe that Mungo 1 was cremated about 26,000 years ago.
It’s the earliest example of a ritualised cremation ever found on this planet.
A man now known as Mungo 3 was also found a short distance away.
Fireplaces found near him prove the existence of a living community even
older than Mungo 1, at least 31,000 years ago. This discovery proved
something that Aboriginal people have always known – they have one of the
world’s most ancient, rich and diverse cultures.
48
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
What’s more, scientists discovered the ochre in Mungo Man’s
burial was from hundreds of kilometres away in the Flinders
Ranges, so it’s also evidence of the world’s first trading
system. It’s no longer possible to argue that the Aboriginal
people were simply a disorganised and primitive race. The
truth is Aboriginal people have always had a rich and complex
social system and culture.
Far from being isolated, prior to British colonisation they had
contact with Asian and European seafarers. This included
many years of cohabitation with the Baiini and at least 400
years of sustained trading with the Macassans.
(Overlay of map of Australia with trading routes.)
There was also a vast network of trade routes that criss-crossed the country. Tools, weapons, food
and information flowed freely along these trade routes.
(Archival film of preparation for a corroboree.)
Aboriginal people had an interwoven system of relationships between people and their environment.
The two are indelibly linked and this is reflected in their language. At the time Aboriginal people spoke
more than 250 languages with complex systems that expressed concepts important to them, such as
families, spirituality and land.
(Montage of different images.)
PROF. IAN MALCOLM – Edith Cowan University:
“And so over many hundreds of years the Aboriginal people
had developed ways in which they could express the
relationships that existed between one and other, and
relations between them and the environment. Their system
involved a union of language, land and worldview, the
understanding of the meaning of life.”
49
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
(Earliest pictures available of Aborginal people trading, hunting and other archival footage.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In many parts of Australia, husbands and wives came from different regions
speaking different languages, so their children grew up automatically being
multi-lingual and multi-dialectal.
From the moment Captain Cook pushed his flag in the sand and claimed
possession of this country, these two worlds have been set on a collision
course. Aboriginal people have been placed under immense pressure to
adopt, conform and assimilate to the ideology of the white supremacy the
colonisers brought with them. The new settlers regarded the original
inhabitors of this land as a primitive race that would eventually disappear.
Aboriginal people initially tried to fit the trespassers into their own system of
law. They started using gestures and their own language to try and trade and communicate the rules.
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“Well, it is reported that in 1829, when Captain Fremantle sailed up the Swan River there were
Aboriginal people standing on the banks of the river and they were calling out ‘warra warra’.
This appears to correspond to a Nyungar word that is still used today meaning bad and probably was
correctly interpreted, just meaning ‘go away’.”
(Archival footage.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
After some initial unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the Aboriginal people, the early settlers
of Port Jackson in New South Wales resorted to abducting Aboriginal people to force them to learn
English. The idea was that these people could then act as translators and interpreters and pass on
their newly acquired language. But even those who did learn English under
duress and survived the European diseases to which they had no immunity,
they didn’t understand the thinking patterns of the new arrivals. So they
applied their own broad view to this new language and changed the meanings
of many words.
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“I think the assumption was, from the beginning, that all you need to do to get
a person to learn another language, is to get them to learn different words
and so they thought that by exposing the Aboriginal people to these
differerent words they would turn them into English speakers.
50
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
Yet a language is intimately related to your human relations
and to all of the conceptualisations that you’ve grown up with.
So taking people away from their context where they have
grown up, expecting them to be able to switch to English was
quite unrealistic.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
During the early years of settlement Aboriginal people kept
their traditional languages and tried to build bridges of
communication with a new contact variety, a pidgin. In some
areas this evolved into a creole, in others it gave way to
Aboriginal English. This is explained in more detail in the video
“Shared World of Communication.”
Right from the start there were clashes in communication and culture. The British settlers quickly
rendered traditional food resources inaccessible and replaced them with European plants and stock.
When Aboriginal people exercised their rights as landowners by using these new resources, the
settlers saw them as stealing British property. These misunderstandings often ended in tragedy.
(Scene of Aboriginal men in chains.)
(Scenes from “Fire Fire Burning Bright”.)
“Fire Fire Burning Bright” is a corroboree that tells the Aboriginal story of the massacres in the Fitzroy
Crossing region. A group of Aboriginal men were accused of
stealing a bullock. They were given tickets to wear around
their necks which, unbeknown to them, marked them for
execution. They were then taken into the bush to cut wood to
what would eventually be their own funeral pyre.
Over time it’s become obvious that the reason why Aboriginal
English didn’t disappear and why Aboriginal people didn’t
learn Standard Australian English, is because they weren’t
fully integrated into British society.
51
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
DIANNE TOMAZOS – First Steps in Maths Project, Department of Education and Training:
“In my first few years I never met an Aboriginal person at all. I grew up in a
small farming community. I remember one time travelling out of town and
asking what (there were a whole lot of sheds, groups of sheds next to the
rubbish tip), and I remember asking ‘What’s that?’ and someone told me
that’s where the Aboriginal people lived.
Interesting probably, is that I actually thought that they actually wanted to live
there. I was under the impression that’s where they chose to live. I remember
feeling sorry for the children, thinking how on earth can they do their
homework and come to school with a clean nice uniform, etc., while living in a
place like that, but I still pretty much thought that it was their parents’ choice.”
(Scenes from reserve and labour site.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
In 1905, the Aborigines’ Act was drawn up to protect the so-called dying race of Aborigines.
They were sent to live on reserves or they were used as controlled labour.
Many Aboriginal English words used commonly today can be traced back to that era.
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“I think Aboriginal English is a very interesting record of the experience of Aboriginal people. It’s not
often with a language that we can trace it back to where it began. With Aboriginal English we can
trace it back to where it began and in the repertoire of Aboriginal English that exists today there are
certain forms that we can relate to different stages in the experience of Aboriginal people.
(Overlay of Aboriginal English words.)
Looking into Aboriginal English is a little like an archaeologial tell, where you
can go back and find different layers of experience. So there are some words
that are in present day Aboriginal English that have been kept from the precontact languages. In Western Australia for instance, in the South West
people will use the term ‘yorga’ for woman, ‘mudich’ for something very good
and many other terms. So there are these terms that go back that far.”
52
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
(Scenes from mission.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
By the ’30s and ’40s when it became obvious to the
Government that Aboriginal people weren’t dying out, it
adopted its next disastrous approach. An attempt to ‘breed
them out’, as Chief Protector A. O. Neville put it.
For generations many Aboriginal people were taken from their
homelands, their families were split up and their children were
institutionalised. Some were fostered to white families, others
trained to be domestics. The aim was to cut all ties with their
culture and language and integrate them into white society.
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“Aboriginal people were discouraged from using their languages and they did get to the stage where
adults didn’t want to use their own language before their own children because of the shame that
they thought was involved in using the language. However, the conceptualisations that lay behind that
language were not going to go away.”
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
For some people this assimilation worked and they hold no bitterness. For many others though,
particularly those who suffered abuse, they’ll never recover. It’s not only ruined their lives, but their
children’s too.
(Scenes of men singing and playing guitars, women with children.)
(Interview of Glenys Collard by Michelle White.)
GLENYS COLLARD:
“We got all taken away in 1961, nine of us.”
MICHELLE WHITE:
“Do you think your Mother’s ever recovered from the fact that
you were all being taken away?”
GLENYS COLLARD:
“No, they (mum and dad) can’t recover because they still
have no book or yarn that I can tell them from the Wadjellas
that gives them any understanding of why they still took them.”
(Scene of Referendum voting with the following voice over.)
“Although this doesn’t look like it, but this is a revolution. On the 27th of May 1967 white Australians
were voting in a referendum to change the Constitution.”
53
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
It’s almost unbelievable to think that it took untill 1967 for Aboriginals to be
classed as citizens. That’s when Australia held a referendum to decide if
Aboriginal people should be included in the census.
Even more noteworthy was the fact that in 1992 the High Court ruled to
change the lie that this country was founded on – that it was terra nullius:
vacant land.
During this time significant differences became evident in the way that
Aboriginal people spoke, as Professor Ian Malcolm explains.
(Scene of freedom ride/ tent embassy/campaign for rights.)
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“If I picked on one thing that is central to Australian English and to Standard Australian English which
Aboriginal English has dispensed with, it would be the way in which we use auxiliaries and copulas,
that is, we use the verb ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ to link things together.”
(Examples of Standard Aborigal English and Aboriginal English read out by Kylie and Dereck using a few
examples to demonstrate how ‘have’ and ‘be’ are left out.)
DERECK :
“We are working.”
KYLIE:
“We working.”
DERECK:
“They have gone.”
KYLIE:
“They gone.”
DERECK:
“There are birds over there.”
KYLIE:
“They got bird over there.”
DERECK:
“It was big.”
KYLIE:
“It big one ‘ay.”
DERECK:
“It got smashed, it was made of wood.”
KYLIE:
“It got smashed, made of wood.”
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“Most people would just say that they are dropping words out.
What they are doing is not dropping words out, they are
systematically changing the whole way in which English is bolted
together. ‘Be’ and ‘have’ are like the nuts and bolts of Standard
English, Aboriginal English has dispensed with them and found
other ways to make the same meanings come across.”
54
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
(Aboriginal paintins and hunting file.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Aboriginal culture has evolved like all cultures do. Acrylics
might be used for painting instead of ochres and guns might
be used for hunting instead of spears, but the underlying
values remain the same. Aboriginal English is another example
of how culture has evolved.
PATRICIA KONIGSBERG – Educator/Linguist, Department
of Education:
“Aboriginal English is a very rich dialect that holds a lot of
information and conceptualisations that are very important for us and inaccessible to a non-Aboriginal
person. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience within that language and it’s a carrier of an
entire culture.”
(Scene from ’70s of young people walking down street.)
(Overlay of book “English and the Aboriginal Child”.)
NARRATOR – MICHELLE WHITE:
Aboriginal English was first recognised by Queensland researchers back in the ’60s. In 1973, the work
was picked up in Western Australia with Dr Susan Kaldor and Professor Ian Malcolm pioneering most
of the work in this field. In fact, it was this publication that led to the Government finally
acknowledging it as a dialect.
(Overlay of BBQ bardies)
Even today, many people still don’t realise that Aboriginal
English exists. So how do we best describe it?
Let’s look at this example.
(Acting Scene – location: BBQ at Kondinin.)
GLENYS:
“Dey got too much bardie over dere.”
PROF. IAN MALCOLM:
“Now, a comment like that might seem to be almost the same as in Standard Australian English and
yet when you look at it there’s a lot that is different. It’s different at all of levels of linguistic analysis.
55
Video Scripts
Moving Into Other Worlds
(Overlay of “Dey got too much bardie over dere”.)
Notice for example the way in which the ‘th’ tends to be pronounced as a ‘d’
in ‘dey got’ rather than ‘they got’ and then at the level of word form, ‘too
much bardi.’ Now ‘bardi’ isn’t pluralised and yet we know it’s plural because
the Aboriginal English system allows optional marking of the plural.
When you look at the vocabulary, “too much bardi” actually doesn’t mean
what to a Standard Australian English speaker it would mean – it means a lot
of bardies. Also, at the discourse level, you notice the way that it’s introduced
– ‘Ay they got too much bardi dere’. The ‘ay’ is clearly performing a discourse
function to direct the listener’s attention to something new that’s being
stated and that’s reinforced with ‘dere’ at the end. Another thing is the
change in the grammatical form which makes it ‘dey got’ instead of ‘there
are’ because Aboriginal English doesn’t tend to use the verb ‘to be’.
In summary, I would say that we have learnt an enormous amount as we have worked together and
we have shared our Englishes. The more honestly we have simply expressed our misunderstanding of
one another, the deeper we have gone in understanding that there are two different conceptual
systems that are operating through English.”
(Overlay of BBQ with bardies being cooked and eaten by various people.)
PRESENTER – MICHELLE WHITE:
Now that you know a little about the history of Aboriginal English and how it differs from Standard
Australian English. The challenge is to recognise and value it in its own right.
There are three other titles in this series. If you’d like to learn more about Aboriginal English, check
out these programs too.
(Overlay of:
WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF TALK
A Shared World of Communication
Now You See it, Now You Don’t
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power)
END OF SCRIPT
56
Background
Papers
Compiled by members of the
Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research
Edith Cowan University
for the
ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning Project,
Department of Education, Western Australia
2002
Background Papers
Contents
SHARED WORLD OF COMMUNICATION ......................................................................................61
An ecological view of communication....................................................................................................................61
How Australia’s communicative ecology has evolved from both Indigenous and introduced sources.........63
Language and dialect.............................................................................................................................................63
Creole languages ...................................................................................................................................................63
Aboriginal languages..............................................................................................................................................64
The broader language ecology of Australia...........................................................................................................64
How two cultures have been maintained in the shared world of communication...........................................64
Aboriginal cultural interruption and maintenance ...................................................................................................64
Code-switching......................................................................................................................................................65
The contemporary Aboriginal experience ...............................................................................................................65
References ................................................................................................................................................................66
MOVING INTO OTHER WORLDS....................................................................................................67
Summary guide to ‘Moving Into Other Worlds’.....................................................................................................67
Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................................72
Two worlds apart......................................................................................................................................................72
Europe...................................................................................................................................................................72
Australia ................................................................................................................................................................73
Two worlds collide....................................................................................................................................................74
Contact and attempts at incorporation...................................................................................................................74
What was happening linguistically during the contact phase? .............................................................................76
Conflict and disruption...........................................................................................................................................77
What linguistic effects have conflict and disruption had? ....................................................................................79
‘Protection’ and ‘assimilation’ ................................................................................................................................80
Linguistic effects of protection and assimilation .................................................................................................82
Living in two worlds: Aboriginal Australian responses to change .....................................................................84
Adapting lifestyles..................................................................................................................................................84
Adapting language: the rise of Aboriginal English ...................................................................................................90
Overview............................................................................................................................................................90
Some examples of Aboriginal English texts.........................................................................................................92
Getting below the surface: more on semantics and pragmatics ..........................................................................98
Aboriginal English, identity, and communication in two worlds ..........................................................................101
Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................................102
References...............................................................................................................................................................102
59
Background Papers
Contents
NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T:
CONCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS OF ABORIGINAL ENGLISH.........................................................106
Two Englishes: the same yet different.................................................................................................................106
Same language, different conceptualization .......................................................................................................108
How Language can be understood in terms of its conceptualization ..............................................................109
Categories ...........................................................................................................................................................109
Schemas ..............................................................................................................................................................110
Metaphor .............................................................................................................................................................111
How Aboriginal English reflects Aboriginal conceptualization ..........................................................................112
Categories............................................................................................................................................................112
Schemas ..............................................................................................................................................................116
Metaphor .............................................................................................................................................................122
Now You See It Now You Don’t .............................................................................................................................123
References...............................................................................................................................................................124
TWO-WAY LEARNING AND TWO KINDS OF POWER ................................................................125
The fact and effects of one-way learning.............................................................................................................125
Dominance of Anglo view of Australian history .....................................................................................................125
Dominance of Anglo knowledge ...........................................................................................................................126
Dominance of English and standard English modes of expression.........................................................................127
Effects of this in Aboriginal students’ experience of exclusion and devaluation .....................................................128
The principles of two-way/both ways education................................................................................................128
Origins .................................................................................................................................................................128
International counterparts ....................................................................................................................................129
Relevance to bidialectal as well as bilingual education..........................................................................................130
Two-way education and identity ...........................................................................................................................130
Importance of learning by way of first language ....................................................................................................130
Importance of building from known to unknown....................................................................................................131
Importance of recognizing existing knowledge and skills.......................................................................................132
Two-way education and power..............................................................................................................................132
The right of Aboriginal English speakers to access power in the wider world through standard English..................132
The equal right of Aboriginal people to recognize power in Aboriginal contexts which is maintained through
Aboriginal English.................................................................................................................................................133
The need for recognition of Aboriginal knowledge, skill and status by non-Aboriginal students and teachers.........133
Principles of the implementation of two-way bidialectal education ................................................................134
Receptive and productive competence in Standard Australian English for Aboriginal English speakers ..................134
Receptive competence in Aboriginal English for all students .................................................................................134
Accommodation to Aboriginal ways of approaching experience and knowledge ....................................................134
References...............................................................................................................................................................135
60
Index.........................................................................................................................................................................139
Video 1 Background Papers
Shared World of Communication
Dr Judith Rochecouste
An ecological view of communication
Languages exist in environments (ecosystems) which affect them. The components of these ecosystems are the
speakers of the language themselves, neighbouring languages, invading peoples, etc. all of which have an impact on the
language, causing it to change. Sometimes this change is consistent and will occur, in time, right across the language;
at other times, it affects just the language as it is spoken in one area or by one cultural group, causing the formation of
a new dialect of the language.
An overview of the development of Australian English and Aboriginal English
Germanic languages
• Influence of French1
• Influence of
Greek and Latin2
English (British dialects)
Dutch
German etc.
• Influence of original
inhabitants (Celts)3
English spoken in Australia
• People came from different countries,
and spoke different languages and
other dialects of English
• Contact with Aboriginal languages
• New names for new flora and fauna
Aboriginal English
• Need to communicate with non-Aboriginal
invaders – development of pidgins and
creole languages
• White assimilation policy – Aboriginal people
not allowed to speak their traditional
languages
Australian English
Standard
Australian English
Non-standard
Australian English
(becomes accepted language of
education, literature and media)
• Need to have a language to maintain culture
and identity after the loss of Aboriginal
languages
• Aboriginal languages originally or currently
spoken in the area causing regional
differences
1
2
3
The French invasion and rule of England for hundreds of years caused many words of French to come into the language
Because much learning occurred in monasteries during the Middle Ages in Greek and Latin, this too was absorbed
into the language.
The original inhabitants of the island of Britain were Celtic and spoke a different language, so this too influenced the
Germanic language brought into England.
61
Video 1 Background Papers
Shared World of Communication
Each language system (whether called a language or a dialect) needs to be understood in its own right:
•
•
•
•
as a vehicle for carrying the culture and identity of its speakers;
as a mother tongue and home language of its speakers;
as a successful communicative system for its speakers;
as having its own conventions for sentence structure, semantics and pragmatics (the behaviours that accompany
languages).
Each language system (whether called a language or a dialect) needs to be understood in relation to the whole:
•
•
•
•
as having evolved from a parent language through the influences of its particular environment or ecology (other
languages, meaning systems, cultures);
as maintaining similarities with its parent language;
as continuing to change just as the parent language continues to change with more influences, such as the influence
of Black American culture on Aboriginal English and the influence of more recent immigrant groups on SAE;
as representative of a proportion of the people within the whole English speaking world.
Two worlds/dialects sharing the same space – Language ecosystem
Intermittent and
tenuous links between
the two worlds/dialects
Aboriginal world/Aboriginal English
• TV and Radio, e.g.
rap music
• School
• Newspapers
• Sport and work
• Encounters with govt
agencies e.g. police,
health, welfare
Non-Aboriginal world/Australian English
These two worlds have enabled SAE and AE to develop independently of each other. Interesting, however, is the fact
that the tenuous links between the two worlds have also allowed for considerable transfer of linguistic expressions
(words, phrases, structures, such as ‘wicked’, ‘deadly’). Thus, described in terms of Mühlhäusler’s ‘salient components’
of a ‘language ecology’, the above model represents a language ecosystem where:
1. the system is inhabited by a diversity of dialects (AE and AustE);
2. the system represents the relationship between such dialects as dynamic and changing and such changes may be
gradual or catastrophic (catastrophic initial effect with white invasion and rapid loss of many Aboriginal languages,
now gradual loss and recognition of Aboriginal languages and gradual recognition of Aboriginal English over time);
3. the system is sustained by functional links between the dialects (currently the functionality of links between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people most often results in code-switching to conform to the dominant dialect);
4. it is not the absolute number of diverse dialects but the links between them which are important;
5. the lack of links leads to conflict and potential collapse of the language ecosystem (misunderstanding between
speakers of different dialects and lack of recognition of minority dialects);
6. the links create a mutually supportive linguistic ecosystem (the ideal for students/classrooms to achieve in the
education system) (Mühlhäusler 1997, pp. 4-5).
In a sense two-way bidialectal education is trying to establish a language ecology in schools where there is ‘a dynamic
system consisting of a number of inhabitants [or dialects] and meaningful interconnections [or explicitly explained
similarities and differences] between them’ (Ibid.).
62
Video 1 Background Papers
Shared World of Communication
How Australia’s communicative ecology has evolved from both Indigenous
and introduced sources
Language and dialect
We all speak a language; we all speak a dialect of a language:
1. some dialects are mutually intelligible (speakers can understand each other although there may be some different
words, meanings or pronunciations); whereas
2. other dialects might be mutually unintelligible (speakers don’t understand each other because there are just too
many different words or too many words with different meanings or too many different pronunciations).
We usually consider languages to be mutually unintelligible in that the differences are so great that speakers of one
language cannot understand speakers of another language.
Generally, languages have different names so we know that they are different languages (French, Thai, English) while
dialects are identified with the people who speak them or the place where they are spoken, e.g. Aboriginal English, US
English, Australian English. But, just to make things difficult:
1
sometimes, for political reasons, dialects are given separate names (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) when they are
really mutually intelligible (the speakers may be able to understand each other, e.g. husen ‘house’ (Sw), huset
‘house’ (Nor), hus ‘house’ (Dan));
2
on the other hand, sometimes different languages are called dialects of each other so that some idea of political
cohesion can be maintained, even though they may not be mutually intelligible, that is, the speakers cannot
understand each other (Chinese dialects).
So the distinction between language and dialect is not a very clear-cut one.
The difference between Aboriginal English and Australian English also varies:
1
Often it is possible for a speaker of Australian English to understand a speaker of Aboriginal English. Most of the
words might sound the same but with different pronunciation and the sentences might be slightly different but
understandable.
2
However when the words have different meanings, misunderstanding might occur between speakers of the two
dialects which causes a break down in communication.
3
Misunderstandings also occur if the rules of two dialects don’t coincide, e.g. listening behaviours, expression of
gratitude, appropriate reply to an invitation.
4
At other times, the speaker of Aboriginal English might use more words from their local Aboriginal language, making
it harder for a speaker of Australian English to understand,
5
The speaker of Aboriginal English might also use a different intonation pattern or pronounce the words with a
different accent which might be the influence of an Aboriginal language spoken in the region.
Creole languages
Creole languages develop from situations of stressed language contact where communication has been made necessary
between speakers of different languages because of trade and/or colonisation. In many ways these speakers improvise
with a simplified form of their languages. The speakers of each language will modify their talk to find some way to
communicate in a limited capacity and what results is called a pidgin. Given time this pidgin communication will be used
in many more situations than originally intended (for example, trade) and in the process it will get more vocabulary, and
develop rules for its structure (grammatical rules). When this new way of communicating becomes so widespread that it
becomes the first language or mother tongue of a generation of speakers, we call it a creole language:
A creole is a pidgin which has expanded on structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and to
serve the range of functions required of a first language (Holm 1988)
There are several creole languages in Australia. In the north-west of Western Australia there is Kriol, and in the north of
Queensland there is Cape York Creole and in the Torres Strait there is Torres Strait Creole English. Creole languages
have their own grammatical structure which reflects the features of those languages involved in their development.
They also have their own vocabulary which reflects elements of both these languages, but very often the language of
the coloniser, e.g. English, will contribute more heavily to the vocabulary.
63
Video 1 Background Papers
Shared World of Communication
Aboriginal languages
Of the estimated 200-300 languages spoken in Australia at the time of white contact, only about 90 are still spoken
today. Of these about 70 are in severe threat of extinction and at least 80 of the surviving 90 Australian Aboriginal
languages will be extinct within 30-40 years, which is an average of two languages per year (Henderson & Nash 1997).
This happens because:
•
speakers shift to a variety of English e.g. Aboriginal English, or to a creole or to another Aboriginal language;
•
speakers are lost through violence, illness or old age;
•
the language is not learned by the next generation so it dies out;
•
the languages are suppressed by missions and other authorities.
Education programs for Aboriginal languages are of three types:
•
bilingual programs, where students speak the language relatively well and where a range of subjects is taught in the
language. Many such programs were established in the Northern Territory but have been discontinued by the NT
government;
•
language maintenance programs, where there are speakers of the language and the focus is on continuing the
tradition of speaking the language in the next generation; and
•
language revival programs where there are fewer speakers of the language and the focus is on maintaining what
knowledge of it exists.
The broader language ecology of Australia
If we consider the whole of Australia, then, the language ecosystem would have to include Aboriginal languages, creole
languages and ethnic languages as well as Aboriginal English and Australian English, so the big picture might look like this:
The language ecosystem of Australia
Aboriginal languages
Creole languages
Aboriginal English
Introduced languages
Australian English
Ethnic languages
How two cultures have been maintained in the shared world of
communication
Aboriginal cultural interruption and maintenance
White invasion brought disruption to the expression of the cultural and spiritual dimensions of Aboriginal society. Many of
these concepts began to be expressed, albeit inadequately, with English words. The ‘Dreaming’ is a typical example of the
inaccurate and inappropriate translation into English of a concept in Aboriginal spirituality. But when English was used
more and more as a vehicle for the continuation of Aboriginal culture and spirituality, the meanings of many words had to
change to accommodate these ways of describing the world. English was used to describe concepts not previously
64
Video 1 Background Papers
Shared World of Communication
known or understood by English speakers and very often the Aboriginal words for these concepts were also lost. So
English words were given different meanings, thus extending English to accommodate Aboriginal meaning systems.
Furthermore, because Aboriginal English was used more for communication between Aboriginal people than between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, where the dominant dialect (standard English) would and still generally prevails,
these meaning systems did not always come to be understood by non-Aboriginal people. Over time, this has caused a
gap in communication where speakers of the two dialects use variants of the same language to describe different
meaning systems. The two cultures and their two meaning systems therefore have tended to co-exist in the same space,
rarely overlapping but frequently colliding when miscommunication leads to the misunderstanding of behaviours.
Code-switching
The current language ecosystem in Australia can cause considerable difficulties for speakers of more than one dialect or
more than one language. Taking speakers of Aboriginal English as an example, moving to and from the two worlds, that is, to
and from the Anglo-Australian world of work, education and other health and housing services and the Aboriginal world of
extensive family structures and related responsibilities and commitments, can be like living in an ambiguous world.
The speaker of Aboriginal English will often use Standard Australian English at work and when interacting within the broader
community and Aboriginal English as soon as he/she is at home or within an Aboriginal community. This is called codeswitching. But for the speaker of Aboriginal English, this requires not just the changing of one’s speech (pronunciation and
grammar) but also requires reference to a completely different set of meaning systems for each dialect situation. This is
because languages and dialects are, to a great extent, products of the societies which speak them and will have selfcontained (culturally specific) meanings which are not necessarily shared by other societies. This is particularly complex
when dialects of the same language represent different meaning systems and the same words are used to describe these
different systems. Cross-cultural communication is then difficult if speakers across dialects are not aware of these
conflicting meanings. Also the action of code-switching becomes more than just a matter of ‘tweaking’ the language a little
– it requires a fundamental change in cultural perspective to be able to move successfully in both worlds.
Most people switch between the codes which they speak. This can happen if a speaker of English and Italian choses to
switch from English to Italian, or vice versa, depending on their audience. Similarly, as above, speakers of one dialect, e.g.
Aboriginal English, can switch to another dialect e.g. Standard Australian English, depending on the audience. People can
also vary their speech within their dialect. In Standard English we might have more formal words for some occasions, so we
code-switch within our dialect depending on our audience. (Code-switching at this level is often called a change in ‘register’).
Similarly, speakers of Aboriginal English can change their use of that dialect depending on the audience. For example, their
speech might be quite different if some non-Aboriginal people are present or if family from other country is present.
The contemporary Aboriginal experience
We might say that Aboriginal people have used English resourcefully to maintain their culture in the light of their postinvasion experience. Not only has the English language been adapted to express their own cultural and spiritual
dimensions or Aboriginality, but more recently contemporary forms of media have been adopted to strengthen what has
been done with the English language to express Aboriginality. Aboriginal authors and playwrights have vividly described
the Aboriginal experience. Aboriginal film makers and TV personalities are also raising the awareness of Aboriginal
issues and Aboriginal vocalists and sports stars are raising the profile of Aboriginal people in the media.
In many ways, however, these art forms have been compromised. Aboriginal stories are now constructed as written
texts not as oral narratives, although the play might be seen as something in between these two genres. Recording
vocalists are using modern media such as video and sound equipment and Aboriginal artists are using acrylic paints and
canvases instead of their traditional media. However, Aboriginal artists continue to maintain their links with the land and
the strong cultural tradition. One example is Yothu Yindi:
Yothu Yindi is a band which combines traditional Australian Aboriginal music with modern western
instrumentation. The indigenous members of Yothu Yindi are among the traditional owners of North East Arnhem
Land, a region of Australia’s Northern Territory in which Yolngu (Aboriginal) people have lived in relative isolation
for thousands of years. Yolngu people deal, as an intrinsic part of their daily lives, with cultural responsibilities
handed down from generation to generation. By attributing human qualities to all natural species and elements,
Yolngu people live in spiritual harmony with nature. This is communicated in ceremonial song and dance. Today
Yothu Yindi also seeks to unite Australians and all peoples of the world in peace.
(Yothu Yindi, 2002)
65
Video 1 Background Papers
Shared World of Communication
Aboriginal authors and playwrights also have the advantage of representing their dialect and their way of life in their
writing. In recent years Aboriginal English has been used more and more in published writing by Aboriginal authors.
For Aboriginal writers many of the ways of constructing reality can only be expressed using Aboriginal English (Malcolm
1994, p. 13). However, the degree to which Aboriginal English is included in this literature is primarily governed by
considerations of who the audience might be. For many Aboriginal writers it is important to educate the white Australian
public to the grievances of Aboriginal Australians, and in these cases, it is important not to alienate readers by
producing texts that they will not understand. This requires modification of the dialect which other Indigenous writers
might consider assimilationist (Narogin 1990, p. 2). Others acknowledge that ‘quite clearly. Black Australian culture is
different and distinctive and that, while it is not inaccessible to non-Aborigines, some effort is required in order to reach
an understanding of it’ through the use of Aboriginal English in literature (Muecke, Davis & Shoemaker 1988, p. 43).
Frequently authors will take a ‘middle of the road’ approach, ‘adapting largely western genres and integrating them with
sufficient Aboriginal English to produce a discernible and distinct Aboriginal flavour’ (Gibbs 1995, p. 37).
Co-existence in Australian society means that Indigenous men and women in high profile positions have the additional
burden of being ambassadors for Aboriginal people (in their own country!). The pressures of this burden were evident in
Cathy Freeman’s carrying of the Aboriginal flag at the Commonwealth Games in 1994, when she stated that ‘I just
wanted to show people that I am proud of who I am and where I come from’ (Jeffery, 1996).
Aboriginal people are lecturers in universities, politicians and have influential positions in other professions. This leads
many non-Aboriginal people to believe that these professionals only think and speak as the Anglo-Australians do, that is,
they use political rhetoric, academic English, etc. Aboriginal leaders have seen the need to bring Indigenous
perspectives into Australian social, political and economic arenas. They take part in a ‘multitude of diverse issues
ranging from negotiating native title; access to land and mining rights; protection of cultural rights; shaping and
responding to state and national policy, legislation and program development in areas such as education, health and
housing; and more general issues such as self determination, equity and race relations’ (Australian Indigenous Leaders
Centre, 2001). In doing so, they use both Aboriginal English and the discourse practices of Standard Australian English
to talk about Aboriginal issues. Aboriginal English is important for consultation with the Aboriginal community and
Standard Australian English is important for presenting information for political debate.
Thus, Aboriginal people maintain their Aboriginality and their links to the Aboriginal world. For Aboriginal people coming
to work, competing in a sports event or performing in front of the broader Australian public means moving out of the
family and community and into another world, adopting another way of talking (code-switching) and other ways of
thinking, but keeping that which is Aboriginal.
References
Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre (2001). About the AILC. www.aiatsis.gov.au/ailc/whatIs.htm (13/05/2002).
Gibbs, G. (1995). How Aboriginal Authors use Aboriginal English in their Writings. Perth WA: NLLIA Child Literacy and ESL
Research Network Node.
Henderson, J. & Nash, D. (1997). Culture and Heritage: Indigenous Languages. Rockhampton, Qld: Central Queensland
University Publishing Unit.
Holm. J. (1988) Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jeffery, N. (1996). Cathy home free for two-flags run. The Australian, 8 May. [Electronic version].
www.ausflag.com.au/debate/nma/aus960508.html.
Malcolm, I. (1994) Aboriginal English and Standard English: Making Connections. In G. Steff (ed.) TESOL: Making
Connections. Proceedings of the 1994 ACTA-WATESOL National Conference. Perth ACTA/WATESOL.
Muecke, S., Davis, J. & Schumaker, A. (1988). Aboriginal literature. In Australian Literary Studies. St Lucia, Qld.:
Queensland University Press.
Mühlhäusler, P. (1997) Language ecology – contact without conflict. In Putz, M. (ed.). Language Choices: Conditions,
Constraints and Consequences. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Narogin, M. (1990). Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature. South Yarra, Vic.: Hyland House.
Yothu Yindi (2002) Welcome to Yothu Yindi on the Web. www.yothuyindi.com/home.html (13/05/2002).
66
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Alison M. Hill
Summary guide to Moving Into Other Worlds
Two worlds apart
Life in general
Language and interaction
European perspective
Aboriginal perspective and responses
What was happening linguistically
• Diversity
• Diversity of Aboriginal cultures –
lifestyles in varying geography.
• Trading and social relationships
between Aboriginal groups
• Connection between language,
Dreaming and land – need to
know appropriate language for
interacting with land and spirits.
• Aboriginal people interacted with
non-Aboriginal people
(Macassans, Baiini).
• diversity of Aboriginal languages –
as different as English and
Russian or Hindi.
• The Dreaming
• Aboriginal society was multilingual
• Complexity of social systems and
philosophies
• several different languages were
often spoken by family members
• Aboriginal people had an
interwoven system of
relationships and responsibilities
between people and their
environment
• linguistic virtuosity was valued
• English varieties
• Ideology of progress
• Land as a possession
• Regarded hunters and gatherers
as ‘primitive’, either
• ‘noble savage’ or
• brutish lives – later backed up
with Darwinian concepts
• Overall view of British/white
supremacy, Civilization, etc.
as result of conquering peoples all
over the world
• Prior to colonisation, some limited
contact with European seafarers,
information from Macassans
about ‘Balandas’ (Hollanders).
Information passed along trade
routes. Evidence in rock paintings,
oral history.
• WA contact with Europeans –
Dampier, French, etc.
• There are still significant numbers
of Aboriginal people who speak
several languages
• Skilled use of sign
languages/gestures
• Like all languages, Aboriginal
languages have complex systems
developed to express concepts
which are important to them.
• Aboriginal languages stress the
importance of kinship in complex
terminologies and relationship
structures.
• Grammatical complexity: many
languages are highly inflected like
Latin, etc.
67
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Two worlds collide
Contact and attempts at incorporation
European perspective
Aboriginal perspective and responses
What was happening linguistically
• European views of Australian
territory
• First contacts: many Aboriginal
people initially attempted to
ignore Europeans in the hope that
they would go away.
• Initial use of sign language.
• By planting flag, etc. thought
they acquired exclusive
possession
• negotiate possession of land if
a ‘sovereign nation’ in control;
seen as terra nullius, so
unilateral declaration of British
possession and sovereignty.
• Ownership to be proven by
making ‘improvements’,
i.e. building things on it,
changing the landscape.
• Europeans attempted to
incorporate Aboriginal people into
their universe, where ethnic
groups were located on a
hierarchy of superiority.
• attempts to incorporate
Aboriginal people into European
political and economic system:
• trade with Aboriginal people,
get them to desire nonAboriginal goods
• acquire Aboriginal labour
• abduction of adults
• taking of children – including
some successes (Governor
Macquarie’s Native Institution
in Parramatta).
• creation of missions,
settlements e.g. New Norcia
• Attempts to ‘civilise’ Aboriginal
people, getting Aboriginal
people to adopt European
clothing, adopt European
manners and religion.
• Some attempts to make use of
Aboriginal knowledge:
• some use made of Aboriginal
knowledge of natural resources
for food, raw materials.
• Explorers’ use of Aboriginal
tracks etc.
68
• attempts to incorporate
Europeans into the Aboriginal
world:
• Naming: Europeans gave
Aboriginal people English names,
and Aboriginal people gave
European people Aboriginal
names.
• European approach to Language:
• assignment of ‘returned
relative’/ghost role to
newcomers
• With few exceptions, Europeans
considered Aboriginal
languages to be primitive.
• Little interest shown at first in
Europeans and their goods,
then attempted extension of
Aboriginal trade relations to
Europeans and adaptation to
European goods
• Few initial attempts to learn
Aboriginal languages.
• Land ownership was immutable,
determined by birth. Therefore
Europeans guilty of trespass
according to Aboriginal law.
• Aboriginal words borrowed into
English
• otherwise, Europeans largely
expected Aboriginal people to
learn English
• Initially, Aboriginal people did not
want to interact with Europeans.
• Aboriginal people learned English
through variety of sources, were
perceived by some Europeans to
have a language-learning facility
superior to that of the British.
• development of pidgin English to
trade in.
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Two worlds collide
Conflict and disruption
European impact
Aboriginal responses
What was happening linguistically
• Impact on natural environment:
• Attempts to use European
resources in payment for produce
of land
• Death of languages due to loss of
speakers, loss of ceremonies,
cultural activities, due to culture
suppression, removal of children,
kidnapping, etc.
• destruction of native plants and
animals
• introduction of European plants
and animals ‘owned’ by the
settlers.
• Because of their philosophy of
private ownership of natural
resources, Europeans regarded
Aboriginal use of these resources
as ‘stealing’.
• introduction of European diseases
• desecration of sacred sites
• stealing of Aboriginal tools and
sacred objects.
• Disease
• Armed conflict and violent
displacement and ‘dispersal’
policies
• Europeans saw Aboriginal people
as aimless wanderers who could
go somewhere else.
• Terror tactics and attempted
genocide.
• Swan River – Pinjarra
• Attempted withdrawal
• Displacement from land affected
Aboriginal people spiritually,
economically, socially and
physically
• lack of access to most fertile
land and to water.
• spiritual connection with the
land disrupted
• conflict with other Aboriginal
people because they were now
staying on their land instead of
just being periodic guests.
• Armed resistance.
• Reaction to European violence
resulting from Aboriginal attempts
to use resources
• Upon realising that Europeans
intended to stay permanently,
armed conflict aimed at
preventing further European
incursions into Aboriginal land,
e.g.. Pigeon/Jandamarra.
• Most well-known example the
Tasmanian languages (NB
survival of the present-day
Tasmanian Aboriginal
population).
• Yaburara dialect of Ngarluma in
the Pilbara
• Loss of languages due to
movement: people moving to
other areas of country in some
cases adopted the language of
the country to which they had
moved, e.g. Jaru
• Over time, with large numbers of
people displaced from their
country and thrown together, lack
of a shared Aboriginal language
led to use of pidgin English as a
lingua franca and in the north, the
development of creoles
• Kimberley – Jandamarra
• Forrest River massacre
• In sum, destruction of majority of
Aboriginal population due to
violence, deprivation and disease.
• Europeans have little knowledge
due to editing of history at
beginning of 20th century.
Now new historians going back to
original documents, e.g. Henry
Reynolds.
• Enshrined in memories passed
down to children and
grandchildren – now being
published in Aboriginal
autobiographies and other
literature.
• History enshrined in narratives
passed down through Aboriginal
families.
• e.g. ‘Oral History’, relating what
Tom Bennell’s grandfather saw.
69
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Two worlds collide
‘Protection’ and ‘Assimilation’
Over time as the Europeans dispossessed the different Aboriginal peoples, the balance shifted from armed conflict to
dealing with the remaining Aboriginal people.
European actions and attitudes
Aboriginal actions and attitudes
• Aboriginal population so depleted
that assumed dying out. Therefore
‘Protection’ policy – banishment
to reserves or controlled use as
labour
• Key point: Most people attempted
to maintain their Aboriginal
culture and identity as much as
possible within the limitations
they faced.
• Effects of 1905 Act and
successors
• Many faced a choice: remain on
reserves practising culture and
language as much as possible and
face losing children OR attempt to
blend into non-Aboriginal
population and possibly keep
children.
• Segregation and division of
people on basis of physical
appearance.
• Strict controls over all aspects
of Aboriginal people’s lives,
including movement,
employment, marriage
•
Language suppression –
punishment for using language.
•
Further decline in Aboriginal
languages due to break in
transmission between
generations, contact with other
languages, recent pressure of
English
•
Now only 90 languages left, and
70 of these are nearly extinct.
The remainder are still being
passed onto children, but all are
endangered.
•
Further rise of Aboriginal English
(see below)
•
Again, continuing record in oral
histories passed down, e.g.
‘Tom’s Story’ (Kura). Published
accounts, autobiographies.
•
words in Aboriginal English
which originated in this era.
• All Aboriginal children legal
wards of the ‘Protector of
Aborigines’
• Police assigned both punitive
and ‘protection’ roles.
• Suppression of culture
• In ’30s and ’40s it became
apparent Aboriginal people weren’t
dying out. Assimilation policy,
Stolen Generations. Yet exclusion
from non-Aboriginal society.
• Europeans largely ignorant of this
history.
70
•
Aboriginal memory of life under
the Act
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Two worlds collide
Living in two worlds: life for Aboriginal Australians
Changes in life in general up to today
Adapting language: rise of Aboriginal English
• Early incorporation of European culture, then forced
adaptation
• Keeping up appearances: Necessity for external
conformity to European norms to avoid negative
consequences
• Internal conflict due to Europeans drawing
conclusions based on appearances
• Ongoing values
• importance of family, kin relationships: extended
family living, attachments to country maintained by
visiting family in different parts of their country.
• continued sense of continuity between human and
non-human world – the natural world is full of signs
with meaning, e.g. Yindjibarndi
• priority of place over time in viewing history;
measuring of time by events rather than by
quantifiable units.
• material culture and way of life: faced with new
material culture, adapted so that Aboriginal values
and concepts could be utilised in new environment,
e.g. transport, hunting weapons, but maintaining
connections with ancestral places. Preoccupation
with bush activities.
• money incorporated into Aboriginal systems of
value/obligation
• the arts: change in subjects of artwork to
incorporate European themes; use of art market to
maintain cultural community; cooperative painting
according to roles
• Because of language death, most Aboriginal people
now do not have linguistic resources of original
Aboriginal languages.
• Still value what remain of Indigenous languages, also
remnants in English
• Therefore they have adapted English to express their
culture and worldview – hence Aboriginal English
• Development of Aboriginal English
• NSW pidgin English spread
• creolisation in north
• restructuring to become more like Standard
Australian English
• Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English:
two dialects of English among many
• Social and regional status of Aboriginal English – PanAboriginal.
• What is Aboriginal English like?
• iceberg model – levels of linguistic analysis: sounds,
word forms, sentence structure, genres, meaning,
rules for use, underlying values, beliefs and attitudes
• sample texts analysed: Narrogin children,
Oombulgurri child, Geraldton adult
• More on semantics (meaning)
• More on pragmatics (rules for communication):
conversational organisation (and adaptation to new
media), manners, assumed knowledge and specificity;
questions and answers.
• Aboriginal English and Identity: growing acceptance,
use in publications, public media.
• Conflicts between Aboriginal values and European
structures
• Culture-switching to accomplish tasks and maintain
relationships with outsiders.
• Relation to Wadjela systems and organisations: still
accommodating as far as have to, but often still living
in ‘separate worlds’. Not high proportion today of
Aboriginal people employed in non-Aboriginal settings.
CDEP. But need to interact with healthcare providers,
government departments who still have big influence
on lives. Shopping, public transport.
• Interaction with members of other non-European
groups
• Unfamiliarity with aspects of Anglo-Australian
culture, even in urban living.
•
Linguistically, need to code-switch: be bilingual and
bidialectal
71
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Introduction
When an Aboriginal Australian and a non-Aboriginal Australian meet and interact, there’s a lot more happening than the
meeting of two individuals with different families and life experiences. In many ways, it’s part of a long history of the
meeting of two worlds – an indigenous world and a non-indigenous world, each of which is embodied in its own
language. Each world has its own assumptions and history, and people living in it have to negotiate relations with people
whose basic experience is in the other world.
Of course, we are committing a huge simplification here by talking only of two worlds and languages: there is enormous
diversity both on the Aboriginal side and the non-Aboriginal side – worlds within worlds, if you like – and each side has
interacted with and been influenced by the other since Europeans first arrived in Australia. But we can make some
generalisations about the two worlds, especially from the time they met, where the historical experiences of people in
each world took a different turn.
In this paper, we will take a historical look at how people from each world moved into the other world and how
Aboriginal people have coped with domination by a non-indigenous world which has threatened to obliterate their
own altogether. We will see how the languages of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians have influenced and
been affected by this history of interaction. In particular, we will see how Aboriginal people have adapted to the loss of
most Australian languages and developed a new variety of English, Aboriginal English, to meet their needs in negotiating
the two worlds. The latter part of the paper will present an overview of Aboriginal English and some of the key areas
where Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English differ from each other as a result of their different histories
and worldviews.
Two worlds apart
Europe
We look first at the two worlds prior to contact, touching very briefly on relevant aspects of European culture at the
time. Europe, of course, was a continent made up of diverse peoples of many cultures and languages – both between
and within the shifting boundaries of nations. Linguistically, Britain in the 18th century was in the process of developing
a standard language based mainly on the dialect of English spoken in the region of London, Oxford and Cambridge (the
centres of power, education and trade), but many other dialects of English had also developed throughout the British
Isles as the English language emerged from the interaction of Scandinavian, West Germanic, Celtic, classical languages
and French (Burridge & Mulder, 1998). Added to this, the British Isles were also home to a number of other languages,
such as Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Cornish.
Europeans shared long histories of interaction in peace and war, and they thus shared many assumptions about life and
the natural order, including the nature of government and societal organisation, their predominantly Christian religion,
the rise of rationalism and the scientific paradigm, the historical idea of ‘progress’, the idea of land as something to be
possessed, ‘developed’ and competed for, and so on. In the couple of centuries prior to the establishment of a
permanent British settlement at Port Jackson, Europeans broadened their explorations and conquests, coming into
contact with a wide range of world societies. In the process of conquering indigenous peoples all over the world, they
acquired a belief in their natural superiority over all other peoples (Markus, 1994).
Initially, there were two main European views of hunters and gatherers such as Aboriginal Australians (Yarwood &
Knowling 1982). On the one hand, the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes saw the life of people in their ‘natural’
state as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, and his contemporary John Locke expounded on the view that hunters
and gatherers did not ‘till the earth and make it fruitful’ – thus failing to keep a Biblical command which Europeans were
seen to excel in observing and propagating through colonisation.
On the other hand, French writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century idealised the life of the ‘noble
savage’. This was a somewhat more positive outlook, but one which still saw Aboriginal people as primitive savages
governed by instinct, rather than as ordinary human beings with their own ethical and political systems and rights over
their land. Captain James Cook saw fit to claim New South Wales for the English crown in spite of leaning towards
Rousseau’s views.
72
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
During the 19th century, the philosophy of superiority acquired new ‘scientific’ backing with the development of the
myth of biological ‘race’ (Markus, 1994, p. 10). While the idea of race has no scientific basis (modern genetics shows
that there are no separate groups within humanity: variations within ‘races’ are just as significant as those between;
Malik, 1996), it was boosted by the application of Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection to societies. The ‘white
race’ was seen to be intellectually and morally superior to all other races, which were graded on a scale downwards
from brown Indians to the ‘yellow race’ (Chinese) to the ‘black race’ – Africans, and Aboriginal people at the bottom.
Evolutionists like Alfred Wallace talked about the ‘inevitable extinction’ of non-European races as they came into
contact with Europeans (Markus, 1994, p. 15).
Australia
Like Europe, Australia was home to great cultural diversity, like the Australian landscape itself. The lifestyles of
Aboriginal people varied greatly, from the relatively Spartan existence of people in the desert regions to the ‘affluent’
societies of the rich coastal areas of north-east Arnhemland and north Queensland, to the stone huts and fishing weirs
in the colder south east. People in the desert regions followed an annual timetable of movement between their family
sites many kilometres apart (Tonkinson, 1991); coastal peoples in parts of Cape York hardly moved camp at all, living in
territories of only a few kilometres of beachfront and immediate hinterland (Chase & Sutton, 1998).
Before European invasion, Aboriginal Australians contacted and traded with each other along routes which criss-crossed
the whole of Australia (Reynolds, 1990a, p. 7). This interaction was not limited to people on the Australian continent,
however: from the 16th century until early in the 20th century, Aboriginal people in the north of Australia traded with the
Macassan people who travelled from the Indonesian islands to collect trepang. Some of them even intermarried with or
sojourned in the islands of the Macassans (Macknight, 1976; Urry & Walsh, 1981). Some Yolngu stories tell of people
called ‘Baiini’ who spent time in Yolngu country before the Macassans (Berndt, 1964; Macknight, 1976). Like the
relationships between Aboriginal groups, these cross-cultural interactions involved relations between equal partners
where each respected the ownership of land, language and culture of the other, and the life of Aboriginal people
changed relatively little (Trudgen, 2000).
The central basis for Aboriginal life all over Australia, which was largely unaltered by these contacts with other nonEuropean people, was the overriding worldview often referred to in English as ‘The Dreaming’. This complex of Aboriginal
beliefs took in every aspect of the world, describing how the world came to be as it is and providing a guide to how
humans and others in the world should behave. The Dreaming set out a framework in which every aspect of the world
was related through an extension of the human kinship system to all other living things, spirit beings and features of the
environment. Each part of the world had a complex set of reciprocal rights and responsibilities to other parts of the
world (Rose, 1987; Stanner, 1956/1998). The Law of the Dreaming was (and in many places still is) held in the stories,
songs, dances and artworks owned by particular groups (Morphy, 1991). Ties to land were immutable, a relationship into
which people were born or married, and people other than the traditional custodians of a territory were required to ask
permission to use the natural resources managed by the custodians (Myers, 1980/1998).
Language was an integral part of this cultural complex, since each language was linked to a particular territory through
the Dreaming: as the Dreaming Beings criss-crossed the land, they spoke the languages belonging to each part of the
land. People spoke the language of the territory they belonged to (Rumsey, 1993), and they needed to know the
appropriate language to speak to the spiritual beings inhabiting the land (see ‘Following the Rules’, Bennell & Collard,
1991, p. 17). Like most knowledge in Aboriginal society, a language was therefore not simply something in the ‘public
domain’ available for use by anyone, but something that was ‘owned’ by particular groups of people (Sansom, 1980).
There was tremendous linguistic diversity in Aboriginal Australia prior to colonisation: it is estimated that at least 250
languages and many more dialects of those languages were spoken at the time Europeans arrived (Schmidt, 1991, p. 1)4 .
Many languages were as different as English is from Russian and Hindi. In many parts of Australia wives and husbands
spoke different languages since they came from different countries, and so their children automatically grew up knowing
at least two languages or dialects. Then as now, Aboriginal people valued linguistic diversity and multilingualism (Brandl
& Walsh, 1982), and they were skilled at inter-group communication and negotiation.
4
The complete spread of these language groups throughout Australia can be grasped from the excellent map by David
Horton (Horton, 1994a). A sample can be viewed at www.aboriginalaustralia.com/Culture/nations/horton.cfm
73
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Like all languages, Aboriginal languages had complex systems designed to express concepts which were important to
them. They stressed the importance of kinship in complex terminologies and relationship structures. Kin relations and
context determined the styles of talk used, and sometimes required different languages or even the use of a fullydeveloped sign language (Edwards, 1998). Languages were extremely complex grammatically, some highly inflected like
Latin and some, like Bardi, able to express whole sentences in a single long complex word (Dixon, 1980; Walsh & Yallop,
1993). This complexity could not be in greater contrast to the assumptions of 18th century Europeans, who assumed
the superiority of English and its values, and expected Aboriginal languages to be ‘primitive’. They were confused by the
diversity of Aboriginal languages; when the British arrived at Port Jackson, they attempted to communicate with the
local Eora people – who were largely speakers of Dharuk – using words Captain Cook had collected from Guugu
Yimidhirr, which was spoken around what is now Cooktown in Northern Queensland (Malcolm & Koscielecki, 1997).
Prior to colonisation, Aboriginal groups had some warning of the arrival of Europeans, and such news travelled quickly
over vast distances (Reynolds, 1990a). The Macassans brought news of the ‘Balanda’ (that is, Hollanders) – a name
which remains the term for Europeans in languages of Arnhemland. There were also isolated contacts with European
seafarers from the 17th century. In Western Australia, the Englishman William Dampier passed by in 1688 and 1699. He
landed in Bardi country (north of present-day Broome) and observed Bardi stone fish-traps and other technology but
despite attempts to communicate in sign language he did not establish friendly relations, and he published rather
unfavourable accounts of their ‘miserable’ life, as he termed it (Dampier, 1981; Mulvaney, 1989, p. 21). French explorers
and others made contact with Aboriginal people in the south of Western Australia, while it has been suggested that
Dutch castaways interacted with Aboriginal people in the Mid West during the 17th and 18th centuries (Gerritsen, 1994).
Contacts with Europeans were only fleeting, however, and it was not until the start of colonisation that the tremendous
disjunction between the two worlds had a serious impact upon Aboriginal society.
Two worlds collide
Contact and attempts at incorporation
When Captain James Cook arrived in Australian waters in the late 18th century, he was one participant in a global race
by European nations to beat each other in finding and claiming possession of new territory around the world. His
instructions regarding any Australian ‘natives’ were clear:
You are likewise to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives, if there be any and
endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a Friendship and Alliance with them, making them presents of such
Trifles as they may Value inviting them to Traffick, and Shewing them every kind of Civility and Regard; taking Care
however not to suffer yourself to be surprized by them, but to be always upon your guard against any Accidents.
You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the
Name of the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for his Majesty by
setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.
(Secret Instructions for Lieutenant James Cook Appointed to Command His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour 30 July
1768, 1768/2000)
Captain Cook did encounter Australian ‘natives’, but he decided to ‘take possession’ anyway. in 1788. Since Aboriginal
people had neither ceded sovereignty of their land nor allowed it to be taken as spoils of a military conquest, the
anomalous position of the land under European law was dealt with by the legal fiction of ‘Terra Nullius’ (‘Empty Land’),
whereby Aboriginal people were held not to exist (Mabo and Others v. Queensland (No.2), 1992).
The British at the time believed that planting a flag on the land and saying ‘I take possession of this land in the Name of
His Majesty King George the Third’ enabled them to acquire exclusive possession of first the land they called New South
Wales (in the case of Cook) and then later the rest of Australia (Captain Fremantle and Captain Stirling in the Swan
River Colony). As we have seen, Aboriginal people believed that land ownership was immutable and could not conceive
of another group of people invading and claiming sole ownership of their land. (None of them actually heard Cook make
his declaration anyway – or at least understood what he was saying!). It was not until the arrival and actions of
European ‘settlers’ that they became aware of a radical disturbance to the ‘natural order’ of the Dreaming.
74
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
This began in 1788 with the arrival of the British First Fleet at Port Jackson, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. Phillip
attempted to deal with the local Eora people in a humane manner while carrying out his instructions to establish a
colony on their land and thus incorporate the Eora into the British world (Reynolds, 1996). From this beginning,
Europeans gradually invaded the entire continent, faster in some parts than others. There are many stories of ‘first
contact’ throughout the 19th century (Reynolds, 1990a), and there are still people living today who remember the arrival
of Europeans in their territory in the 20th century.
In Western Australia, the European invasion did not begin until 1826, when a military garrison was established in King
George’s Sound (Albany), although various Europeans had visited Western Australia prior to this (Green, 1984).
The garrison had little impact on the local Nyungar people (who identified themselves as Meananger), and friendly
relations prevailed between them and the Europeans (Green, 1979). Captain Fremantle encountered mixed reactions
when he rowed up the Swan River in 1829, however. At one point his way was blocked by a local man yelling ‘Warra!
Warra!’ – a Nyungar word, still used today, which means ‘bad’, or in this case, ‘Go away!’ (Cottesloe, 1979). The British
did not go away, however, and later that year Captain Stirling and his soldiers used their guns to drive the local
Nyungars away from their long-established camp, Goonininup, in its prime location at the springs at the base of Mt Eliza
(Kings Park) (Austen, 1998).
The reactions of the Europeans and Aboriginal people in these early stages of contact reveal the attempts of each group
to incorporate the other into its own world. For example, Aboriginal people in initial contact situations across Australia
often incorporated Europeans into their own cosmology by deciding that logically these people must have previously
belonged to their country and were now returning there from the dead. So they welcomed the Europeans as long-lost
relatives, calling them by the names of those relatives and describing them using their terms for ‘ghost’, ‘spirit’, etc.
(Reynolds, 1990a, pp.30-31).
The Europeans, for their part, attempted to coopt the Aboriginal people into their established hierarchy – slotted into
the landless social class allotted to them. They gave the people English names, encouraged them to adopt European
clothing and manners, and aimed to get them to desire European goods which could be exchanged for their labour and
local artefacts (Troy, 1990). They attempted to train Aboriginal people to act as servants and farm workers for rations,
and as time went on, many Aboriginal people were thus employed. In a few cases, Aboriginal children were adopted or
taken into institutions to be raised with a European education – sometimes quite successfully: in 1819, a 14 year old girl
at Governor Macquarie’s Native Institution in Parramatta topped the New South Wales public examinations (Harris,
1994, p. 47). The majority of these children were trained and sent out for domestic work. Aboriginal women began a
long history of subjection to sexual exploitation (Broome, 1994, p. 41).
European missionaries endeavoured to bring Christianity to Aboriginal people. Like other Europeans, these people
demonstrated a variety of attitudes and behaviour towards them. On the one hand, they professed to be concerned with
the welfare of Aboriginal people, and many expressed dismay at the racial violence which soon dominated the treatment
of Aboriginal people (see below). But by and large, their attitudes still reflected the assumed superiority of the
Europeans and the assumption that Aboriginal people had to be induced to lead a ‘settled, civilized’ lifestyle (Harris,
1994). This was put into practice in Western Australia in the founding of New Norcia in 1845 by the Benedictine Bishop
Salvado, who was also attempting to segregate the people from hostile settlers and their ‘corrupting’ influence.
Compared with many other missionary groups, the Benedictines at New Norcia were relatively enlightened in the early
years: they respected many Aboriginal customs and had the children live with their parents (later missions separated
children into dormitories and under the Protection Acts prohibited contact with their parents). Their leader, Bishop
Salvado, allocated plots of land to Aboriginal men to farm and paid them wages, with the promise of houses as the
community progressed. The Aboriginal people, for their part, saw the mission as a guarantee that they could remain on
some of their land. The mission became a highly successful farming operation, but its success made the land a target
for surrounding European farmers and the Aboriginal farmers never gained legal title to it.
The use of Aboriginal people by European settlers was not restricted to the incorporation of Aboriginal people into the
British system. The Europeans also relied on Aboriginal knowledge of the local environment to make use of indigenous
foods and learn the uses of raw materials, such as plant fibres for making rope. Except where news of their behaviour
preceded them, European explorers were frequently guided and aided in the earlier years by friendly Aboriginal people
who extended their traditional trading relationships to the newcomers. The explorers often followed Aboriginal tracks
linking the various water sources and avoiding geographical obstacles (Reynolds, 1990a ; 1990b). Aboriginal people
were also coopted unwillingly to assist explorers like Alfred Canning, who in 1906 forced Aboriginal people to guide his
party up the Canning Stock Route at the point of a gun and chained by the neck to camels (Austen, 1998, p. 48).
75
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
What was happening linguistically during the contact phase?
From their arrival, and with the failure of attempts to use words from Guugu Yimidhirr, the British attempted to
communicate with the Eora through sign language (Troy, 1994). Their initial attempts at establishing ongoing
communication were frustrated, though, by the fact that the local Aboriginal people avoided the Europeans for many
months after the initial contacts. In desperation, Governor Phillip initiated the abduction of a number of Aboriginal
people, including the famous Bennelong, who were forcibly taught English language and culture (Troy, 1994, pp.40-54).
A few of the colonists made an effort to learn the local languages, especially in the first few years of the Port Jackson
colony. Lancelot Threlkeld was exceptional in learning the Awabakal language of Lake Macquarie well enough to
translate a book of the Bible by 1830 (Harris, 1994). Unfortunately, all the Awabakal people he worked with had died or
been killed by the 1840s (Broome, 1994, p. 33). The Swan River Colony also had its share of early enthusiasts who
made an effort to learn Aboriginal languages, such as R.M. Lyon, who brought out a wordlist of ‘Aboriginal inhabitants of
Western Australia’ in the early 1830s, F.F. Armstrong, who was appointed official interpreter for the Aboriginal languages
of the South West, and George Fletcher Moore, a lawyer who lived in the Swan River Colony in the 1830s (Green, 1984;
Thieberger, 1996). Many Aboriginal words, mainly referring to plants, animals and the Aboriginal world, have been
incorporated into Australian English (Dixon, Ramson & Thomas, 1990; Knight, 1988; See Table 1).
Table 1: Some Australian Aboriginal words borrowed into Australian English (Source: Dixon et al., 1990)
Source Language
Sample words
Nyungar
numbat, quokka, dugite, gilgie, koonac, marron, marri, karri, jarrah tree,
mallet tree, gidgee (‘spear’), mia-mia
Yindjibarndi (Pilbara)
willy-willy, yandy
Nhanta (Geraldton region)
weelo bird
Dharuk (Sydney)
boomerang, dingo, waddy (club), waratah, corroboree, gibber plain,
cooee (from guuu-wii ‘come here’)
Yuwaalaraay (NSW)
galah, mulga
Wiradjuri (NSW)
quandong, billabong
Yagara (Brisbane)
humpy, bung (Yagara meaning was ‘dead’), yakka
Wemba-Wemba (Vic)
yabby, bunyip
In spite of these efforts by some Europeans, it was usually the Aboriginal people who were expected to pick up English,
or at least enough bits of it to work and trade in. Most of the settlers maintained a low view of the local languages,
referring to them as ‘yabber’ or ‘gibberish’ (Malcolm & Koscielecki, 1997, p. 20). A number of observers did claim that
the Aboriginal people were more skilled in acquiring English than the Europeans were at acquiring Aboriginal languages
(Malcolm & Koscielecki, 1997). Few of them, though, were actively taught English, and what they heard spoken by the
newcomers covered a diverse range of languages and dialects. Among the Englishes they heard from people on the
First Fleet were Cockney, Billingsgate slang, Irish English, other regional Englishes and a stereotypical simplified
‘foreigner talk’ (Malcolm, 2001). They would also have been exposed to the maritime jargon used by English seafarers to
conduct trade with speakers of other languages.
One important consequence of this complex mix of English varieties and local Aboriginal languages was the
development of a contact code, called a pidgin.
76
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Pidgins are very simplified codes constructed by speakers of two mutually unintelligible languages
to communicate with each other on a limited basis when they have no language in common. They
are not real languages, since they are only used in very restricted contexts, usually that of trade,
and they are not developed enough to express all the complex meanings that people need to
express in all the domains of communication. They have a small vocabulary drawn mostly from the
dominant language involved (usually, but not always, that of European colonisers such as the
British) and very limited grammatical structure which is often influenced by the language(s) of the
other speakers. While pidgins are shared by groups of people who engage in this limited crosscultural communication, and they may last for many years, they are not anyone’s native language.
The pidgin which developed in early NSW (and later in adjoining states) is known today as NSW Pidgin English. While it
developed at first to bridge the gap between the British settlers and Aboriginal people, it was soon used by Aboriginal
people to communicate with each other as the dislocation brought about by colonisation began to bring them into
contact with speakers of other Aboriginal languages with whom they had previously had little or no contact (Malcolm,
2001). This pidgin was one of the key contributing factors in the development of Aboriginal English, and we will come
back to it later in this paper.
Conflict and disruption
So far, we have looked at the ways in which members of each culture tried to engage positively with each other during
the early stage of the British invasion. We have seen that Aboriginal people were initially cautious and then welcoming
as they attempted to assimilate the colonists into their own worldview. But when they became aware that the
Europeans were overstaying their welcome, doing the unthinkable and asserting sole ownership over their land, the
situation rapidly became one of violent conflict as Aboriginal people attempted to defend their land. Under Aboriginal
law, the Europeans were guilty of trespass when they failed to ask permission to camp on other people’s land and use
its resources, and the local landowners were soon suffering the effects of being pushed off their land.
Not only denied access to their best camping grounds, Aboriginal people found that important sacred sites were
desecrated (often by Europeans who were unaware of the nature of the sites), and ceremonial gatherings were
disturbed by Europeans who were anxious about any large groups of ‘natives’ (Austen, 1998, p. 5; Reynolds, 1990a, p.
66). Europeans purloined tools and sacred objects for sale to the overseas market (Troy, 1994). Some shot dead
Aboriginal people without provocation. The Europeans gradually appropriated large areas of land in the regions most
heavily populated by Aboriginal people, since these were of course the most fertile areas for growing crops and grazing
livestock. The new farmers eliminated indigenous plant foods and disrupted the local food-sharing relationships, leaving
the displaced land owners in unpayable debt to people who had previously come to use their resources in exchange for
others (Austen, 1998, p. 20). The settlers were largely unaware of these consequences, since they perceived Aboriginal
people as aimless wanderers who could simply move somewhere else. The truth was that displacement onto other
people’s land caused further conflict and added to the massive social disruption of epidemics of new diseases such as
smallpox, which spread rapidly through the Aboriginal population in advance of the line of British settlement.
Deprived of their traditional food sources, Aboriginal people attempted to use the replacement food sources, such as
sheep and cattle, and demanded or raided grain stocks. From their point of view, animals and plants produced by their
land flourished as a result of their responsible stewardship of the land, so to demand a share in the produce – native or
new – was their right as custodians (or to use the European concept, ‘land owners’). Because of their philosophy of
private ownership, the Europeans regarded Aboriginal people’s use of these resources as ‘stealing’, with predictable
consequences.
In April of 1834, 30 Bibbulmun men from the Murray River area of WA besieged a grain mill (now reconstructed beside
the Narrows Bridge in South Perth) and made off with 444 kilograms of wheat and flour. The leader of the raid, Calyute,
was later captured and publicly flogged, but escaped execution. His people continued to carry on a campaign of
resistance – a source of anxiety and frustration to settlers such as Thomas Peel, who coveted for their cattle the lush
grasslands of the Murray River District. (These grasslands had, unbeknownst to them, been created by the Nyungars’
practice over thousands of years of systematically firing the land to encourage the growth of feed for kangaroos and
emus; Fletcher, 1984).
The Swan River settlers, for their part, went about with guns close at hand, as on all the other frontiers in Australia, and
lived on the edge of panic over potential Aboriginal offensives. As one settler declared, ‘We are at war with the original
owners, we have never known them in any capacity but as enemies’ (Reynolds, 1996, p. 5).
77
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Stirling, now Governor, was determined to terrify the people into submission by the use of extreme force, so on 27
October 1834, he and his troops surrounded a large group of the Murray River people camped on the Murray at Pinjarra
and shot them. Around half of the men, women and children survived. While Stirling reported that only 15 men had been
killed, settler Joseph Hardey reported that it was ‘a shocking slaughter’ where up to 30 were killed, including women
and children (Harris, 1994, p. 256), and later research based on their mass graves has suggested that up to 80 may
have died (Austen, 1998, p. 21). Stirling rounded up the survivors and told them that if they attempted any retaliation,
‘four times the present number of men would proceed amongst them and destroy every man, woman and child’ (Perth
Gazette, 1 Nov 1834, quoted in Fletcher, 1984). Thomas Peel got his title deed to 250 000 acres of the land and was
negotiating the sale of 100 000 acres by mid-December (Fletcher, 1984).
With the Pinjarra massacre, the fiercest resistance around the Swan River was broken, but now that Aboriginal people
were aware of the expansionist intentions of the Europeans and their violent propensities, resistance to the invasion grew
increasingly fierce and incidents like that at Pinjarra were multiplied throughout Western Australian history. In some
regions, Aboriginal resistance was very successful for some time, especially in the far north inland, in spite of the use of
tactics such as the drafting of Aboriginal police assistants in the frontier regions to assist in the control or destruction of
other Aboriginal groups (Austen, 1998, p. 48). Sixty years after Pinjarra, Kimberley Bunuba hero Jandamarra led a group of
his people who stalled European invasion into their territory for several years until 1897 (Pedersen & Woorunmurra, 1995).
While armed resistance ceased early in the 20th century, the last reported massacre in Western Australia was in 1926
at Forrest River in the Kimberley (the truth of the matter was never resolved since the bodies were burned and there
appears to have been a conspiracy of silence; Austen, 1998; Harris, 1994). These incidents are engraved in the
consciousness of Aboriginal children and grandchildren of those involved, and make an important contribution to the
outlook of Aboriginal people in Australia today. Even the beginnings of European settlement in Western Australia are not
many generations removed in his ‘Oral History’, Tom Bennell recounts stories he was told by his grandfather, who saw
the first Europeans on the Swan River in 1836 (Bennell and Collard, 1991, pp.23-27).
While these experiences of the past relations between Europeans and Aboriginal people are very much alive in the
memory of Aboriginal people, few non-Aboriginal people today have any detailed knowledge of them. There are good
reasons for this. Newspapers and other documents from settlement until the end of the 19th century are full of frank
reports of frontier violence and Aboriginal dispossession. For example, the Rockhampton Bulletin in 1865:
[It is ] well known that the frequent use of firearms is indispensable to the outside settlers. Hundreds of blacks are
shot down in the Colony every year.
(quoted in Reynolds, 1996, p. 49)
They also record the unpopular, but constant protests from those Europeans who were appalled by the treatment of
Aboriginal people. Victorian Aboriginal Protector James Dredge did not know how to:
repress the struggling fire in my bones – while a witness of the awful tragedy in course of performance around me
. . . the widespread devastation, heartless cruelties, wholesale robberies, and endless murder.
(Letter, 10 May 1841, quoted in Reynolds, 1996, p. 84)
West Australian David Carly protested for years over the brutality, rape, kidnapping and murders that he observed in
towns in the north-west, and wrote a thundering letter to Lord Knutsford, the Secretary of State for the Colonies:
Again I write to you… from this land of murder and slavery and fraud. You have upheld and protected those in this
colony that have committed far worse crimes than any done in Russia. You have done this with the full knowledge
of the terrible acts done to the Native slaves of Western Australia. . . The same atrocities are still sanctioned by
you Lord Knutsford and your Governors of this infamous Colony West Australia.
(quoted in Reynolds, 1996, p. 88)
But as Federation dawned, most European writers made a conscious effort to eliminate the memory of these experiences:
They said things like ‘it is well to draw a veil over the dark side of the picture’ or ‘there one would willingly draw a
veil over the sad picture’ .
(quoted in Reynolds, 1999, p. 114).
78
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
It is only in the last forty years or so that historians have begun to return to the original documents to remove this veil
(Reynolds, 1984), and 15 years or so that the information has become more widely known outside academia. Aboriginal
people themselves are also publishing their personal, family and community histories in increasing numbers (Sutton &
Hercus, 1986; see also below).
What linguistic effects have conflict and disruption had?
The most catastrophic effect has been the death of over a hundred Aboriginal languages and many more dialects. The
loss of languages occurs for many reasons, more of which will be mentioned in the next section. But there are many
examples in Australia of languages which disappeared simply because of the loss of entire populations of speakers. The
most well-known example is that of the eight languages of Tasmania – although what is less well-known is that a
number of Tasmanian Aboriginal people did in fact survive on islands in the eastern Bass Strait, leading to the presentday Tasmanian Aboriginal population (Horton, 1994b, p. 1051). An example from Western Australia is the Yaburara
dialect of Ngarluma in the Pilbara, which disappeared due to the loss of the Yaburara population through disease and an
1868 massacre (Gribble, 1905/1987; Rijavec, 1995).
There were also many linguistic consequences of displacement of people to different country, either as refugees or as a
consequence of forced removal into missions and reserves, a development which we will look at below. Large groups of
people from several different language groups found themselves living together. In some cases, people would adopt the
local language, either because of the language-country link or because of the need for a lingua franca, or common
language (Schmidt, 1991, p. 9). For example, McKay (1995, p. 58) reports that Warlpiri people who now live at Yaruman
in Jaru country in the Kimberley speak Jaru now instead of Warlpiri. In this case, Warlpiri is still strong elsewhere, but
other languages have lost out altogether. Movements like these are amply illustrated in a map of ‘Traditional Locations
of Kimberley Languages’, produced by The Kimberley Language Resource Centre.
Another very significant development was the emergence of new languages, called creoles.
A creole is a new language which develops out of a pidgin when children begin speaking the pidgin
as their first language. This comes about in cases of extreme dislocation where speakers of
mutually unintelligible languages are brought together with no common language and the only
available means of communication is the pidgin. Speakers – particularly the children – begin to
expand and elaborate on the pidgin so that it takes on all the complexity and functions of a fully
developed language.
Two creoles developed in Northern Australia, one based in the Torres Strait and northern Queensland known as Torres
Strait Creole (Shnukal, 1988), and one covering most of the rest of northern Australia, known as Kriol. Each of these
languages has a vocabulary based mainly on English (with some Aboriginal language words or original contributions), but
the grammar and the meanings behind it have substantial contributions from the original Aboriginal languages.
One of the main places where Kriol developed was at Roper River in the Northern Territory, where an Anglican mission
was set up in 1908 to save the remnants of eight language groups of the region. These peoples had resisted the
incursions of the graziers since the 1870s, but from 1903 the Eastern and African Cold Storage Company determined to
exterminate them and employed gangs of ten to fourteen men to hunt out and shoot all the people – adults or children
– on sight. Describing those years, Warndarang woman Dinah Garadji said, ‘They just regarded us Aboriginal people as
animals’ (Harris, 1994, p. 697). Compared with the horrors of life on the run, the regimen of life on the mission was
welcomed by the Aboriginal people, but here as elsewhere the mission had an assimilatory agenda. Most of the children
were housed separately from the adults (although not by force, as in many other places), which contributed to their lack
of access to traditional languages, and so they developed the existing northern Australian pidgin into what became
known initially as Roper River Creole (Sharpe & Sandefur, 1977). From here and from other centres, Kriol developed and
spread across the north, meeting up with and merging with Kimberley varieties (Mühlhäusler, 1991; Sandefur, 1981).
Today, altogether, there are around 20 000 speakers of Kriol.
79
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
‘Protection’ and ‘Assimilation’
As the European frontier spread further out from the settlements and Aboriginal resistance was broken, dispossessed
Aboriginal people left in the colonised territories became dependent on European rations for much of their food. To
survive, it became necessary for these people to juggle the two worlds in which they now had to live, adopting the
externals of European culture where necessary (and in some cases by choice). Many became employed on stations in
domestic labour, land clearing, shepherding and hunting possums and dingos – some as permanent workers, but most
as seasonal labourers. By 1900 some Nyungar people in the south west had even purchased their own blocks of land for
farming and lived much as their European neighbours did (Haebich, 1988). Through all this, many managed stay on their
traditional lands (now occupied by the pastoral stations), keeping up regular visits to relatives and to sites on their
‘runs’, keeping their surviving families together (Baines, 1988, p. 231).
The lives of these colonised Aboriginal people took a definite turn for the worse at the close of the 19th century.
Suddenly, after some Aboriginal success in coping with the occupation, the experiences of the two worlds diverged
even further. Since these events happened to people who are still alive, or whose children are still alive, they are even
more vivid for Aboriginal people today than the events we have just described.
When Western Australia gained its independence from Britain in 1889, two things happened. One was that the
restraining influence of liberal humanitarians back in Britain was removed, and so settlers in the less civilized north felt
able to carry out violent acts with even less fear of retribution. The other was that Western Australia was able to follow
Queensland in formulating draconian ‘Protection’ Acts which would impose severe controls on all Western Australian
Aboriginal people and remove them from sight to missions and reservations wherever possible (Haebich, 1988). At the
time, the prevailing European view was that Australian Aboriginal people were doomed to extinction. Even the most
charitable Europeans saw their task as ‘to smooth the dying pillow of the Aboriginal race’ (Harris, 1994), and the
Protection Acts were justified on this basis.
Leading up to the Protection Acts, an amendment was passed in 1893 to exclude all Aboriginal people of full and part
descent in Western Australia from voting (previously some had actually been able to vote since the British had
designated Aboriginal people ‘British citizens’ from the time they claimed possession of Australia). Other reductions in
rights followed, culminating in the 1905 ‘Native Administration Act’ and its even more draconian successors, the 1936
and 1944 Acts5.
The Protection Acts were based on the European ideology of ‘race’, where people were assigned to categories on the
basis of appearance. There were constant revisions of guidelines for classifying Aboriginal people by titles such as ‘halfcaste’, ‘quadroon’ and ‘octoroon’ according to how much Aboriginal ‘blood’ they were supposed to have. While
classification was purportedly on the basis of ancestry, in practice Protectors and other officials decided who was what
simply on the basis of skin colour (Read, 1983). Depending on how people were classified, provisions of the Acts
applied differently to them – and forced the segregation of many from members of their own families. People convicted
of offences under the Act could be fined, jailed (‘with or without hard labour’; Section 58, 1905 Act), and permanently
exiled from their country.
Europeans appointed as ‘Protectors’ under the Act (often policemen, who were thus required both to ‘protect’ and to
enforce) had powers to disperse Aboriginal camps and remove people to other areas or detain them permanently in
strictly regimented native ‘settlements’. Life in places like Moore River Native Settlement from the 1920s to the 1940s
has been likened to life in a concentration camp, with a highly controlled routine, lining up for roll calls, inadequate
food, clothing and medical care, separation of children from adults by fences and locked dormitories. Brutal
punishments were common, including solitary confinement for up to a fortnight for both adults and children in a tiny
wooden shack known as the ‘Boob’(Haebich, 1988, Ch 6). Detention in such settlements was a shock both for those
Nyungars who were accustomed to living free lives in their own comfortable European-style homes and for people who
had previously lived a more ‘traditional’ lifestyle, particularly in the north.
‘Non-natives’ who attempted to visit their families in settlements and reserves committed offences under the Act.
Aboriginal people were not allowed to move from one town to another without a permit. Many towns imposed curfews
on Aboriginal people, who had to be out of town by dark, and other towns ‘banned’ Aboriginal people altogether. Travel
from the north to the south was almost impossible (except of course for those being exiled to southern settlements),
and travel outside the state was illegal.
5
80
The provisions and effects of the Acts are summed up in the helpful video, ‘The 1905 Act’ (Graham and Haebich,
1996), produced by Edith Cowan University and based on Anna Haebich’s research.
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
The Acts vigorously pursued a policy of racial segregation and control over sexual relations. Aboriginal people could not
marry without a permit, and ‘Natives’ were not permitted to marry ‘non-Natives’. Interracial couples were separated,
and their children were particularly vulnerable to being removed to institutions. Every Aboriginal child under 21 years of
age was automatically a ward of the Commissioner of Native Welfare, regardless of the fitness and economic state of
the parents, and could be taken into custody at any time. Any ‘Native’ could be ordered to submit to medical
examinations at any time, and none was permitted to possess or supply alcohol.
Aboriginal people could no longer work as independent contractors, and potential employers had to get permits to
employ Aboriginal workers – who were then bonded to their assigned employers in a fashion little removed from slavery.
They were excluded from other workers’ rights such as workers compensation and paid much lower wages. They could
no longer own property (those who still retained farms lost them); any things they owned and most wages they earned,
aside from a small amount of ‘pocket money’, were taken into ‘trust’ by the Native Welfare Department. Spending of
these funds was strictly controlled by the Department, and people were forced to apply in writing to the department for
trivial items of clothing. Much of the money disappeared, and families did not often inherit the earnings of their
deceased relatives. Of course, Europeans still continued to employ Aboriginal people since cheap or unpaid Aboriginal
labour was indispensable, especially on the pastoral stations of the north, which would not otherwise have been
commercially viable (Reynolds, 1990b).
In many Western Australian towns, Aboriginal children were barred from attending school. But when they were able to
gain access, it was at the expense of their cultural and linguistic identity. As for achieving a European education,
children in the native settlements received a vastly inferior education aimed at fitting them for menial labour. At the
Moore River Settlement in the 1920s, one untrained teacher was responsible for teaching 100 children in the younger
primary years, and the recommended curriculum included how to build a shack, laundry techniques and use of cutlery.
Play activities were strongly discouraged (Haebich, 1988).
The stamping out of Aboriginal culture and identity was bolstered in the 1930s by the growth in popularity of eugenics.
The Chief Protector in Western Australia, A.O. Neville, explicitly propagated a policy of ‘breeding out’ the ‘coloured race’
– a policy based on the myth that the ‘black’ could be bred out by the ‘white’ over a few generations with no possibility
of ‘throw-backs’. White Australians were convinced that ‘half-castes’ inherited ‘the worst of both sides’ (Haebich, 1988,
p. 318), and they were alarmed by the growth in the 1930s and 1940s of numbers of people of mixed descent. As a
result, policy changed at this point. While those people who were designated ‘full-blood’ were left on reserves (they
were of course expected to die out anyway), light-coloured children were taken away to institutions from wherever they
were found, to be biologically absorbed into white society. The aim of absorption was rather thwarted by the attitudes of
the wider society, most of which regarded the presence of ‘half-castes’ with hostility, but the policy certainly succeeded
in breaking up Aboriginal families until the 1970s. While most of the most draconian provisions of the Acts were
repealed in 1954, those concerning the removal of children remained in force until much later, whereupon the Child
Welfare Act took over and perpetuated child removals under alternative justifications.
After the 1944 Act was passed, some ‘half-castes’ could apply for citizenship papers to exempt them from the Act, after
being assessed for their health and degree of ‘civilization’ (including non-participation in Aboriginal ceremonies and
other cultural practices) (Rijavec, 1995, p. 14). Those who were eligible were faced with the unenviable choice of
remaining on the reserves, maintaining their community life and practising their culture and language as much as
possible but risking child removal; or getting citizenship papers, promising to cut all contact with their ‘native’ family
members, attempting to ‘pass as white’ and hopefully being able to keep their children from being taken away .
The past 50 years have seen a succession of bureaucracies take the place of the Department for Native Welfare, but the
history of government and police interaction has left West Australian Aboriginal people with an abiding distrust of both
institutions. When the protection legislation was dismantled, it was replaced by a policy of ‘assimilation’ which
attempted to force Aboriginal people to merge indistinguishably into the general population (Rowley, 1972). Some things
improved in the 1970s with official recognition of some rights of Aboriginal people to ‘self-determination’, but the vast
majority of organisations ‘for’ Aboriginal people are still government-controlled. It is only since legal recognition was
given to the fact that Aboriginal people did not surrender their traditional land titles that Aboriginal people have gained
legal grounds for being treated as land owners with rights rather than ‘charity cases’.
81
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Linguistic effects of ‘protection’ and ‘assimilation’
Not surprisingly, ‘protection’ and ‘assimilation’ had further catastrophic effects on the maintenance of Aboriginal
languages. Aboriginal languages and culture were vigorously suppressed to aid in the wiping out of Aboriginal identity.
The Minister in charge of the Acts’ administration had the power to prohibit any ‘tribal practice’ considered ‘injurious’ to
the natives, and those who had power locally over Aboriginal people were often zealous in stamping out Aboriginal
language. As the Bringing Them Home report (Wilson, 1997, Ch14) puts it, ‘The significance of Indigenous languages to
the maintenance of family relations and the preservation and transmission of cultures was not lost on missionaries and
protectors’. The report quotes a submission from the Kimberley Language Resource Centre:
People were also punished for speaking language. In many places language became something that had to be
hidden; we were taught to be ashamed if we spoke anything other than English.
(Kimberley Language Resource Centre submission, quoted in Wilson, 1997, p. 299)
An Aboriginal Queenslander who endured the same conditions under Queensland’s Protection Act has this to say:
[The old people] didn’t like you listening in and wouldn’t explain things to you, what it was about ... Then again
they were frightened of white-fellas, Superintendents, they were very very frightened. If he said you jump, you
don’t know how high you going to jump. If old people tried to teach the younger people, they were sent to Palm
Island, at the pleasure of the Superintendent in those days. It was a crime to teach us languages, that’s why we
were going backwards... The old people were frightened of getting sent away ... That’s why a lot of our people
were frightened to teach us our language. It was fear.
(Allan Douglas, in Aird, 1996, p. 14)
This policy carried through into the schools: until the late 20th century, teachers were prohibited from using Aboriginal
languages in Western Australian state schools. Many teachers punished and ridiculed Aboriginal students for speaking
their language or their own variety of English. The superiority of English was constantly reinforced (Schmidt, 1991).
The removal of children from their parents and other Aboriginal people also made language transmission impossible,
apart from the limited sharing of knowledge the children had with each other, again under threat of caning or other
sanctions. Since much transmission of Aboriginal knowledge, including linguistic terms, happens in ceremonies and
activities at specific locations and times, families who had been transported far from their homelands often lacked the
contexts for learning in any case. Adults were often sent off to work in European contexts where they had no
opportunity to share their language with other speakers of the language, and people married spouses from other
Aboriginal groups who now lived in the same settlements.
While the official policy of assimilation was shelved some years ago, Aboriginal people are still subject to many
pressures to conform to the English norm of non-Aboriginal society, especially in urban situations where they are in
closer contact with non-Aboriginal people. The media promote English and rarely include Aboriginal languages (although
this is changing in some areas with Aboriginal radio or television stations) and the new economy and its values links
English with status and material success. Most reading material is in English, and most Aboriginal language literature is
limited to religious, linguistic or school material. As a result, language death is continuing to take place. In 1991 (the
most recent survey) there were only 90 languages left, and 70 of these were nearly extinct. The remaining 20 languages
are still being passed on to children, but even these are endangered (Schmidt, 1991). Their role in encapsulating an
Aboriginal worldview is being taken over by the creoles described above and by Aboriginal English, a new variety of
English which we will talk about in the next section.
Aboriginal families abound with stories of people living under the Acts. Tom Bennell’s story (Bennell and Collard, 1991) is
one which has been published in Nyungar and Aboriginal English (the version here is transcribed straight from the
original tape of his conversations with Glenys Collard). In this text, he introduces himself and tells the story of his life:
82
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Tom’s Story
Well now this is ‘bout Nyungars talk
h’Aboriginal’s words
h’its nidja ngany
no hold jus’ wait on
now my name is ol’ Tom Bennell
I bin brought up with the h’Aboriginals
from when I was three years of age
my mother
she was a white woman
h’an’ ‘er gran- um, ‘er mother was a ‘alfcaste woman
h’an’ ‘er grandpa – our father – grandfather was a hIndian
We don’t know what part a’ India ‘e cum from
but I was only a little boy about three years of age
h’an’ I remember tha’ man quite well
Well when they took me over
out in the bush
the Bennells boys used to say to me
send that wadjela boy ‘ere – means he’s a white boy
Ngala wangka
learn ‘im to talk Nyungar words mean
das mean to talk h’Aboriginals word see
so tha’ my mother say well h’alright so
an’ they used to take me over h’an’ talk ‘n
learn the ole Nyungar talk
Kaya nyunak
nidja nyininy
djorin yayi. see
I say ohh yeah
ok
‘ow long you gonna stop there
Well I said I don’t know
I might be bula nyininy for years h’an’ years
might’e burda mila wort kurliny
thas mean go away behind bars
well
I stayed with ‘em j- prac’ally all me life
h’anyhow they learn me to
talk all Nyungar words.
83
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Tom’s story is a fine example of a multi-layered Aboriginal English yarn. Even though he is translating his Nyungar into
Aboriginal English for his grand-niece, Glenys, most non-Aboriginal readers find the tale quite opaque due to the lack of
knowledge of the Aboriginal world of experience. Here is a very limited introduction to what it is about (in fact its
content is far more complex than this):
Tom Bennell was a fair-skinned Nyungar child born to his Nyungar mother and adopted by his Nyungar father in 1908.
He describes his ancestry and relationships to relevant family, and how his Nyungar relatives hid him away deep in the
bush for years to keep him from being taken away. In the process he learned his Nyungar culture and language.
As can be seen in ‘Tom’s Story’, the ‘Protection’ and ‘Assimilation’ eras have left their mark in the vocabularies of
Aboriginal people today. Many words in Aboriginal English have their roots in the experiences of those times, e.g.
put behind bars
put into an institution such as a mission or orphanage
(not necessarily jail, and usually not for wrong-doing)
taken away
forcibly removed as a child from parents and put into an institution or adopted
dog licence/tag
Certificate of Citizenship (Arthur, 1996; Rijavec, 1995, p. 14)
munatj
‘policeman’ (from the Nyungar word for ‘White Cockatoo’, probably referring to
the badge on the policeman’s helmet; may also have been conflated with the
‘monarch’ whom the policeman represented.)
There are special words for policeman in Aboriginal languages all around Australia, reflecting the high profile the police
had, and still have, in the lives of Aboriginal people. People from around Roebourne call a policeman munda-maranga,
meaning ‘chain-hand’ (Rijavec, 1995, p. 7).
Many other Aboriginal people are now publishing their histories, and only a few examples can be given here. Linden Girl
(Rajkowski, 1995) tells the story of Lallie Matbar, a young Aboriginal woman, and Jack Akbar, an Afghan cameleer, who
were repeatedly refused permission to marry, were interned, escaped to South Australia, were extradited, and so on. The
late Jack Davis (1982; 1986) summed up the experiences of Nyungars and the attitudes of those in power in many plays,
books and poems, and Broome musician Jimmy Chi (1991) stirred audiences with his hilarious musical Bran Nue Day, which
tells the story of a Broome boy trying to find his way home from the mission where he had been taken. Glenyse Ward (1991;
1995) and Alice Nannup (1992) have told of their experiences of institutionalisation followed by slavery as domestics. Jack
McPhee tells the story of his life from adoption by a non-Aboriginal father at an early age and work on stations and mines.
He describes the effects of the different Acts on people in North West towns. Morndi Munro (1996) tells how he worked for
years on a station carved out of his own land, and then was dumped when he grew too old: ‘I didn’t know the manager was
just trying to get all the sweat out of me, just like a motorcar or an engine or something like that’.
Living in two worlds: Aboriginal Australian responses to change
The story so far has been largely from the point of view of European history, showing how Europeans moved into the
Aboriginal world and expected Aboriginal people to move into the European world, under particular conditions. But how
have Aboriginal people responded to this dislocation of their world? While in many cases their room to make choices
has been severely circumscribed, Aboriginal people have been far from passive recipients of a new culture and law.
Adapting lifestyles
We’ve seen how Aboriginal people attempted to incorporate Europeans into their own world initially by identifying them
as lost relations and attempting to deal with them according to their existing norms of reciprocity and relationship. They
also made use of many of the new things brought into their world, on their own terms. Within a few years of the arrival
of Europeans, European artefacts were criss-crossing Australia along the traditional trade routes, just as Macassar steel
had circulated in the centuries before (Trudgen, 2000). European explorers often found evidence of European items and
pidgin English or new Aboriginal words referring to them which had come to regions over immense distances several
decades before they themselves entered the territory (Reynolds, 1990a).
Europeans, their animals, and their material culture were incorporated into Aboriginal rock art and bark paintings
from the earliest sightings. Paintings of ships, feral cats, horses and bullocks and their tracks appear in the midst of
more traditional art subjects (Reynolds, 1990a, pp.42-43; Sutton, 1989). Reynolds (1990a, p. 43) reports that European
tunes, words and themes were incorporated into Aboriginal songs and dances. As with their traditional subjects, the
accuracy of drawings and the imitations of European animals in dances were evidence of acute observation.
84
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
As Aboriginal territory was progressively overrun by Europeans, however, the world of the Europeans became something
which could not just be selected from to add to Aboriginal culture: Aboriginal people faced a new situation where they
were forced to adapt to the new world while striving to maintain the integrity of their own culture as far as possible.
In many cases, it’s a matter of ‘keeping up appearances’. Even today, when protection and assimilation are officially a
thing of the past, many Aboriginal people in Western Australia put on the externals of European lifestyles primarily out of
fear of non-Aboriginal evaluations or because ‘the Welfare will get you’ or ‘wadjela might come’ (wadjela is Nyungar
Aboriginal English for non-Aboriginal people), or simply feelings of shame. (Aboriginal English shame is a complex and
important concept in Aboriginal society all over Australia, difficult to translate into standard English but meaning roughly
a sense of social appropriateness and embarrassment at being singled out). Glenys Collard gives two present-day
examples of trying to appear ‘normal’:
Looking like a ‘normal’ Australian household
Nyungar families value living together and looking after one another, so Anglo-Australian expectations about nuclear
family households cause many problems:
AH:
what about um sometimes ah like Nyungars worry when they got too much family in the in the house thatthe Wadjelas are gonna complain?
GC:
but that’s what I’m talking about inspection times you actually say to them all go down the shop because..
usually they say um between 9 and 12.. and it’s not just cleanup, it means clean OUT
AH:
mhm [clean OUT
GC:
[you fellas all go
AH:
right it’s not just tidying up the house
GC:
no.. you fellas all go down there an sit an come back after dinnertime.. or I’ll come that way.. when they go..
cause that’s what ‘appens you ave ta.. get everyone out cause you know that they.. you know they’ll say they
not alloweda stop there.. so they don’t be there.. or- there’s the three things: they send people away, they try
an clean up, or they just.. um.. have to send half the- or more than half the mob away from the house.
The fears about inspections underlying these efforts are not just related to the fear of losing the house. One young
Nyungar woman talks of how obsessively her mother kept their house hyper-clean and tidy out of fear of having her own
children taken away as she was (anonymous, personal communication).
Visiting and Socialising with Non-Aboriginal People
Glenys’ granny ‘Janine’ (not her real name) was ‘stopping’ with Glenys when Glenys’ close non-Aboriginal friend Patsy
invited Janine to stay with her family for the weekend. Nyungar families don’t usually carry lots of luggage with them when
they move somewhere, and they are used to sharing clothes with other family members (people just pick up whatever
they want to wear). Most Nyungars have low incomes too, so goods are only bought at the time they are needed.
GC:
Janine went to Patsy’s one time my granny, an Patsy said could she stop the weekend. So an I ony ad a little
bit of money an I ad to go down the shop an buy er some pyjamas and shorts and undies and tops because
it didn’t matter (when J was at GC’s house) cause she could wear- she had a coupla old pairs- she didn’t
bring anythink with er which was okay cause she could just put pop’s t-shirt on an have er shower an jump
into bed but- because she ad to go to the Wadjela’s – Patsy- I ad to go an get er all these things .. an pack
her little bag to go cause it was- it would’ve been shame.. but.. that’s what happens then or a lot- or
otherwise they don’t go . . . I woulda had to say ‘well.. she does- well we’re actually takin er over here out
Patsy’ or something else making up (pretending, making an excuse) you know.. but ‘er pop said ‘how much
you got there?’ an we adda shuffle around until we could get ‘er a nice pair of shorts an a nice t-shirt even
though it was only the couple of nights and a nightie an a couple of pairs of.. new undies cause it would’ve
been shame.. oh an a pair of sandals.. they were only cheap ones but as long as they were clean and neat
cause – you know the Wadjelas wanna go – where’d they take er down to the markets an stuff an.. I mean
we don’t care we wouldn’t go.. if she doesn’t- if you don’t have the clothes you don’t go.. so.. was no good
‘er going to Patsy’s if she couldn’t go nowhere.. where.. we don’t- if we aven’t got em we don’t go. Or we
can go but you sit in the car and someone just goes in if you only gonna go to get something.. so it doesn’t
matter. but- yeah I spent all my money
AH:
so that’s even Patsy, an she understands everything
85
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
GC:
yeah an that’s my Wadjela cobber who doesn’t- you know who would have found something of [her
daughter’s] probably but I was still shame cos it’s still my granny or it would ave made her shame too..
cause she did say ‘Nan?’ – ‘yeah yeah’ I aksed her did she wanta go – but she said ‘um oh what clothes I’m
gonna wear Nan?’ So Pop said ‘yeah well we’ll just have to get some’.
Unfortunately because most non-Aboriginal people see only these external appearances, and are excluded from the
Aboriginal world which continues to exist out of view in their own cities, they are unaware of the depth of values and
lifestyle that continue to govern Aboriginal lives. This ignorance causes more problems and tensions for Aboriginal
people. As one Aboriginal woman said to researchers in Sydney, ‘A lot of people don’t understand that just because
they put us on missions and put clothes on us doesn’t mean that, what was in our make-up and in our systems and in
our society immediately went away’ (Munns, 2000, p. 32).
There are many ways in which Aboriginal people have found ways to maintain their own worldview and lifestyle while
adapting to the presence of European culture. First, family relationships (i.e. kinship relations) are still of central
importance in defining the world. Important family events like funerals (all too common in contemporary Aboriginal
society), or looking after younger relatives, often have a higher priority than school, even when school is also important
to people. Much more frequently than Anglo-Australians, Aboriginal people will call others by their kin term rather than a
personal name. Reciprocal kin names are still used in most places: for example, an uncle may refer to his nephew as
unc, or uncle, grandchildren are referred to as liddle pop or nan; when ‘Joanne’ saw her new-born daughter for the first
time, she exclaimed ‘Oh, my liddle mummy!’, to the confusion of the attending Anglo-Australian doctor. Generational
seniority can be more important than age, as Eva Sahanna explains:
When an aunty is the same age or younger than niece or nephew, same respect goes as if they were an older, or
somebody who has kids. So respect for generations overrides age. I got a cousin who’s only 2 and my daughter is
17 months – an thas ‘uncle’. You go to your normal auny you gotta shake her hand an give er a kiss. An like if you
don’t, Pop’ll say ‘Gloria in there’ – you gotta go in an say hello to her – she only [13] – an she goes along with it
she says ‘Hello Lyn, hello Harry’ (to Eva’s parents) – because they’re her cousins – and they respond normally –
that’s the spinout.. and she gets to sit at the table an talk with them.. most of the time she talks to Carol (Eva’s
sister) cause they’re about the same age, but she can sit there and talk if she wants to. Mum can’t say ‘Can you
go up there with the kids’. You know how all your aunties sit together and all your uncles sit together – Gloria gets
to sit with them and she’s only 13 – and we gotta sit out with the kids.
(Eva Sahanna, personal communication; names have been changed)
From the time that the European world began to impinge on the Aboriginal world, Aboriginal people have maintained
their connections with ancestral country wherever possible, and generally live relatively mobile lives, visiting family in
different parts of their country. The most ‘urbanised’ people in the south-west still often demonstrate a preoccupation
with bush-related activities, such as hunting. They have simply replaced spears with guns. In some areas, ceremonies
such as initiation are still carried out in their appropriate sites, as recorded for example in the film Exile and the Kingdom
(1993) by the people of Roebourne. The Roebourne people show how they always introduce themselves to the spirits of
the sites they visit (Rijavec, 1995, p. 2). But this practice is not restricted to the north of Western Australia; it is still
followed in the south in Nyungar (Baines, 1988) and Yamatji country:
86
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
The Pool Snake
1
Fred:
You ever been to the Mullewa waterfall?
2
Alan:
I been dere eaps of times.
3
Eva:
Is that a swimmin spot or jus?
4
Alan:
Yeah swimmin spot,
5
oh you gotta throw sand in before you jump in
6
Eva:
Why’s that?
7
Alan:
I dunno jus what my Mum tell me,
8
throw sand in before you jump in,
9
she don’t tell me dat much.
10
Eva:
She didn’t tell you why,
11
she just told you to do it?
12
Alan:
Yeah.
13
Fred:
You know why Alan:?
14
I’ll tell ya.
15
Alan:
(Inaudible)
16
Fred:
Cos where youse go swimming
17
is a place where a snake is, ya know
18
Eva:
(Inaudible)
19
Fred:
that belongs to that pool, a big snake.
20
You gotta throw sand in dere
21
to let im know when who you are.
22
Same when you swim in the Murchison River
23
Shaun:
Yeah yeah the big ting comes an it’s like (Inaudible)
24
Fred:
So you gotta throw sand in
25
so that means you don’t get sick
26
and you’re from that country
27
or if you’re a stranger,
28
if I went down to Perth somewhere
29
or (Inaudible) I’d throw sand in it.
There is a strong sense of the continuity between the human and non-human world of spiritual entities, landscape,
animals and plants. The natural world is full of signs with meaning, as a Nyungar 11-year-old (V) and her aunty (A)
explain:
V:
[Nyungars] think . . . somebody’s die there if a wirlo bird but ... um like Wedjalas don’t know what ...what wirlo
bird mean.. Christine was tellin us for news [but] teacher didn’t even know what she was talkin bout.. an if
they (i.e. wirlos) go whistlin too an in Nyungar thas means like someone dyin or somethin like... in Nyungar.
A:
. . . I had to help her [explain to the teacher] because I knew a lot about that wirlo bird too, it’s a death bird or
when someone very sick an on their last . . .
Aboriginal people usually prioritise place over time in viewing history and measure time by events rather than by
quantifiable units, e.g. ‘when gran’s gran was a little girl’. This applies when talking about the recent past too, as in the
following exchange which took place over the telephone:
Niece: Mary’s gone to hospital. Her heart was beating rreeal fast and she couldn’t get her breath
Aunt: When was this, aunt?
Niece: Just after Home an Away. She’s got pneumonia.
(Malcolm et al., 1999)
87
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Non-Aboriginal Australians often assume that using European tools and materials is not ‘Aboriginal’, but Aboriginal
culture like any other changes and adapts to new circumstances while maintaining a basic Aboriginal identity. People
have adapted to horses and camels and then Toyotas (in Aboriginal English, ‘toyota’ can mean any four-wheel drive
vehicle) yet use them to maintain the same mobile lifestyle visiting kin and significant places. Basil Sansom (1988) has
shown how Aboriginal people have adapted to the use of money as a trade item, but incorporated it into ‘traditional’
systems too, where money, like any other item of exchange, is bound up in relational systems of value and obligation.
It is in the arts that contemporary Aboriginal culture has the highest profile for non-Aboriginal people, and even here,
Aboriginal people have adapted European materials and techniques to express ‘traditional’ themes. The renaissance of
Western Desert art from the mid-1970s owes a lot to the use of canvas and acrylic paints to produce art works which
were formerly produced in the sand as part of ceremonies and storytelling (Anderson & Dussart, 1988). In the process,
Western Desert people have had to negotiate many issues which are analogous to those which arise in the transfer of
communication to English and written media. For example, acrylic paintings (like writing) are enduring objects, unlike
the transitory art of sand paintings, which belonged only to the particular event in which they played a part. When they
are sold to outsiders, the knowledge encoded in them becomes public, something which can conflict with the Aboriginal
concept of the ownership of knowledge, where people must own the right to paint a design or to view it, and so on
(Morphy, 1991).
But in spite of these issues, Aboriginal ‘artists’ (the concept of an élite ‘artist’ is itself a European imposition) maintain
many of their ‘traditional’ ways of doing art. For example, resisting the Western idea of ‘star’ performers, it is very
common for Western Desert artists to paint paintings cooperatively, according to the ceremonial roles of the people
involved (Anderson & Dussart, 1988, pp.101-106). In urban centres, contemporary Aboriginal artists like Bronwyn
Bancroft, Fiona Foley, Sally Morgan, Shane Pickett and a wealth of others express their Aboriginal identity and
experiences of contemporary life in new and innovative ways. Yet ‘country’ (that is, homeland) retains its foundational
importance in their work.
Other Aboriginal artists use performance art to express their heritage, in dance, drama and cinema. Tracey Moffatt is an
example of an internationally successful Murri film writer/director who uses Aboriginal English where appropriate, while
Western Australian directors are producing films like Confessions of a Headhunter and Blackfellas. We’ve already noted
the plays and musicals of Jack Davis and Jimmy Chi, and local Aboriginal actors like the Yirra Yarkin theatre are
continuing to develop new ways of combining European media and distinctively Aboriginal ways of doing things.
There are other more subtle – and often deeply rooted – ways in which Aboriginal culture influences experience today.
One which often comes into conflict with the compartmentalisation and specialisation of Western society is the
tendency to see things as a whole and interrelated. Glenys Collard talks about the conflicts this causes for Aboriginal
people working in Australian bureaucracies:
You’ve got the Aboriginal health worker, Aboriginal education worker, Aboriginal police aide, you’ve got the
Aboriginal project officers in ATSIC, you got Aboriginal court officers, not lawyers…. One is not allowed to go over
to the other. One could be a health worker, but she can’t go into the school to say oh that food the kids had they
really got sick. Because she’s not a health expert. . . . The Aboriginal Liaison Officer from housing who knows that
there’s 18-25 people living in that house. And that they really need the support and that, but they can’t write that
on the paper – they can’t assist the family.
(Glenys Collard, personal communication)
Coombs, Brandl and Snowdon (1983, Ch 13) report on a number of cases where Aboriginal groups came up with
innovative plans to address multi-faceted needs in their communities, but they failed to get funding because of
bureaucratic compartmentalisation. For example, members of Belyuen community applied for funding for a truck that
people could use to improve nutrition by gathering their traditional foods, instruct the children in their cultural and
geographic heritage, and enable a craft business using bush resources. They failed to gain funding since such multipurpose (and efficient) uses of the resource did not fall under the funding guidelines of any single department. Glenys
comments that the same happens in communities throughout Western Australia, for example in projects which aim to
address economic disadvantage:
Like from Kondinin if they were to get a bus for one project that ATSIC has given, they not allowed to use that bus to
take five mums to Narrogin for shopping where it’s four times cheaper. You’re not allowed to because it doesn’t fit
the mileage. So the solution is that they have five buses and can’t afford it. So how many tires is that to replace?
88
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
What it is is that because we think in the whole, that worldview that’s logic to us – well if we had that then we can
do this this and this, but the society rules that you actually have to go this by this by this – they actually cut it up.
That’s why people can’t achieve.
(Glenys Collard, personal communication)
Even when they keep within the confines of their department’s agenda, of course Aboriginal staff still face conflicts due
to the lack of recognition of their cultural knowledge:
Welfare officers FACS who [are] aksed to give an assessment on a family but then their assessment can still be
overridden by the psychologist and the team leader because they have the paper where the Aboriginal person
again even though there’s 25 people in that house them fellas still know how to look over that baby. ‘Neglect
neglect’ from the Wadjelas.
(Glenys Collard, personal communication)
On the other hand, Aboriginal staff are often caught in the middle of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal expectations. For
example, programs which bypass Aboriginal protocol on seniority of leadership:
They put on programs and delegate a young person because they say they have more skills and that’s why they fail.
It’s the protocol of giving it to the 3rd youngest brother who tells it to the eldest (...) So it’s already set up to fail.
(Glenys Collard, personal communication)
Aboriginal employees also face many linguistic conflicts as a result of accommodating to the Standard Australian
English expected in the workplace and then alienating their own people by talking ‘flash’:
GC:
in jobs okay you get a lotta um.. Nyungars or blackfellas in work have different jobs it could be from you know
the counter person at CES an they talking sort of flash way
(. . .)
AH:
just cause there’s Wadjelas around or?
GC:
yeah because they’re in this Wadjela environment an they dress like the Wadjelas an that’s when you get
other blackfellas say to them they use the terminologies that are used in that setting only in that workplace..
an then.. the other blackfellas rip em up cruel . . . because they say oo you think you talkin to?
This dilemma is one manifestation of a general requirement that most Aboriginal people live with: they need to culture
switch to accomplish tasks and maintain relationships with people outside the Aboriginal world. The proportion of
Aboriginal people today working in non-Aboriginal settings is still fairly low. Even where they are working in Western
institutions, their roles are often directed towards interacting with other Aboriginal people, as we have seen above.
Those people who do not work in non-Aboriginal settings often interact with non-Aboriginal people in limited contexts,
mainly to do with official functions such as health care, education, the police and social security. On the other hand,
those Aboriginal people who do interact with outsiders in less formal settings often find themselves in contact with
multiple ethnic groups from Malays and Afghans to Italians and Pacific Islanders – as in fact they have during much of
the last two hundred years. As a result their exposure to the dominant Anglo-Australian experience can be surprisingly
limited, leading to further potential for communication breakdowns:
GC:
Rod – when he was working doing planting the trees out at (town).. regrowth.. place.. and e ad is Christmas..
picnic party thing
AH:
oh yeah
GC:
like a picnic thing.. and him an liddle Rod and Sonia an I ad to buy them new things to go new shorts and..
sandals and.. whatever and.. um a hat because it was hot an they don’t.. they just wear their caps but..
anyway e- he said choo you better dress em up cause other than like all them Wadjela kids will be there so
(...) let them two go.. (...) an [the organisers] told Rod to take a plate an so I put three plates in there.. an I did
say to im ‘you gotta take a feed?’ an e just said ‘no.. we just gotta take a plate... and.. so yeah them things
happen all the time
AH:
so e got there an he didn’t have any food?
GC:
but they said it was all- they still gave em plenty of feed
AH:
mm.. but they thought oh these Nyungars yeah they never bring anything
GC:
they probably did but they never said anythink
(Source: Glenys Collard. Names have been changed)
89
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Adapting language: The rise of Aboriginal English
Overview
Hand in hand with the changes in general lifestyle which we have just discussed have been further changes in language.
As we have seen, colonisation has led to the death of many languages so that few are still spoken in full, and most
Aboriginal people today speak either a creole (10%) or a form of English (80% – mostly Aboriginal English) as their first
language (Schmidt, 1991). This does not mean that Aboriginal languages have lost their value to Aboriginal people –
many words and phrases have been preserved in the English spoken by them. But without the full resources of their
original languages, Aboriginal people have had to turn English into a language capable of expressing an Aboriginal
worldview. Hence, the rise of Aboriginal English.
Aboriginal English has developed through several different paths. The key development was that of NSW Pidgin English.
By 1870 a pidgin based on it had become the lingua franca of much of Queensland, continuing north and west and
eventually creolising in the north, as we have seen. It probably also disseminated south to Victoria and South Australia
and could have been transported to Western Australia by sea routes, if not through the inland (Malcolm & Koscielecki,
1997). More sustained contact with the dominant lexifier language, English (in many varieties, as we saw earlier), led to
the restructuring of the pidgin or creole to become more like standard English. A new variety of English thus emerged
which was mutually intelligible with the English spoken by other Australians but was still distinctively Aboriginal.
Aboriginal English is often compared with Standard Australian English (SAE) – the variety of English which is taken to be
the norm in Australian institutions of power, whose spoken form is the first language of higher status groups in
Australian society, and which provides the standard in education. Peoples’ idea of SAE is based mainly on its written
form, which nobody really speaks, but they have strong views on what is ‘proper’ standard English and what is not. SAE
and Aboriginal English are both ‘dialects’ (varieties) of English, like British ‘RP’ (‘Received Pronunciation’ – the British
prestige variety), American English, Scottish English, Indian English, etc.
Aboriginal English is a ‘social’ dialect, in that it is social group membership which determines its speakers, and rather
than being limited to one region it is spoken all over Australia in the same range as Australian English. There are actually
a range of varieties to which we give the cover term ‘Aboriginal English’, which range from ‘heavy’ pronunciation in Kriolinfluenced varieties to ‘light’ in the south. There is also some overlap with non-standard English spoken by many nonAboriginal Australians (due to influence both ways). Regional varieties of Aboriginal English have their own lexical
variants such as words which have remained from the local Aboriginal languages. But they have much more in common
with each other so that we can talk about a pan-Australian Aboriginal English which marks Aboriginal identity. We
showed ‘Steve’, a 12 year-old Wongi (Goldfields) boy, an Aboriginal English dialogue with some distinctive Nyungar
features and asked if he knew who spoke like that: ‘Yeah, us mob!’ he replied.
Aboriginal English expresses an Aboriginal worldview. It differs from Standard Australian English at every level, from this
worldview to the rules for using language (that is, ‘pragmatics’), to the meanings of words and the structures of texts, to
its grammar and sound system. Patricia Königsberg uses the analogy of an iceberg (see Figure 1):
[The iceberg analogy draws attention to] what we call the three crucial parts of language difference: the parts that
are exposed and obvious, the parts that are very hard to get at and the parts that are hidden under the water.
Like the parts of an iceberg that are exposed to the air, some language features are very obvious; they are easily
observed in speech and writing. Some aspects of language are almost irretrievable – like the part of the iceberg
visible just under the water. Lastly, there are aspects of a language which cannot be understood without being deeply
submerged in the culture.
The obvious exposed features include those features that teachers are often most concerned with. They are:
1.
the prosodics of the language: features such as stress and intonation;
2.
the phonology: the sounds that a language employs;
3.
the morphology: the form of the words;
4.
the syntax: the way sentences are put together; and
5.
the genres or text structures.
Looking at the part of the iceberg just visible under water, we describe those features that are harder to get at.
They include:
90
6
aspects of semantics: the meanings employed in Aboriginal English and
7
the pragmatics: the language’s rules of usage within different contexts and for different functions.
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Figure 1: The Language Iceberg
Stress/Intonation
(prosodics)
Sounds
(phonology)
Words
(morphology)
Sentences
(syntax)
Textform/Structure
(genres)
Meaning
(semantics)
The way language is used
(pragmatics)
Values
Beliefs
Attitudes
Lastly, deep under water, we find:
8
the values,
9
the beliefs and
10
the attitudes that underpin everything within a particular language or dialect, the worldview.
(Königsberg & Collard, 2000)
91
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Some examples of Aboriginal English texts
We will now look at some texts and pick out some of the features which illustrate these aspects of Aboriginal English.
[NB: All texts are available on audiotape]
Text 1. Narrogin
‘Robert’, Nyungar boy in Year 2. A is Robert’s cousin ‘Annie’; I is Kezia Cruttenden, a non-Aboriginal teacher, who kindly
provided this recording from 14.5.97 (Tape #063).
1. I:
what did you do on the weekend Robert?
2. R: I went to my Nan’s… Shirley’s…
3. I:
mhm.. tell me all about it
4. R: an I went huntin wiv er…
5. I:
mm
6. R: [an I7. I:
[mm did you catch anything?
8. R: yep caught um ten boomers an ten choo-s um kangaroos yeah…boomers still kangaroos…they shot ten
kangaroos and ten…boomers
9. I:
mhm…and what did you with them?
10. R: um we skunned em…an put em in our fridge…
11. A: and did you cook em?
12. R: yep
13. I:
mhm…and did you go- did you go hunting for them too?
14. A: yeah
15. I:
you tell us about how you caught some of them
16. R: um we caught one by our slingers… we ad it in the bush… an I wa(s) in the bush dere (h)idin with my um bow
and arrows what I made… I was jus lookin at a boomer I jus got it right dere in the ‘eart ssmash
17. I:
mm
18. R: went wobbly way like that an
19. A: (sneeze)
20. R: went straight in
21. I:
mm… and did you… how many did your dad catch?
22. R: Dad e caught… bout nine of em
23. I:
mm… how did he catch his?
24. R: with a gun… an e’d use a… coz um Uncle Shane used a… um a shotgun and. e [used
25. A: [Shane is your Uncle
26. R: yeah e’s our Uncle… Uncle Shane li’l boy… an Annie’s cousins… uncles
27. A: those aren(‘t) my uncles thas my cousins…
28. R: well… well e’s my… mum’s brother… and. den um Nan Shirley shot um two… wiv only with one pistol gun and
e shootin blue bullets out… shot em two at the same. place boom boom boom… i’ was like a machine gun i’
wouldn’ stop shootin.. ‘ad a hundred bullets in it…
29. I:
mmmm
30. R: she taught him up. like Dad??
31. I:
mm… and did you have a cook up in the bush?
32. R: yep… yeah bu’ mum… mum sat down with her Shirley eatin her feed…
33. I:
92
mm
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
34. R: an Mum’d.. Mum just got a... d- Mum just caught a boomer. when we was.. when we was. r-runnin when we
were under this shotgun?? an dus (-just?) hit it in the head with a stick.
35. I:
… mmm… and what did you have to eat at the cook up?
36. R: ah I had vegies and.. some kangaroo meat…an…an tomatoes…an rabbit bones. an rabbit meat…
37. I:
mm
38. R: cause I shot a rabbit…an I made my liddle campfire an we stayed dere for two nights
39. I:
mmm
40. R: thas how come we got ten boomers…
41. I:
mm
42. R: cause we was drying?? them up it woulda been. like nearly eighdy… coz me an Tommy got two
43. I:
and Annie… have you been out kangaroo hunting lately?
44. A: [my dad did
45. R: [yeah… she’s dad
46. A: when my brother went with im… my brother went for a ride with im
47. R: yeah but Uncle Gary goes with them sometimes unna
48. A: mhuh
Values, beliefs and attitudes
Lines 27-28: Sorting out how people are related is of prime importance if any yarn is to be told, so Annie initiates a
digression to clarify how she relates to the people in Robbie’s yarn.
Line 38: Robbie was being given an opportunity to learn by doing in creating his own little campfire in imitation of the
main campfire and cooking his catch on it.
Pragmatics
Line 8: ‘ten kangaroos and ten boomers’. Aboriginal English does not usually require precision in terms of specific
numbers, so Robert has probably included these numbers for the benefit of the non-Aboriginal interviewer; the numbers
are not intended to be a precise count, simply to convey a large number in each case.
Line 47: Unna is an invariant question tag frequently used by Nyungar speakers of Aboriginal English to gain
confirmation or agreement from a listener or fellow narrator, or involve them in the yarn. In this case, its equivalent in
SAE would be ‘doesn’t he?’. Aboriginal English in other regions uses different tags with the same pragmatic purpose,
such as ‘ini’?, ‘inna’?, etc.
Semantics
Line 8: Robbie deliberately uses the term ‘boomers’, which specifies an older male kangaroo, as opposed to the smaller,
female ‘roos’ which have more tender meat. This semantic distinction may be attributed to the fact that in the original
Nyungar language, there were at least two words for kangaroo: yongka and warru (Malcolm et al., 1999, quoting Alan
Dench).
Line 32: Feed is a word which has undergone a semantic extension in Aboriginal English, from ‘what is fed to animals’ to
‘what people eat’, ie. ‘food’. We speculate that this extension may have its origins in the pastoral context in which many
Aboriginal people originally learned English (and where many Aboriginal people did indeed experience the indignity of
being thrown rations on the woodpile rather than eating in a more ‘civilised’ fashion with the other human workers).
Syntax
Line 22: ‘Dad e caught...’ The subject noun ‘Dad’ is often followed by its pronoun, ‘e’, as is common in Aboriginal English.
Line 26: ‘Uncle Shane li’l boy’: Possession may be marked in a variety of ways in Aboriginal English such as by
juxtaposing the ‘possessor’ and the ‘object’; using ‘s is not obligatory.
Line 28: ‘E shootin blue bullets out’ Aboriginal English often omits the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ (ie. ‘was’, in this case).
The context provides any necessary information on whether past or present tense is involved.
93
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Line 34: ‘We was runnin’: When the auxiliary is used, it is usually regularised, so that ‘is/was’ is used as the auxiliary
verb for each subject (‘I was’, ‘you was’, ‘he was’, etc.). Notice that Robert code-switches to the SAE form ‘we were’ for
the benefit of the non-Aboriginal teacher.
Morphology and lexis
Line 10: Skunned is a commonly used past tense form of ‘to skin’.
Line 16: ‘What’ is used as a relative pronoun in Aboriginal English where SAE would use ‘which’ (this use of ‘what’ is also
common in some other non-standard dialects of English).
Line 18: -way is frequently used to create adverb compounds in Aboriginal English, such as wobbly-way, quick-way,
straight-way etc.
Phonology
Lines 16, 28: ‘Dere’, ‘den’: Very few Aboriginal languages have fricatives (sounds created by the friction of air passing
through a constricted space, such as ‘s’, ‘f’, ‘th’), so ‘th’ as in ‘there’ is often replaced by ‘d’.
Lines 16, 24, 28: ‘(H)e’d, (h)e’s, (h)eart’ etc: English is one of the few languages in the world to include an ‘h’ sound,
and Aboriginal languages do not, so it is often omitted. Many of the non-standard dialects of English which Aboriginal
people heard modelled (e.g. Cockney, rural Australian English) often omit initial ‘h’ too, so it would not have been very
salient to the original Aboriginal learners of English. Some speakers of Aboriginal English over-correct by pronouncing ‘h’
in front of words where it is not pronounced in SAE, eg. ‘haunty’ (‘aunty’). Other English dialects also differ over which
words are pronounced with initial-h:, e.g. the high-status form for ‘herb’ in American English is ‘erb’.
Line 40: ‘Thas’: Aboriginal English has different rules from SAE as to how sounds can be grouped together. It tends not
to tolerate clusters of consonants, so these are often modified by deleting a consonant or putting in an extra vowel.
Lines 4, 34: ‘Huntin’, ‘runnin’: Aboriginal English generally pronounces ‘-ing’ at the ends of words by replacing the [ng]
sound with [n]. (On the other hand, many Aboriginal languages have the [ng] sound at the beginnings of words (eg. ngun
‘brother’ in Nyungar).
Text 2. Oombulgurri
This text comes from an Aboriginal community north of Kununurra, in the Kimberley. Trina Jones kindly provided us with
this recording of her interview with ‘Jack’ on 11.6.96. (Tape #117). This speaker has a number of Kriol-influenced forms
in his Aboriginal English.
94
1. Teacher
What can you see in this picture?
2. Student
All da ba- ball... na balloon... na – yeah ball.. the ball an all the kids
3. Teacher
But not just one ball, is there? there’s...
4. Student
Too many...
5. Teacher
There is isn’t there?
6. Student
And all the kids play.. an dat ting can nearly suffocate you.. when you are underneath it
7. Teacher
It might
8. Student
And and and e got dat ting dat cubbyhouse
9. Teacher
mhm
10. Student
Dey dey slide down
11. Teacher
Mhm.. yes slide over there
12. Student
And
13. Teacher
What’s this?
14. Student
And.. dis
15. Teacher
What’s he doing?
16. Student
Grabbing a ball... an e got a.. an e got all dat ting... um whatnow (pause) all dat pattern dere... dere look
17. Teacher
Can you see anything else in that picture?
18. Student
Yeah wall
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
19. Teacher
Mmm, anything else? No. Do you think you’d like to be in room filled with balls?
20. Student
Yeah
21. Teacher
Be good fun wouldn’t it
22. Student
An all da balloon dropping down.
23. Teacher
(laughing) I’ve seen a place like this before
24. Student
You bin go in dere?
25. Teacher
No, only little kids are allowed in there and I was too big. What about this picture. [What things can you see?
26. Student
[all the persons.. Buying something... an all da all da healthy stuff an some silly stuff... (inaudible)
27. Teacher
All right
28. Student
An big shop an some people dere buying something an ... an all da ting blocks and every... an... ball ball
dis ball... yeah... and some feed dere
29. Teacher
What’s that?
30. Student
Meat... an butter
31. Teacher
Anything else in that picture?
32. Student
Nah... yeah ting... dat ting
33. Teacher
That’s a slicer. Jack if you went into this shop and you wanted to buy something, what would you say to
that man there?
34. Student
Can I have something please?
35. Teacher
That’s right wouldn’t you. What kind of things do you think you might buy if you went in there?
36. Student
All da meat... an some bread for my home.
37. Teacher
And what would you make with that?
38. Student
Um... (sandwich)?
39. Teacher
Anything else? (Pause) No? Have you ever been to a shop like that (pause)
40. Teacher
No? We don’t have those shops that sell lots of cheese and bread and meat and things do we?
(Child nodding head)
41. Teacher
In Kununurra?
42. Student
Mmm yeah
43. Teacher
We do?
44. Student
Yeah dey got em dere (inaudible)
45. Teacher
They have haven’t they. So who cut you hair?
46. Student
Um... my Uncle Shane...
47. Teacher
Did he shave it?
48. Student
Yeah
49. Teacher
Why?
50. Student
Cos... Shane tell me to shave it e go too many hair on my... too many hair das why e shave it
51. Teacher
I think it looks fantastic. Especially with your scarf around your head too it looks really good. What did
you do on the weekend Jack?
52. Student
Us mob when we go flying fox Samson... get no turkey an webin go webin go fly-... um flying fox side ...
from from Oombie webin go w-i-i-i-ight aroun... eberywhere like dat hill eberywhere an and an we go
allway la flying fox an after I bin say I bin say ‘you mob anchor dat boat dere’ an dat boat im dere... an
dat Sid an I bin say ‘Sid boat comin in’ an Sid boat bin come in
53. Teacher
Wow, how did you know? Just lucky was it?
54. Student
I bin hear it from long way
95
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
55. Teacher
Oh did you.
56. Student
Not anybody else... only me
57. Teacher
Just you. You must have been listening very carefully then
58. Student
I bin say ‘you mob shhsh now.’ They couldn’t hear it and Jerry ‘no boat coming’ I bin say ‘Shhsh’ after
when e get dere Sid boat come in. An an an an an Uncle Gerald say ‘Ah Sid come back here where you
goin us mob here’ Dem go straight past us.
59. Teacher
Did they?
60. Student
Mmm
61. Teacher
Why were you guys hiding or something?
62. Student
Nah, us mob bin dere. Dey couldn’t see us and e watching liddle television
63. Teacher
Oh.
64. Student
and so where you going
65. Teacher
Have you been fishing lately?
66. Student
an e bin take us drivin for dat boat.
67. Teacher
You went for a ride in it?
68. Student
Us mob bin drive it.
69. Teacher
You’re too young to drive Jack.
70. Student
Uncle Gerald e bin let us
Values, beliefs and attitudes
Lines 68-70: Aboriginal society does not draw such strong distinctions between adulthood and childhood as AngloAustralian society in many domains. Children are expected to learn by observing adults, to show initiative and exercise
complex skills from an early age. Therefore it is common for Aboriginal children to learn to drive vehicles and boats
much younger than most non-Aboriginal children.
Pragmatics and discourse markers
Liness 6, 16, 28: ‘ting’ (in some areas, also ‘sing’) is commonly used as a hesitation filler.
Semantics
Line 4: ‘too many’ = ‘lots’ (SAE): Aboriginal English sometimes expresses superlatives using forms which SAE uses to
express excess.
Line 52: ‘side’ refers to ‘location/place’ rather than SAE ‘on this side of X’ (See also the examples in Arthur, 1996)
Line 52: ‘la’ is a Kriol preposition here meaning ‘to/for’.
Syntax
Line 8: ‘e got...’ is an existential construction whose SAE equivalent is ‘there is’.
Line 24: ‘You bin go in dere?’ Yes/No questions in Aboriginal English are often marked just by intonation rather than by
putting an auxiliary such as ‘did’ at the front and changing the verb form.
Lines 62, 64, etc.: ‘where you goin’, ‘e watching’: auxiliary ‘to be’ (‘are’/’was’) is optional.
Morphology and lexis
Line 2: ‘all da ball’ = ‘the balls’ (SAE): all da, or alla is a plural marker, used where SAE would use -’s, or sometimes used
in combination with -’s, as in ‘all the kids’.
Lines 62, 68, 70 etc.: ‘bin’ is a past tense marker carried through from Kriol. It is used where SAE would use an ‘-ed’
suffix on the verb instead.
Lines 52-70: In narratives, marking the distinction between past and present is not important, since it can be gathered
from the context. In this case, ‘Jack’ tells his story in a mixture of present and past tense forms. SAE also has this use
of ‘narrative present’ in some informal storytelling, to make the action more immediate and exciting.
Line 66: ‘for dat boat’, meaning ‘on’ it (SAE). Aboriginal English prepositions often vary in use from those used in SAE.
‘For’ is a multipurpose preposition whose wide range of uses probably mirrors those of the Kriol preposition, ‘longa’.
96
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Line 68: ‘Us mob’ is a common first person plural subject (meaning ‘we, more than two’) in Aboriginal English all over
Western Australia.
Phonology
Line 62, etc.: ‘dere’, ‘dey’: Substitution of ‘d’ (a ‘stop’) for ‘th’ ( a ‘fricative’), as in Text 1.
Line 52: ‘eberywhere’: Again, a stop ‘b’ substituted in Aboriginal English for a fricative ‘v’.
Line 52: ‘an’, etc.: Consonant cluster reduction: final ‘d’ sound is rarely sounded in Aboriginal English.
Prosody
Line 52: ‘webin go w-i-i-i-ight aroun... eberywhere’ Aboriginal English often uses sound lengthening for expressive
effect, as here where Jack emphasises the great extent of their journey. The oral performance of a yarn is an important
skill to be mastered in Aboriginal society.
Text 3. Geraldton
This text is a yarn told by a Yamatji man, ‘T’ to a couple of high school boys, a young Nyungar woman, ‘S’, and an AngloAustralian woman, ‘R’. (Yamatji Text 97, #158-9).
1-2
T:
Thas what happened to me once.. I was out bush.. I went to this hill.. and this ole fella said ‘Oh don’t go
near that ill’.. but me nah.. I went up the ‘ill.. when I was mustering sheep.. and I went in lookin in aroun..
3-5
T:
An these little fellas lived.. an that night they come out an tormented me.. got me an chucked me outa
my bed.. chucked the bed on me an all.. I had to go back to that hill because I took somethin from the hill
what I shouldn’ta taken an I took it back
6
S:
Put it back
7
T:
An those little (Inaudible) didn’t come no more
8
R:
So they knew
9
T:
Oh yeah I took a little a grinding rock
10
?:
?
11-12 T:
I’ll take it back I-I’ll take that thing back.. but they jumped all over me.. chucked me out o my bed didn’t
e.. this was out Wiluna..
Values, beliefs and attitudes
This yarn has its background in a complex set of beliefs about ‘little fellas’ connected to sites, the inviolability of sites,
the knowledge of elders (‘this ole fella’, otherwise not introduced at all), knowledge of the geography of Wiluna, the
common experience of supernatural (in non-Aboriginal thinking) ‘tormenting’, and the night as a time when ‘scary
things’ happen.
Genre and text structure
The text illustrates how the structure of Aboriginal English narratives can be quite different from the norms of SAE,
particularly in the way segments are ordered. This yarn belongs to a genre where the actor violates some traditional
customs or site. It begins like most Aboriginal English narratives with an orientation to participants and place (but not a
specific time), followed by a caution about a threat, the disregarding of the caution and the consequences/punishment
and the solution. But then it goes back and fills in the detail of the specific misdemeanour, with a recap of the
punishment and more detail on the precise location. Other Aboriginal English yarns follow a similar strategy of
‘skimming’, where the framework of the narrative is laid out and then the details are filled in later. In contrast, SAE
problem-solution narratives tend to have a linear order where problems are detailed and then followed by solutions.
Pragmatics and discourse markers:
Like most narratives in Aboriginal English, the narrative is economical, assuming much background on the part of the
listeners (and if there had not been a Wadjela6 present, it would probably have been even more so). Many details which
would be required in an SAE narrative are considered unnecessary because the listener should know or infer them
themselves. For example, that he ‘went in’ to a cave (line 2), where exactly the little fellas lived (line 3), where exactly
he was sleeping that night and what kind of bed it was (a swag?) (line 4).
6
Wadjela: non-Aboriginal person (term used by Nyungar and Yamatji speakers of Aboriginal English)
97
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Line 11: makes use of direct speech ‘I’ll take it back...’ without an introductory identification of who is speaking.
Aboriginal English frequently uses this strategy; oral performance enables intonation and vocal tone to indicate who is
speaking if the listener is not likely to be able to infer this.
Line 11: ‘didn’t e’ is a discourse marker which involves the audience although they did not participate in the original
event.
Semantics
Line 3 etc.: ‘little fellas’ are well known to Aboriginal people in Yamatji country, the south-west and elsewhere. There
are expectations about what they look like, the way they come and take children, and so on.
Syntax
Line 7: ‘didn’t come no more’: ‘Multiple negation’ is a feature which Aboriginal English shares with other non-standard
dialects of English. It is also very common in other languages in the world, including French. Interestingly, it was also
the usual way to negate in the prestige dialect of English until Bishop Robert Lowth invented a rule proscribing it in the
18th century.
Phonology
There are a lot of reduced sounds (‘outa’, ‘ole’ etc) which are found in the fast colloquial speech of any speakers of
English; otherwise the phonology is relatively standard. This is a good example of the fact that a narrative can sound
relatively standard yet be strongly influenced in its less noticeable levels (‘in the water’ and ‘deep under it’ by
distinctively Aboriginal worldview and structure.
Getting below the surface: more on semantics and pragmatics
The texts we have just viewed have provided a very brief introduction to the way in which Aboriginal people have
adapted English to express their own culture and experience. We will make a few more general points to illustrate ways
in which Aboriginal English expresses the Aboriginal worldview.
In the semantic realm, one of the most obvious expressions of Aboriginality is the number of words borrowed from
‘traditional’ Indigenous languages. Even in the south-west, where Nyungar language was virtually stamped out by
oppressive practices, people still value their remaining words and phrases, and many Nyungar words have been
incorporated into Aboriginal English. Words like kulungka ‘child’, moorditj ‘terrific’, yongka ‘grey kangaroo’, goona
‘excrement’, winyarn ‘poor, pathetic’, nyorn ‘embarrassment/pity’, budjari ‘pregnant’ and many others are used on a
daily basis among Nyungar people. A similar use of ‘language’ words applies in the English of Aboriginal people all over
the state, from gaga ‘grandfather’ at Bidyadanga and jarnkurna ‘emu’ in Roebourne, to bungarra ‘racehorse goanna’ in
the Yamatji lands and mimi ‘milk’/’breast’ in Kalgoorlie.
As Aboriginal English has developed, it has taken this incorporation even further, with the adoption of new meanings for old
words, such as kepa, formerly Nyungar for ‘water’, now used for ‘alcohol’, or the addition of English affixes (yorga ‘woman’ +
English plural marker –s =yorgas) and the translation of old concepts into new words, e.g. choo – a Nyungar concept – now
generally expressed by shame or combined with it; the classificatory relationship between first cousins in cousin-brother; ole
girl as a term of respect, and reciprocal kin terms such as aunty/aunt meaning either ‘aunt’ or ‘niece’.
In addition to these words, there are many other words in Aboriginal English which have the same form, but a different
meaning from words in Standard Australian English (Arthur, 1996; Harkins, 1994; Malcolm et al., 1999. pp.45-46). For
example, for liar ‘not serious/just pretending’ (used more in the north); camp ‘home’; cheekin ‘teasing/telling off’; open
‘empty’ (and by extension ‘penniless’, ‘pathetic’ and many more meanings depending on the context; this meaning is
used more in the south); muddy ‘afraid’. Some meanings are the exact opposite of SAE: wicked and deadly both mean
‘terrific’ (as does solid). English words may be given suffixes from Aboriginal language, e.g. ‘We been see Megan-watha’
(Megan’s mob/family; the addition is from Yindjibarndi).
As well as words having a different set of meanings in themselves, they also differ in their connotations in the two
dialects. For example, the associations which the word ‘kangaroo’ brings up for Aboriginal English speakers are
generally much more detailed and cover different areas of experience from those of most non-Aboriginal speakers:
98
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
In an investigation of word association relating to ‘kangaroo’ carried out by Anne Mead of the Narrogin District
Education Office Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal respondents differed noticeably in their responses. The initial twelve
Aboriginal associations included the following:
kangaroo ➜ taste ➜ food ➜ onions, tomatoes ➜ head in ashes ➜ tail in ashes ➜ kangaroo dip ➜ sitting in the
shade ➜ fire ➜ family, brothers and sisters ➜ night time hunting ➜ daytime hunting ➜ hides, pegging in the sun
while the initial twelve non-Aboriginal responses included:
kangaroo ➜ national emblem ➜ dangerous ➜ long ➜ tail ➜ pouch ➜ tourists ➜ coins ➜ graziers ➜ joey ➜
clever ➜ hops ➜ beautiful ➜ soft
In fact, out of the 73 associations provided for ‘kangaroo’ by each group, only four concepts were shared (grey,
red, pet and furry). These data demonstrate how dialects can contain contrasts in meaning which are not
always evident at the surface level.
(Malcolm et al., 1999, p. 36).
Another area in which we see pervasive, but often subtle, reflections of the Aboriginal world of communication is that of
pragmatics, the rules for communication (see Eades, 1982, 1984, 1988; Harris, 1980, 1987). For example, the default
mode of conversation for Aboriginal English speakers is communal and continuous (everyone talks and listens at once)
as opposed to the dyadic (one-to-one, one at a time) default for Anglo-Australian speakers (Walsh, 1991). This basic
phenomenon leads to many consequences. For example, turn-taking rules are obviously very different. Aboriginal
English speakers often have to remind themselves to ‘wait their turn’ in Anglo-Australian conversations and find it
difficult to judge when the appropriate entry points are.
Non-Aboriginal people in communal Aboriginal conversations face a dilemma of who to focus on, make eye contact with
and give feedback to. Speakers of Standard Australian English are used to giving many overt indications of their
attention to a speaker such as eye contact, nodding and saying things like ‘yes’, ‘mhm’, etc. They find it difficult to
follow all the threads of the conversation and often miss the connections between what is being said and what
preceded it. They are perplexed or offended when Aboriginal listeners fail to respond to their utterances (listeners’
verbal and even non-verbal responses are optional in many more cases in Aboriginal English).
Aboriginal speakers on the other hand give more subtle non-verbal indications of attention, often do not need to make
eye contact and feel free to tune in and out or make contributions to several conversational threads almost
simultaneously. From early childhood they have been accustomed to this mode of communication. Conversely, they
find it difficult to follow the structure of non-Aboriginal conversations, particularly when speakers of SAE use ‘big
words’ – that is, words which are not normally used in Aboriginal English (while they often are longer, length is not the
issue, merely unfamiliarity).
With such fundamental differences in communication norms, Aboriginal people have had to make further adjustments
in relation to communications technology. While telephones and two-way radio generally impose the dyadic norm of
SAE, radio phones and conference telephones are being used to enable non-dyadic communication. Although radios
and televisions are of course one-way communication, they tend to be used continuously (sometimes ‘speaking’ to an
empty room until someone comes back in), and they’re not seen as any impediment to any other communication
going on in the same room. In some places, Aboriginal people are producing their own television to fulfil the public
broadcasting functions formerly served by signal fires and the network of messengers who travelled continually
between groups (Michaels, 1986).
Many broader assumptions about communication also cause frequent problems of miscommunication. ‘Manners’ are very
important in both worlds, but the rules in each world can differ significantly. Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ is very
important in Anglo-Australian society but not part of being polite for most speakers of Aboriginal English: rather than these
verbal expressions, Aboriginal people expect others to demonstrate their recognition of mutually-helping relationship by
doing something in return at a later date (Harris, 1987). For example, Hamilton (1981, p. 65) notes that the Anbarra of
north-central Arnhemland have no words for ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ and in any case children are expected to help
themselves to what is available, being independent and resourceful. Aboriginal children are taught ‘please and thank you’
routines in order to interact with European Australians. Politeness in an Aboriginal context is also expressed through the
way things are said, what tone of voice is being used, body language, and so on.
99
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English differ in what kinds of knowledge are presupposed – that is, where
knowledge is assumed to be shared by a speaker and listener and therefore doesn’t require spelling out. They also differ
in the responsibilities of speakers and listeners in ensuring understanding:
In Aboriginal English a speaker is under no obligation to provide all the information required for understanding.
Aboriginal English values economy of words so a short phrase can be used to express a lot of meaning. The
responsibility for understanding lies with the listener. The listener should already be familiar with the context
and be able to work out what is being said. By contrast, in Standard Australian English, and especially in more
public settings, the responsibility lies with the speaker to ensure that he/she is understood. The speaker
therefore will use a lot of words to fill in the details in case the listener is unaware of them. To a speaker of
Aboriginal English non-Aboriginal speech appears repetitive and unnecessarily detailed and an Aboriginal person
can get very frustrated with a non-Aboriginal person who seems to require lengthy explanations to understand a
simple statement, as explained by AIEWs Tanya Tucker and Bonnie Sansbury:
Tanya:
When a person, like Aboriginal person says something, they just say it, like ‘I’m going to the
shop’. And a white person says ‘Well, why’re you goin’ to the shop?’, ‘Oh, well what are you
gonna buy?’ Like, if I said, ‘yeah, I’m goina go shop’, then you (BS) don’t have to ask me what
I’m goina do – you- ‘oh I just goin to shop’, but if someone else, like they wanna... get into
more detail, that sort of example ... or, ‘we goin’ t’Perth’, like, ‘How you gointa Perth’ or, you
know – wanna know – everything! ....
Bonnie:
Well like, lunchtime, I say to you (TT) ‘I’m goin’ shopping’... An’ thas it.
Tanya:
But all of youse (Wadjelas) might wanta know more.
(Malcolm et al., 1999, pp.32-33)
There are some fundamental differences between Aboriginal and Western ways of viewing knowledge which bear on this
process. Knowledge in Western society is seen as something which belongs to the public domain: it is put into libraries
and on the Internet where everyone can access it. Interestingly, in practice there has always been knowledge which has
been hoarded by the few, such as technological developments which might advantage one group over another, and even
‘harmless’ knowledge is becoming more and more subject to copyright restrictions as knowledge becomes increasingly a
commodity. But the idea of public knowledge remains the Western ideal.
In Aboriginal society, by contrast, knowledge is prototypically private property. Knowledge owners have the right to
determine who can acquire their knowledge, and those who know the knowledge do not necessarily have the right to
speak it (Coombs et al., 1983; Morphy, 1991). As a result, there are many social rules for acquiring and passing on
information. Diana Eades (1982, 1988) has found that information-seeking in Aboriginal society in south-East
Queensland, for example, is typically indirect: rather than asking direct questions, enquirers share some of their own
related knowledge to signal their interest in further information which the information holder has the right to give or
withhold. Direct questions can violate privacy and will often not result in an answer, except in initial orientation
questions where people are sorting out how they relate to each other. People do not pass on information gained from
another source without attributing it to a source who gave it to them.
Direct questions are also often inappropriate for gaining agreement or commitments to action in Aboriginal English. This
frequently leads to cross-cultural conflicts and let-downs. For example, this very common scenario:
Anglo-Australian: Are you coming to my barbecue tonight?
Aboriginal friend: Yes
(Aboriginal friend does not turn up; Anglo-Australian friend is disappointed because she expected her friend
to come)
The two pragmatic rules operating here are very different. In SAE the answer to the question must be seen to be
genuine, but in AE there is no such expectation. In AE it would be rude to decline. There could be many reasons for the
Aboriginal friend’s actions. She may have had another commitment or not wanted to attend, but avoided giving a direct
‘no’, to be polite. A long history of dominance by Europeans has also led to the tendency of Aboriginal people to say
‘yes’ to any question from them to keep them happy – a phenomenon known as ‘gratuitous concurrence’ which has
disastrous consequences in legal situations (Eades, 1992). It is also possible that the Aboriginal friend may have had
every intention of turning up, but on the night other things were more important or something happened which
prevented her. A verbal commitment is often not considered binding, and it is not considered necessary to phone and
explain the changed circumstances, since the other person should know that they might change. In the Aboriginal world
today, the future is often not predictable, due to the upheavals experienced during colonial history and the lack of
control which most Aboriginal people still experience in colonised society.
100
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Invitations in Aboriginal English, in contrast to the example above, are often indirect. Rosemary Cahill in Solid English
cites the following experience of teacher Sue-Ellen Murray in the east Kimberley region:
When Sue-Ellen was first posted to Wangkatjungka Remote Community School in Australia’s north-west, she
noticed that a few of the Aboriginal women she had befriended often went fishing in the late afternoon. Sue-Ellen
mentioned that she’d done a bit of fishing in her time and would like to go with them some time. One woman
acknowledged what she’d said by making a habit of passing her house on the way to the river to say ‘I go fishin
now’. Not wishing to impose, Sue-Ellen felt she should wait for an invitation to join the woman – but weeks
passed, and the invitation she wanted was not forthcoming. Eventually after having been in the community for
some time, it dawned on Sue-Ellen that each time the Aboriginal woman had come to tell her she was going
fishing, she was actually inviting Sue-Ellen to join her! The invitation Sue-Ellen had been waiting for had been
extended on numerous occasions but she had not recognised it for what it was.
(Cahill, 1998, p. 26)
Patricia Königsberg related this example at a professional development workshop for the Cannington District, in the
Perth metropolitan area. A local Australian Indigenous Education Officer (AIEO) said to the teachers who were with her:
‘Woah – that’s why you fellas never come out to lunch with me! Every lunchtime I say I’m goin out get some lunch now,
and nobody ever comes with me’. Her companions were amazed, saying ‘We didn’t know that was an invitation for us to
come with you’.
There are many other cross-cultural differences in expected behaviour for which there is not scope in the present paper.
Aboriginal English, identity and communication in two worlds
Most Aboriginal people are not aware that linguists have come up with a name for the way they talk; most just see
themselves as speaking English, or, if they are conscious of speaking in a different way to other Australians, they may
refer to Aboriginal English as ‘pidgin’ or ‘broken English’. Nevertheless, Aboriginal English remains, whatever its name, a
key marker of Aboriginal identity. As we saw above, people who use more standard English, or ‘flash talk’ are often
chastised and ridiculed by their Aboriginal family and peers because to use it outside non-Aboriginal contexts implies a
rejection of Aboriginal identity and denigration of fellow Aboriginal people.
Since there is a tradition of non-standard dialects of English (that is, dialects which have less prestige and have not
been codified in dictionaries and grammar books) being denigrated by speakers of dialects such as Standard Australian
English, many Aboriginal people are made to feel ashamed of the way they talk (Hampton, 1990). In spite of this,
Aboriginal English is increasingly being used by those contemporary writers, film producers and the like who we
mentioned above, and it can also be heard on radio and television to a limited extent. It provides one of the bases of
pan-Aboriginal identity while allowing for the expression of regional identities in its local variations.
One positive development countering the denigration of Aboriginal English in wider Australian society is the growing
number of materials referring to or being written in Aboriginal English which are being used in schools (Gibbs, 1995,
1998). The Australian Indigenous Languages Framework (Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project, 1994a,
1994b, 1996a) includes Aboriginal English, and the accompanying textbook has an excellent chapter about the dialect
(Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project, 1996b).
To cope with the requirements of both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal worlds, most Aboriginal people have acquired
the ability to ‘code-switch’ between their home language – whether that is a ‘traditional’ Aboriginal language or
Aboriginal English – and that of the dominant society. They speak SAE when non-Aboriginal people are present and
Aboriginal English (or ‘language’) when only Aboriginal people are present. In other words, they are bilingual and/or
bidialectal (Malcolm, 1997).
As we noted at the beginning of this paper, Aboriginal people have always had multilingualism and multidialectalism, so
that in itself is not new. What is different is that the new code, Standard Australian English, represents a world which is
so different from that of the Aboriginal code that much more is involved in becoming completely proficient in it. Many
Aboriginal people have a repertoire which spans a continuum from their ‘heaviest’ Aboriginal English to a form which is
close to SAE but often still has noticeable Aboriginal features. And as we have seen, it is rare for someone to be so
immersed in both worlds as to be equally proficient in both dialects due to the complex understandings encoded in
them. As a result, when speakers of the two dialects come together, they need to be aware of potential
misunderstandings and be prepared to negotiate with each other to develop common understandings.
101
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Conclusion
In this paper, we have tried to show how language, and specifically Aboriginal English, reflects the history and culture of
its speakers. Aboriginal culture, like all cultures, changes to adapt to new circumstances, but Aboriginal people have
found ways to maintain continuity with the past in order to live creatively in the present. Aboriginal people have been
forced to adapt to the imposition of a foreign world and the suppression of many expressions of their culture by finding
new ways to express that culture using the resources available to them today. Aboriginal English is one of the most
important of these resources, and it continues to develop to express the unique identity of Australian Aboriginal people.
References
Aird, M. (1996). ‘I Know a Few Words’: Talking about Aboriginal Languages. Southport, Qld: Keeaira Press.
Anderson, C. & Dussart, F. (1988). Dreamings in acrylic: Western Desert art. In P. Sutton (ed.), Dreamings: The Art of
Aboriginal Australia. Ringwood, Vic: Penguin Books.
Arthur, J. (1996). Aboriginal English: A Cultural Study. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Austen, T. (1998). A Cry in the Wind: Conflict in Western Australia, 1829-1929. Darlington, W.A.: Darlington Publishing Group.
Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project. (1994a). Australian Indigenous Languages Framework. Book 1 ( 2nd
ed.). Adelaide: Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia.
Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project. (1994b). Australian Indigenous Languages Framework. Book 2:
Support Materials ( 2nd ed.). Adelaide: Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia.
Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project. (1996a). Australian Indigenous Languages Stage 2: Detailed
Syllabus Statement. Languages Broad Field of Study. Adelaide: Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia.
Australian Indigenous Languages Framework Project. (1996b). Australia’s Indigenous Languages. Wayville, SA: Senior
Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia.
Baines, P. (1988). A litany for land. In I. Keen (Ed.), Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia (pp. 227-249).
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Bennell, T. & Collard, G. (compiler). (1991). Kura. Bunbury: Nyungar Language and Culture Centre.
Berndt, R. M. (1964). The Gove dispute : the question of Australian Aboriginal land and the preservation of sacred sites.
Anthropological Forum, 1(2), 258-295.
Brandl, M. M. & Walsh, M. (1982). Speakers of many tongues: Towards understanding multilingualism among Aboriginal
Australians. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 36, 71-82.
Broome, R. (1994). Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to White Dominance 1788-1994 (2nd ed.). Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Burridge, K. & Mulder, J. G. (1998). English in Australia and New Zealand: An Introduction to Its History, Structure and
Use. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Cahill, R. (1998). Solid English. Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia.
Chase, A. K. & Sutton, P. (1998). Australian Aborigines in a rich environment. In W. H. Edwards (Ed.), Traditional
Aboriginal Society (pp. 62-89). Melbourne: Macmillan.
Chi, J., & Kuckles. (1991). Bran Nue Day: A Musical Journey. Broome, WA: Magabala Books.
Coombs, H. C., Brandl, M. M. & Snowdon, W. E. (1983). A Certain Heritage: Programs For and by Aboriginal Families in
Australia. Canberra: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University (CRES Monograph 9).
Cottesloe, J. W. H. F. (ed.). (1979). Diary & Letters of Admiral Sir C.H. Fremantle, G.C.B., Relating to the Founding of the
Colony of Western Australia, 1829. Fremantle, W.A: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
Dampier, W. (1981). A Voyage to New Holland: the English Voyage of Discovery to the South Seas in 1699. Gloucester:
Alan Sutton.
Davis, J. (1982). The Dreamers. Sydney: Currency Press.
Davis, J. (1986). No Sugar. Sydney: Currency Press.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1980). The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
102
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Dixon, R. M. W., Ramson, W. S. & Thomas, M. (1990). Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning.
Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Eades, D. (1982). ‘You gotta know how to talk...’: information seeking in South-East Queensland Aboriginal society.
Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2, 61-82.
Eades, D. (1984). Misunderstanding Aboriginal English: the role of sociocultural context. In G. McKay & B. Sommer
(eds), Further Applications of LInguistics to Australian Aboriginal Contexts (pp. 24-33). Parkville, Vic.: Applied Linguistics
Association of Australia.
Eades, D. (1988). They don’t speak an Aboriginal language, or do they? In I. Keen (ed.), Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures
in Settled Australia (pp. 97-115). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Eades, D. (1992). Aboriginal English and the Law: Communicating with Aboriginal English Speaking Clients: a Handbook for
Legal Practitioners. Brisbane: Queensland Law Society.
Edwards, W. H. (ed.). (1998). Traditional Aboriginal Society: Reader (2nd ed.). South Melbourne: Macmillan.
Exile and the Kingdom (1993). Lindfield, N.S.W: Film Australia. Video.
Fletcher, C. (1984). The Battle for Pinjarra: a revisionist view. In B. Reece & T. Stannage (eds), European-Aboriginal
Relations in Western Australian History. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Gibbs, G. (1995). How Aboriginal Authors use Aboriginal English in their Writings. Perth, WA: NLLIA WA Child Literacy and
ESL Research Network Node for small-scale research.
Gibbs, G. (1998). Educating Readers: Aboriginal English in Aboriginal Literature. Unpublished MEd dissertation, University
of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA.
Gerritsen, R. (1994). And Their Ghosts May be Heard. Fremantle, W.A: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
Graham, D. (director) & Haebich, A. (writer/researcher) (1996). The 1905 Act. Perth, WA: Institute of Applied Aboriginal
Studies, Edith Cowan University. Video.
Green, N. (1979). Nyungar, the People: Aboriginal Customs in the Southwest of Australia. North Perth, W.A: Creative
Research in association with Mt. Lawley College of Advanced Education.
Green, N. (1984). Broken Spears: Aborigines and Europeans in the Southwest of Australia. Perth: Focus Education
Services.
Gribble, J. B. (1905/1987). Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land, or, Blacks and Whites in North-west Australia. Nedlands, W.A:
University of Western Australia Press with Institute of Applied Aboriginal Studies, Western Australian College of
Advanced Education.
Haebich, A. (1988). For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900-1940.
Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.
Hamilton, A. (1981). Nature and Nurture: Aboriginal Child-rearing in North-central Arnhem Land. Canberra: Australian
Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Hampton, E. N. (1990). Aboriginal English/Standard English Dialects. In C. Walton & W. Eggington (eds), Language:
Maintenance, Power and Education in Australian Aboriginal Contexts (pp. 179-182). Darwin: Northern Territory University
Press.
Harkins, J. (1994). Bridging Two Worlds: Aboriginal English and Cross-cultural Understanding. St Lucia, Qld: University of
Queensland Press.
Harris, J. W. (1994). One Blood: 200 years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: a Story of Hope ( 2nd completely rev.
ed.). Sutherland, N.S.W: Albatross Books.
Harris, S. (1980). Culture and Learning: Tradition and Education in Northeast Arnhem Land. Darwin: Northern Territory
Department of Education.
Harris, S. (1987). Yolngu rules of interpersonal communication. In W. E. Edwards (ed.), Traditional Aboriginal Society:
a Reader (1st ed.). Melbourne: Macmillan.
Horton, D. R. (1994a). Aboriginal Australia [map]. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Horton, D. R. (1994b). The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History, Society and
Culture. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
103
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Knight, A. (1988). South Australian Aboriginal words surviving in Australian English. In T. L. Burton & J. Burton (eds),
Lexicographical and Linguistic Studies: Essays in Honour of G.W.Turner. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.
Königsberg, P. & Collard, G. (2000). Indigenous and Non-indigenous Cultural and Linguistic Misunderstandings in Western
Education: Responding to Forces of Change. Paper presented at the Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference,
Fremantle, 21-23 September.
Mabo and Others v. Queensland (No. 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1 F.C. 92/014 (High Court of Australia 1992).
Macknight, C. C. (1976). The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne
University Press.
Malcolm, I. G. (1997). The pragmatics of bidialectal communication. In L. F. Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language
Learning (pp. 55-78). Urbana-Champaign, IL; Division of English as an International Language, Intensive English Institute,
University of Illinois.
Malcolm, I. G. (2001). Aboriginal English: Adopted code of a surviving culture. In D. Blair & P. Collins (eds), English in
Australia (pp. 201-222). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Malcolm, I. G., Haig, Y., Königsberg, P., Rochecouste, J., Collard, G., Hill, A. & Cahill, R. (1999). Two-way English: Towards
more User-friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia
and Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I. G., & Koscielecki, M. M. (1997). Aboriginality and English: Report to the Australian Research Council.
Mt Lawley, WA: Centre for Applied Language Research, Edith Cowan University.
Malik, K. (1996). The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Markus, A. (1994). Australian Race Relations, 1788-1993. St. Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin.
McKay, G. (1995). The Land Still Speaks: Review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Language Maintenance Needs
and Activities. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.
Michaels, E. (1986). The Aboriginal Invention of Television in Central Australia 1982-1986. Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies.
Morphy, H. (1991). Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mühlhäusler, P. (1991). Overview of the pidgin and creole languages of Australia. In S. Romaine (ed.), Language in
Australia (pp. 159-173). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mulvaney, D. J. (1989). Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians 1606-1985. St. Lucia, Qld: University of
Queensland Press.
Munns, G. (2000). A lot of them get so shamed. Education Horizons, 6(2), 30-33.
Munro, M., & Jebb, M.-A. (1996). Emerarra: a Man of Merarra. Broome, W.A: Magabala Books.
Myers, F. R. (1980/1998). Always ask: Resource use and land ownership among Pintupi Aborigines of the Australian
Western Desert. In W. H. Edwards (ed.), Traditional Aboriginal Society (pp. 30-46). Melbourne: Macmillan.
Nannup, A., Marsh, L. & Kinnane, S. (1992). When the Pelican Laughed. South Fremantle, W.A: Fremantle Arts Centre
Press.
Pedersen, H., & Woorunmurra, B. (1995). Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance. Broome: Magabala Books.
Rajkowski, P. (1995). Linden Girl: a Story of Outlawed Lives. Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia Press.
Read, P. (1983). ‘A rape of the soul so profound’: some reflections on the dispersal policy in New South Wales. Aboriginal
History, 7(1/2), 23-33.
Reynolds, H. (1984). The Breaking of the Great Australian Silence: Aborigines in Australian Historiography 1955-1983.
London: University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies Australian Studies Centre.
Reynolds, H. (1990a). The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia
(rev. ed.). Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books.
Reynolds, H. (1990b). With the White People. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin.
Reynolds, H. (1996). Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land. St. Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin.
Reynolds, H. (1999). Why Weren’t we Told?: a Personal Search for the Truth About our History. Ringwood, Vic.: Viking.
104
Video 2 Background Papers
Moving Into Other Worlds
Rijavec, F. (1995). Know the Song, Know the Country: the Ngarda-ngali Story of Culture and History in the Roebourne
District. Roebourne, W.A: Ieramugadu Group.
Rose, D. B. (1987). Consciousness and responsibility in an Australian Aboriginal religion. In W. H. Edwards (ed.),
Traditional Aboriginal Society: a Reader. Melbourne: Macmillan.
Rowley, C. D. (1972). The Destruction of Aboriginal Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Rumsey, A. (1993). Language and Territoriality in Aboriginal Australia. In M. Walsh & C. Yallop (eds), Language and Culture
in Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Sandefur, J. (1981). Kriol – An Aboriginal Language. Hemisphere, 25, 252-256.
Sansom, B. (1980). The Camp at Wallaby Cross: Aboriginal Fringe Dwellers in Darwin. Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies.
Sansom, B. (1988). A grammar of exchange. In I. Keen (ed.), Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia (pp.
159-177). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Schmidt, A. (1991). The loss of Australia’s Aboriginal language heritage. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Secret Instructions for Lieutenant James Cook Appointed to Command His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour 30 July 1768
(1768/2000). Available: at www.foundingdocs.gov.au/places/nsw/nsw1.htm [2001, 19/11/01].
Sharpe, M. C. & Sandefur, J. (1977). A brief description of Roper Creole. In E. Brumby & E. Vaszolyi (eds), Language
Problems and Aboriginal Education (pp. 51-60). Mount Lawley, WA: Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education.
Shnukal, A. (1988). Broken: An Introduction to the Creole language of Torres Strait. Canberra: Department of Linguistics,
Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Stanner, W. E. H. (1956/1998). The Dreaming. In W. H. Edwards (Ed.), Traditional Aboriginal Society: a Reader (2nd ed.),
(pp. 227-251). Melbourne: Macmillan.
Sutton, P. (1989). Dreamings: the Art of Aboriginal Australia ( 2nd ed.). Ringwood, Vic: Viking in association with the Asia
Society Galleries, New York.
Sutton, P. & Hercus, L. A. (1986). This is What Happened: Historical Narratives by Aborigines. Canberra: Australian
Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Thieberger, N. (1996). Handbook of Western Australian Languages South of the Kimberley Region. Available at
coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/AborigPages/LANG/WA/wahbk.htm [2001, 8/10/01].
Tonkinson, R. (1991). The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston.
Troy, J. (1990). Australian Aboriginal Contact with the English language in New South Wales: 1788 to 1845. Canberra:
Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Troy, J. F. (1994). Melaleuka: A History and Description of New South Wales Pidgin. Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian
National University, Canberra.
Trudgen, R. I. (2000). Why Warriors Lie Down and Die: Towards an Understanding of Why the Aboriginal People of Arnhem
Land Face the Greatest Crisis in Health and Education Since European Contact: Djambatj Mala. Darwin: Aboriginal
Resource & Development Services Inc.
Urry, J. & Walsh, M. (1981). The lost ‘Macassar language’ of Northern Australia. Aboriginal History, 5(2), 90-108.
Walsh, M. (1991). Conversational styles and intercultural communication: an example from Northern Australia. Australian
Journal of Communication, 18(1), 1-12.
Walsh, M. & Yallop, C. (eds). (1993). Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Ward, G. (1991). Unna you Fullas. Broome, W.A: Magabala Books.
Ward, G. (1995). Wandering Girl. Broome, W.A: Magabala Books.
Wilson, R., Commissioner. (1997). Bringing them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, April 1997. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Yarwood, A. T. & Knowling, M. J. (1982). Race Relations in Australia: a History. North Ryde, N.S.W: Methuen Australia.
105
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Professor Ian G. Malcolm
Two Englishes: the same yet different
Australia was once the home of a rich variety of Indigenous languages. The Australian continent was a patchwork of
speech communities, hundreds of them, each community unified by a common way of speaking and identifying with a
common inheritance of land in which, in a literal and metaphorical sense, they mapped out their lives. Generations of
forebears were intimately linked to each speech community through the linguistic inheritance they had had bequeathed
to them: a linguistic framework in which were embedded a communal response to the environment and a template for
the management of human relations.
Today, by far the most common language spoken by Indigenous Australians is English, and the second most common
language is Kriol, a new language which draws largely on an English base for its vocabulary. To the uninformed observer,
it might be thought that Aboriginal people had largely, under the force of the traumatic circumstances of the last two
hundred years, abandoned their Australian-based languages for a foreign import, adopting a way of verbalizing
experience which derives from the experience of white people on the other side of the world, and accepting a
European-based redefinition of their physical and social environment.
Such an observer would, however, be ignoring a significant fact about the life of contemporary Indigenous Australians:
they have not, as a speech community, adopted the English which is used by other Australians. The English used in
Indigenous contexts is a new English, a unique and subtle variety which weds an Aboriginal inheritance to an adopted
linguistic framework.
This means that, for many Indigenous Australians, using English means managing two different Englishes: one which is
learned and used in home and community contexts and another which is used in school and in other contexts controlled
by non-Indigenous Australians. In linguistic terms, we would describe most Aboriginal English speakers as bidialectal.
Many non-Indigenous Australians are unaware of the bidialectalism of their Indigenous compatriots. They assume that, if
an Australian speaks English, they speak essentially the same English. Some may speak it better than others; some may
command a bigger vocabulary or a use more acceptable grammar than others, but the language they’re all trying to use
is the same. When this is the assumption, Aboriginal people are always disadvantaged because the norms by which
acceptable English is judged always come from the economically and politically dominant members of society and it is
assumed that, if Aboriginal people don’t conform to these norms, then they are non-achievers, either because of
circumstances or because of their inability.
It is understandable that many non-Indigenous Australians should be confused about the English of Indigenous
Australians because, in some ways, their English and the English of other Australians seem remarkably similar. After all,
both dialects use the same basic alphabet, sound system, vocabulary and rules for forming sentences. Speakers of one
dialect generally have a good idea of the surface meaning of what speakers of the other dialect are saying to them. But
would most non-Indigenous Australians interpret the following Aboriginal English expressions correctly?
106
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
1.
I jarred him
I scolded him
2.
That would’ve been solid, ay
That would’ve been great, wouldn’t it
3.
Louise had a smash with her
Louise had a fight with her
4.
…inside the church next to the bells
In the church yard near the belfry
5.
we just camp then on the bus
Then we just slept on the bus
6.
onna table
on the table
7.
alla people
(a lot of) people
8.
I’s goin
I was going
9.
I got seven families
I’ve got seven in my family
10. They got lots of irons
They’ve got lots of pieces of iron
11. …bigges mob of blood comin out
…a lot of blood was coming out
12. we lie- don’t look
we pretended not to look
13. I drop him
I hit it (referring to prey aimed at)
14. dinner time
dinner
15. tough go
mishap
16. we bin get im cook
we cooked it
17. we get five sheeps fat one
we got five fat sheep
18. dey bin race to dey teacher
they raced to their teacher
19. e got plenty Stephen around here
there are many boys named Stephen around here
20. my cousin bike
my cousin’s bike
(examples 1-2 from Malcolm 2001; examples 3-5 from Rochecouste & Malcolm 2000; examples 6-10 from Sharpe
1977; examples 11-20 from Kaldor and Malcolm 1982).
Examples like these are but the tip of the iceberg. Aboriginal English operates differently from standard English not only
in the meanings it attaches to words, but in the ways in which it forms and combines words, the ways in which it makes
reference between words, the ways in which it constructs interactions and stories, the ways it foregrounds some things
and backgrounds others; it differs in where it draws the line between literal and ironic meanings, between offensiveness
and inclusiveness, between saying too much and not saying enough. Aboriginal English derives from and evokes a world
which most non-Aboriginal Australians understand only vaguely if at all, or, sadly, a world which they think they
understand but actually misinterpret and misjudge.
English is, then, a mixed blessing for Indigenous Australians. They see themselves, in most cases, as native English
speakers, but the English in which they are fluent has no currency beyond their own community and they are judged by
some other English speakers as having some kind of language deficiency. Ironically, those who judge them this way are
usually monodialectal English speakers and have little understanding of the complexity of the bidialectal communicative
milieu in which Indigenous speakers operate.
The stigma carried by Aboriginal English speakers is parallelled by the stigma attached to other speakers of minority
English dialects in different parts of the world. In Singapore, ‘Singlish’ has been outlawed by the authorities and is even
excluded from being used in television entertainment; in Hawaii, Hawaiian Creole English has to fight for recognition;
native English speaking students coming from Guyana to the U.S.A. for university study have been known to be
classified as learners of English as a second language on account of their dialect (Nero 2000, p. 485); speakers of
Ebonics (African American Vernacular English) have long been discriminated against within a school system which
considers their dialect an obstacle to learning.
107
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
All such groups (and there are many more of them) struggle against the fact that one dialect (or more precisely, one
group of dialects) of English has been favoured because it is the vehicle of communication of those who have most
control over the economies and education systems of nations. Of course, it is generally agreed that there needs to be a
globally-accessible English and it is understood that the English of the most powerful will prevail. However this should
not mean that other Englishes have to be denigrated and treated as if they have no function to perform in the education
of their speakers.
Some non-English speaking groups have argued against the dominance of English on the grounds that it favours a
‘Eurocentric structuring of thought’ (Mazrui and Mazrui 2000). Some spokesmen of an ‘Africanist’ point of view have
claimed that English favours:
certain conceptual tendencies, including, for example, dichotomization (e.g. reason versus emotion or mind versus
body), objectification and abstractification (where a concept is isolated from its context, its place and time, and
rendered linguistically as an abstract).
(Mazrui & Mazrui 2000, p. 148)
However, even those who argue against the dominance of English recognize the need to use English in order to
communicate those arguments (Mazrui & Mazrui 2000, p. 148). In fact, what has happened on the Australian scene
suggests that the Africanist arguments represent an unwarranted extreme form of Whorfianism (that is, the view that a
language, by virtue of its structure, compels its speakers to think in a certain way). What we have discovered is that it is
conceptualization that forms and transforms language, rather than the reverse, and Indigenous Australians, in the face
of the death of their original languages, have shown that they have the capacity to forge from English a new dialect to
express their way of viewing the world.
Same language different conceptualization
There is a growing body of evidence that languages not only allow themselves to be modified to express conceptual
processes and innovations but that this is the means by which they normally operate, as living expressions of the
collective mind of a speech community. ‘Language,’ as Einar Haugen (2001, p. 57) put it, ‘exists only in the minds of its
speakers’. So the growth and development of varieties of English is not controlled by grammar books and dictionariesindeed, they are constantly going out of date. Nor is it controlled by linguists, language planners, business leaders or
even governments. For each speech community, our native way of speaking is our life. In the words of Eve Sweetser
(1990, p. 6), ‘our linguistic system is inextricably interwoven with the rest of our physical and cognitive selves’.
The users of language control its development as they use it in framing their experience.
If we accept that this is the case, this brings with it the opportunity to examine language in a new way: not in terms of its
structures, but in terms of the conceptualizations it represents. Doing this brings us closer to the lived experience of the
speakers and the reasons why they speak the way they do. It also enables us to see that there are many ways in which
the speakers of the same language can make it a resource for different ways of thinking about themselves and the world.
George Lakoff has pointed out (in Pires de Oliveira 2001, p. 32) that, from our emergence into the world as babies, we
imitate our parents, and that, in order to do this, we must have the capacity to project our own bodies onto our parents’
bodies and control them the way we see our parents controlling theirs. He sees a similar capacity operating in
conceptualization and language: we project our conceptualizations onto objects from our surrounding experience,
including linguistic objects. So, for example, we have a concept of getting up in the morning and we project this onto
the sun by saying that it ‘gets up’; we have a concept of our own head in relation to our body and we project this onto,
say, a bed, or a household, or a page of print, each of which we see as having a ‘head’; we use numbers, always putting
‘one’ first, and we project this onto a selfish person, saying they only care about ‘number one’.
What we have referred to above as ‘projecting’ from ourselves and our experience to our environment is one case of
what linguists have called ‘cognitive mapping’. One way of explaining how language works is to see it largely in terms of
the way we make mappings between the images of experience- both actual and imagined- and the set of symbols we
are provided with by our language. Anthropologist Gary Palmer has argued that:
108
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
language is the play of verbal symbols that are based in imagery. Imagery is what we see in our mind’s eye…
Our imaginations dwell on experiences obtained through all the sensory modes, and then we talk.
…I believe that words are…fleeting vocalizations, symbolically linked to conceptual shades that inhabit the
parallel world of our imaginations. This imagined world sometimes closely represents what we apprehend from
direct daily experience, …much of the time it presents us with alternative realities and fantasy worlds based on
mythology, or soap opera, or unproven theories, Nevertheless, in world views we find those stable representations
and fleeting images that are the conventional meanings of linguistic expressions.
(Palmer 1996, p. 3).
The various images that comprise our conceptualization are enabled, through language, to interact with one another in
complex ways. To take one everyday example, think of how we can talk about time: it can pass, stand still, fly, run out,
drag on, go by, elapse. Generally speaking, we can’t say time waits (indeed we can say it doesn’t wait), or goes
backwards, although we can go back in time, either metaphorically or fictionally. We seem to find it appropriate to think
of time in terms of space, and, for the most part, time is progressing through that space. This is one example of a very
widespread process in language, called conceptual blending. Sometimes the movement of time seems to be related to
some viewing point. If so, time seems to leave the viewing point behind as it proceeds (as in ‘go by’). Normally, we
imagine going forward to the future and leaving the past behind (though some languages see it the other way round),
but it can make sense to us, within the context of science fiction, to think of going ‘back to the future’.
These things that we assume about time, when we verbalize it, constitute what Palmer (above) calls the ‘conventional
meanings of linguistic expressions’. Certain forms of imagery have become fairly stable in our language, or at least in
our variety of the language, and we accept them as ‘normal’. Yet another speech community may use the same
language in a way which takes a different form of imagery for granted.
How language can be understood in terms of its conceptualization
Human beings seem to approach experience in three ways in order to talk about it: we categorize it, we envisage it and
we analogize it.
Categories
Experience is complex and interrelated. It is, in a sense, indivisible, in that time and space are limitless and the things
our senses convey to us are multidimensional. Yet, because of our human limitations, we cannot understand and
respond to everything at once, so we categorize. We cut time up into years, seasons, months, weeks, days and so on.
We divide space up into districts and towns and numbered house lots. We classify the animate and inanimate things
around us, and the things that humans do, like having meals and going to work and engaging in recreation and carrying
out all manner of interaction. We need to categorize experience because only so can we understand and control it. Also,
we need to categorize experience so that we can talk about it. For language to work properly we need to have words
which enable us to name the objects of our experience (nouns and pronouns) and words which express the different
ways in which we, or others, or things, may act on the objects of experience (verbs). It has been said that ‘language
translates meaning into sound through the categorization of reality into discrete units and sets of units’ (Taylor 1995,
p. 1). Another way of putting this is to say that language is essentially concerned with associating sounds with thought,
and it does this by doing three things:
a) organising sound
b) organising thought
c) providing ways of associating the sounds with the thought. (Chafe 1998)
People from different cultures, as illustrated in their languages, differ in the ways in which they categorize reality,
although they may often not be aware of the categories they are using.
The members of a speech community usually show a high level of agreement with respect to what items belong in what
categories. Not only this, but they tend to agree on what is the best example of a particular category. One can verify
this experimentally by giving people a limited amount of time (say 30 seconds) to list the best examples of a set of (say
50) concepts (vegetables, birds, animals, items of furniture, etc.). In American studies cited by Hatch and Brown (1995),
robin is seen by the respondents as the best example of a bird and carrot the best example of a vegetable. Such
examples are known as prototypes, and it has been claimed items like these, which are named first when a concept is
suggested, are those which speakers of a language use as cognitive reference points.
109
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Prototype research has several implications. One is that people respond to the meanings of words by summoning up the
image of an example rather than by putting together the various components of the meaning. That is, the word dog is
not conceptualized by an English speaking listener as canine mammal with four legs, a tail and a propensity for barking;
it is conceptualized as a ‘best example’, which might, perhaps, be a kelpie. Another important implication is that
categories usually have ‘fuzzy’ (Sweetser 1990, p. 17) borders. That is, just as we can think of a best example, we can
think of examples we are much less certain about. For example, a robin may be the prototypic bird, but few people
would think that an emu or a penguin fitted the ‘bird’ category quite as well. This is further supported by asking a
question: ‘Can a bird sit on a telegraph line?’ Most people would answer ‘yes’, because the prototypic bird they would
have in mind would not be, for example, a kiwi, an eagle or a turkey.
Relationships among the meanings of words may also be investigated by looking at associative networks. Terms which
are considered close in meaning summon up one another by way of what have been called associative chains. There
may be different principles on which such chaining occurs. The terms may be linked together because of their common
association with a certain kind of activity, like fishing or school or danger, etc. Clearly, associations which may link
terms together may be very localized, e.g. having been in the same class at school. They may simply exist within a
particular relationship or a family, or they may distinguish a culture.
Just as groups of words may be linked in associative networks, individual words may extend over a range of different
categories and associate with quite different fields of discourse. Words to which this applies are said to be polysemous.
The network of meanings surrounding a particular word is called a radial network. Radial networks may differ
considerably across languages. Dirven and Verspoor (1998, p. 271) have described the radial network of the concept to
count in English as shown below (slightly simplified):
b. count to ten
d. count as a child
(classify)
c. counting the puppies
(including)
a. count things
e. count little
(be worth)
d1. count somebody
as a friend
f. count on somebody
(trust)
They point out that this radial network is not shared by any equivalent term in German, which requires both zählen and
rechnen to cover these senses of ‘count’.
Schemas
A second way in which we bring experience into conceptualization is by envisaging, or using schemas. Schemas are
imagistic cognitive models (Palmer 1996, p. 59) which people depend on to give them a ready-made way of interpreting
experience. Schemas help us to conceptualize many things, including propositions, events, stories, objects and patterns
of cultural behaviour.
A proposition schema is a presumption about the relations between concepts. For example, Watson-Gegeo and Watson
(1999, pp. 230, 235) illustrate this by the schema which they attribute to Americans: ‘ARGUMENT IS WAR’ (and, hence,
when one argues, one attacks one’s opponent, etc.) and by several schemas which they attribute to Solomon Islanders,
including: ‘FAMILIES SHARE FOOD WITHOUT EXPECTATION OF RETURN’, ‘WORDS ARE POWERFUL’ and ‘WORDS
CAN KILL’.
An event schema (also referred to as a script) refers to an expectation about an event - where, and in what situation it
will take place, how the elements of the event will be ordered and what the various participant roles are. Thus, living in
mainstream Australian culture, one knows what to expect when one goes into a shop to make a transaction, or receives
a telephone call or attends a wedding or a funeral or a football match.
110
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
The term story schema (also called a scenario) has been used to refer to the expected pattern in the unfolding of a
story. A pattern that occurs, with various modifications, in many cultures is described by Chafe (1998) as follows:
1. Orientation – establishes time frame, space frame, participants and background activity
2. Complication – something happens against the background
3. Climax – an event that is unexpected (the reason for the topic)
4. Dénouement – the new situation that results from the climax
5. Coda – a meta-comment, e.g. ‘that was really weird’.
We also use schemas to conceptualize elements in our physical environment. Certain aspects of an object or setting are
taken to help us to characterize it, in a process called schematization (Palmer 1996, p. 64). Thus, as Palmer (1996, p. 66)
puts it,
A word must be defined relative to its schema. For example, while ground and land may be used to describe a
piece of dry earth, ground belongs to a vertical schema that divides sky from ground, whereas land belongs to a
horizontal schema that divides land from sea.
When we consider the relationship of one element in the environment to another, we schematically regard one
(sometimes called the base, or the landmark) as the reference point and the other (sometimes called the profile or the
trajectory) as the point which shows the relationship. This relationship is seen, for example, between eaves and bird,
respectively, in The bird was under the eaves.
It has even been suggested (Palmer 1996) that schemas can relate to the smallest units of language: phonemes, or
distinctive sounds. One way in which this may be seen is in the way in which we tend to use words with a particular
sound to represent certain meanings. For example, the /sl/ combination seems to unite words with a common sense
of slipperiness and negativity: slimy, slithering, sloppy, slippery, slide, sleazy, slut, sloth, etc.
Schemas are also invoked by the grammatical expressions we employ. For example, as soon as we say ‘a’ before a
noun, the expectation is aroused that something which can be counted will follow (Palmer 1996, p. 53).
According to this understanding of language, then, we tend to be guided by imagistic patterns of expectation and
projection in all of our language use. This suggests that language operates fundamentally in response to
conceptualization, rather than in accordance with rules relating to its formal structures. This is view is further supported
when we look at the role of metaphor in language.
Metaphor
It has been claimed by George Lakoff (in Pires de Oliveira 2001, p. 24) that ‘ordinary everyday thought and language,
and especially everyday thought, is structured metaphorically’. Further, it has been argued by Eve Sweetser (1990,
p. 19) that ‘metaphor is a major structuring force in semantic change.’ Gary Palmer (1996, p. 6) states that:
…discourse invokes conventional imagery and provokes the construction of new imagery. At the same time,
imagery structures discourse; they are mutually constitutive. Through time and incessant patter, speakers in
language communities collaborate and negotiate over the imagery of evolving world views. Old or new, unwanted
ideas are filtered out. New imagery and language emerge together.
In other words, it is being suggested that the process of thinking metaphorically, which many people might think relates
only to poetic or colourful language, actually underlies basic language use and helps to drive linguistic change.
Many of the metaphorical uses of language are so basic that we hardly realize they are metaphorical. For example,
when we want to say we know something we typically say I see. Thus, there is a non-random relationship (Sweetser
1990, p. 5 calls it a ‘motivated relationship’) between seeing with the eyes and seeing with the mind. Clearly, the
metaphor with vision helps us to conceptualize what it means to understand, but when we say I see we don’t imagine
ourselves to be using a metaphor.
There are many metaphorical relationships of this kind, where we habitually map ‘one domain onto another’ (Sweetser
1990, p. 25). One fundamental metaphor, which underlies the ‘see/know’ connection, is the ‘mind-as-body metaphor’
(Sweetser 1990, p. 28). This also generates such expressions as I grasp/catch onto/get what you say (holding =
understanding); watching/surveillance (from French ‘over look’)/oversight/regard (visual monitoring = control)
(Sweetser 1990, p. 32-33).
111
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Another is the so-called ‘conduit metaphor’ (Reddy 1979, in Sweetser 1990, p. 20), whereby we bring together the idea
of language with that of a container or pipeline (empty words; get your meaning across to the reader; what did you get
out of that talk?).
We have a number of pervasive images of the concept of life (Hatch and Brown 1995, pp. 102-103): life is a journey
(Don’t let yourself get sidedtracked; I’ve lost my way; Keep right on to the end of the road; That was an important
milestone, etc.); life is a day (in the twilight years, etc.); life is a year (autumn centre, etc.); life is a plant (the young need
nurture; root out the troublemakers, etc.).
We talk about the stock market being bullish, the traffic piling up, prices skyrocketing, the authorities stonewalling,
demand receding and our team slaughtering the opposition. We understand much of what is going on around us by
conceptual mapping between apparently unrelated entities. Some metaphors enter the language and leave it in the
course of one conversation; others are adopted by a speech community as a part of a collective worldview and help to
define the way in which those speakers perceive themselves and their experience.
One particular kind of conceptual mapping is that which takes place between one aspect of an object and the whole.
Thus we can say Canberra to mean the Australian Government which is to be found in Canberra, silk to refer to a
Queen’s Counsel who is robed in a silk gown, or bums on seats to refer (colloquially) to people attending a performance.
Such a process is called metonymy.
We have shown three major ways in which language and thought work together: in using categories, schemas and
metaphors. We have also given some illustration of the fact that these processes may work differently across languages.
What we will now go on to argue is that they may also work differently across different dialects of the same language,
namely Australian English and Aboriginal English.
How Aboriginal English reflects Aboriginal conceptualization
From the time of their earliest encounters with English, Aboriginal speakers modified English words and expressions to
reflect their own conceptualization. For example, the sea was described as corbon water, combining an Aboriginal word
for ‘large’ with English ‘water’; the word moon was used for ‘month’ and sit down was used for ‘stay’ or ‘dwell’; towsan
was used for any number over a dozen; the sun was said to jump up (rise), and the words tumble down were used for to
‘kill’. English terms were also used with original metaphorical meanings, for example, white bread meant a nonAboriginal person and a big wheelbarrow was a carriage (Malcolm and Koscielecki 1997). The process of adapting the
resources of the English vocabulary and grammar to meet the requirements of the expression of Aboriginal meanings
has continued since the early 19th century, and may be observed if we consider the ways in which Aboriginal
categories, schemas and metaphors are represented in contemporary Aboriginal English.
Categories
Aboriginal English could be said to be less time-oriented and more space-oriented than Australian English. One way in
which English categorizes time is through tense marking on verbs. Where the marking of verb tense is a requirement of
standard Australian English grammar, it is optional in Aboriginal English. The Aboriginal boy in the following extract is
aware of the standard English need to mark tense, as we see by the way he corrects himself, but no sooner has he
done this than he leaves the next verb unmarked for tense:
At home we got a flying fox.
We t’ we tie it we tied it hiiiigh up on a big tree
an we go fast down… by a wire.
For the Aboriginal English speaker time is not perceived as being so strictly segmented into past, present and future as
it is for the Australian English speaker. The present relevance of the past is constantly reinforced in Aboriginal culture
through the strong sense of continuity with the events of the Dreamtime. Of course, Aboriginal speakers understand the
difference between past and present but they relax the English requirement for this to be constantly encoded, since to
them it is not central to their meaning. Often, in talking about the past, a speaker may use the past tense early in the
narrative and leave the successive verbs unmarked for tense.
Australian English speakers often mark the time reference of what they are saying by relating it to an understood time
scale, e.g. Last year…; Back in the sixties…; in 1998…, etc. Aboriginal speakers are more likely to mark such time
references by referring to events or places where they have been, as in:
112
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
When we was down Geraldton…
When I was out on Williams Station…
When we was at Maureen’s house…,
or they may use a time reference which is deliberately vague, as in
One day, um, I was laying on the bed dere…
Couple o months back…(not to be interpreted as literally two months back)
Um one time my uncle dropped is um wife off…
The perception of time reflected in Aboriginal English is less chronological than event-based. The suffix –time may be
added to a variety of words in order to indicate that they are being used as time references in this sense, e.g. darktime,
alltime, everytime, morningtime, dinnertime (translated ‘dinner’). The typical Australian English way of referring to a time
in the past (A long time ago…) is modified in Aboriginal English to become Long time…and the expression Not long ago
is modified to become Not long…The effect is, as with the non-marking of past tense on verbs, to convey a conception
of time in which the division between past and present is less strong.
Place, by contrast, is strongly marked in Aboriginal English discourse. When talking about their experience, Aboriginal
speakers very often begin by saying where they were. Children recounting their travels will often go into great detail as
to who was with them, reflecting the need to let the interlocutor know that, if they were out of their own territory, they
were accompanied by somebody who had a right to be there.
The sense of place (both of persons and objects in a particular setting) will often be reflected in the frequent
occurrence of there, or dere at the ends of clauses:
An then after we camped out there…
where there was bushes up to dere.
There was another bushy part dere
An dere was um.. (inaudible) dis tree an some.. kangaroos all layin under there.
There are many subtle ways in which Aboriginal English demonstrates a different way of categorizing the environment,
both physical and social. The physical environment tends to be regarded as a place where one is constantly on the
move. One of the most important verbs in standard English is be, in that the language expresses states and
characteristics in terms of ‘being’. Aboriginal English de-emphasizes the verb be, removing this ‘being’-semantic from
the expression of states (He tired for ‘he is tired’; E got big mob cat for ‘there are a lot of cats’) and actions (They singing
for ‘they are/were singing’). The verb go, on the other hand, tends to be used more often and in a greater variety of
ways than in Australian English, as, for example, in:
i.
Dad and us said
Okay let’s go in the shop [‘go’ = movement into]
Go and buy a feed [‘go’ = initiate action]
ii. forty-five minutes drive um goin towards Gascoyne Junction [‘goin’ = on the way]
iii. they used to jus see im floatin along, goin along [‘goin’ = reinforcement of sense of ongoing motion]
iv. A: they go there chargin on don’t they
B: yeah yeah go drinkin dere
[‘go’ = begin doing something rash]
v. we used to go for cockies
[‘go’ = travel with the purpose of hunting]
With the third meaning above, the salience of go is reinforced with a characteristic rise in pitch and elongation of the
second vowel in along.
Often objects in the environment which are expressed in a simple noun in Australian English are expressed in a
compound noun in Aboriginal English, as in fire-smoke, eye-glasses, finger-ring. In some cases, environmental features
are referred to in Aboriginal English in a way which shows they are being perceived according to a different schema
from Australian English. For example, under the ground is contrasted with on top of the ground, where Australian English
would use on the ground. Climbing a hill is described as We went right up to the hill, implying that one hasn’t gone up to
a hill until one has reached the top.
113
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
There are major differences between Aboriginal English and Australian English when it comes to quantification. The
features of extent and excess tend to come together in the way in which Aboriginal English speakers use too much to
mean ‘very much’ and bigges to mean ‘very big’. The term mob in Aboriginal English does not imply the large and unruly
crowd that it invokes in Australian English. A mob may be just a few people who are regarded as a group. It may also refer
to animals and (by contrast with Australian English) to uncountable objects, such as water. Most forms of quantification
are approximative rather than precise. For example, half means less than the whole but not necessarily exactly half.
When it comes to the social environment, there are also significant differences in categorization. An Aboriginal English
speaker may refer to my mum mum, thus distinguishing a maternal grandmother. The term cousin brother is widely used
to refer to male parallel cousins. It is recognized that not all who claim to be cousins may be accepted as such. Hence
the pejorative term claimin cousins. The term claimin may also be attributed in this sense to a partner with whom one no
longer acknowledges a relationship. The relationship of a pregnancy to the male partner may be expressed in the
comment I’m pregnant for you. A grandmother or grandfather, or grandchildren may be referred to as grannies and a
young person may refer with affection and respect to an older woman with the term ole girl. The relevance of obligations
within the extended family is emphasized with the Aboriginal English term ownlation (‘own relation’).
The use of prototypes differs between Aboriginal English and standard English, thus supporting the view that the use of
the same language may be accompanied by contrasting conceptualizations. Investigations among Aboriginal people of
the south-west of Western Australia suggest that the prototypic bird is the crow, the prototypic dinner is a meal away
from home (supper or a feed is eaten at home) and the prototypic roast is a traditionally cooked bush meal.
The conceptual distinctiveness of Aboriginal English is further revealed by the study of associative chains. The term
kangaroo associates strongly with hunting and eating in the bush; ashes also associates with cooking in the ground.
Aboriginal English has varying levels of association for different speakers, since the language is the repository of
successive cultural accretions. There is, for some speakers, much which evokes the pre-contact past of Aboriginal
people. Some words from traditional languages are in common use within English, even in the south-west. Nyungar
people refer to themselves as Nyungars; they describe good things as moorditj, women as yorgas, foolish people as kat
wara, and they describe many native birds and animals by their Aboriginal names. There are some traditional words
which have acquired two meanings because they are used to refer to aspects of post-contact culture. Hence the word
manatj, or monach refers to a policeman as well as to a White Cockatoo. The word bridaya refers to the boss, in an
Aboriginal or a non-Aboriginal context. The term boss consequently has two meanings, both its standard English
meaning and an Aboriginal English meaning of ‘excellent’.
Many Aboriginal English words derive from a colonial history in which Aboriginal people have been subjected to
inhumane and insulting treatment, called by demeaning names and sworn at. The negative associations of some of
these words may be accessed more by some than by other present day speakers. In many cases words which would
have been used in a negative way by the oppressors of Aboriginal people in the past are used in an ironic or positive
way, among themselves, by present day Aboriginal speakers. Thus, Aboriginal people will refer to one another as
blackfellas or even niggers (though this is highly offensive when used by a non-Aboriginal person); Aboriginal boys will
threaten to flog or drop one another; Aboriginal people will use wicked, deadly and other negative terms with highly
positive denotation. By contrast, some words which represent positive qualities in Australian English, such as open, are
used very negatively in Aboriginal English.
Swearing has been taken into Aboriginal English as a form of in-group rough talk which, while offensive, does not
convey the literal meaning it might convey to non-Aboriginal speakers.
The memories of the stolen generations also show themselves in certain linguistic usages. The term take over refers to
the adoption of Aboriginal children to prevent them from becoming wards of the state under the 1905 act. To place
someone behind bars means to institutionalize, not simply imprison, them. Aboriginal parents and children may still be
haunted by the thought of strange people coming for the children, just as Aboriginal hunters go for game (a fear that
may associate both with the period of the stolen generations and with more traditional ideas of vulnerability to avenging
Aboriginal visitants).
The various levels of association lead to patterns of polysemy in Aboriginal English which are quite different from
those in Australian English. The radial networks of three common Aboriginal English words are represented (at least
in part) overleaf:
114
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
stay in the bush
(hunting schema)
camp = dwelling
stay with family
(family schema)
bed down
interrupt travel
(travel schema)
stop =
cease movement
stay overnight or
longer (family schema)
ritual
(traditional law schema)
entertainment (popular
media schema)
choruses, hymns
(Christian worship
schema)
spirit communication
(scary things schema)
singing
taunting
(smash schema)
The above representations of radial networks link the present discussion of categories to the discussion that is to come
on schemas. It will be noted that, with respect to the core concept camp, there are at least three associated meanings.
To take the left alternative, one may camp out in the bush, either away from habitation, or in the vicinity of a homestead.
This means sleeping in the outdoors. It is most likely that this meaning of camp will be invoked when the discourse is
following the hunting schema. If we take the right alternative, one can camp at home, that is, at the home of any family
member. In this case, camping will normally mean sleeping inside the house, perhaps in a particular bedroom or
perhaps in makeshift accommodation. This meaning of camp will be the most likely one when the discourse is informed
by the family schema. Thirdly, it is possible to camp in some place where one needs to bed down without it being a
normal dwelling place. For example, Marcia, telling Eva about an occasion when she had to get up early to catch a bus
for a long trip, said:
an then Mum- my Mum got us up
an, cos everything was packed up next to the door,
an then we just grabbed our bags
and just tooked off out to the taxi,
an then um we just camp then on the bus.
It can be seen (though we will not expand on it here) that the radial networks for stop and singing also can be related to
the alternative meanings evoked by use of the terms in association with diverse schemas.
We referred earlier to the fact that the language requires the categorization of certain words according to their
grammatical function. Aboriginal English sometimes dictates a change of grammatical category for a word. Sometimes
where Australian English tends to nominalize in describing an event, Aboriginal English prefers to verbalize. Thus:
115
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
schooled (Aboriginal English)
for
‘went to school’ (Australian English)
I versed against Y
for
‘I played against Y’
(This innovation is apparently becoming widespread in non-standard Australian English, in Western Australia
at least)
she blackeye someone.
for
‘she gives someone a black eye’
Another grammaticalized difference is between a transitive and an intransitive use of a verb:
I growl (= scold) him
for
‘I growl at him’
Aboriginal English also sometimes forms adverbs in a different way from Australian English:
went wobbly-way
for
‘went wobbly’
got up quick-way
for
‘got up quickly’
Full-way! (Well done!)
Occasionally an Aboriginal word may be Anglicized through an English suffix:
the winyarnest (saddest) thing
The distribution of the particle up differs in Aboriginal English from Australian English; it sometimes occurs in
Aboriginal English where it would not be expected to appear in Australian English. This is particularly likely after the
object pronoun it:
‘bounce’
becomes
bounce it up
‘learn’
becomes
learn it up
‘bake’
becomes
bake it up
Schemas
It is possible to infer proposition schemas from behaviours which are approved and not approved within Aboriginal
community contexts. Some of these are:
1. Respect is due to the people whose land you occupy.
It follows from this schema that Aboriginal people (as noted above) do not enter the territory of others without being in
the company of people who belong there, or having the agreement of the traditional owners. It also follows that when
one pays a visit to a person, one waits before being invited to speak. It is also expected that when a public function is
held the traditional owners of the land where it is held will be acknowledged or given the opportunity to speak.
2. It is not appropriate to speak for others without authorization.
This schema leads to the expectation that, when asked for information, one will defer to the authority of the
appropriate person if the information asked for belongs to them or is under their control, even if one knows the
information being sought.
3. It is good to know only what one is supposed to know.
According to this schema, one exercises restraint, rather than curiosity, with respect to knowledge that one has not
been given.
4. People who are related look after one another.
This schema is similar to that referred to earlier which was identified among Solomon Islanders (‘Families share food
without expectation of return’), but it goes beyond sharing food to sharing shelter and protection. Awareness of this
schema is reflected in the way in which Aboriginal children take careful note of who is accompanying them when they
go out into the bush, often verbalizing their names, so that nobody will be lost. The schema also lies behind the great
pains Aboriginal people tend to take in going over and remembering the kinship network of which they are a part.
116
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Speakers of Aboriginal English share many event schemas with speakers of Australian English, in that they participate in
many of the same public events. However some events belong especially to the Aboriginal community. More remote
Aboriginal people will be familiar with various seasonal meetings of Aboriginal people, some of which may involve men’s
business or women’s business. Those in metropolitan locations may often spend periods in the country to attend
special Aboriginal events, most commonly funerals. Aboriginal English differs from Australian English in the way it refers
to a funeral. Nana’s funeral does not necessarily mean the funeral after Nana has died but may mean the funeral where
one goes to comfort Nana in her bereavement. Aboriginal English speakers are familiar with an event called a smash,
which is a verbal and often physical confrontation between individuals or groups which may take place on the flat, an
area designated for this purpose. The smash takes place before onlookers who need to know under what conditions
they may intervene. Even some events which are shared by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants may not involve a
fully shared schema. For example, there is some evidence that suggests that going to the football may be, to Aboriginal
people, more of a family participation event whereas it is more of a spectator event among non-Aboriginal people.
Study of Aboriginal oral narratives (Malcolm 2001) shows that the story schema which we referred to on page 111 is not
often followed when Aboriginal people are talking with one another about real experience. Aboriginal listeners do not
necessarily expect the speaker to develop a theme to a climax leading to some kind of resolution. They may not, like
many non-Aboriginal listeners, be waiting to hear the punch line. Rather, they may be attending to features which
belong to quite different schemas. Perhaps for this reason, even the word ‘story’ may feel a bit foreign to Aboriginal
English speakers, who may refer to the narrations which follow their own schemas as yarns.
Although Aboriginal English speakers may be guided by many different schemas in telling stories, including many that
are shared with non-Aboriginal people, five schemas have shown up more frequently than any others among speakers
surveyed in the south-west.
The commonest is the Scary Things schema, which is evidenced in a story which involves some encounter with strange
powers, in which ordinary people experience strange visitations, or see unfamiliar figures (human or animal) which
appear or disappear, maybe taking somebody with them. Often the happenings occur at night, and in the morning, or
whenever an investigation is made, there is no trace of the intruders. A story influenced by the Scary Things schema is
the following told by an eleven year old boy from a country town:
Little Man Story:
1
Um.. when I ‘as asleep at ‘ome (…)
2
When I ‘as asleep at ‘ome ..
3
One.. one little man was dere.
4
I was.. I was I went under the rug
5
An.. it it come right up to me..
6
An’ pricked me.
7
E fight me all over the place (…)
8
Oh… and he went then.
The Scary Things schema is often associated with certain story elements, like open doors or windows, unexplained
sounds, singing, animals with strange features like red eyes or strange lights in the rear vision mirror when one is driving.
The Observing schema is the second commonest found. It generates discourse which is concerned with the reporting of
experience, usually shared experience, giving details of the natural or social phenomena observed. When the observing
schema is dominant, the discourse may seem to the non-Aboriginal listener to be over-concerned with ‘irrelevant’ detail.
This is because there is an attempt to be inclusive in the reporting, not allowing one aspect of what has been observed
to take attention from the rest. Aboriginal people come from a long tradition of survival in circumstances where close
observation of the environment is essential. Observing is, then, a functional skill, and its practice in discourse can be
seen a time-honoured way of learning. The following extract illustrates the use of the Observing schema:
117
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Rocky Pool/Hunting
C:
We shoot kangaroos.
A:
We don’t. (?)
I:
Where was that?
C:
At um Rocky Pool.
I:
At Rocky Pool.
A:
I saw I saw—
C:
Yeah, my uh-- my unc— my unc—my brother-in-law—my brother-in-law—my brother-in-law he pick a bobtail, dead one.
A:
I saw- I saw- I saw- I saw bobtail in the bushes.
I:
Did he, C? What did you see, A?
A:
I saw a kangaroo dead bobtail.
D:
Bobtail and my (Inaudible).
A:
Dad keeps goin’ in the shop o’ some butcher.
D:
Dat’s a very (Inaudible)
I:
What else have you seen in the bush?
D:
I see-e-e lizard.
I:
Yes.
D:
One lizard. And I sa-a-a-w snake.
C:
Why are we not allowed ‘o talk ‘n this(?)?
D:
Cattle(?) snake. And I saw I saw (Inaudible).
I:
Why?
C:
Why are we allow allowed ‘o talk into this(?)? [tapping]
B:
And I saw I saw a dead chicken.
C:
(Inaudible)
I:
Did you? Where-- where’s that A?
A:
At the bushes at Rocky Pool.
B:
No my dad um my dad um took-- cooked that for dinner.
I:
Did he?
B:
We had duck (?).
I:
Where’d he come from A?
A:
The bushes.
D:
And it came from the—came from the swamp.
I:
From the swamp.
D:
Yes.
I:
Mm-m.
D:
We catch emu.
A:
(Inaudible)
D:
And my uncle he got a gun
I:
Has he?
D:
Some real bullets…and some real gun and we go hunting me and my pop and ‘im and my fr- my friend
A:
I’m goin’ to lunch now. I’m hungry.
D:
an’ my uncle my friend and in Adobe (?) (Inaudible) emu emu.
That’s- that’s where we catch emu in the bush.
118
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
The Hunting schema is the next commonest, and it occurs among metropolitan as well as rural speakers. The schema
involves the activity of known participants who, having arrived at a location, are concerned with the observation, pursuit
and capture of prey. Typically, the prey are not captured easily and there is need for persistence. If the hunt is
successful it is often followed with eating what has been caught. The essential features of the hunting schema show
that it is closely associated with the Observing schema. It also relates to other schemas which involve pursuit, effort and
persistence, including fishing, sporting and other events. An example is as follows:
Hunting (1)
1
Trevor Bonner
At the station
2
Me and my dad and my mother and my brother
3
We went we went camping out
4
And um we went bush and
5
Uh we walking along
6
And I saw a s- I saw I sawra sawra emu
7
And ‘e was a cheeky emu
8
And I went and I went to um get de eggs
9
And my dad ‘e was gonna shoot da wild emu
10
And I ran back to get da bullets
11
And d’emu was under da um under the er Land Rover
12
And I got…
13
And ‘e was under the Land Rover
14
And I’s walkin along
15
Get the bullets and
16
I got the bullets
17
And um, and I ran
18
U saw de emu under da um Land Rover
19
And I ran
20
Jumped the fence
21
Hit a – um jumped over a the r um um spinifect
22
And and a… snake came out
23
I got up, got the bullets and
24
And ran an told Dad
25
And I got the gun
26
And Dad wasn’t dere
27
So I got the gun and shot the emu
28
and got the eggs
29
and got in the Land Rover
30
and roared around the c- um
31
roared around the corner
32
then a
33
and that’s the end of the story.
119
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
The Travel schema is extremely pervasive, and often occurs in association with another schema, like Hunting. It involves
known participants departing and travelling with intermittent stops when they do things before travelling on. An optional
element in this schema is a return to the starting point. The Travel schema underlies the following account:
Tracking
1
On the weekend…
2
we went to a um river with my family
3
and we had a swim…
4
and… and dere we went-..
5
we caught some fish…
6
and… and we were swimming us kids in another part of the pool
7
and.. we saw a snake
8
so we got out
9
an we went to a…nother spot
10
when our um..
11
we made a raft
12
and we left it there..
13
an we was playing on dat…
14
and.. we nearly fell off
15
so we um.. cam back
16
an then we-…went back home…
17
and we saw some kangaroos on the way back.
The Family schema represents experience in relation to the immediate or extended family network of the speaker. An
example is below. The speaker, Darren aged 6 is talking with a non-Aboriginal interviewer:
Morning
120
1
A: Um my (Inaudible) and my poppy- popeye.
2
I: And then what happens?
3
A: My- my brothe’ makes a fire- fire
4
and and he makes a fire all the time my mum tellin’ ‘im.
5
My mum- my mum and dad and the little baby well they sleep in bed all the time.
6
I: Yeah
7
A: When when when when the sun comes- the sun ri- sun come right up
8
they get up.
9
I: When the sun comes right up.
10
A; Yeah.
11
I: Yeah.
12
A: And my mum- when we go to school
13
my mum goes out.
14
Sometimes my mum—my dad goes out by hisself
15
and my mum stays home.
16
I: Yeah.
17
C: When they gets (Inaudible).
18
A: (Inaudible) my dad had a bottle of beer in the back.
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
19
It was out of the box.
20
And- and he come back home
21
and he went out—
22
I: Andy I’m wanna ask you in a minute.
23
A: He come back home—
24
he come back home and he—and he- he come back home
25
and he went out again.
With respect to the schematization of the environment, Aboriginal English speakers position themselves more
deliberately as observers than do Australian English speakers. This is done both by discoursal and grammatical means.
We have referred to the discoursal means already when discussing the Observing schema (see p.117). We noted that the
speaker may relate to a scene less in terms of profiling one element against the rest than in terms of providing a fully
inclusive observation. I have called this discourse strategy ‘surveying’. In the following extract we see this kind of
inclusive observation, where no detail of itself (drinking the creek water, chasing the kangaroo, finding the goanna under
the stone, pulling it out, cooking it, seeking the workers in the shearing shed, having ice creams) constitutes the focus.
Everything is equally in focus.
an, an we went to dis big big creek with the water,
an we sittin down drinkin it,
an we bin get (Inaudible)
an we chased a kangaroo
n kill im,
an so we went.. an we bin go to um Chris..
an we bin go to the other windmill up,
so we’s getting..
an we, we got dis other big fat goanna,
it was under piece of stone
n we came n pulled im out,
so we left im,
so ‘e ‘s gone back home,
an e cooked im
an dey’s workin at the shearin shed
an dey .. um and dey, and.. and Kimmy’s mother bin seeing,
an ‘e ‘s workin up the house
an den (Inaudible) icecreams.
But there is also a grammatical way in which the observer stance can be encoded. This is a procedure I have called
‘embedded observing’, whereby the activities described are made into a complex subordinate clause governed by the
verb representing the observing. It is illustrated below from some students’ writing:
I saw him was running behind me
I saw
(((horse) running)
behind me)
We saw Murphy’s camp had a big hoe
We saw
((camp) with a big hoe)
121
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
The effect of this pattern is to reinforce all that the writer observed:
the horse
the horse running
the horse running behind him, etc.
Some objects in the environment are conceptualized according to schemas which contrast with standard English. For
example, a person can be described as ‘long’, thus showing the operation of a vertical rather than a horizontal schema
for this attribute.
There is also an interesting schema which associates the land immediately around a site as relevant to that site. Thus, a
child may say:
we always…from school…there we play marbles most times,
where the expression from school means in the vicinity of the school but not actually in the school. This seems to
associate with the sense of territoriality which we have referred to elsewhere (pp.113, 115).
With respect to phonology, Aboriginal English makes a greater link than Australian English between the length of a sound and
the magnitude of what is being talked about. There is, then, a schema which associates sound duration with magnitude.
Thus, it is common for Aboriginal speakers to extend the pronunciation of vowels in words like loooong and biiiiig.
Metaphor
In Aboriginal English, as in other Englishes, metaphor plays in important role in the structuring of conceptualization and
expression. However the metaphorical processes often contrast with those in Australian English.
One area of contrast is in the expression of animacy with respect to environmental objects. Aboriginal English speakers
are more likely than Australian English speakers to treat non-human objects in the same way as human objects –
for example:
something could jump (= spill) on your shirt
e flew (describing a truck)
did that rain catch you (c.f. did you get caught in the rain)
Many expressions in Aboriginal English represent conceptual blends, where one domain has been mapped onto another,
as in:
cattle snake (a snake with markings like cattle)
boomer starts bootin im (the boomer starts kicking him)
playing for liar (playing for fun/pretending)
reckon (may include saying as well as thinking)
talk us a story.
It has been pointed out by Mühlhäusler (1996) and others that Aboriginal people in the north of Australia have used
certain metaphors from natural phenomena to refer to learning and literacy. One such example is ganma, which is ‘the
turbulence and foam which arise where the downstream flow of fresh water in a river meets the tidal flow of salt water
from the sea’ (Mühlhäusler 1996, p. 172). This is seen metaphorically to represent different things which need to be
reconciled, and has been applied to the bringing together of traditional and Western learning.
Often the metaphorical usages in Aboriginal English represent an extension or grammaticalization of metaphors which
are also accessible in Australian English, as in:
122
stiffened out
(c.f. ‘scared stiff’)
chargin on
(drinking, c.f. ‘charged’ = drunk).
I’ll be real soft
(quiet, c.f. ‘to do something softly’)
big mob times
(many times)
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
Many standard English words are polysemous in Aboriginal English because they are taken to have metaphorical
reference to the spirit world by Aboriginal speakers, as in:
clear
‘free from any negative or undesirable spiritual associations’
clever
‘spiritually powerful’
dangerous
‘hazardous because of possible effect of spiritual powers’
hold
‘spiritually own, look after and be responsible for’
(examples from Arthur 1996).
As a living, contemporary language, Aboriginal English continues to use processes of metaphor in everyday expression.
For example:
they’re putting us to the back of the bus
‘they’re neglecting us’
A: Ay brother, horse and cart!
B: Sausages and baked beans and eggs on top!
(positive evaluations).
There is also evidence of metonymy in expressions like
doing kickit
‘informal football play’.
Now You See It Now You Don’t
The evidence provided here is in support of the claim that Aboriginal English and Australian English, though
intercomprehensible to a degree, are two different systems and that the differences are greatest at the ‘unseen’ level of
conceptualization. In communication between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians the problem is often that both
sides think they are getting the meaning of what the other side is saying but the reality is rather that ‘now you see it,
now you don’t’. Some aspects of Aboriginal English are transparent to the non-Aboriginal interpreter but many are not.
This to be expected in view of the fact that the speech community which has given birth to Aboriginal English is very
different from that which has given birth to Australian English. The differences of world view are profound, and they are
further added to by differences of present lifestyle, even where Aboriginal people dwell in the suburbs. For the most
part, Aboriginal people spend a much greater proportion of their time than do non-Aboriginal people dealing with
trauma, illness and bereavement. The uppermost concern is often for survival. Even if Aboriginal people wanted to move
away from existing patterns of personal and social organization (and, for reasons of world view, they usually do not), the
opportunity to plan things out and adopt the lifestyle patterns of people who are a part of the majority culture is often
not available.
Given that Aboriginal people have established ways of conceptualizing the world and expressing this through language,
and that these are not going to change, it follows that education, if it is going to meet their needs, needs to come to
them on their own terms, not only presenting them with another cultural alternative but providing the means to achieve
it while not surrendering that which they have. Such education, I would argue, must be two-way and bidialectal.
123
Video 3 Background Papers
Now You See It Now You Don’t
References
Arthur, Jay (1996). Aboriginal English: A Cultural Study. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Chafe, Wallace (1994). Discourse, Consciousness and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in
Speaking and Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chafe, Wallace (1998). Notes from Lectures to the Australian Linguistics Institute, Brisbane.
Chawla, Saroj (2001). Linguistic and philosophical roots and our environmental crisis. In Fill, Alwin and Mühlhäusler,
Peter (eds) The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. (pp. 115-123). London and New York:
Continuum.
Dirven, René & Verspoor, Marjolijn (1998). Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
Dirven, René, Hawkins, Bruce & Sandikcioglu, Esra (eds) (2001). Language and Ideology. Volume 1: Theoretical Cognitive
Approaches. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Fauconnier, Gilles & Turner, Mark (1991). Blending as a central process of grammar. In Adele E. Goldberg (ed.)
Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Hatch, Evelyn & Brown, Cheryl (1995). Vocabulary, Semantics, and Language Education. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Haugen, Einar (2001). The ecology of language. In Alwin Fill and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds) The Ecolinguistics Reader:
Language, Ecology and Environment. (pp. 57-66). London and New York: Continuum.
Kaldor, Susan & Malcolm, Ian G. (1982) Aboriginal English in country and remote areas. A Western Australian
perspective. (pp. 75-112). In Eagleson, Robert, Kaldor, Susan & Malcolm, Ian G. English and the Aboriginal Child.
Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre.
Malcolm, Ian G. (2001). Aboriginal English Genres in Perth. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy
Research, Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, Ian G. and Koscielecki, Marek M. (1997). Aboriginality and English. Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language
Research, Edith Cowan University.
Mazrui, Ali A. & Mazrui, Alamin M. (2001). Linguistic dilemmas of Afrocentricity: the diaspora experience. In René
Dirven, Bruce Hawkins & Esra Sandikcioglu (eds) (2001). Language and Ideology. Volume 1: Theoretical Cognitive
Approaches. (pp. 141-164). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Mühlhäusler, P. (1996). English language and literacy within remote and isolated desert communities. Desert Schools
Volume 2 Research Report. J. Clayton, et al. Canberra, Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth
Affairs: 151-177.
Nero, Shondel J. (2000). The changing faces of English: a Caribbean perspective. TESOL Quarterly 34, 3:483-510.
Palmer, Gary (1996). Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Pires de Oliveira, R. (2001). Language and ideology: an interview with George Lakoff. In René Dirven, Bruce Hawkins &
Esra Sandikcioglu (eds) (2001). Language and Ideology. Volume 1: Theoretical Cognitive Approaches. (pp. 23-47).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Rochecouste, Judith & Malcolm, Ian G. (2001). Aboriginal English Genres in the Yamatji Lands of Western Australia.
(Rev. ed). Mount Lawley: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research.
Sharpe, Margaret C. (1977). Alice Springs Aboriginal English. In Ed Brumby & Eric Vaszolyi (eds) Language Problems and
Aboriginal Education. (pp. 45-50). Mount Lawley: Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, Mount Lawley College of
Advanced Education.
Sweetser, Eve E. (1990). From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphoric and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, J. (1995). Linguistic Categorisation: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Watson-Gegeo, Karen Ann & Gegeo, David Welchman (1999). (Re)modeling culture in Kwara’ae: the role of discourse in
children’s cognitive development. Discourse Studies 1, 2:227-244.
124
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Ellen Grote
The fact and effects of one-way learning
Dominance of Anglo view of Australian history
After the Second World War, approximately one million Australian school children learned history using a textbook called
Man Makes History. In this volume it was stated that
[t]here are still living today in Arnhem Land people who know almost no history. They are Aboriginal tribesman
who live in practically the same way as their forefathers and ours did, tens of thousands of years ago. Like them
they have not only no accurate knowledge of past events, but no aeroplanes, motor- cars or picture shows; not
even any books, houses or clothes. Apart from the fact that they use weapons of stone and wood to hunt for their
food, their lives are almost as hard and dangerous as those of the animals who also hunt to live… We are civilized
today and they are not. History helps us to understand why this is so (Ward, 1952, in Cope, 1988, p. 16).
This text represents the way in which history was taught and the cultural identities of white Australians and Aboriginal
Australians were constructed in the 1950s. A careful examination of the language of more contemporary social science
textbooks shows how these texts continue to tell the story of Australia from an Anglo perspective. Take, for example,
the Year 6 Social Studies teachers’ resource book, Social Studies 6 (Harrold & Bartley, 1990). In an introductory
passage entitled ‘Aboriginal Settlement’ of ‘Discovery and Settlement of Australia, [Part] 1’ the authors note that:
It is believed that Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for about 40,000 years. Scientists and Aborigines
themselves have different theories about where and when they [i.e., Aboriginal people] originated. Two Aboriginal
legends state that their people were either created here or they arrived in the Dreamtime from across the sea.
Many scientists believe that during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were lowered, the Aborigines crossed from
Asia to Australia.
Two authorities are contrasted in this passage in an unbalanced manner: that of ‘two Aboriginal legends’ representing
the Aboriginal view and that of ‘many scientists’ representing the Anglo-Australian view. A more accurate term for
‘legends’ in this context would be ‘oral histories’. The textbook writers fail to mention that these oral histories were
once told by elders who were highly skilled in the arts of oral history telling, and that these histories remain only in
fragments as a result of the European invasion. The value of these oral texts is minimized by the authority vested in the
‘many scientists’ because of their knowledge which is based on sophisticated modern technology, highly valued by
Western culture . The authors continue in the subsequent pages to discuss the ‘European discoveries’ of Australia made
by the Dutch and British, and the ‘exploration’ of the interior regions. Although the authors acknowledge the earlier
occupation of the land by Aboriginal people, their use of the terms ‘discoveries’ and ‘explorations’ fails to recognize this.
No further mention is made of Aboriginal people in the subsequent pages in reference to the roles they may have played
in assisting the Europeans to locate water holes or passages to the interior lands. The use of the more accurate term
‘invasion’ now used by contemporary Australian historians, is avoided in schools because of its ‘controversial’ nature
(Land, 1994).
Another aspect of the presentation of Australian history which Aboriginal children find confusing is the linear framework
within which it is presented. The conception of time held by Australian Aboriginal cultures, like other Indigenous oral
cultures around the world, is cyclical in nature, rather than linear (Mühlhäusler, 1996). It has been described by Glenys
Collard, a member of the Nyungar community in Western Australia and a researcher at Edith Cowan University, as a
continuous spiral connecting past historical events to more recent past and present events (Malcolm et al., 1999,
p. 28). This perspective is reflected in the worldview that Aboriginal children have been enculturated into through
language and oral histories. While this is just one of the ways Aboriginal children are confused and alienated by the
representation of knowledge in Australian classrooms, it is one that is rarely addressed by school texts or considered by
teachers in the classroom.
It is now widely accepted by contemporary social scientists that one of the main functions of a public education
institution is the transmission of culture (Everhart, 1983; Gearing & Epstein, 1982; Spindler, 1963; Spindler & Spindler,
1982; Waller, 1965; Wilcox, 1982a, 1982b; Willis, 1977). In this view, the purpose of schooling is ‘to recruit new
members into the community (usually its own offspring) and maintain the cultural system’; however, it is not surprising,
that this view is not ‘held by most educators, administrators, and politicians’ (Spindler, 1982, p, 16). Contrarily, this
group sees ‘schools as agents of equal opportunity, teaching children from all backgrounds what they need to be
successful, if only the children will learn what is taught’ (Wilcox, 1982b, p. 465).
125
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
The cultural knowledge and values are, therefore, passed on to schoolchildren in order that they may become
productive, contributing members of that society (See ‘Values’ listed under ‘4. Social and Civic Responsibility’, inside
back cover of Curriculum Framework, 1999). The ‘core shared values’ in the Curriculum Framework have been agreed to
through a ‘process of consensus and wide consultation’ and are set out by the Curriculum Council of Western Australia
as fundamental (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 1998). The purpose of the document itself is to establish
‘…the knowledge, understandings, skills, values and attitudes that students are expected to acquire’ in accordance with
Section 4(b) of the 1997 Curriculum Council Act (op. cit., p. 9). But whose cultural knowledge and values are these?
The process of education is never neutral (Shaull, 1970). A curriculum reflects ‘the ways in which the dominant
meanings of society expressed in education policies, sourcebooks, syllabi, frameworks and textbooks render the
perspectives of the disadvantaged groups invisible at the same time as these groups are stereotyped’ (Young, 1990,
cited by Singh, 1994, p. 27). This practice is referred to as ‘curriculum imperialism’ (op. cit., p. 27). And while the
emphasis on critical reading skills is emphasized in contemporary Australian curricula, it has been argued by Torres
Strait Islander Martin Nakata and his colleague Sandy Muspratt, who are specialists in literacy and pedagogy research,
that these critical learning models need to be scrutinized for Western bias. Although these models are introduced to
encourage school children to critically analyze historical (and other) representations in the school curriculum, they often
turn out to be culturally biased because they use Western frameworks to organize information (Nakata & Muspratt,
1994). Nakata and Muspratt argue that the use of such frameworks ensures that mainstream children will continue to
succeed while Indigenous do not.
Dominance of Anglo knowledge
A cursory glance through school textbooks and the curriculum will show that the knowledge schoolchildren are
expected to master and the strategies taught to master them are those of the dominant culture. An examination of the
learning areas identified in the Curriculum Framework – the Arts, English , Health & Physical Education, LOTE,
Mathematics, Science, Society & Environment, Technology & Enterprise –all reflect a dominance of Anglo knowledge.
Even the languages offered in most urban LOTE programs are dominated by European languages or Asian languages
seen as important from a white Australian economic perspective.
When Aboriginal knowledge is presented, it is most often through materials and resources written by non-Aboriginal
authors. In the early years of schooling, Aboriginal culture , and other non-Anglo cultures, are trivialized by AngloAustralian writers as they are represented through symbolic imagery of the culturally exotic: traditional foods, dress,
ceremonies, celebrations, dance, and traditional gender roles (Cope, 1988). In the later years, Aboriginal cultures are
often reduced to numerical representations in order to develop analytical skills for interpreting graphs and charts in
order to understand and classify Australian social trends.
Aboriginal people have long been skeptical about the ways in which their culture and history have been represented by
non-Aboriginal researchers. Many Aboriginal people have sought to tell their own stories in order to present their
perspective. Aboriginal author Ruby Langford Ginibi sees her role as an educator of both Aboriginal people and nonAboriginal people. In an interview, she noted the lack of Aboriginal perspectives in the literature: ‘I reckon about 80% of
writing done on Aboriginal people is done by white academics and anthropologists…I wonder if the tables were reversed
whether they would let us write their stories’ (Ginibi & Guy, 1997). Rarely do the writings of Indigenous people make it
into the school classroom, except perhaps some poetry or a play by Jack Davis in TEE English Literature courses.
The sentiments expressed by Ruby Langford Ginibi have also been observed by Aboriginal students in tertiary
institutions. In a recent study investigating the attitudes of the Aboriginal community toward university practices,
students expressed their concern ‘that the views of white anthropologists were not always correct or appropriate’
(Rochecouste, Hayes, Eggington, & Collard, 2001, p. 5). They said there was a need for oral traditions to be recognized
and valued equally along side of written knowledge. They were well aware of the practice of non-Aboriginal academics
receiving credit for Aboriginal knowledge that had been passed on to them orally by members of their community while
those who shared this knowledge received little or no recognition.
While the knowledge that is valued in school is based on print sources, the knowledge that is valued by Aboriginal
people is that which has been acquired through observation and experience and shared in the form of oral
communication, often as narratives. In an analysis of 100 oral texts collected in the Yamatji Lands of Western Australia,
it was found that narratives serve a variety of functions in contemporary Aboriginal communities (Rochecouste &
Malcolm, 2001). In addition to providing entertainment, recount narratives may serve to share knowledge of life skills
and experiences, to control behaviour, to reinforce values of the group, as well as to describe what happens when group
126
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
norms are violated. Report narratives may serve to represent history from an Aboriginal perspective, to relate
‘procedural knowledge’, to ‘reinforce cultural practices’, share learning from reading or observation, and like the recount
narrative it may be used to regulate behavioural norms and discuss life skills. Most of these functions of the narrative
serve the community members in maintaining Aboriginal culture (Malcolm, 2000a, p. 9-10).
Dominance of English and standard English modes of expression
Social scientists view the school as embedded within a community; the community in turn is embedded in the state and
nation. Hence, the language, activities and social relationships of the school reflect the language, activities and social
relationships of the dominant culture. In this way the school becomes a place where the ‘discourse, practice, and
organisation’ of the dominant culture are institutionalized (McTaggart, 1988, p. 91).
The discourse of the school, or patterns of language use, thinking and acting (Gee, 1991), reflects those patterns used
by speakers of the standardized language. It also reflects the modes of expression favoured by standard English
speakers in educational settings. The use of language in the classroom for speaking and writing gets closer to the
language of print as students move up to higher levels in school. The standard dialect, linked to educated middle-class
Anglo-Australian culture, is often familiar to middle-class Anglo-Australian children because it is used in their homes
(op. cit.). But it is used less often in the homes of working class non-Aboriginal or Aboriginal families whose dialect
tends to reflect that of the local region and/or culture.
Standard English and standard English modes of expression often seem to be neutral to those who use them because
they have been exposed to them for so long and because they do not reflect any particular geographical region. But the
language and modes of expression are far from neutral. For the Aboriginal child, standard English is the language of the
‘outsider’. It is different from the way English is used by the Aboriginal English speaking community and is seen by
sociolinguists to be closely linked to Aboriginal identity (Malcolm, 1998, p. 131).
A common practice in a typical classroom is for the (non-Aboriginal) teacher to use Standard Australian English to
manage learning activities that make up her lesson plan. One common practice in Western classrooms (and in school
textbooks) is to evaluate the comprehension of students after a reading activity. The teacher usually asks a question (that
she knows the answers to), and then calls on one child to answer. When that child responds, the teacher then confirms
whether this is correct or not, and gives an evaluation of the child’s performance, saying, ‘Good’ or ‘Good try’. For the
middle-class Anglo children whose parents read them bedtime stories, this is a familiar practice. For the Aboriginal
children who may not experience ‘bedtime stories’ at home in this manner, and where the adults do not regulate who can
speak and when they can speak, this practice is very unfamiliar. Often the response is silence (Malcolm, 1998).
Another common practice in schools at all levels is to have students present what they have learned, either in written
form or in an oral presentation. The expectations of the ways in which these presentations are organized, whether
written or oral, also reflect Western ways of organizing and sharing information. Again, the language expected is
Standard Australian English and the structure of the presentation will depend on the function. These are referred to as
generic structures or genres. Again, like the word standard, the word generic suggests neutrality. But these modes and
structures of presentation are far from neutral. They reflect the preferences of the dominant white (Western) culture and
society of the school.
In a recent investigation into differences between the genres of school and the genres used by Aboriginal people,
sociolinguist Ian Malcolm analyzed the discourse (or patterns of language use) of sample texts which are provided to
Western Australian teachers as guides. These sample texts were compared to the oral texts of Aboriginal English
speaking children. (‘Oral texts’ in this case are the stories told by Aboriginal English speaking children which are first
audiotaped and then transcribed into written form so that they can be analyzed more carefully.) ‘Work samples’ were
taken from teacher resource materials in three curriculum areas of Science, Technology & Enterprise, and Society &
Environment which make up part of the Curriculum Framework (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 1998) on the
rationale that these texts use observation and reporting skills. The findings revealed significant differences between the
Anglo and Aboriginal modes of describing experience, i.e. interpreting and constructing ‘reality’ through discourse. The
school texts focus on and value the identification of generic subjects, abstractions, categories and classifications. They
are taken from secondary sources and ordered chronologically and categorically. In contrast, the out-of-school
Aboriginal English oral texts focus on and value ‘particularized subjects’ based on knowledge gained from personal
observation. Another difference is their use of associations to organize material (Malcolm, 2000b, p. 15). It was noted
that using associations to organize material is not uncommon in oral cultures. It has been found in the discourse of
African American children in U.S. classrooms (Gee, 1991).
127
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Western modes of expression reflect Western values in that they are direct and follow a linear structural pattern with a
clear beginning, middle and end. The values reflected in Western modes are not the values reflected in Aboriginal
English modes of expression. When children’s essays are criticized in school for lacking clear structure i.e. structure
other than linear, for wandering and not sticking to the main topic (using associations to organize material) and not
clearly expressing their point of view (being indirect to avoid conflict), it is because their writing reflects cultural values
of their Aboriginal discourse community rather than those held by the teacher. These cultural values are more important
to the child because they are the values of the speech community in which the child is raised, nurtured and cared for,
and with whom the child shares identity.
The organisation of the school curriculum and the rules that govern the organisation and operation of the school are
often in conflict with Aboriginal cultural values and seen as a destructive force in undermining Aboriginal society. For
example, one of the basic requirements of a school system is regular attendance. But when an Aboriginal child is absent
from school because of a funeral, Western teachers express their concern for the loss of time spent learning in school.
Yet these messages imply that the significance of the funeral as a medium of social and family bonding is minimized by
the school (Harris, 1990). They ignore the centrality of the family/kinship ties in Aboriginal culture (Coombs, Brandl,
& Snowdon, 1983).
Effects of this on Aboriginal students’ experience of exclusion and devaluation
Recent studies indicate that the limited knowledge that teachers have about Aboriginal English and Aboriginal English
discourse interacts with a number of other complex factors which contribute to the exclusion of Aboriginal students
from schools and the devaluation of their lived experiences. These factors include the limitations of teacher knowledge
of Indigenous history and culture and the ways they relate to their Indigenous students. The irrelevance and inflexible
nature of the curriculum structure, issues of fairness, the influence of peers in terms of expectations and behaviours as
well as the extent of involvement of Indigenous community members in the education process are all factors which
interact with one another to contribute to the problem (Aboriginal Education and Training Council, 1997; Harslett,
Harrison, Godfrey, Partington, & Richer, 1997; Partington, Richer, Godfrey, Harslett, & Harrison, 1999).
These complex interrelated issues are seen to contribute to student attendance and the ability of schools to keep
Aboriginal students in the education system. They have received much attention by the Commonwealth and Western
Australian governments in the last decade. Statistics gathered in WA indicate that while approximately 60% of nonIndigenous students who commenced Year 8 in 1996 completed Year 12 in 2000, only 22.3% of their Indigenous peers
did so. (Education Department of Western Australia Annual Report 2001, unpublished).
The principles of two-way/both ways education
Origins
Bicultural approaches to finding solutions to address the complexity of cross-cultural situations have been used in a
range of legal and religious, as well as educational, institutions (McTaggart, 1988) and have been referred to in a variety
of ways: ‘two laws’(Maddock, 1977 cited by McTaggart, 1988), ‘two-way’ education (Harris, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993;
Hooley, 2000; McConvell, 1982; McConvell, 1991; McConvell, 1994; McTaggart, 1988; Malcolm, 1995a, 1995b;
Malcolm, 2000a; Malcolm, forthcoming; Malcolm et al., 1999), ‘both ways’ (Bepuka et al., 1993; Malcolm, 1995b;
Yunupingu, 1990) and ‘the old and the new ways’ (Bell & Ditton, 1984, cited by McTaggart, 1988). The term ‘two-way’ or
‘both ways’ has been used in a variety of educational contexts in Australia and abroad with a range of related but
different meanings in both bilingual and bidialectal settings.
Bilingual education was first introduced to the Northern Territory in selected schools in 1972 (Eggington, 1992). Before
bilingual education had been introduced in the Gurinji community at Daguragu on Wattie Creek, elder Pincher
Nyurrmiyarri expressed the desire for a ‘two-way’ system which would involve ‘an exchange between Europeans and
Aborigines’ (McConvell, 1982). The Gurinji people were disenchanted at the way their children were being educated in a
‘one-way’ European-based system. This ‘two-way’ approach would involve the use of their language and culture as part
of a program in which community members would be consulted and involved in making curriculum decisions.
The Yirrkala community in the Northern Territory was selected by the Federal government in 1974 as a site for one of the
first bilingual schools to be set up (Yunupingu, 1990). Under this bilingual system, the local Yolngu teachers were
employed to teach some classes, including some Yolngu traditions such as dance, art and hunting. Although the local
community was now involved inside the classroom, the non-Aboriginal administration gave the Yolngu community
128
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
members very little opportunity to be involved in the running of the school itself. Ten years later in1984 the community
members set up the Yolngu Action Committee and by 1986 they began to develop a ‘both-ways curriculum’ (p. 5). This
‘both-ways’ design involved both balanda (or European) content as well as Yolngu content, but the balanda content, i.e.,
culture and history, would be presented from the Yolngu perspective and structured to meet the needs of the community.
A third use of the ‘two-way’ or ‘both ways’ concept developed by Aboriginal people was identified by Jean Harkins at the
Yipirinya school in the multilingual context of Alice Springs. The concept was applied this time to the English language
itself. The desire was expressed by the Yipirinya School Council to see their competence in English expanded so that it
could work as a means of explaining their Aboriginal culture and values to non-Aboriginal people, while at the same time
advantaging themselves by accessing non-Aboriginal opportunities (1994).
In discussions about the bilingual/bicultural school context, a debate arose regarding the compatibility between
Aboriginal culture and non-Aboriginal culture and the need for a separation of ‘cultural domains’. Stephen Harris argued
that for small cultural groups like that of Aboriginal people, to achieve true biculturalism in the sense of having two
cultural identities, schools need to compartmentalize the learning contexts in order to reduce the pressures of Western
influences and help preserve Aboriginal cultural identity (1988). This would mean that Western teachers would be
teaching Western content in Western ways (adapted to Aboriginal learning styles) in classrooms separate from where
Aboriginal teachers taught Aboriginal cultural studies. But he acknowledged that there would be some overlap (1990,
1991). Patrick McConvell opposed this notion of compartmentalizing the school because it would foreground
incompatibilities, contribute to further stereotyping of Aboriginal people, and focus on issues of worldviews rather than
the more significant Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal sociocultural conflicts regarding land and Aboriginal families (1991).
While the issues of this debate may seem only to relate to bilingual school contexts in rural areas, it does highlight the
dilemma of the majority of Aboriginal children in Australia who attend monolingual urban schools. Ian Malcolm has
pointed out that for these Aboriginal English speaking children, there is no practical option of compartmentalization of
cultural domains (Malcolm, 1995a). For the urban Aboriginal child in particular, these cultural domains overlap in a range
of contexts, namely school, and at a very young age, children are expected to make sense of and deal with these
conflicting worldviews. Robin McTaggart has pointed out that in relation to differences in cultural worldviews ‘[w]hat
children find “confusing” is exactly where education ought to direct its efforts. In the psychology of learning the term
“cognitive dissonance” is used to describe a crucial trigger to learning – an incongruity between what is already known
(including correspondences) and some immediate experience’ (1988, p. 86). McTaggart argues for the need of local
Aboriginal community involvement in the schools so that they can offer suggestions on how these ‘dissonances’ can be
resolved for the Aboriginal child in a collaborative, negotiated manner.
To address the problems faced by Aboriginal English speaking children attending monolingual schools, a ‘two-way’
bidialectal approach to education is being developed in Western Australia through the ABC of Two-way Literacy and
Learning Project. It connects with a number of research projects and teacher development programs through the
collaborative efforts of the Education Department and the Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research at Edith
Cowan University. One such project was undertaken in response to the needs expressed by teachers of Aboriginal
children. This teacher development project, called Language and Communication Enhancement for Two-way Education,
was undertaken at Edith Cowan University through support provided by DEET National Priority Reserve Fund (Malcolm,
1995a). Eighteen teachers who taught in English-medium schools from across the state trained as action researchers,
collecting linguistic data in their own classrooms. The development of bidialectal education training packages available
for external study offering university credit followed. This research project and other collaborative efforts have also
contributed to the ongoing professional development program, resulting in the further development and implementation
of a range of two-way bidialectal education strategies and initiatives.
International counterparts
The ‘two-way’ bilingual programs in the U.S. are different from the bilingual and bidialectal programs in Australia. In the
U.S. model language instruction usually involves two language groups having instruction and interaction in two
languages: for example, Spanish and English. Such programs are designed to integrate language minority speakers with
their native English speaking peers so that both groups receive content and language instruction together with an aim to
promote academic achievement and language skills in two languages and improved community relations for both groups
(Cazabon, Lambert, & Hall, 1993; Christian, 1994; Groesbeck, 1984).
In the bidialectal context, a ‘two-way’ approach to education was advocated by Gail Chermak, but she used the term
‘bilingual’ rather than ‘bidialectal’ in order to call attention to the systematic differences between the language used by
129
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
African American children and Standard American English speaking children. Chermak recognized that the education
system did not take into account the distinctiveness of African American English which made it difficult for these children
to succeed in school. She maintained that the ‘one-way’ model under which the education system operated assumed that
children could easily switch from one dialect to another. She also argued that both White and Black children needed to be
educated together about the similarities and differences between the two dialectal systems (1976).
Other bidialectal programs have been operating in U.S. schools but not using a ‘two-way’ approach. Some successful
programs have been operating in the schools in De Kalb County, Georgia (Harris-Wright, 1987) and in northeastern Utah
among the American Indian English speaking Ute school children (Leap, 1992). Both programs approach bidialectal
education from a ‘difference’ rather than ‘deficit’ perspective, accepting and valuing the home language and culture.
Relevance to bidialectal as well as bilingual education
The two-way approach to education continues to receive support for both bilingual and bidialectal contexts in a range of
settings. The implementation of the two-way or both-ways approach continues to be used effectively in Bachelor
College in the Northern Territory, one of the first places where it was trialled (Eggington, 1992). It has been found to be
a practical way of effectively addressing the needs of Aboriginal children in a variety of school situations in Western
Australia (Rankin & Ramsey, 1991; Richards, 1984). For example, professional development packages have been
developed to provide support for two-way education programs for Kriol-speaking students in the Kimberley: Fostering
English Language in Kimberley Schools (FELIKS) (Hudson, 1992) and Making the Jump (Hudson & Berry, 1997). The twoway approach has been used in government as well as non-government schools such as the Catholic school system in
the Kimberley (Catholic Education Office Kimberley Region, 1987; Kimberley Catholic Education Language Team, 1988).
More recently the principles of two-way education have been implemented at the tertiary level. The principles are being
taught in teacher education programs at Edith Cowan University (Malcolm, 1995a) and in a new program called the
CUTSD program where university academic staff members learn about two-way approaches to use with university
students (www.ecu.edu.au/ses/research/CALLR/NEWSCUTSD/entry.htm). Also within a two-way bicultural education
framework, Nyerna Studies, a Bachelor of Education program at Victoria University of Technology, has ‘redrafted’ twoway learning into what it calls ‘two-way enquiry learning’ which uses two-way participatory learning and action research
strategies (Hooley, 2000, p. 11). While not specifically a bidialectal program, it implements a bicultural approach to
education in a range of areas in the program.
Two-way education and identity
Importance of learning by way of first language
While some have argued that children cannot learn a language unless they are exposed to it, others have argued that
children can only learn in a language that they can understand. For many years school programs have operated along
the lines of the first (maximum-exposure) assumption. But the success of this ‘sink or swim’ approach is neither
supported by statistics nor by research from a wide range of cultural contexts (McCarty, 1993). In bidialectal contexts, it
is recognized that when the language of the classroom is an unfamiliar dialect, it can obstruct comprehension and
interfere with learning (Wolfram & Christian, 1989).
While the medium of instruction is important, Jim Cummins, a researcher who specializes in bilingual education, has
argued that the issue of learning through a second dialect or language is much more complex because some languageminority children have been able to succeed in contexts where the language or dialect of the classroom is not that of
their home (1986). This is illustrated by research in sociology and anthropology which has shown that issues of status
and power contribute significantly to the failure of schools to promote academic success in minority-language students
(Fishman, 1976; Ogbu, 1978; Paulston, 1980, all cited by Cummins, 1986). In studies of minority-language students
around the globe --including African American, Hispanic, and Indigenous American students in the U.S.; FrancoOntarian students in Canada, Finnish students in Sweden, and Indigenous Burakumin students in Japan – the social
status of the languages spoken by these populations is seen to be an important factor in the disempowerment of
students, contributing significantly to their academic failure. In cases where these same language groups had
immigrated to different countries, a change in the status of their language resulted and the students achieved
academic success. This was the case of Finnish children coming to Australia and Indigenous Burakumin students going
to America where their achievements equalled that of their Japanese immigrant peers (Troike, 1978; Ogbu, 1978, cited
by Cummins, 1986).
130
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
The status of the minority-language speakers and their language or dialect is determined by the attitudes held by
members of the dominant society. In societies where equal access to education is legislated and written into public
documents, individuals are often held responsible for their own failure because of their inability or unwillingness to
access the benefits of public education (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1984, cited by Cummins, 1989). The issue of ownership of
the problem was reflected in an investigation into teacher attitudes toward Aboriginal English conducted in Western
Australia (Malcolm, 1996). Four different types of teacher responses were noted: (1) that students must learn to
conform to the standard; (2) that students’ use of the non-standard is a ‘disability’; (3) that the language of these
students indicated that they were in the process of acquiring standard English; and (4) that the students’ dialect was an
important part of the students’ lives, particularly outside the classroom. In all but the last response, students are held
responsible for the problem; the fourth response recognizes the complex speech ecology of Australia and the need for a
bidialectal educational approach to addressing the needs of Aboriginal English speakers.
Because schools are institutions embedded in society, the societal attitudes, values, and practices of the dominant
culture are reflected in the attitudes, values and practices of teachers, principals and other administrators in the
schools. Therefore, the academic success of language-minority students rests on the degree to which the interactional
patterns in the wider society can be reversed within the context of the school (Cummins, 1986). It is important for
teachers of Aboriginal English speaking students to seize the opportunity to address these issues inside the classrooms
through their own interactions and practices.
Importance of building from known to unknown
The concept of building from known to unknown is fundamental to what effective teachers do on a regular basis when
planning lessons which involve the meaningful presentation of new material. Teachers review what the students already
know about the topic and then relate new material in the context of what is known. This practice is based on a theory of
learning developed by American psychologist David Ausubel called ‘Subsumption Theory’. In this model learners
subsume or integrate new knowledge into their existing framework of knowledge. It applies to what Ausubel referred to
as ‘meaningful reception learning’ (1963, p. 20) or the learning of new material through verbal or written presentations in
school settings. It does not apply to rote learning, experiential discovery learning or problem solving.
This kind of learning can involve a number of cognitive processes, including: (1) ‘cataloguing’ new information in terms of
where it fits into what is already known; (2) reconciling it with what is known, which may involve resolving ‘discrepancies
and inconsistencies’; (3) relating it to one’s personal experience, ideas, and language; and then (4) integrating the new
information into what is known, which may require reorganizing the existing concepts (Ausubel, 1963, p. 20). This
theoretical model shares common elements with other learning models such as Gestalt theories, schema theory
(Bartlett, 1932 and others) and Bruner’s (1966) constructivist ‘spiral learning model’. This approach to learning is
recognized in a range of learning areas such as science (Campbell, 1993), mathematics (Cooper & Williams, 1997), and
literacy (Clay, 1986).
In terms of literacy, American psycholinguist Kenneth Goodman maintained that learning to read and write follows the
pattern of natural language learning: a child progresses ‘from whole to part, from general to specific, from familiar to
unfamiliar’ (Goodman, 1982a, p. 58). It is also the basis of the language experience approach to literacy, advocated by
Goodman and adopted in some bidialectal contexts (Bachelor, 1976). It involves assisting children to write down their
spoken language, using their own grammar and vocabulary and then teaching them to read what they have written.
Children are motivated to learn to read and write because it is purposeful, inherently meaningful and relevant to their lives.
In Aboriginal education ‘“[m]oving from the known to the unknown” is one of the most widely quoted maxims, and in
Aboriginal classrooms is one of the most widely underused principles of sound teaching’ (Harris, 1982a, p. 142). Often
the teacher assumes that a concept is familiar to her class, which may be true for her non-Aboriginal students, but not
for her Aboriginal students. Aboriginal English speaking students often construct a very different reality through their
cultural lens, making it very difficult for them to make connections with what is presented in class. This applies not just
to content, but also to learning strategies, processes and behaviours, ‘expectations, motivations, [and] interests’ (Harris,
1982a, p. 142).
For example, the ‘unknown’ may include common classroom practices that teachers employ unconsciously including
the use of ‘verbal instruction’, comprehension checks through teacher questions and student responses, and the
application of ‘context-free principles’ in daily classroom learning activities (Harris, 1982a, p. 142). The use of ‘contextfree principles’ is particularly true of teaching literacy or using text-based resources on topics far removed from the
students’ cultural knowledge and experience.
131
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Importance of recognizing existing knowledge and skills
When children come to school they have already developed a sophisticated communication system which has served
them well in meeting their physical and emotional needs. The children adapt this language and ways of speaking
according to the norms of the family and community (Goodman, 1982b; Heath, 1983). The language not only serves the
children to operate within their community of speakers, but also within their own minds as they learn to understand and
make sense of their world (Goodman, 1982b; Vygotsky, 1986). Goodman advised educators that they should ‘capitalize
on this medium of thought and learning’ (Goodman, 1982b, p. 34) but cautioned them on the need to ‘help the learner
to build on a base of pride and confidence instead of negating his language competence in a cloud of shame and
confusion’ (Goodman, 1982c, p. 177). It is important to remember that the interconnectedness of one’s cultural
knowledge, language and ways of knowing and doing things is very much tied to one’s identity. If these are not
recognized and valued, it can undermine the child’s self-esteem, self-concept and expectations of achievement.
Two-way education and power
The right of Aboriginal English speakers to access power in the wider world through
standard English
Most Australian Indigenous parents today want their children to learn Standard Australian English for a variety of
reasons (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1994), but mostly because they see it as a way to access
power not only in the Australian context but globally (Nakata, 1999). Torres Strait Islander Martin Nakata, a researcher
in literacy and pedagogy, maintains that this is not a new sentiment, but one that has been expressed by Australian
Indigenous peoples since colonization began (op. cit.).
As an advocate of English education, particularly for Indigenous language speakers, Nakata maintains that since the
early days of colonization when his people learnt about the educational standards of non-Indigenous Australians, they
made repeated demands that the government provide better educational opportunities for them. At times when this was
denied them, they built their own schools; and when English teachers were not supplied, they hired their own. Nakata
argues that it was not until recent international pressure, through the discourse of human rights, that the
Commonwealth Government began to put pressure on state governments to improve access to education for
Indigenous Australians (1999).
Nakata emphasized the need for Indigenous people to learn English so that it could be used as a ‘tool’ for accessing
the ‘political knowledge of Western institutions’ –health, education, finance, and politics – in order to take control of
their own lives and futures (1999, p. 18). He asserted that Indigenous peoples need “a proper grounding in the
language of knowledges, and an education that can provide…a full understanding of how… Indigenous peoples are
positioned in/by them” (p.19).
In the bilingual context, Nakata minimized the concern for language death or assimilation, maintaining the view that oral
Indigenous languages and culture will continue to be maintained without support and ‘coexist’ along side of English
(1999, p. 14). This view is contested by other Indigenous educators such as Mandawuy Yunupingu who argues on behalf
of the ‘double power’ that is available by maintaining both English and one’s own Indigenous language and culture.
Yunupingu was the principal of the Yirrkala community school in Arnhemland until 1991 when ‘both ways’ bilingual
education was implemented there. He is now more well known for his involvement with Indigenous band Yothu Yindi,
but continues to support the concept of both-ways education. Yunupingu told the story of the Yirrkala school as an
example of how it was necessary to present the ideas of the elders in his community in a format that the Western
education system would recognize, i.e., using Western genres and Standard Australian English (1999). Another account
of the same events observed that it was not until the Yolngu staff action group of the Yirrkala group submitted and made
public ‘well written’ documents that the white principal finally responded to the demands of the community because he
sensed that there was ‘white involvement’ (Eggington, 1992, p. 89). Up until that point, the demands of the community
were ignored.
Members of other communities, for example, the Aboriginal communities in the Yipirinya School near Alice Springs
(Harkins, 1994) as well as the Aboriginal people in desert communities in South Australia (Clayton, 1996), have
expressed a similar awareness of the effectiveness of using Standard Australian English as the language of power to
access the benefits of an improved standard of living and to defend their rights.
132
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
The equal right of Aboriginal people to recognize power in Aboriginal contexts which is
maintained through Aboriginal English
Although Standard Australian English is perceived to be the way to empowerment in the wider society, Aboriginal
English remains the language of power in the Aboriginal English speaking communities. While Aboriginal English varies
across Australia in terms of some grammatical features and vocabulary, since the 1900s it has served as a lingua
franca, or language of communication, when Aboriginal people from different parts of Australia have come together for a
variety of reasons (Malcolm, 1995a). Since the 1950s it has also been recognized as an identity marker among
Aboriginal people, and as such, a medium to promote solidarity and unity among different Aboriginal communities as
well as within a single community. In the U.S., African American Vernacular English is also recognized as an identity
marker (Rickford, 1999), and like African American Vernacular English, Aboriginal English maintains its link to identity by
resisting attempts to conform to standard English (Malcolm, 1995a, 2000; Rickford, 1999).
Aboriginal English also provides the medium through which Aboriginal English speaking parents enculturate or socialize
their children and pass on Aboriginal knowledge and worldview (Malcolm, 1995a). Since the 1960s Aboriginal English
has also become a medium of literary expressions in both oral and written forms (Eagleson, 1982; Kaldor & Malcolm,
1991; Malcolm, 1995a). There is now a growing body of vernacular literature in a range of genres written by Aboriginal
writers using Aboriginal English as the medium of expression.
Within the home and other domains in Aboriginal community contexts, the use of Standard Australian English is
‘marked’, that is, it stands out as not conforming to the norms of the community. Sociolinguists recognize that a
speaker will instinctively choose a language or dialect according to the situation. This is referred to as situational codeswitching (Wardhaugh, 1998). Code-switching is ‘a conversational strategy used to establish, cross or destroy group
boundaries; to create, evoke or change interpersonal relations with their rights and obligations’ (Gal, 1988, cited by
Wardhaugh, 1998). When speakers of Aboriginal English are together they use Aboriginal English as the preferred
language code. When they do not, it is noticed. Community members who attempt to use Standard Australian English
will often be challenged or teased for trying to talk ‘flash’ (Eagleson, 1982). As discussed earlier, Aboriginal English is a
bearer of Aboriginal identity and signals shared histories and values. Aboriginal English speakers are aware that to be
included as a part of the group, receive the benefits of the association, and have the option of exerting influence or
power within that group, they need to use Aboriginal English to signal solidarity with the group.
The need for recognition of Aboriginal knowledge, skills and status by non-Aboriginal
students and teachers
Central to the principles of two-way education is the need for there to be a ‘two-way exchange of knowledge’ with
teachers learning to understand about Aboriginal ways of knowing and learning and vice versa (Malcolm, 1995a;
McConvell, 1982). Until now it has only been Aboriginal children having to learn, in a ‘sink or swim’ approach, about only
Western knowledge using Western learning practices. The starting point here is for teachers to begin to recognize
Aboriginal knowledge and skills, and understand the status that Aboriginal English has historically been ascribed in the
school by mainstream society. As noted by sociolinguist Peter Trudgill ‘the scientific study of language has convinced
scholars that all languages, and correspondingly all dialects, are equally “good” as linguistic systems…[and that] any
apparent inferiority is due only to their association with speakers from under-privileged, low-status group’ (1995, p. 8).
It is therefore important for the teacher not only to make an effort to learn as much as possible about Aboriginal English,
Aboriginal knowledge and traditional ways of learning, but also to teach both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students
(many of whom speak other non-standard dialects themselves) that the status of non-standard dialects is determined
by society, not by any inherent qualities of the dialect itself or those who speak it.
133
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Principles of the implementation of two-way bidialectal education
Receptive and productive competence in Standard Australian English for Aboriginal
English speakers
While it is important for teachers to recognize and foster the valuing of Aboriginal English as the language of
enculturation for Aboriginal children, it is equally important to remember that Aboriginal parents want their children to
learn Standard Australian English as a means of accessing power in mainstream society. The goal of two-way bidialectal
education is therefore to develop both receptive competence in Standard Australian English (listening and reading skills)
as well as productive competence (speaking and writing), while continuing to value Aboriginal English as the language of
the home and community. When developing receptive and productive skills it is important to recognize that linguistic
interference from the child’s first dialect will influence both comprehension and production ability (Malcolm, 1982).
Nonetheless, it has been argued by some that teachers have a ‘moral obligation’ to teach the standard language, not to
replace the language of their home, but to add to it. If students are motivated with positive experiences to use standard
English, they will be able to make their own decisions about choosing to use it. But if they are not taught it, they do not
have the choice. It has been said that ‘we owe our students that choice, or we will have essentially cut them out of the
conversation’ (Heller, 1994, p. 17).
Receptive competence in Aboriginal English for all students
Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students need to be educated about the reality of the relationships between social
dialects, standard dialects and power. Teachers need to explain to all students that Standard Australian English is the
dialect of power in Australia because it is the language spoken by those in power, and as such serves as a vehicle to
access power and economic opportunities. Students should learn that social dialects such as Aboriginal English and
other non-standard varieties of English ‘are structured, complex, rule-governed systems which are wholly adequate for
the needs of the speakers’ (Trudgill, 1995, p. 8).
One way to accomplish this is to have teachers and students openly discuss these language and power issues in the
classrooms and analyze some Aboriginal English texts. Discussions of Aboriginal English words that have unique and
deeply historical meanings would enhance cross-cultural understanding. Analyzing the grammatical features of
Aboriginal English and comparing it to other non-standard dialects as well as Standard Australian English would enable
students to challenge the commonly held belief that Aboriginal English as well as other non-standard varieties of English
are broken or incomplete forms of the standard. American sociolinguist Walt Wolfram, who specializes in non-standard
American dialects, has developed such a program in the U.S. to teach students about the grammar of non-standard
American dialects including African American Vernacular English and the non-standard English spoken in the
Appalachian Mountains. The aim was to facilitate an understanding about American dialects and how non-standard
dialects are not incomplete or broken language systems, but complex, systematic, rule-governed languages (Wolfram,
1993). This kind of program can be challenging and fun for students. They become aware of the knowledge that they
have already unconsciously internalized about the non-standard dialect, and try to articulate rules about the grammar
system, and then test these rules on new data. It not only teaches them about language systems but encourages them
to question the foundation which supports their attitude toward a non-standard dialect (and its speakers). By starting in
the classroom, teachers can begin to make changes in society’s attitudes and misconceptions.
Accommodation of Aboriginal ways of approaching experience and knowledge
Effective teachers are already aware that different children have different learning style preferences and tend to
approach short-term objectives and long-term outcomes through range of strategies to accommodate all students in
their class. Learning to accommodate Aboriginal ways of approaching experience and knowledge is just an extension of
this teaching methodology and can benefit not only Aboriginal children, but non-Aboriginal children as well.
For example, Stephen Harris has identified a number of traditional Aboriginal learning strategies that, with some
conscious planning, can be adapted to the bicultural/bidialectal classroom. These include learning by observation, by
doing, by imitation, by personal trial-and-error, by real life performance, and by persistence and repetition. A teacher
can capitalize on good personal relationships within the classroom through cooperative group tasks which can
significantly motivate the Aboriginal children in her class. Aboriginal children learn more effectively if they can
understand how the task they are working on relates to the whole end-product (Harris, 1982b, p. 137). This holistic
learning strategy enables children to see why they are learning something, or what they will be able to do with what they
134
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
are in the process of learning. Many non-Aboriginal children also question why they are learning something. When all
children can see the ‘big picture’, they are often more willing to participate. Accommodating Aboriginal ways of learning
and knowing in the classroom context will not just benefit Aboriginal members of the class, but all children.
References
Aboriginal Education and Training Council. (1997). Western Australian Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Education and Training
for the Triennium 1997-1999. Perth, WA: Department of Education Services.
Ausubel, D. P. (1963). The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Bachelor, I. (1976). The language-experience approach to teaching reading. Developing Education, 4(3), 20-25.
Bepuka, D., Dhurrkay, G., Gaykakangu, N., Gondarra, G., Marawili, M., Marrayurra, V., Mltjarrandi, E., Nungalurr, H.,
Nguluwidi, J., Rraminba, B. & Rrumaliny, N. (1993). Literacy and changes – both ways education. Ngoonjook: A Journal of
Australian Indigenous Issues, 9 (November), 67-69.
Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Campbell, A. (1993). The teaching of learning strategies. The Australian Science Teachers Journal, 39(4), 11-15.
Catholic Education Office Kimberley Region (1987). Two-Way Learning: A Guide to Policy for Kimberley Catholic Schools.
Broome: Catholic Education Commission of WA.
Cazabon, M., Lambert, W. E. & Hall, G. (1993). Two-way Bilingual Education: A Progress Report on the Amigos Program
(Research Report 7). Santa Cruz, CA.: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language
Learning, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Chermak, G. (1976). Review of issues in Black dialect; a proposed two-way bilingual educational approach; and
considerations for the congenitally deaf child. Psychology in the Schools, 13(1), 101-110.
Christian, D. (1994). Two-way bilingual education: students Learning through Two Languages (Educational Practice Report
12). Santa Cruz, CA: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, University of
California, Santa Cruz.
Clay, M. (1986). Young readers and their cultural connections. Australian Journal of Reading, 9(4), 239-251.
Clayton, J., (comp.). (1996). Desert Schools: an Investigation of English Language and Literacy Among Young People in
Seven Communities. Hectorville, S.A.: Department of Employment, Education Training and Youth Affairs & National
Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia.
Coombs, H. C., Brandl, M. M. & Snowdon, W. E. (1983). A Certain Heritage: Programs for and by Aboriginal Families in
Australia. Canberra: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University (CRES Monograph 9).
Cooper, T. J. & Williams, A. M. (1997). Teaching 3x. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in
Education, Brisbane.
Cope, B. (1988). A textbook case: Teaching Australian history, from assimilation to multiculturalism. Teaching History,
22(2), 16-20.
Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students: a framework for intervention. Harvard Educational Review, 56(1), 18-36.
Curriculum Council of Western Australia. (1998). Curriculum Framework for Kindergarten to Year 12 Education in Western
Australia. Osborne Park, WA: Curriculum Council of WA.
Department of Employment, Education and Training (1994). National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander People: Discussion Paper. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.
Eagleson, R. D. (1982). Aboriginal English in an urban setting. In R. D. Eagleson, S. Kaldor & I. G. Malcolm (eds), English
and the Aboriginal Child (pp. 113-162). Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre.
Education Department of Western Australia Annual Report 2001 (Unpublished), Corporate Information Services,
Department of Education, Western Australia, 2001
Eggington, W. (1992). From oral to literate culture: an Australian Aboriginal experience. In F. Dubin & N. A. Kuhlman
(eds), Cross-cultural Literacy: Global Perspectives on Reading and Writing (pp. 81-98). Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Regents/Prentice Hall.
135
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Everhart, R. B. (1983). Reading, Writing and Resistance: Adolescence and Labor in a Junior High School. Boston:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Gearing, F. & Epstein, P. (1982). Learning to wait: an ethnographic probe into the operations of an item of hidden
curriculum. In G. Spindler (ed.), Ethnography of Schooling: Educational Anthropology in Action (pp. 240-267). New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Gee, J. P. (1991). The narrativization of experience in the oral style. In C. Mitchell & K. Weiler (eds), Rewriting Literacy:
Culture and the Discourse of the Other (pp. 77-101). New York: Bergin and Garvey.
Gee, J. P. (1991). What is literacy? In C. Mitchell & K. Weiler (Eds.), Rewriting literacy: Culture and the Discourse of the
Other (pp. 3-12). New York: Bergin & Garvey.
Ginibi, R. L. & Guy, E. (1997). Ruby Langford Ginibi in conversation with Elizabeth Guy. Westerly, 42(2), 9-17.
Goodman, K. (1982a). The language children bring to school: how to build on it. In F. V. Gollasch (ed.), Language and
Literacy: Selected Writings of Kenneth S. Goodman – Reading, Language and the Classroom Teacher (Vol. 2, pp. 33-38).
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Goodman, K. (1982b). On valuing diversity in language: Overview. In F. V. Gollasch (ed.), Language and Literacy: Selected
Writings of Kenneth S. Goodman – Reading, Language and the Classroom Teacher (Vol. 2, pp. 175-178). London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Groesbeck, D. (1984). Two-Way bilingual education in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Equity and Choice, 1(1 (Fall)), 22-24.
Harkins, J. (1994). Bridging Two Worlds: Aboriginal English and Cross-cultural Understanding. St Lucia, Qld: University of
Queensland Press.
Harris, S. (1982a). Aboriginal learning styles and the teaching of reading. In J. Sherwood (ed.), Aboriginal Education:
Issues and Innovations (pp. 141-152). Perth: Creative Research.
Harris, S. (1982b). Traditional Aboriginal education strategies and their possible place in a modern bicultural school. In J.
Sherwood (ed.), Aboriginal Education: Issues and Innovations. Perth: Creative Research.
Harris, S. (1988). Culture boundaries, culture maintenance-in-change, and two-way Aboriginal schools. Curriculum
Perspectives, 8(2), 76-83.
Harris, S. (1990). Two-way Aboriginal schooling: Education and Cultural Survival. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Harris, S. (1991). Reply to McConvell’s two-way blind alley paper. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1991(2), 19-26.
Harris-Wright, K. (1987). The challenge of educational coalescence: teaching nonmainstream English-speaking students.
Journal of Childhood Communication Disorders, 11(1), 209-215.
Harrold, J. & Bartley, S. (1990). Social studies 6: R.I.C. Publications Pty Ltd.
Harslett, M., Harrison, B., Godfrey, J., Partington, G. & Richer, K. (1997). Good Relationships and Good School
Experiences: That’s What is Important to Aboriginal Students. Paper presented at the Education Department of Western
Australia Aboriginal Pedagogy Conference: (www.wn.com.au/abled/edu.htm).
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Heller, D. A. (1994). The problem of standard English. English Journal, 83(5), 17-18.
Hudson, J. (1992). Fostering English language in Kimberley schools: an in-service course for teachers. In J. Siegel (ed.),
Pidgins, Creoles and Nonstandard Dialects in Education. Melbourne: Applied Linguistics Association of Australia.
Hudson, J. & Berry, R. (1997). Making the Jump: A Resource Book for Teachers of Aboriginal Students. Broome: Catholic
Education Office, Kimberley Region.
Kaldor, S. & Malcolm, I. G. (1991). Aboriginal English – an overview. In S. Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia
(pp. 67-83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kimberley Catholic Education Language Team (1988). Two-Way Learning: Language and Culture in Schools (rev. ed.).
Land, R. (ed.) (1994). Invasion and After: A Case Study in Curriculum Politics. Nathan, Qld: Griffith University.
Leap, W. L. (1992). American Indian English. In J. Reyhner (ed.), Teaching American Indian Students (pp. 143-153).
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
136
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Malcolm, I. G. (1982). Communicative dysfunction in Aboriginal classrooms. In J. Sherwood (ed.), Aboriginal Education:
Issues and Innovations (pp. 153-172). Perth: Creative Research.
Malcolm, I. G. (1995a). Language and Communication Enhancement for Two-Way Education. Report to the Department of
Employment, Education and Training. Perth: Centre for Applied Language Research, Edith Cowan University.
Malcolm, I. G. (1995b). Language and Prejudice ‘Both Ways’: Implications for Education. Paper presented at the 20th
Annual Conference of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia, Australian National University, Canberra,
26-29 September.
Malcolm, I. G. (1996). One language, two cultures: implementing bidialectal education. In J. E. James (ed.), The
Language-culture Connection (pp. 123-135). Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
Malcolm, I. G. (1998). ‘You gotta talk the proper way’: language and education. In G. Partington (ed.), Perspectives on
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education (pp. 117-146). Katoomba, NSW: Social Science Press.
Malcolm, I. G. (2000). Aboriginal English: Evolving Forms and Functions. Paper presented at the Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies seminar series on Australian Indigenous Languages: Survival in the 21st
Century, Canberra, 6 May.
Malcolm, I. G. (2000a). The Place of Genres in Two-Way Bidialectal Education. Paper presented at the Fifth Annual Round
Table of the Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research, Edith Cowan University, Claremont Conference Centre,
30 June – 1 July.
Malcolm, I. G. (2000b). Yarning and Learning. Paper presented at the Australian Indigenous Education Conference,
Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle, 4-7 April.
Malcolm, I. G. (2001), Two-Way English and the bicultural experience. In B. Moore (ed.) Who’s Centric Now? The Present
State of Post-Colonial Englishes (pp. 219-240). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Malcolm, I. G., Haig, Y., Königsberg, P., Rochecouste, J., Collard, G., Hill, A. & Cahill, R. (1999). Two-Way English: Towards
More User-friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia
and Edith Cowan University.
McCarty, T. L. (1993). Language, literacy, and the image of the child in American Indian classrooms. Language Arts, 70,
182-192.
McConvell, P. (1982). Supporting the two-way school. In J. Bell (ed.), Language Planning for Australian Aboriginal
Languages (pp. 60-76). Alice Springs: Institute for Aboriginal Development.
McConvell, P. (1991). Cultural domain separation: Two-way street or blind alley? Stephen Harris and the neo-Whorfians
on Aboriginal education. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1991(1), 13-24.
McTaggart, R. (1988). Aboriginal pedagogy versus colonization of the mind. Curriculum Perspectives, 8(2), 83-92.
Mühlhäusler, P. (1996). Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region. London:
Routledge.
Nakata, M. (1999). History, cultural diversity, and English language teaching. In P. Wignell (ed.), Double Power: English
Literacy and Indigenous Education (pp. 5-22). Melbourne: Language Australia.
Nakata, M. & Muspratt, S. (1994). How to read across the curriculum: The case of a social studies ‘social investigation
strategy’ as ideological practice. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 17(3), 227-239.
Partington, G., Richer, K., Godfrey, J., Harslett, M., & Harrison, B. (1999) Barriers to Effective Teaching of Indigenous
Students. Paper presented at the Combined Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education and
New Zealand Association for Research in Education, Melbourne, 29 November – 2 December.
Rankin, E. & Ramsey, G. (1991). Two-way education at Alekarenge. Ngoonjook, 5(July), 14-16.
Richards, D. (1984). Yipirinya comes of age. Education News, 18(10), 24-27.
Rickford, J. (1999). African American Vernacular English. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Rochecouste, J Hayes, G., Eggington, R. & Collard, G. (2001). Indigenous Community Attitudes and Tertiary Education.
Paper presented at the CALLR Roundtable Conference 2001, Edith Cowan University, Claremont, WA. June.
Rochecouste, J. & Malcolm, I. G. (2001). Aboriginal English Genres in the Yamatji Lands of Western Australia. (Rev. ed.)
Mt Lawley, WA: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research.
137
Video 4 Background Papers
Two-Way Learning and Two Kinds of Power
Shaull, R. (1970). Foreword. In P. Freire (ed.), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (pp. 9-18). New York: Continuum.
Singh, M. G. (1994). The struggle against curriculum imperialism: questioning invisibility and stereotypes in Australian
history. In R. Land (ed.), Invasion and After: a Case Study in Curriculum Politics. Brisbane: Queensland Studies Centre.
Spindler, G. (1963). The transmission of American culture. In G. Spindler (ed.), Education and Culture: Anthropological
Approaches (pp. 148-172). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Spindler, G. (1982). Doing the Ethnography of Schooling: Educational Anthropology in Action. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston.
Spindler, G. & Spindler, L. (1982). Roger Harker and Schonhausen: From the familiar to the strange and back again. In
G. Spindler (ed.), Doing the Ethnography of Schooling: Educational Anthropology in Action (pp. 20-47). New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Trudgill, P. (1995). Sociolinguistics: an Introduction to Language and Society. London: Penguin Books.
Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language (A. Kozulin, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Waller, W. (1965). The Sociology of Teaching. New York: John Wiley.
Wardhaugh, R. (1998). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (3rd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Wilcox, K. (1982a). Differential socialization in the classroom: Implications for equal opportunity. In G. Spindler (ed.), Doing
the Ethnography of Schooling: Educational Anthropology in Action (pp. 268-309). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Wilcox, K. (1982b). Ethnography as a methodology and its applications to the study of schooling: A review.
In G. Spindler (ed.), Doing the Ethnography of Schooling: Educational Anthropology in Action (pp. 456-488). New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs. Westmead, England: Saxon House.
Wolfram, W. (1993). The grammar of vernacular English. In A. W. Glowka & D. M. Lance (eds), Language Variation in
North America (pp. 16-27). New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
Wolfram, W. & Christian, D. (1989). Dialects and Education: Issues and Answers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/
Prentice Hall.
Yunupingu, M. (1990). Language and power: The Yolngu rise to power at Yirrkala School. In C. Walton & W. Eggington
(eds), Language: Maintenance, Power and Education in Australian Aboriginal Contexts (pp. 3-6). Darwin: Northern
Territory University Press.
Yunupingu, M. (1999). Double power. In P. Wignell (ed.), Double Power: English Literacy and Indigenous Education
(pp. 1-4). Melbourne: Language Australia.
138
Background Papers
Index
Aboriginality, 65, 98
bung (Yagara for ‘dead’), 76
African Americans, 127, 130
bungarra, 98
alla (plural determiner), 96, 107
bunyip, 76
Anderson, Christopher, 88, 102
Cahill, Rosemary, 101, 102, 104, 137
animacy, 122
camp (noun), 98, 107, 115, 121
Armstrong, F. F., 76
camp (verb), 115
Arthur, Jay, 84, 96, 98, 102, 123, 124
Canning, Alfred, 75
ashes, 114
Carly, David, 78
Assimilation (policy), 81, 82, 84
categorization, 109, 110, 112-115, 127
Austen, Tom, 75, 77, 78, 102
cattle snake, 122
auxiliary (verbal), 93, 94, 96
Cazabon, M., 129, 135
Baines, Patricia, 80, 86, 102
Chafe, Wallace, 109, 111, 124
Balanda (Europeans), 74
chains, associative, 110, 114
Bancroft, Bronwyn, 88
chargin on, 113, 122
Bardi, 74
Chase, Athol K., 73, 102
be (verb), 93, 96, 113
Chawla, Saroj, 124
behind bars, 83, 84, 114
cheekin, 98
Bennell, Tom, 73, 78, 82, 84, 102
Chermak, Gail, 129, 135
Bennelong, 76
Chi, Jimmy, 84, 88, 102
Bepuka, D., 128, 135
choo (interjection), 89, 98
Berndt, Ronald M., 73, 102
Christian, Donna, 129, 130, 135, 138
Berry, Rosalind, 130, 136
claimin cousin, 114
bidialectal education, 62, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 137
Clayton, Jean, 124, 132, 135
bidialectalism, 101, 106, 129
clear, 123
big mob, 113
clever, 123
big wheelbarrow, 112
code-switching, 62, 65, 66, 101, 133
big words, 99
bigges mob, 107
example, 94
bilingual education, 128, 129, 130, 135
Collard, Glenys, 73, 82, 85, 88, 89, 91, 102, 104, 125, 126,
137
billabong, 76
communal (conversation mode), 99
bin (past tense marker), 83, 95, 96, 107, 121
conceptualization, 108, 111, 114
blackfellas, 89, 114
Confessions of a Headhunter (film), 88
Blackfellas (film), 88
consonant clusters, 94
blending, conceptual, 109
Cook, Captain James, 72, 74, 105
boomerang, 76
Coombs, H. C. (‘Nugget’), 88, 102, 128, 135
boomers, 92, 93
corbon water, 112
boss, 114
corroboree, 76
both ways (education), 128, 129, 132, 135. See also
two-way education
cousin-brother, 98, 114
Bran Nue Day, 84, 102
creole, 63, 90, 104
creole defined, 79
Brandl, Maria M., 73, 88, 102, 128, 135
Cruttenden, Kezia, 92
bridaya, 114
culture
Broome, Richard, 75, 76, 102
adaptation, 84-88
Brown, Cheryl, 109, 112, 124
continuity of, 88
budjari (Nyungar), 98
oral, 64, 65, 84, 125, 135
139
Background Papers
Index
representation of, 126
attitudes towards, 101, 107, 131
suppression of, 81, 82
development of, 61, 90
transmission of, 62, 64, 65, 82, 84, 125, 126, 129,
132, 138
text structure, 97
Cummins, Jim, 130, 131, 135
Curriculum Framework, 126, 127, 135
African American Vernacular English (AAVE), 107, 130,
133, 134, 137
Dampier, William, 74, 102
American Indian English, 130, 136
dangerous, 123
Darwin, Charles, 73
Australian English (AustE), 61, 63, 64, 76, 90, 94, 112,
113, 114
Davis, Jack, 66, 84, 88, 102, 126
British English, 72, 76
De Kalb (County, Georgia), 130
Hawaiian Creole English, 107
deadly, 62, 98, 114
non-standard dialects of English, 76, 94, 98, 101, 133,
134
deficit (perspective), 130
Dhurrkay, G., 135
dialect, 61, 62, 63, 65,
dialect vs language, 63
non-standard dialects, 101, 133
social dialect, 90
difference (perspective), 130
dingo, 76
dinner, 114
dinner time, 107, 113
direct speech, 98
Dirven, René, 110, 124
discourse, 96, 97, 127
displacement, 77, 79
dissonance, cognitive, 129
Dixon, R. M. W., 74, 76, 102
Douglas, Allan, 82
Dreaming, 64, 73, 74, 105
Dredge, James, 78
drop, 107, 114
dugite, 76
Dussart, Françoise., 88, 102
e (personal pronoun), 89, 92-97, 119, 121, 122
Eades, Diana, 99, 100, 103
Eagleson, Robert, 124, 133, 135
Ebonics, 107
ecology (speech/language), 61-64, 124, 137
ecosystem, 62, 64
Edwards, William H., 74, 102, 103, 105
Eggington, William, 103, 128, 130, 132, 135, 138
English, Englishes, 61-66, 76, 77, 90, 94, 106-108
Aboriginal English (AE), 61-66, 77, 82, 84, 85, 88,
90-101, 106, 107, 111-123, 124, 127, 133, 136, 137
140
texts, 82, 86, 92, 94, 97, 117, 118-121
Singapore English (‘Singlish’), 107
Standard Australian English (SAE), 61, 65, 66, 89, 90,
93, 99, 127, 133
attitudes towards, 101, 107, 132, 133
Eora, 74, 75, 76
Everhart, R.B., 125, 136
exclusion, 128
Exile and the Kingdom (film), 86
existential (construction), 96
eye contact, 99
eye-glasses, 113
Fauconnier, Gilles, 124
feed (noun), 89, 92, 93, 95, 113, 114
FELIKS, 130
finger-ring, 113
fire-smoke, 113
Fishman, Joshua, 130
flash (talk), 89, 101, 133
flat, 117
Fletcher, C., 77, 78, 103
flog, 114
Foley, Fiona, 88
for (Kriol-influenced), 96
for liar (adv), 98, 122
Forrest River (massacre site), 78
Freeman, Cathy, 66
Fremantle, Captain, 75, 102
fricatives, 94
from, 62, 122
gaga, 98
Gal, Susan, 133
galah, 76
Background Papers
Index
ganma, 122
interference, linguistic, 134
Gaykakangu, N., 135
Jandamarra (Bunaba hero), 78, 104
Gee, James Paul, 127, 136
jarnkurna, 98
Gegeo, David Welchman, 124
jarrah tree, 76
genres, 66, 90, 127, 137
Jones, Trina, 94
Gerritsen, R., 74, 103
jump up, 112
gibber plain, 76
Kaldor, Susan, 107, 124, 133, 135, 136
Gibbs, Genevieve, 66, 101
kangaroo, 93, 99, 114, 118, 121
gidgee (spear), 76
karri, 76
gilgie, 76
kat wara, 114
Ginibi, Ruby Langford, 126, 136
kepa, 98
go (verb), 113, 114
kickit, 123
Gondarra, G., 135
Kimberley, 94
Goodman, Kenneth, 131, 132, 136
kinship, 73, 74, 86, 116, 128
goona (Nyungar), 98
Knight, A., 76, 104
grannies, 114
Königsberg, Patricia, 90, 101, 137
Green, Neville, 75, 76
koonac, 76
Gribble, J. B., 79, 103
Koscielecki, Marek M., 74, 76, 90, 104, 112, 124
Haebich, Anna, 80, 81, 103
kulunkga, 98
half, 114
Lakoff, George, 108, 111, 124
Hall, G., 129, 135
Lambert, W.E., 129, 135
Hamilton, Annette, 99, 103
language, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 106, 108, 109, 111
Hampton, E. N., 101, 103
Harkins, Jean, 98, 103, 129, 132, 136
Aboriginal languages, 61, 62, 63, 64, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79,
82, 83, 84, 90, 94, 98, 105
Harris, John W., 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 103
Awabakal, 76
Harris, Stephen, 99, 103, 128, 129, 131, 134, 136, 137
connection to land, 73
Harris-Wright, Kelli, 130, 136
Dharuk, 74, 76
Hatch, Evelyn, 109, 112, 124
ethnic, 64
Haugen, Einar, 108, 124
iceberg analogy, 90
Hayes, Glenys, 126, 137
Kriol, 63, 79, 96, 105, 106
Heath, Shirley Brice, 132, 136
language death, 79, 82, 132
Heller, D.A., 134, 136
lexifier language (of a pidgin), 90
Henderson, John, 64, 66
Roper River Creole, 79
Hercus, Louise, 79, 105
sign language, 74
Hobbes, Thomas, 72
Torres Strait Creole, 63, 79, 105
hold, 123
language contact, 63
holistic learning strategies, 134
language of power, 133
Holm, J., 63, 66
language suppression, 82
Horton, D. R., 73, 79, 103
Leap, W.L., 130, 136
Hudson, Joyce, 130, 136
liddle mummy, 86
humpy, 76
liddle pop/nan, 86
identity, 62, 81, 88, 90, 101, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133
lie, liar, 98, 107
imagery, 109, 111
linear (discourse structure), 97, 128
initial-h, 94
linear (time framework), 97, 125
141
Background Papers
Index
lingua franca, 79, 90, 133
Morgan, Sally, 88
listener, role of, 99
morphology, 90, 94, 96
little fellas, 97, 98
Morphy, Howard, 73, 88, 104
Locke, John, 72
muddy, 98
longa (Kriol preposition), 96
Muecke, Stephen, 66
Lyon, R. M., 76
Mühlhäusler, Peter, 79, 104, 122, 124
Macassans (traders), 73, 74
mulga, 76
Macknight, C.C., 73, 104
Mulvaney, D. J., 74, 104
maintenance, culture, 64
mum mum, 114
maintenance, language, 64, 82
munda-maranga, 84
making up, 85
Munns, G., 86, 104
Malcolm, Ian G., 66, 74, 76, 77, 87, 90, 93, 98, 99, 101,
104, 107, 112, 117, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130,
131, 133, 134, 135, 137
Munro, Morndi, 84, 104
Malik, K., 73, 104
mallet tree, 76
manatj (monach), 114
mapping, cognitive, 108, 112
Marawili, M., 135
Markus, A., 73, 104
Marrayurra, V., 135
marri, 76
marron, 76
Mazrui, Alamin, 107, 124
Mazrui, Ali, 107, 124
McCarty, T.L., 130, 137
McConvell, Patrick, 128, 129, 133, 136, 137
McKay, Graham, 79, 103, 104
McPhee, Jack, 84
McTaggart, Robin, 127, 128, 129, 137
Mead, Anne, 99
metaphor, 111, 122, 123
142
Muspratt, Sandy, 126, 137
Myers, F.R., 73, 104
Nakata, Martin, 126, 132, 137
Nannup, Alice, 84, 104
Narogin, Mudrooroo (Colin Johnson), 66
narratives, oral, 65, 117
Nash, David, 64, 66
negation, multiple, 98
Nero, Shondel, 107
networks, associative, 110
networks, radial, 110, 114
Neville, A. O. (Chief Protector, W.A.), 81
Nguluwidi, J., 135
ngun (brother, Nyungar), 94
Nhanta, 76
niggers, 114
numbat, 76
Nungalurr, H., 135
nyorn (Nyungar), 98
metonymy, 111, 123
Nyungar, Nyungars, 75, 76, 77, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87,
89, 92, 93, 94, 98, 114
mia-mia, 76
Nyurrmiyarri, Pincher, 128
Michaels, Eric, 99, 104
Ogbu, J., 130
mimi, 98
ole girl, 98, 114
missionaries, 75, 76, 82
on top of (preposition), 113
Mltjarrandi, E., 135
one-way learning, 125
mob, 85, 95, 96, 114, 122
onna, 107
Moffatt, Tracey, 88
Oombulgurri text, 94
monach (manatj), 114
open, 98, 114
moorditj (muditj) (Nyungar), 98, 114
oral history, 125
Moore River Native Settlement, 80
ownlation, 114
Moore, George Fletcher, 76
Palmer, Gary, 108, 110, 111, 124
Background Papers
Index
Peel, Thomas, 77, 78
scenario, 111
Phillip, Governor Arthur, 75, 76
schemas, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116-122
phonology, 90, 94, 97, 122
event schemas, 110, 117
pidgin, 63, 77, 79, 84, 104
Family schema, 120
defined, 76
NSW Pidgin, 77, 90, 105
Hunting schema, 119
Observing schema, 117, 121
Pinjarra massacre, 78
proposition schemas, 110, 116
Pires de Oliveira, R., 108, 111, 124
Scary Things schema, 117
place, 87, 96, 97, 113
story schemas, 111, 117
Politeness, 86
Travel schema, 120
polysemy, 110, 123
Schmidt, Annette, 73, 79, 82, 90, 105
possession, 93
segregation (racial), 80-81
pragmatics, 90, 93, 98, 99, 104
semantics, 90, 93, 96
pregnant for, 114
shame, 85, 86, 98
prosodics, 90, 97
Sharpe, Margaret, 79, 105, 107, 124
Protection (Acts), 80, 82
Shaull, R., 126, 138
Protection (policy), 75, 80
Shnukal, Anna, 79, 105
prototypes, 109, 114
Shoemaker, Adam, 66
quandong, 76
side, 95, 96
questions (speech acts), 96, 100
Singh, M. G., 126, 138
quick-way (adv), 94, 116
singing, 113, 115
quokka, 76
sit down, 112
race, 73, 80, 81, 104
‘skimming’, 97
Rajkowski, P., 84, 104
skunned, 92, 94
Rankin, E., 130, 137
smash, 107, 115, 117
reckon, 122
Snowdon, Warren E., 88, 102, 128, 135
register, 65
solid, 98, 107
restructuring (of pidgin), 90
sound lengthening, 97
revival, language, 64
speaker, role of, 99
Reynolds, Henry, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 84, 104
Spindler, G., 125, 136, 138
Richards, D., 130, 137
Spindler, L., 125, 136, 138
Rickford, John, 133, 137
Stanner, W. E. H., 73, 105
Rijavec, Frank, 79, 81, 84, 86, 105
stiffened out, 122
roast, 114
Stirling, Captain/Governor James, 74, 75, 78
Rochecouste, Judith, 104, 107, 124, 126, 137
Stolen Generations, 81
Rose, David B., 73, 105
stop, 83, 85, 115
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 72
straight-way (adv), 94
Rraminba, B., 135
supper, 114
Rrumaliny, N., 135
surveying, 121
Rumsey, Alan, 73
Sutton, Peter, 73, 79, 84, 102, 105
Sahanna, Eva, 86
swearing, 114
Salvado, Bishop, 75
Sweetser, Eve, 108, 110, 111, 124
Sansbury, Bonnie, 100
syntax, 90, 93, 96
Sansom, Basil, 73, 88, 105
take over, 114
143
Background Papers
Index
taken away, 81, 84, 85
willy-willy, 76
Taylor, John, 109, 124
Wilson, Sir Ronald, 82, 105
Thieberger, Nick, 76, 105
winyarn (Nyungar), 98
Threlkeld, Lancelot, 76
wobbly-way (adv.), 94, 116
time, 87, 97, 109, 111, 112, 113, 125
Wolfram, Walt, 130, 134, 138
ting or sing (pro-form), 87, 94, 95, 96
Woorunmurra, B., 78, 104
Tonkinson, Robert, 73, 105
too many (adjective), 95, 96
worldview, 73, 77, 78, 82, 86, 89, 90, 91, 98, 109, 112,
125, 133
too much (adjective), 114
writing, 66
tormenting, 97
yabby, 76
towsan, 112
yakka, 76
Troy, Jakelin, 75, 76, 77, 105
Yamatji, Yamatjis, 86, 97, 98, 124
Trudgen, Richard, 73, 84, 105
yandy, 76
Trudgill, Peter, 133, 134, 138
yarn, 117
Tucker, Tanya (Dorizzi), 100
Yarwood, A.T., 72, 105
tumble down, 112
Yindjibarndi, 76
Turner, Mark, 124
Yirra Yarkin (theatre), 88
two-way (education), 62, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 136, 137
yongka (kangaroo, Nyungar), 93, 98
defined, 128
unc, uncle, 86, 98
under (preposition), 113
unna (question tag), 93
up (particle), 92, 93, 116
up to (preposition), 113
Urry, J., 73, 105
us mob (plural pronoun), 90, 95, 97
values (cultural), 74, 82, 86, 91, 126, 128, 131
Verspoor, Marjolijn, 110, 124
waddy (club), 76
wadjela, 83, 85
Waller, W., 125, 138
Walsh, Michael, 73, 74, 99, 102, 105
waratah, 76
Ward, Glenyse, 84, 105
Wardhaugh, Ronald, 133, 138
warru (kangaroo, Nyungar), 93
-watha (Yindjibarndi suffix), 98
Watson-Gegeo, Karen Ann, 110, 124
weelo bird, 76, 87
white bread, 112
Whorfianism, 108
wicked, 62, 98, 114
Wilcox, K., 125, 138
Willis, P., 125, 138
144
yorgas, 98, 114
Yunupingu, Mandawuy, 128, 132, 138