A NATIONAL BULLETIN
ISSUES IN AUSTRALIAN STYLE AND THE USE OF ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA
Volume 11 No 2
DECEMBER 2003
The Australian Word Map
Sue Butler, publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary, writes about the Australian Word
Map project and its contribution to the recently published Macquarie ABC Dictionary.
A
ustralian Word Map, the
corner of the ABC website
devoted to Australian regionalisms, is the result of the synthesis
of the special aptitudes of
Macquarie Dictionary and the
ABC. Macquarie does the lexicography behind the scenes. The
ABC picks up our small voice and
amplifies it across Australia, then
follows up by providing the
mechanism by which people from
around the country can reply.
The idea of collecting regionalisms
appealed to the ABC because its role
as a national broadcaster requires it to
provide services to the regions. It
appealed to us as dictionary-makers
because we were tired of the wellworn
examples of regionalism that made up
the sum of knowledge to date. After
devon, fritz, polony, etc., what was
there to say? The dreadful thought
had
occurred
that
perhaps
regionalism was part of a colonial past
and no longer existed under the
barrage of national communications
and standardisation.
The response from the website was
immediate and encouraging. At the
time of the publication of the
Macquarie ABC Dictionary, 6000
contributions had been selected to go
on the site from about twice that
number of unedited offerings, and
another
6000
people
had
commented on the listed items. The
Australian Word Map website was
being accessed at the rate of 20,000
hits a week.
The reason for the introduction of
an editorial filter was that the
response, though enthusiastic, was
somewhat
undisciplined.
Contributors were sending general
colloquialisms as well as regionalisms
which, if included, would have
blurred the focus of the site. It was
important to keep people attuned to
the notion of regionalism.
Of course, publication on the
site was one thing, but publication
in the dictionary was another. For
that we needed evidence that an
item had some kind of general
currency, even if that currency was
limited to a small region.
The comments from contributors
helped to corroborate offerings
which might otherwise have
appeared to be one-off eccentricities.
In addition we researched other
available resources and were able to
track down items and, in some
instances, account for their presence
in the region. Finally, we compiled a
national email list from the addresses
helpfully provided by contributors
willing to be part of a follow-up
campaign. These people were
surveyed on a number of items to
provide verification for their regions.
The fact that there were words
and phrases appearing on Word
Map which were new to the editors
of the dictionary demonstrates that
I N THIS
ISSUE
QuestionsI N
of THIS
Rhetoric
ISSUE
3
SCOSE Notes
4
Australian English
grammar
5
Style Council 2004
5
From the Editor
6
Letters to the Editor
7
Book Notes
Oxford Guide to World
English
The Meaning of Everything
8
Feedback 22
10
Feedback Report
11
Rubicon
12
DECEMBER
DECEMBER2001
2003
AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIANSTYLE
STYLE 11
Continued from page 1
the spoken language is still primary,
and has a range of expression and a
lexicon that goes beyond what might
appear in print.
There are phrases that seem to run
around the countryside as a national
shared joke. Each comm-unity
develops its own version of the joke
which makes it even more delicious.
Take, for example, the range of
humorous names for a cask of wine –
red handbag, Dapto briefcase, etc. And
the collection of words for speedos –
budgie smugglers, ball-huggers, nylon
disgusters, dick pokers or dick
stickers, dick togs or DTs.
Just as the key items of Australian
English identify Australians as a
community separate from those
which speak British English or
American English, so too do these
regionalisms in their smaller sphere
identify a person from one part of
the country as distinct from
another. Often it is when we move
out of the area in which we grew up
to another part of the country that
we notice the identifying features of
our regional dialect. With time,
that keen observation blurs and we
begin to adopt the local expressions
of the new community to which we
belong, while retaining a distinct
sense of nostalgia about the words
we have left behind. Language and
identity, even at this local level, are
entwined.
Historically there have been two
major causes of regional variation –
the make-up of the original
settlement community with its
various language influences, and
the imposition of items by state
governments setting standards in
matters of housing, roads, transport
and education.
The
original
patterns
of
settlement made different dialects
of British English influential in
different parts of the country.
Victorians may well ask for a piece
instead of a sandwich, thus
revealing a Scottish presence in
their community. The Tasmanians
refer to a spoiled or troublesome
child as a nointer betraying a
Northern British dialect. How the
South Australians acquired the term
gent for a maggot, a shortening of
gentleman, which dates back to the
jargon of anglers in England in the
1500s, is a mystery.
Background languages had their
influence too. So, for example, the
German community in the Barossa
has given rise to a number of
distinct items of English in South
Australia, such as fritz (a luncheon
meat), schnitter (a sandwich) and
streusel cake (a cake with a topping
of nuts, sugar and spices).
In some cases regional items
from the early days of settlement
have become fossilised in a
particular community. Thus the
badger box bears witness still to the
fact that colonial Tasmanians
referred to wombats as badgers.
There are still rural areas where
echidnas are known as porcupines.
Queenslanders will have a duchesse
in their bedrooms rather than a
dressing table, the duchesse in
mid-nineteenth-century
England
being a particular kind of dressing
table with a swing glass.
The other strongly discernible
influence is the statewide standard
imposed in some areas of language.
Sometimes these jargons are actually
set by state governments, as in
education and the infrastructure of
roads and railways. Sometimes they
simply operate within a state by
custom and convenience and the
influence of statewide media, as in
the jargon of real estate.
Thus a kindergarten in New
South Wales is a prep class in
Victoria and Tasmania, and a
reception class in South Australia. A
power pole is a Stobie pole in South
Australia, an SEC pole in Victoria,
and a hydro pole in Tasmania.
A semi-detached house is in South
Australia called a maisonette. A sleepout is in most of Australia a partially
enclosed porch or veranda, but in
Victoria it is a building separate from
the main house. This building is in
Tasmania called a chalet.
In the past, collecting evidence of
regionalism was a laborious exercise,
carried out in the old way, with
questionnaires and field research. It
is just as well that new technology
has given us the means to tap into
this aspect of Australian English and
move past devon, fritz, polony, ...
The address of the WordMap
website is:
http://abc.net.au/wordmap/
Australian Style is published by the Style Council Centre, Macquarie University.
It is edited by Pam Peters, with executive assistance from Adam Smith. The editorial
reference group includes Ann Atkinson, David Blair, Sue Butler, Richard Tardif and Colin Yallop.
Views expressed in Australian Style and the styles chosen are those of the authors indicated.
Design: Irene Meier. ISSN 1320-0941
2 AUSTRALIAN STYLE
DECEMBER 2003
Questions of Rhetoric
D
on Watson’s tirade against
the abuse of language by
people who should know
better will raise three hearty cheers
in many quarters. You will
recognize Watson’s prime targets
for censure if you have ever had to
suffer the brainless abuse of
language now so common at the
points where the world of business
and marketing meets government
and the public realm.
Death Sentence might well
remind you of the times you were
involved in the drafting of mission
statements or other such exercises
in
public
language
where
obfuscation, an odour of sanctity,
and sounding terribly impressive
were at least as important as
communicating clearly. You will
remember the sense of having
joined Alice at the Hatter’s tea
party as commitments, enhancements, flexible game plans chased
each other archetypically through
flexible,
market-centred
strategies
to
self-regulatory
agreements
written within the parameters of a
holistic approach…
We are all of us so used to this
sort of stuff, so seduced by the
fashionableness, or the superficial
impressiveness of it, that it can take
a massive overdose of it to bring us
to our senses and make us scream
for a zero-tolerance (there I go!)
approach to the problem. This is
the point Don Watson has reached,
and his passion about what he sees
as politically and socially dangerous
trends is loud and clear in the
language he uses to describe the
abuse of language: this sort of
writing is “sludge” of various kinds,
including my favourite, “depleted
and impenetrable sludge”. It is
“guaranteed copious muck”, “a kind
of self-sealing grout”, “clag sandwich
with the lot”, “witless and
unfathomable dreck” and “sanctimonious clag”. Watson clearly feels
that enough is enough!
The book is another call to arms
(Watson acknowledges and cites
Orwell and other champions of this
cause), and he calls upon all those
who speak and write in public
places to be responsible, careful and
clear. He reworks themes familiar
over the last 400 years: about how
language, especially the deliberate
or habitual misuse of it, can easily
be an impediment to clear
thinking, to solid science and to
sound judgment. To add my
favourite Francis Bacon quotation
on this theme to the dozens of
quotes that Watson offers in an illlinked
collage
of
citations
swimming in a marginal stream
beside his text: “words do shoot
back upon the understanding of
the wisest, and mightily entangle
and pervert the judgement”.
Language is a powerful tool, but
misused can be at best a hindrance
but at worst, (certainly according
to Watson) downright pernicious.
Watson’s core theme, on which
he will get little argument from
most, is the infection of politics,
education and public service by the
often
vacuous
language
of
marketing and manager-speak. Any
teacher who ever felt nervous about
the re-designation of students as
“customers” or “clients” for
example, will probably share
Watson’s fears about how the
judgment
of
teachers
and
educational planners may well be
perverted by uncritical acceptance
of such weasel-worded language.
Much of the book rambles
around, and rails against, a range of
old favorites in usage abusage
which can be found in any
handbook of clear thinking and
clear writing: topics like using more
words than are necessary and
avoiding clichés “…like the
plague”, to cite one of those old
jokes which far too few public
writers would now understand.
Death Sentence is an interesting
selection of examples of the good,
the bad and the ugly in public
language, and could have some
impact if it were directed as a
heartfelt plea for the restoration of
the study of rhetoric into what in
our school syllabuses is now
covered by that highly suspect
Bill Krebs is Associate Professor
of
English
Language
and
Literature at Bond University,
and the Australian editor for
Collins
Dictionaries.
He
responds
to
Don
Watson’s
critique of Public Language,
Death Sentence: the decay of
public language
(Knopf 2003,
RRP $29.95.)
buzz-word literacy. I refer of course
not to the windy, empty or false
rhetoric which Watson condemns,
but to rhetoric in its older and
comprehensive sense of the
disciplined organization of ideas,
matched by economical and
effective clarity of expression,
geared to the demands of
responsible public speaking. Let’s
hope that this plea finds an
audience.
DECEMBER
DECEMBER2001
2003
AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIANSTYLE
STYLE 33
S C O S E
Language
researcher
Irene
Poinkin
summarises
recent
discussions at
SCOSE, the
ABC Standing Committee on
Spoken English.
I
n a radio program in May this
year the BBC journalist Andrew
Gilligan made some remarks
which were widely quoted and
mentioned a term which attracted
the attention of some listeners. He
said that the Blair government had
deliberately sexed up the intelligence dossier which it had used to
make a case for Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq.
Subsequent news items kept
mentioning the term sexed up and
prompted ABC listeners to ask
where it came from and to question
whether it was appropriate for
reporters to keep using it.
SCOSE was also intrigued by
the sudden popularity of this
4 AUSTRALIAN STYLE
DECEMBER 2003
NOTES
hitherto unfamiliar term.
Its
meaning was fairly obvious from
the context. We’re accustomed to
hearing sexy used colloquially to
mean exciting, attractive or trendy,
and sex up is just a verb based on
the same idea. SCOSE learnt that
sex up had been used in the 1940s
in a very literal sense – it is in fact
listed in the New Shorter Oxford
Dictionary (“give a sexual flavour
to, increase the sexual content of;
arouse sexually”). By the 1970s it
had acquired a metaphorical
meaning, with expressions like
“sexed-up Bach”. So if you sex
something up, you make it appear
to be more interesting, attractive,
acceptable, etc. Like many phrasal
verbs and other colloquial expressions the term can serve as an
umbrella for a wide range of
qualities, and this lack of precision
is a potential downside. SCOSE
advised caution and moderation,
noting that some newspapers had
stopped using sexed up and had
replaced it with more formal single
word verbs like embellish or
exaggerate.
Lack of precision is a major
concern to Don Watson in his new
book Death Sentence (see review,
page 3). He calls on the media to
examine more carefully the
language of those who speak in
public and to demand explanations
of anything that’s obscure. At the
next meeting SCOSE will look at
some recent examples. Did you
find yourself wondering what
George W. Bush meant when he
described a new policy as “a
forward strategy of freedom”? What
did he mean when he said that “the
advance of freedom leads to peace”,
and that the establishment of a free
Iraq would be a “watershed event”?
And what did the journalist mean
when he referred to this as a
“landmark” speech?
The term wildfire continues to
trouble some listeners. They think
it’s American for bushfire, but in
fact it’s established in Australian
usage and there’s nothing to
suggest the Americans beat us to it.
The Macquarie Dictionary says
wildfire means “a grass fire or
bushfire of unusual intensity and
speed which is out of control”,
while bushfire is “a fire in forest or
scrub country”. This suggests that
bushfire is a subcategory of
wildfire. Since bushfires aren’t a
feature of American life, we only
hear them speak of wildfires, which
might
explain
why
some
Australians think wildfire is an
American term. Wildfire is likely to
stay in use because it’s reinforced
by the phrase “spread like wildfire”.
The west African republic of
Niger was in turmoil in the middle
of this year. In the ABC newsroom
there was some turmoil too over the
pronunciation of the name. An
authentic pronunciation is not
always the right choice. Some
journalists were unaware that there
was an established anglicised
version, so when they heard a
Australian English grammar: fact or fiction?
T
he grammar of Australian
English is often said to be
just like that of British and
American English, or so little
different that it hardly matters.
While there is much common
property, research studies point to
differences of degree in the
popularity of some kinds of verb
constructions and verb forms like
those tested in the regular
Feedback questionnaires. A large
ARC-supported research project on
Australian English grammar is
about to begin, with Peter Collins
(University of NSW) and Pam
Peters (Macquarie University) as
the “chief investigators”. The aim
is to research the grammar used by
Australians in ordinary public
communication,
written
and
spoken, and to identify its the
distinctive elements. Just how
Americanised it is (or is not) will
also become clear.
The Australian English grammar
project will make use of data from
Feedback questionnaires (see for
example p. 11 below) to discover
people’s grammatical preferences
when attention is focused on
particular constructions. It will also
make the most of databases of
printed texts held at Macquarie
University, which show what comes
naturally when writers and editors
are thinking less specifically about
grammar
and
more
about
communication. By the same
token, published texts always
involve the input of professional
editors, and their contribution to
Australian English grammar needs
to be factored in.
A new database of public
dialogue, drawn from talkback
radio will be created, to document
the grammar that people use when
they want to communicate with a
reasonably broad, unseen audience.
Talkback programs where the host
gives plenty of time to the callers
will be sampled, with an eye on
both older and younger callers, and
a spread of social backgrounds. As
far as possible, we would like to
collect data from all state capital
cities and would therefore welcome
volunteers from beyond NSW to
tape-record talkback from selected
local radio stations, especially
commercial ones. The criteria for
choosing them will be indicated on
the Dictionary Research Centre
website at: www.drc.mq.edu.au
Offers of help with taping would
be much appreciated, and audiotapes
will of course be supplied. Please
contact Pam Peters at Macquarie
University, on 02 9850 8773.
Style Council 2004
The next Style Council Conference is
shaping up for July 9-11, 2004 in
downtown Sydney. The theme will
be public and professional discourse,
giving a platform to those who write,
edit or teach it, and providing open
forums in which to critique it. Don
Watson’s book on the decay of public
language (see review article p.3) is a
rallying cry, and the conference will
bring together editors, communications trainers and interested
members of the public in the
common quest for clarity. Texts from
annual reports and e-documents to
PhD theses will be under scrutiny,
with papers focusing on their
language as well as the editorial
problems that they can create.
Nominations for the top ten clichés
will be taken, and an award made at
the end of the conference for the most
widely used cliché. The conference
will provide in service training for
professional communicators, writing
teachers, editors and all who grapple
with academic, corporate and bureaucratic documents.
Dates and other registration details
will be available on the Style Council
website at www.ling.mq.edu.au/style
Feel free to contact the
Conference Administrator Adam
Smith on 02 9850 8783 for further
information.
was considered acceptable. But
some of our broadcasters have told
SCOSE that they’re accustomed to
hearing it pronounced with the
stress on the second syllable.
Indeed we’ve heard the Prime
Minister John Howard pronounce
it this way. This second version
isn’t a surprising development. As
SCOSE member Pam Peters has
pointed out, the [kuhm-BATuhnt] version is conditioned by the
verb combat ([kuhm-BAT]). Of
course it happens to be the way
many Americans pronounce it, but
don’t blame the Americans – some
Australians would end up pronouncing it [kuhm-BAT-uhnt]
even if they had never heard an
American pronounce it that way.
Lastly, SCOSE gave marks for
guilelessness to the broadcaster who
pronounced orgy as [AW-gee]
instead of [AW-jee]. He pleaded
ignorance on the grounds that he had
never participated in such an event.
Clearly not a member of the media
given to sexing up the issues.
Continued from page 4
French version, [nee-ZHAIR], in
some of the foreign reports
(including one in which an
American pronounced it this way),
they thought it had to be right.
Uniformity was achieved, however,
after it was pointed out that the
anglicised version given in the
SCOSE database ([NIGH-juh])
was indeed the appropriate one to
use.
A second pronunciation has
emerged for the word combatant.
Until now only [KOM-buh-tuhnt]
DECEMBER
DECEMBER2001
2003
AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIANSTYLE
STYLE 55
T
he Editor’s mailbag has run
the gamut from sport and
fashion to history and
philosophy, but everywhere there
are new usages. Many thanks to
those who wrote in or emailed about
verbal curiosities, and especially to
those whose contributions could not
be acknowledged below, through
lack of space.
The article in AS 11:1 (June
2003) on the spelling of ding(h)y
in the archives of a sailing club
prompted Andrew Rayment (VIC)
to send in some of those in
Victorian Railways publications
from the first three to four decades
of the twentieth century. They
show the spelling employe, the
masculine form if you imagine it
with an acute accent on the end.
This spelling is common in the US,
according to the 1972 Supplement
to the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED), and its citations for
employee
come
from
British
sources.
But employee is now
standard in the US too; Websters
Dictionary (1986) has employe
only as the secondary spelling. The
Railways records show also an
earlier spelling of trolley without
the e, as trolly with plural trollies,
of course. The OED has it in
nineteenth century British sources
up to 1881, and these from
Victoria would show it had a longer
life in the antipodes. A further
point of interest is the spelling of
the station names Flinders street
and Spencer street with hyphens.
This again was a nineteenth
century convention for street
names, preserved in older legal
documents.
Yet another word whose
appearance and pronunciation
has changed over the course of time
is algorithm. It was once algorism,
queried by Maureen Wright
(QLD) from the June AS article on
Arabic loanwords. In medieval
English its various spellings always
included the s, which properly
links it with its Arabic origins. But
6 AUSTRALIAN STYLE
DECEMBER 2003
it was refashioned with the Greek
th in the seventeenth century a
“pseudo-etymological perversion”,
according to the OED, but one
which has stuck, just like the d in
admiral.
Variation in space rather
than time was noted by an
anonymous writer from SA,
responding to comments in the
June editorial on humbug as a verb
meaning “irritate” in Aboriginal
English. In Papua New Guinea
pidgin, the same verb appears as
hambag (meaning “mess about”,
“mislead”, “distract”). The PNG
spelling reminds us of how close
the vowels in cut and cat are in
other dialects of English.
Within Australian English
itself, the same word appears as
both gig and geek in the informal
expression “have a ___at” (“have a
look at”). The expression itself
probably owes something to
Scottish, where the word is keek. In
fact it appears in other Germanic
languages including Norwegian,
Swedish and Dutch, where kijken
is the verb “look at”.
Another colloquial verb
meaning “look, stare at” is gawp,
which may well explain the
mystery word gorbie reported
among the letters in the June issue
of AS. This helpful suggestion
comes from KR Massingham
(ACT), who remembered being
admonished as a child for being a
gawpie when staring at anyone. It
might as well be spelled gorpie, and
thus fits the bill well in terms of
meaning
and
pronunciation.
Gawp is itself a probably a variation
of gape, a word from Old Norse.
If spelling changes make words
look more different than they are,
so can the space between them – or
the loss of it. The now usual
practice of writing worthwhile is an
interesting case, noted by Neville
Cohen (NSW), along with the
increasing use of underway, now
endorsed by the Shorter Oxford
(1992). For those with a nautical
background, it loses the sense of
setting sail.
Finally, another building
whose floor signage is a bit of a mix:
Ann MacCann (NSW) found one
where the floors outside the lift
were labeled G to 4, and the
buttons inside offered you 1 to 5.
Fortunately it was a department
store, so the only casualties might
be the delivery of fashion goods to
the sports section, etc.
Feedback Acknowledgements
Feedback 21 on subject and object
pronouns was greatly helped by
hundreds of respondents, and
especially the following people, who
sent in batches of questionnaires on
behalf of their groups, named and
unnamed: Michael Dwyer, Canberra
(10); Shirley Barnett, Coffs Harbour.
(13); VH-1, a group of Aeromodellers, NSW (14); W. Barrwick,
Yanco Agricultural High School (18);
Robert Lindsay, Coonabarabran
High School (24); Mrs John
Thompson, the Edgecliff Writers
Group (8); Norman Talbot, Nimrod
Publishing (88); David Pocock,
Herberton Secondary Department
(9); John Pfitzner, Openbook
Publishers (22); Alison Manthorpe,
Port Lincoln (5); Joan Loudon, the
Writers’ Workshop class at Hobart
U3A. (11); Dr Rosemary Milne,
Richmond. (13); Anne Calvert,
Holmesglen Institute of TAFE (17);
Dee Gargano, Melbourne. (19);
Robyn Whiteley, VIC (35); Janel
O’Hehir, VIC (5); J. Rodriguez,
Deakin University (74); Deakin
University, VIC (8); Bronwyn
Rachor, the Australian Public Service
Commission. (8); Colin Beasley,
Murdoch University (11); F.
Trigone, WA (6); Jean Cameron, the
North Coast Branch U3A, WA (6);
The Sunset Coast Literati, WA (6);
Ray Forma, Claremont WA (96)
Dear Editor
re “Male person”
I worked at the Queensland
Police Academy and I learned that,
although speaking policely sounds
like musical comedy, there are
three reasons why it happens,
despite the risibility.
Firstly, because of a commendable decentralisation of police
duties, it’s the officer on the spot,
not a well-trained spokesperson,
who gets on air, and you can’t
expect every officer of every rank to
be trained in media methods. That,
at least, keeps the story fresh and
honest.
Secondly there is a legal (age)
difference between a man and a boy,
and a woman and a girl. So, if the
POI (person of interest) is around
about the age when the difference
kicks in, and if the police officer is
not yet certain of the age, the officer
feels safer saying “male person”.
The third reason is that working
with legislation all your life makes
you bound to think and speak in
legislative terms. There is an offence
“Violence against the person”,
which accounts for a recent Brisbane
radio police interview (after a home
invasion) in which the police officer,
sounding like something from
Gilbert & Sullivan, said: “Violence
against the person was committed
against the male person”.
Paul Bennett
Queensland
Dear Pam,
One of your “Letters” correspondents refers to the days when
newspapers employed proofreaders.
That precaution wasn’t foolproof.
The publication of a report that the
Duke of Edinburgh had shot a
great many peasants is well
authenticated, but I doubt the
legend that a Times report
announcing that “Queen Victoria
was the first person to pass over
Waterloo Bridge” appeared in print
with the “a” replaced by another
vowel.
Nowadays
mistakes
are
common. This Monday’s [July 21]
Sydney Morning Herald “Guide”
reports, for example, that “the
subsequent investigation came to
the incredulous conclusion that
Dutroux was acting alone”. Still, it
brightens the day for us pedants!
Dennis Gibbings
Hornsby NSW
Dear Pam,
I was interested to read John
Satterley’s letter (June 2003) about
the misspelling of accommodation.
When working with user logs from
search engines, I have found that
accommodation is misspelt over
30% of the time. For this reason,
when I am creating metadata, I
always include accomodation in a
list of synonyms for the search
engine to automatically include.
There are even worse problems
with millennium, and I have heard
it said that if you consistently spell
this word correctly on your website
you are failing about half of your
users!
Unfortunately there doesn’t
seem to be a generally applicable
rule about double letters. When
using these examples as a standard,
and assuming that we usually need
both letters doubled, I find myself
misspelling harassment!
Glenda Browne
Blaxland, NSW
Dear Pam,
After much discussion recently
my brother and I were able to
reconcile dates to go in our diaries.
The problem was: he said “Let’s put
the date forward a day,” so instead
of Thursday I made it Friday. No,
he meant Wednesday. If he’d said:
“Let’s bring it forward” I might
have had Wednesday. I have exactly
the same problem when someone
says: “Let’s put the date back.”
Does anyone else have this
problem?
Lesley E. Shaw
St Lucia, SA
R.G. Kimber sent us this interesting example of Northern Territory
dress codes.
Dear Pam,
The rather puerile attempt by
the US neo-conservatives to irritate
or admonish the intransigent
French for their attitude over Iraq,
by renaming French fries as
freedom fries, overlooked the
logical extensions. Should we also
have freedom polish, freedom leave,
freedom toast, or even, heaven
forbid, freedom letters?
John McArthur
Carlton South, VIC
DECEMBER
DECEMBER2001
2003
AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIANSTYLE
STYLE 77
Oxford Guide to World English
Linguist
Dr
Ruth
Wajnryb
writes
the
weekly
“Words”
column
for
the
Sydney
Morning Herald. She is a
language consultant for Collins
Dictionaries, and the director
of
LARA
consultancy,
a
language
and
communication
service. Here she reviews the
Oxford
Guide
to
World
English,
Tom
McArthur,
Oxford University Press 2002,
RRP $34.95.
T
he Oxford Guide to World
English takes up, a decade
later, where its “mother
book”, The Oxford Companion to
the English language left off. In the
Introduction
to
the
1992
Companion, McArthur wrote:
In the closing years of the
twentieth century, the English
language has become a global
resource. As such, it does not owe
its existence or the protection of its
essence to any nation or group.
Inasmuch as a particular language
belongs to any individual or
community, English is the
possession of every individual and
every community that in any way
uses it.
He begins the 2002 work by
suggesting that, in the last decade,
for many people this comment has
already become a truism.
The
Guide
maps
the
demographic story of English. It
tracks the global territory where
English today is “a significant
language” – a map lists 104 places,
alphabetically from Anguilla to
Zimbabwe. This is achieved not in
a purist sense of the development of
outreach ports flowing from a
mother source. The focus is rather
on what “happened to English”
when it “arrived” in a new place,
how it contacted and interacted
with other languages, hybridised or
accommodated or blended, with an
attention to the transfer of material
8 AUSTRALIAN STYLE
DECEMBER 2003
and patterns in both directions. (Did
you know, for instance, that while
American English might be said to
“rule
the
linguistic
roost
worldwide”, the actual English of
Americans is enormously varied,
and inclined to leak, northwards,
into Canadian English, southwards
into Caribbean English?). In the
process of describing the evolving
patterns, McArthur treats both the
linguistic elements and those of the
broader cultural context.
The Guide’s organization takes a
different approach from the
Companion in being thematic
where the latter was alphabetical.
The
themed
sections
are
geographically organised into five
major sections: Europe (divided
into England, Scotland, Wales,
Ireland and Continental Europe),
the Americas (USA, Canada,
Caribbean, Latin America), Africa,
Asia (west, south, south-east, east),
Australasia, Oceania and Antarctica.
The regional approach (as opposed,
say, to one that followed political/
national borders) is congruent with
demographic distributions, an
examination of which immediately
reveals that political and lingual
boundaries do not conflate neatly
or comfortably. Remember, for
instance, that Melbourne is the
third biggest Greek-speaking city
in the world; that Yiddish has
followed the Jewish Diaspora; that
the Englishes of individual pockets
of USA are strongly influenced by
the historical movements of people,
like German in eastern Pennsylvania, French in Louisiana, and
Spanish in parts of Texas. The
challenge that McArthur faces, and
overcomes successfully, is how to
follow a demographic structure
while also noting “the ties that
bind” – that is the
interconnections among varieties of
English that are geographically
disparate – like West African English to African-American English;
or Scots, Ulster Scots, and the
Scotch-Irish migration to Appalachia in the US.
This is a reference book, not a
light read from cover to cover. But
that said, open up on any page, and
you become engrossed in, for
example, the way that Arabic has
interacted with English since the
Crusades (11th 13th centuries). A
sprinkling of loan words has come
in over the centuries, mostly from
three distinct sociocultural domains
Islam (eg ayatollah, mullah), Arab
society (eg alcove, bedouin, sultan)
and knowledge or learning (eg
alchemy, algebra); and often the
loan words are influenced by a
mediating language eg safari
(through
Swahili),
albatross
(through Portuguese and Spanish),
admiral (through French). Or, did
you know that Americans say
“huh?” where Canadians say “eh?”
Just as people skim travel books
looking for what is said about their
own country (well, I do anyway), I
had a good long look at the
Australia sub-section of the
Australasia section, and fortunately
(phew!) it’s not about sheilas,
dingoes and meatpies. There’s a
detailed coverage of colonial
beginnings and of Aboriginal
languages, and a separate section
on “swearing, slang, strine and
stereotypes”, including mention of
the influence of Australian English
through
the
popularity
of
Australian soapies on the shaping of
so-called “Estuary English” in the
London area; and the contribution
of the Macquarie Dictionary to the
understanding of English as an
Asian Language.
By virtue of its goals, the Guide
travels deeply into the past, but if
one foot is inevitably historical, the
other is very much on the ground of
“now”. It’s scholarly, erudite,
inclusive,
entertaining,
and
wonderfully readable. Perhaps my
only quibble – I’d rather it were
“Englishes”, not “English”, in the
title!
H
The Meaning of Everything
aving written a “footnote to
history” in The Surgeon of
Crowthorne,
Simon
Winchester has sought to write “the
history itself” in this new book. As
with the earlier work, Winchester is
careful to place his humans in the
context of events even as he focuses
on the “human interest” aspect of his
story. Only one character is painted
in full colour – James Murray, the
chief editor for most of the seventy
years that the first edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary was in the
making. But we also meet Murray’s
predecessors,
successors,
and
colleagues. We meet the visionaries
who first conceived the enterprise;
the egotists and bumblers who
placed seemingly insurmountable
obstacles in its path; the supporters
who helped to overcome those
obstacles; the front-line troops who
read the books and submitted the
citations that were the Dictionary’s
raw material. Makers of other
dictionaries have their own tales to
tell, but in comparison with the
tribulations of the OED project,
those tales are an O. Henry story
alongside the Iliad.
Like Homer (though I will not
pursue the analogy too far),
Winchester interrupts the main
narrative with some delightful
asides. We meet the original of
Kenneth Grahame’s Ratty; we find
Tennyson and Tolkien contributing definitions of their own
coinages; we cross the path of the
master printer Horace Hart (he of
Hart’s Rules). We learn of the stiff
chilliness of Oxonian attitudes to
outsiders; we learn of the Post
Office’s thoughtfulness in providing a pillar box by the front gate
of Murray’s home; we learn of the
games played by the lexicographers
as they struggled to write clear yet
concise definitions.
The story itself, as told by
Winchester, is fascinating and
enjoyable. However the style, in
the opening chapters at any rate,
seemed to me rather over-elaborate.
This prose style might have been an
unconscious response to the highflown oratory of Stanley Baldwin’s
speech marking the completion of
the enterprise in 1928, which is
reported in the Prologue to the
book. Still, on the evidence of The
Surgeon of Crowthorne and The
Map that Changed the World,
Winchester does not need to elevate
his style to gain and hold the
reader’s attention.
Another quibble that is perhaps
personal (though I suspect that it
will be shared by others), is that the
book comes across in part as an
exercise in hagiography rather than
history. The title itself suggests
that the OED has “captured the
language”, and this idea is
frequently reinforced by Winchester’s own words and quotes
from others. (Winchester himself
says, on page 235, that “this story
is not supposed to be overtly
hagiographical” [my emphasis].)
In a sense, the “hero” of The
Meaning of Everything is the
Dictionary itself; but, though
described as “the greatest enterprise
of its kind in history”, it never truly
takes on a life of its own. Somehow,
it remains a mere artefact, while the
project that created it is shown as a
cockpit of egos and vanities. Yet, in
the end, it is the Dictionary that
lives on; the names and natures of
the men and women who made it
are almost completely forgotten.
Winchester’s book serves to remind
us that the OED was and remains a
very human creation, and that
lexicography is an immensely
challenging discipline rather than
mere harmless drudgery. Despite
its somewhat variable style, The
Meaning of Everything deserves a
place on the shelves of every lover of
this or any language.
Michael
Lewis
teaches
in
Linguistics and Student Writing
Skills programs at Macquarie
University, and is a language
and
communication
consultant
with Brandle Pty. He reviews
Simon Winchester’s new book
The Meaning of Everything,
Oxford University Press, 2003;
RRP $34.95
DECEMBER
DECEMBER2001
2003
AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIANSTYLE
STYLE 99
VERBAL OPTIONS
Please indicate which of the two alternative expressions given below you
would be more likely to use in: a) casual conversation with a close friend;
b) a letter written on a serious matter to someone not known to you
22
a
(conversation)
b
(letter)
1. [Can] [May] I offer you some advice?
2. I am sure it [‘s/is going to] [will] be very entertaining.
3. They [have to] [must] be in Adelaide by Tuesday.
4. We [may] [might] have made the wrong decision.
5. I [‘d/had better] [should] consult the family.
6. You [ought to] [should] consider joining the group.
7. She [may] [might] have died if the ambulance hadn’t come.
8. We [have to] [‘ve/have got to] replace the back fence.
9. In Australia you [can] [may] say “surfer” or “surfie”.
10. He [mustn’t] [can’t] be a very good cook.
Would you please indicate your sex and age bracket:
F/M
10-24
25-44
45-64
65+
and the state in which you live:
ACT
NSW
NT
QLD
SA
TAS
VIC
WA
Please return this Feedback questionnaire to:
Style Council Centre, Linguistics Department, Macquarie University, NSW 2109 Australia.
Alternatively, the questionnaire may be faxed to the Style Council Centre at (02)9850 9199.
Continued from page 11
experience for we/us blind people”.
Perhaps the explanation lies in the
fact that the pronoun come last in
the “for John and I” example, and
seems to carry some emphasis
through its position in the sentence.
Sentence position is certainly
the key to the fact that most people
prefer to use who in questions like
“Who are you waiting for?”, which
was endorsed by 84% of respondents. More curious is the fact that
73% of respondents endorsed the
use of “who” in “The judge who we
met in the corridor was very jolly”.
10 AUSTRALIAN STYLE
DECEMBER 2003
There, syntax would suggest that
whom was in order, because it’s the
object of the verb met.
But
increasingly whom appears only
following a preposition, and 85% of
respondents voted for “To whom
did you give the parcel?”
Interestingly, the difference between written and spoken usage was
hardly noted here.
In sentences with a gerund/
verbal noun, the results showed the
strong Australian tendency to prefer
the object pronoun rather than the
possessive. The table shows this as
the majority preference, whether the
construction is the object of a verb
(item 14), the object of a phrasal
verb (item 15) or the complement of
a noun (item 16). Only when the
gerund is the first item in the clause,
does it go the other way. In the
following sentence, 72% of
respondents voted for the possessive:
“I don’t know; my/me being there
probably made a difference.”
All these findings are relevant
to the project in Australian English
grammar, described on p.5.
The questionnaire on pronouns produced a large and very interesting set
of responses from 946 people, well distributed across the age range, as
shown in the table below. Thanks to all those who acted as agents, and
to their groups, named on p.6. Some respondents (about 150) added
information to the questionnaire on whether they would use different
pronouns in speech and writing in particular cases. We’re very grateful
to them for providing those extra insights into the scale of usage. The
questionnaire data have been painstakingly entered by Deanna Wong,
and expertly processed by Adam Smith.
The pronouns are the last bastion
of the English case system, distinguishing between the subject I, the
object me and the possessive my.
These distinctions are still there for
all the personal pronouns, and for
the relative pronoun who, though
the use of the case-marked forms
doesn’t always line up with their
grammatical role in a given
sentence. Speech is more variable
than writing in this regard, and
generations of teachers have
grappled with teaching students
how the case system works.
Current research shows much use
of object pronouns as the default
(where the syntax would suggest
one of the others). Yet there are
countercases in which the subject
pronouns turn up unexpectedly.
The results from Feedback
21 show that most Australians
would now use an object pronoun
in comparative phrases with than
or as (items 1, 2 and 3 in the table
below). The pronouns me and her
weigh in with the majority in each
case, though respondents also
noted that the use of the object
pronouns was much more strongly
associated with speech than
writing. For item 1 only 22%
would use it in writing, and for
item 2, just 29%. But the agegrouped data shown in the table
confirms that younger respondents
are much more likely to use the
object pronouns for items 1, 2 and
3 than their elders. The continuous gradation across the age
range is very clear, and it no doubt
correlates with the emphasis
placed on case distinctions in
traditional grammar teaching.
Grammarians of the older school
liked to explain comparative
phrases as elliptical clauses, and
therefore preferred to have the
subject
pronoun
(I/she)
in
sentences
like
those.
This
underscores the link with written
usage. Spoken usage takes them as
the phrases that they are, and is
therefore comfortable with the
object pronouns. The Feedback
results here show that the
enthusiam and motivation for using
subject pronouns in comparative
constructions is declining.
When pronouns are coordinated with names, or with each
other (“you and I/me”), their
syntactic role is not necessarily
obvious to all, and the pronouns are
sometimes used erratically. People
note the use of “between you and I”,
where syntax demands me, because
of the preceding proposition. Yet
two thirds of the respondents to
AGE 1
Feedback 21 had it as me, and
80-90% had the syntactically
appropriate pronoun in three
other cases presented. The only
countercase was registered in
“There was a message waiting
for John and I/me”, where just
under two thirds of respondents
plumped for I, even though the
coordinated phrase there is the
object of the verb/preposition.
But the age differentiation was
enormous, with the use of I
preferred by both Age 1 and 2
(64% and 54% respectively),
and me by 80% in Age 3 and
90% in Age 4. The most
intriguing thing about this
result is that the same
respondents mostly voted for
the object pronoun in the rather
similar case of “It’s a common
AGE 2
AGE 3
AGE 4
1. John is taller than ____.
me
I
92%
82%
63%
50%
8%
18%
37%
50%
2. S he had danced much longer than ____.
me
78%
74%
56%
42%
I
22%
26%
44%
58%
3. Is the new soloist as good as ____?
h er
93%
87%
68%
50%
sh e
7%
13%
32%
50%
14. H e didn't seem to notice ____ talking all through.
them
70%
65%
55%
56%
their
30%
35%
45%
44%
15. We w ere concerned about ____ w orking there.
yo u r
21%
17%
44%
41%
yo u
79%
83%
56%
59%
16. H ow do you like the idea of ____ staying w ith us?
them
91%
90%
67%
63%
their
9%
10%
33%
37%
DECEMBER
DECEMBER2001
2003
11
AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIANSTYLE
STYLE 11
RUBICON, devised by David Astle, is a
hybrid of crossword, jigsaw and acrostic.
First, solve as many clues as you can and
begin to fit the answers inside the grid.
(The scattered letters of RUBICON should
give you a toehold.) When the grid is
completed, arrange the clues from the first
Across to the last Down – their 32 initial
letters will spell a category. As a bonus,
which six of your answers belong to the
category in question?
Daring admiral created by CS
Forester (10)
Sanctuary set aside for prayer (10)
Scrubbing out (10)
When siestas are traditionally
observed (10)
Hyper-rigid as a result of a mental
disorder (9)
Lake Michigan city (9)
Margins of play (9)
Objected (9)
Officially the fairest of them all (4,5)
Orthodox name for “mary jane” (9)
Race entailing swimming, cycling and
running (9)
Tasty (9)
Antonym of besmirch (7)
Appreciated (7)
Kidded around (5,2)
Main ingredient of dhal (7)
Names can be so “casually”
mentioned (7)
Optimistic sign for Noah (7)
Preliminary (7)
Rudi Giuliani’s stamping ground (3,4)
Decorated fabric in traditional Malay
style (5)
“Elbow” of the foot (5)
Emulated a monarch (5)
In or around the kidneys (5)
Lighting up illegally (5)
Pales (5)
I
B
R
N
C
O
U
Solution to Rubicon in last issue
WORDS THAT HOLD A
FAMILIAR ANIMAL: Amulet
(mule), spumante (puma), delicate
(cat), eponym (pony), pavilion (lion),
hibiscus (ibis)
How to contact Australian Style
I
O
F
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F
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A
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P
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U
N
R M Y
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E
N
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B
S
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T
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T
R
A
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V
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A M U
L
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N
H
Y
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P
U M A
N
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P
F
D
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K
Slaven’s alter ego (5)
With a few years’ variation (5)
Extinct volcano of Japan (4)
Express in words (4)
Neutral word for bank hold-ups;
occupations (4)
Off-work (4)
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On editorial matters
Please contact the editor at Macquarie University as follows:
By mail:
Please write to
By Fax:
Pam Peters, Editor
Call fax number 02 9850 9199
Australian Style
Department of Linguistics
By Phone:
Macquarie University NSW 2109
Call direct on 02 9850 7693. If there’s no one in the Style Council Centre office, your call
By email:
will be received on an answering machine and returned as soon as possible.
[email protected]
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If you change your address, or need to alter your details on the mailing list in any way, or would like to add the name of a friend or
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12 AUSTRALIAN STYLE
DECEMBER 2003