The Australian Strine

Résumé du document

Having spent my eight-month-stay between Sydney and Brisbane, respectively State capitals of New South Wales and Queensland, sharing Australians' life, and having also travelled a bit to other cities and States of the East Coast, I feel I must share my affection for this vast, exciting country and help you feel the very heartbeat of its rich and diverse existence. In this report, I am going to analyse and share what I discovered in Oz (Australia) about a country I fell in love with and the culture of its inhabitants. Thanks to this and to the research I made, I am now able to partly explore this fascinating and amazing culture. There were many ways of analysing the Aussie (= Australian) culture. So why did I choose to explore the Australian slang or Strine? Firstly, because what better means to get to know a person and his culture than to discover and learn his language? In psycholinguistics, there are two beliefs; the first one shows that its human experience which shapes a language, whereas the second one tends to think that a language shapes the human mind. Accordingly to these two beliefs, I will first analyse the influences which have shaped the Strine, and then in a second part what are the consequences of the Aussie slang on its speakers in their everyday lives. You could be wondering what makes Australian English (AuE) such an extremely rich and interesting language. Throughout its history it has been influenced and built by four main sources.

Extraits

[...] I do not know why, but the fact of staying in Oz helped me love French again and accept as my real language as well. Bibliography General books Collins Robert Unabridged (“French-English, English-French dictionary”) 6th edn, HarperCollinsPublishers, Malesherbes, FRANCE. Le petit Larousse illustré 2005, Larousse, Malesherbes, FRANCE. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (A. S. Hornby) 2001, 6th edn, edited by Sally Wehmeier, Oxford University Press, Tehran. CD-ROMs Encyclopædia Universalis [CD-ROM] 2003, 8th version (French version), Paris. Specialised books: BAKER, S. (1945). The Australian language. 1983 (3rd edn), A Dictionary of Australian Slang, Melbourne: Currey O'Neil. [...]

[...] Now it is a validating term, and it signifies person who still maintains a tradition of anti-establishment behaviour that expresses itself through genuinely good humour.” (Bill Leak)[13]. But once it rhymed with “street criminal”! As for taking the piss, it consists in making fun of someone or an ethnic group when that person or this group is present. This person, in turn, will have to make fun of Australian people. Usually, in most countries, including France, people make jokes about groups when none of their members is present, otherwise it would be considered extremely rude! [...]

[...] Throughout their history, Aussie people have invented many linguistic artifices in order to make their everyday life more colourful or in order to conceal facts from strangers or deceive the authorities. An Australian's "greatest talent is for idiomatic invention”. It is a manifestation of our vitality and restless imagination".[10] But what makes the AuE a deceptive language? Australian Rhyming slang A common feature of Australian English and one of its most famous methods of concealment is rhyming slang. This is extremely important from a sociolinguistic point of view. [...]

[...] This part will help us explore a little bit the Australian conception of life. “Linguistic determinism is the idea that language shapes thought. Determinism" is the belief that human will is not free.”[7] Accordingly to this, we can say that the structure of the AuE shapes Australian people's thoughts, emotions, behaviors and their conception of life. Being such a young country, and its social make up being mostly derived from convicts and migrants, Australia does not have this very wide gap between the and the so common in other Western countries. [...]

[...] So why did I choose to explore the Australian slang or Strine? Firstly, because what better means to get to know a person and his culture than to discover and learn his language? In psycholinguistics, there are two beliefs; the first one shows that its human experience which shapes a language, whereas the second one tends to think that a language shapes the human mind. Accordingly to these two beliefs, I will first analyse the influences which have shaped the Strine, and then in a second part what are the consequences of the Aussie slang on its speakers in their everyday lives.[1] I. [...]