Trends and fashions in the Australian English language will come under the spotlight at a free public lecture at The University of Queensland on Thursday, August 23.
UQ language expert and popular radio talkback presenter Professor Roly Sussex will discuss Dingo lingo, cultural cringes, and the changing faces of Australian English at the lecture at the Prentice Building, Lecture Room 216 at 5.30pm.
The Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies event is part of a program of free public lectures by researchers from UQ's Faculty of Arts, supported by the UQ Alumni Association.
"Australian English is currently in a period of joyful turbulence," Professor Sussex said.
"It has a solid understructure of British-Australian stock, now increasingly overlaid with Americanisms. But there are also growing native strands, especially a penchant for ludic, playful language and diminutives like cuey, cardie, oppo and Kyles.
"One way of tackling these divergent trends and fashions is through the concept of the meme, introduced by the socio-biologist Richard Dawkins to provide a cultural counterpart to the gene.
"Memes are features of culture which pursue their own propagation. Like genes, the survivors are fitter. Applying memes to prestige and variation, two of the key themes of sociolinguistics, we can look for rationales and patterns, if not explanations, for the conflicting indigenous and exogenous movements of contemporary Australian English."
Professor Sussex, of the University's School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, said there were two current competing paradigms in the analysis of international English.
"One view has it that international media, travel and globalization will cause the various national, local and dialectal Englishes to collapse into a more or less homogeneous soup of a predominantly American flavour, with an aftertaste of British. The opposing view sees instead an increasing divergence. On this interpretation, modern Englishes will eventually become more or less unintelligible to each other."
Professor Sussex has a broad based interest in language related issues. His research covers the interaction of information technology with language learning and teaching. He also researches community languages, their maintenance and survival, with special reference to Russian and Polish. Professor Sussex has a regular language talkback radio program on Queensland, Tasmania, Northern Territory and South Australia ABC regional stations, and writes for newspapers around Australia on matters of language and language culture.
The lecture will be chaired by the Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, Professor Graeme Turner.
Media: For further information, contact Ms Andrea Mitchell, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, telephone 07 3365 7182, email a.mitchell@mailbox.uq.edu.au, Mobile 0412 474 978, Web: http://arts.uq.edu.au/cccs/events or Professor Roly Sussex, telephone work 3365 6896, Email: r.sussex@mailbox.uq.edu.au
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