The languages of Aboriginal Australians have attracted a considerable amount of interest among scholars from such diverse fields as linguistics, political studies, archaeology or social history. As a result, there is a large number of studies on a variety of issues to do with Aboriginal Australian languages and the social contexts in which they are used. There is, however, no integrative reader that is easily accessible to the non-specialist in any of the areas concerned. The collection edited by Leitner and Malcolm fills this gap. Looking at Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and their changing habitats from pre-colonial times to the present, the book covers languages from a structural and functional linguistic perspective, moves on to the issue of cultural maintenance and then turns to language policy, planning and the educational and legal dimensions. Among the many themes discussed are: the social and linguistic history of language contact after 1788 (including the Macassans); the demographic base of indigenous languages; traditional indigenous languages; results of language contact such as the modification of traditional languages and the rise of contact languages (pidgins, creoles, esp. Kriol, Torres Strait Creole, and Aboriginal English); the impact of the Aboriginal languages on mainstream Australian English; maintenance, shift, revival and documentation of indigenous and contact languages; language planning; language in education; language in the media; language in the law courts. The contributors are leading experts in their fields. The book can serve as a reader for university courses but also as a state-of-the-art work and resource for specialists like applied linguists or educational planners.

The book looks at Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and explores the changing habitat of languages from pre-colonial times to the present. The contributions treat the languages from a structural and functional linguistic perspective, ..

Australia is host to many languages - English, indigenous, migrant, and contact. Its multilingualism, the sociopolitical changes that have been impacting upon them, and its wide-ranging language policy efforts are well-known. What has been missing so far is a comprehensive, integrative study of the entire 'habitat' of languages - the contacts and interactions that have been taking place from the beginning of colonization to the present day with their linguistic outcomes. This book and its companion, Australia's Many Voices. Australian English - The National Language, develop and apply such an approach. The present book deals with non-mainstream varieties of English, indigenous, migrant, and contact languages. Based on census and other data to 2003, it addresses themes such as language demographics, language shift, and socio-psychological factors that bear upon it. Language change is discussed from the angle of the uprooting of indigenous languages from their original context, of transplantation, and of contact with English. Pidgins and creoles are located inside the Pacific context of the nineteenth century. This study provides an analysis of language and language-education policies to 2003 and connects this theme with the role of Australian English, the national language. It suggests that Australia's habitat is reaching a new stage of plurilingual tolerance. The book is of interest for specialists from a wide range of language and policy disciplines. Its discursive, non-technical style makes it accessible to non-specialists with no background in linguistics.

The dialect of English which has developed in Indigenous speech communities in Australia, while showing some regional and social variation, has features at all levels of linguistic description, which are distinct from those found in Australian English and also is associated with distinctive patterns of conceptualization and speech use. This volume provides, for the first time, a comprehensive description of the dialect with attention to its regional and social variation, the circumstances of its development, its relationships to other varieties and its foundations in the history, conceptual predispositions and speech use conventions of its speakers. Much recent research on the dialect has been motivated by concern for the implications of its use in educational and legal contexts. The volume includes a review of such research and its implications as well as an annotated bibliography of significant contributions to study of the dialect and a number of sample texts. While Aboriginal English has been the subject of investigation in diverse places for some 60 years there has hitherto been no authoritative text which brings together the findings of this research and its implications. This volume should be of interest to scholars of English dialects as well as to persons interested in deepening their understanding of Indigenous Australian people and ways of providing more adequately for their needs in a society where there is a disconnect between their own dialect and that which prevails generally in the society of which they are a part.

The Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The volume provides a thorough overview of Australian languages, including their linguistic structures, their genetic relationships, and issues of language maintenance and revitalisation. Australian English, Aboriginal English and other contact varieties are also discussed.

This book investigates the study of World Englishes from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics, a theoretical and analytical framework for cultural cognition, cultural conceptualisations and language that employs and expands on the analytical tools and theoretical advancements in a number of disciplines, including cognitive psychology/science, anthropology, distributed cognition, and complexity science. The field of World Englishes has long focused on the sociolinguistic and applied linguistic study of varieties of English. Cultural Linguistics is now opening a new venue for research on World Englishes by exploring cultural conceptualisations underlying different varieties of English. The book explores ways in which the analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics may be employed to study varieties of English around the globe.

The Indigenous languages of Australia have been undergoing a renaissance over recent decades. Many languages that had long ceased to be heard in public and consequently deemed 'dead' or 'extinct', have begun to emerge. Geographically and linguistically isolated, revitalisers of Indigenous Australian languages have often struggled to find guidance for their circumstances, unaware of the others walking a similar path. In this context Re-awakening Languages seeks to provide the first comprehensive snapshot of the actions and aspirations of Indigenous people and their supporters for the revitalisation of Australian languages in the 21st century. The contributions to this volume describe the satisfactions and tensions of this ongoing struggle. They also draw attention to the need for effective planning and strong advocacy at the highest political and administrative levels, if language revitalisation in Australia is to be successful and people's efforts are to have longevity.