Most research on Australian English has been carried out in major urban centres. But about 30% of the population live in regional and rural settings.
The stereotypical variety of Australian English assigned to regional and rural Australia is the broad, nasal, “ocker” speech or “Strine”.
How does Australian English vary across the continent?
How accurate are the stereotypes of regional and rural accents?
Is regional Australian English changing in the same ways that we see in urban centres?
We speak most like the people we interact most with. Australia is witnessing significant demographic changes, especially in inner regional areas. We would ordinarily expect people who have been in a region longer to have more of the local features. But what about people who are newer, yet strongly attached to, and embedded in, the community?
How does a sense of attachment and belonging to the region impact the way regional Australians speak?
These are the big questions motivating the Voices of Regional Australia project.
The language
• Vowels are a major differentiating feature across English accents.
• To study vowel pronunciations, we take acoustic measurements that tell us about the position of the tongue in the mouth and how it moves as we produce a vowel – this is what distinguishes vowels in, for example, today vs. to die, or bye vs. boy.
• This figure shows the acoustic measures of 5 vowels from 9 speakers from the Braidwood region – some speak more broadly (the darker lines), and some are perceived as more General (the lighter, broken lines).
• The figure represents the movement of the tongue when speakers produce the vowels listed (e.g. the face vowel occurring in words like day, mate, or lane; the price vowel in words like bye, like, or fine).
• The figure highlights some differences between Broad and General speakers, e.g., for Broad speakers, day might sound like die (because the face vowel is produced further back in the mouth), and bye might sound like boy (because the price vowel is produced higher and backer in the mouth).
• One question we ask is: How do regional Australians compare to urban Australians in terms of how Broad or General their speech is?
Sample of Broad Australian English
Sample of General Australian English
Local attachment
Inner regional Australia is experiencing high population turnover, as regional Australians spend time in major cities, and city dwellers move out to regional areas.
People connect to their local area in different ways – sometimes because they have been in the community for a long time, or their family’s history connects them to the area. Sometimes because they are passionately committed to the future or wellbeing of that community.
We call this local attachment.
One question we ask is: is there an identifiable connection between local attachment and patterns of language use?
Measuring local attachment
What features might impact patterns of language variation and change we observe?
- Length of time in the community?
- Engagement with local organisations?
- Connections in and outside the local region?
- Future orientation?
