Lecture Theatre H3, Menzies Building Clayton Campus
Wellington Road
Monash University
Victoria
2009 Language and Society Centre Annual Lecture: Early Australian English and Beyond
Presented by Kate Burridge, Monash University
In this lecture Professor Kate Burridge explores the characteristics of early Australian English based on evidence from 19th century police reports. Australian English is a ‘melting pot’ of linguistic inputs, from the influence of dialects from southeast England, Ireland and Scotland in early settlements, to more recent diversity from Aboriginal English and migrant Englishes. This talk discusses the development of Australian English as a distinctive and diverse language.
In this paper I want to consider some of the ways ‘inter-racial mixing’ was constructed and understood from the late-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, contrasting the contingency of racial attitudes on the one hand, and evolving understandings of whiteness, and strict eugenic prescriptions for racial purity on the other. This is recent and formative work – thus the ‘preliminary’ nature of my title — and is the start of a much larger comparative project on the racial politics of population which formed and informed British settler societies. My focus will be on New Zealand and Australia, and popular and scientific discourses around ‘miscegenation’, whiteness and eugenics, but situating this in a wider comparative perspective. I
want to draw out the ways in which whiteness and eugenics became central to attitudes towards ‘interracial mixing’ and ‘biological absorption’ in British settler societies, including America, and the diversity of opinions–which depended very much on the ‘type’ of mixture under discussion its perceived consequences for the maintenance of whiteness, or the Anglo-Saxon, British race.
In this special event, held as part of the 3rd International Conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS), local writers Elizabeth Honey, Alice Pung and Tara June Winch take part in a discussion on Australian literature and translation. Writers will read excerpts from their works, reflect on their experiences with writing, interculturalism and/or being translated.
The event will be followed by drinks and a book signing. Books will be available for purchase on the day.
