Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2007

News

Deregulation of Aussie accent

Something is happening to the way we speak in Australia … and you can hear it in the lecture theatres and tutorial rooms of La Trobe.

While grappling with his day job teaching journalism in Media Studies, Dr Lawrie Zion has been listening to his students as carefully as he hopes they listen to him.

Why? Because for a large part of this year Dr Zion also researched and wrote a one-hour documentary for ABC television about the Australian accent.

‘The Sounds of Aus’, hosted by John Clarke, was broadcast in November and is now available on DVD.

The story was told through interviews with linguists, historians, social and political commentators, as well as comedians and actors, including Rachel Griffiths, Bruce Beresford, Bert Newton, Max Gillies, Denise Scott, Mary-Anne Fahey, Santo Cilauro, Simon Palomares, and Akmal Saleh. Third year La Trobe Media/Law student Erdem Koc also appears in the documentary.

‘Our mission,’ says Dr Zion, ‘was to examine where the Australian accent came from, where it’s heading, and what it says about us. On the latter point, one thing is clear: we’ve shed the cultural cringe that made the “received pronunciation” of the English upper class a kind of linguistic role model. Nor is the Ocker accent as important as it once was in defining our national voice – fewer of us speak like Hoges or Steve Irwin.