2007 Media Releases
Tuesday 30 October, 2007
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 University.
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, goes to air on ABC TV on Thursday November 8 at 8.30 pm.
The story is 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.
The patrician accent, once dubbed ‘cultivated Australian’, is no longer as commonly heard as it once was, as the impact of decades of immigration and exposure to the rest of the world makes a massive imprint on who we are and how we sound.
‘The Australian accent has been deregulated and is open to an unprecedented array of influences, including turns of phrase popular on TV shows and other forms of international slang.
‘Yet it is unlikely that exposure to American culture or other global forces will diminish what makes it distinctive.’
‘The Sounds of Aus’ was produced by Princess Pictures, whose recent credits include the hit TV series ‘Summer Heights High’. The DVD of The Sounds of Aus goes on sale in early December.