Review of Bruce Moore, 'Speaking Our Language: The Story of Australian English' (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008). Pp. xix, 225. ISBN (pbk) 9780 19556 5782, $32-95. [Also in hardback, ISBN 9780 19556 5775.]

Abstract

This volume is one of proud celebration, being issued especially to mark the hundred years of the Oxford University Press's functioning in Australia, even as it also celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the 'Australian National Dictionary', edited by W.S. Ramson. Both works grew out of the ongoing and meticulous research of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the Australian National University, a group whose auspices were difficult if not controversial due to earlier lexical developments in the Sydney universities. Both these works - like their cousin, 'The Dictionary of New Zealand English - are focused on the particular or regional southern variety of speech and lexicon that complement the mother tongue, "English English". In the case of 'Speaking Our Language', there is no attempt to deal with the more than 14,000 words that make up the body - and so the history - of the distinctive Australian vocabulary (p. xiv). Rather is the persisting and most proper concern is to focus on many of the words that make Australian English different from other Englishes, as well as on many of those words/idioms that shape Australian identity, the Australian mindset and the significant/cultural lingua franca that one finds in the diverse ethnic and other strands in the ever more culturally mixed general society.