Vigilance or Tolerance? Younger Speakers’ Attitudes to Australian English Usage^*

* I gratefully acknowledge the 395 people who completed the survey and who recruited others to participate and thus allowed me to undertake this research. I wish to thank Professor Kate Burridge for her wisdom, support and guidance as my Honours supervisor at Monash University and Dr Julie Bradshaw and Dr Louisa Willoughby for their feedback in the preparation of this article. I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a Monash University Jubilee Honours Scholarship and a Monash LCL Honours Summer Research Support Award. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in the preparation of this article, especially for their insight regarding style guides.

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, the teaching of English in first-language classrooms underwent a series of radical upheavals. Crystal claimed that the newest pedagogy introduced into curricula in the 1990s would lead to a decline in rates of prescriptivism among English speakers, with young Anglophones becoming tolerant of language variation and change. Through a survey of 307 Australian English speakers, this study compares linguistic judgements across age groups corresponding to different pedagogical approaches received during primary and secondary schooling. Analysis of participants’ responses demonstrates that younger speakers who received the new approach in school displayed a more nuanced understanding of linguistic rules of appropriateness than their older counterparts. They were also more aware of the social factors which inform speakers’ judgements; however, they largely remained intolerant of socially marked forms.

Keywords:

• Prescriptivism
• Language Attitudes
• Curriculum
• Pedagogy
• Verbal Hygiene
• Australian English

Notes

* I gratefully acknowledge the 395 people who completed the survey and who recruited others to participate and thus allowed me to undertake this research. I wish to thank Professor Kate Burridge for her wisdom, support and guidance as my Honours supervisor at Monash University and Dr Julie Bradshaw and Dr Louisa Willoughby for their feedback in the preparation of this article. I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a Monash University Jubilee Honours Scholarship and a Monash LCL Honours Summer Research Support Award. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in the preparation of this article, especially for their insight regarding style guides.

1 For example, for the impact of language use, see Victoria Board of Studies (1995: 9); for linguistic diversity, see New South Wales Board of Studies (1999: 23); and for the relationship between language and power, see Western Australia School Curriculum and Standards Authority (1998: 3).

2 The survey discussed here was conducted in mid-2013. No participants who completed the survey were in years Foundation to 10 at school at the time and thus the most recent changes to the curriculum did not affect their education.

3 Ethics approval was granted by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC); project number: CF13/2156–2013001121.

4 While an albeit minimal background in linguistics could at first seem to interfere with results of this study, as Crystal claims that training in linguistics will result in a reduction in prescriptive attitudes, this high proportion of participants with a linguistics background should only further lead to greater levels of tolerance among respondents of this age group and thus validate his claim.

5 The true rate could potentially be as high as 89.3%, as 21 of the 24 participants aged under 35 who selected the response ‘graduated from high school’ completed the survey during a second semester undergraduate lecture, implying that they had completed some undergraduate studies and should potentially have selected that response instead. When the rate of participants with further qualifications (4.2%) is added to this adjusted figure, it becomes apparent that as few as 6.5% of participants could have only a high school education.

6 All comments included within this article are referenced according to the following system: (participant number.gender.age group.sentence code). Thus, a comment from participant number 41—a female, aged 18–34—in response to the sentence I have no one to go with, earns the following code: (41.F.1834.PrepStranding). All typographical errors, spelling mistakes, etc., in participant comments have been retained verbatim throughout this paper.