Sussex taiwan aus eng 201004

Notas del editor

1. “ Australian English: Consolidation and autonomy” Roland Sussex The University of Queensland Over the past 40 years Australian English has matured from a “colonial” English to a self-standing variety on the second tier (after the UK and USA) of inner-circle Englishes, in Kachru’s term. This increased self-confidence can be seen in a wide variety of roles which are filled by Australian English in everyday life, from the media to politics and education. Australian English is now the unquestioned prestige model in Australia, a role which it held with much less consistency and security forty years ago. This social-functional maturation has been paralleled by the publication of major dictionaries and style guides of Australian English, and by the enshrining of “Australian English” in the latest national curriculum draft proposals in March, 2010. While Australian English, like all other Englishes, has been borrowing widely from American English, especially in the area of the lexicon, it is also true that Australian English is continuing to sustain some of its characteristic properties, especially in phonology; and to enrich some very characteristic resources which set it aside from other Englishes. This paper reports in detail on one of these phenomena: the “diminutives” of the “Aussie” type. It outlines the key formation properties and social parameters of diminutives, of which Australian English has approximately 5,000, in the light of Australian English as a distinct, and at least partly autonomous, variety of English.