Australian Aboriginal English: Linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives

Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) is an enregistered contact‐based variety spoken by 80% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This paper offers an overview of some of the features that characterise AAE as recorded in our corpus of naturally occurring in- teractions in Nyungar country, Southwest Western Australia. Led by Nyungar researcher Glenys Collard, our fieldwork rests on three pillars: (1) the data origi- nate from group recording sessions, as culturally appropriate in the community; (2) speakers are recruited in venues such as medical centres and Perth city parks; (3) data collection is based on ‘yarning’: ‘a process of [...] communicating and passing on history and knowledge’ (Terszak, 2008, p. 90). Our approach is strongly grounded in indigenous knowledge‐sharing practices. We discuss how the traditional un- derpinnings of yarning as a culturally entrenched mo- dality have made it possible to tap into the community's vernacular and to capture the urgent concerns and silenced histories of Aboriginal English speakers.