Abstract
The Boarders’ Corpus of Australian Aboriginal English (BAE) is a growing dataset of spontaneous conversation among First Nations youth in Australia. The field site, renamed by the students as St Mary’s Hills to safeguard the institution’s anonymity, is a boarding school located in Whadjuk Nyungar country, Southwest Western Australia. It is the home away from home for First Nations teens who every term leave their homes to pursue a private education in the mainstream system. Boarders at St Mary’s Hills hail from across WA and from the Northern Territory. The students speak traditional languages such as Walmajari and Miriwoong, and /or Kriol when conversing with relatives face-to-face and on the phone. They also speak Australian Aboriginal English, a post-invasion contact-based variety of English used by approximately 80% of First Nations people in Australia (Rodríguez Louro & Collard, 2021a: 2).The BAE currently comprises 20+ hours of audio-recorded material, featuring 23 female speakers and four male speakers aged 12-17. Data collection, which began in September 2022, is scheduled to continue until December 2023 as part of a sociolinguistic ethnography akin to Eckert’s (1989) canonical work with adolescents in a Detroit high school. The recorded data consists of First Nations students engaging in conversation with peers, as well as with the author. In line with Rodríguez Louro and Collard (2021b: 7),no predetermined questions are employed. Instead, yarning, a First Nations cultural form of storytelling and conversation, is used to collect data in a culturally safe way. As the first sociolinguistic corpus of First Nations boarders, this dataset will contribute to our understanding of the linguistic experiences of First Nations communities in mainstream institutions. It will also throw light into the role that language plays in the construction of boarders’ identities. Additionally, the ethnographic nature of the project will help to uncover the social meaning of linguistic variation.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Unpublished - 3 Jul 2023 |
Event | Workshop on language corpora in Australia - Online , Australia Duration: 3 Jul 2023 → 3 Jul 2023 |
Workshop
Workshop | Workshop on language corpora in Australia |
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Country/Territory | Australia |
Period | 3/07/23 → 3/07/23 |