This study examined the attitudes of 114 Nyungar Aboriginal school children toward Aboriginal English (AE) and Standard Australian English (SAE), and the attitudes they attributed to their teachers and peers. Students were generally positive about using AE at home and in the playground but negative about using SAE in those contexts. Students did not feel positive about using either AE or SAE in the classroom. Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory is used to explain the significant differences found in attitudes to the two linguistic codes of students, as well as the attitudes students perceived their teachers and peers to have.The development of positive affect about both our own language use and that of other people has consequences for a range of issues relating to self-identity, academic success, and successful participation in society. We have known for some time that the evaluation of language can be systematically affected by stereotypical views about majority and minority groups (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, & Fillenbaum, 1960), and that this evaluation can depend to a large extent on previously formed attitudes toward the language, social class, and the ethnic group membership of the speaker.
Variationist sociolinguists have now collectively spent decades gathering vernacular language data, enriching linguistic theory through detailed empirical analysis. What the field is yet to offer are reflective accounts of how partnership with communities and participatory research models can begin to decolonise the field. In this paper we reflect on the Indigenous-led fieldwork that allowed us to document Australian Aboriginal English in urban Nyungar country, Southwest Western Australia. We discuss how Indigenous leadership allowed us to choose appropriate data collection methods (the Indigenous cultural form of conversation and storytelling known as 'yarning'). Our analysis of premonitory yarns about the death of youth in the community reveals a rich performative style which shows linguistically entrenched ties with traditional Aboriginal Australia, and which provides original material for sociolinguistic analysis. Our work has great potential for social transformation in the inclusion of Indigenous epistemologies, and through 'hearing the voices' of speakers rarely featured in sociolinguistic research.
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