Aboriginal English in Education

Ian Malcom, honorary emeritus professor of applied linguistics at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, and long-time Honey Ant Readers friend, gave a terrific interview about Aboriginal English on Radio National’s Lingua Franca show with Maria Zijlstra last week. Ian has long been advocating the need for recognition of Aboriginal English as a dialect of English in its own right, with recognisable and agreed forms spoken across the continent.

He explains that at the time of settlement of the Australian continent, two separate ‘Englishes’ developed, one among the settler community and the other among the Indigenous community. Among Indigenous groups, two varieties of English also emerged, the first for communicating with the settlers and the other, as a lingua franca, for communicating among Indigenous groups speaking different mother tongues. Some words were taken from the maritime community, other jargon was picked up from the settlers, most notably Irish English is more prominent in Aboriginal English than the Standard Australian form!

With time, it developed into a mother tongue for many groups, but as the Creole was influenced heavily by Australian English, it “decreolised” meaning it became more like English, but quite distinct from Australian English. Far from a “careless” or “inadequate” English, Aboriginal English is derived from pidgin and Creole origins, but is in fact a fully developed dialect which expresses the need and identity of its speakers. Professor Malcom believes that there needs to be a place in education for both dialects, that we need to teach Aboriginal speakers with sensitivity for their language in order to balance the rights of speakers of different dialects in the classroom and enhance their learning. Education must add rather than detract from what students bring to the school.

Follow the link below to listen to the full interview :
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/linguafranca/aboriginal-english/3709226