Image and Speech-Style in The Australian Television Commercial

Bibliographic Data

ID8137397
AuthorsDavid A Lee (0000-0003-0866-8753, The University of Queensland, corresponding author)
Year1984
Volume61
Issue1
Pages52-68
Publication date1984-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAUMLA-Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-2793 • E-ISSN: 2051-2864
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/aulla.1984.61.1.005
OpenAlexW1993664358
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

THIS paper is in two parts. In the first part I re-examine the Mitchell and Delbridge 1965 model of variation in Australian English in the light of Labovian sociolinguistic methodology. Although recent work has clearly undermined the concept of discrete social dialects on which the Mitchell-Delbridge model was based, I will argue that a re-interpretation of certain aspects of this model may well have a contribution to make to the investigation of Australian English.' One area to which such are-interpretation would be relevant is that of subjective attitudes to language, which has so far received little attention in the Australian context. (But see Gallois and Callan 1981; Gallois, Callan and Parslow 1982; Gallois, Callan and Johnstone 1983.). The second part of this paper therefore attempts to make an initial exploratory study of this area and to formulate certain general hypotheses. As a basis for this exercise I will discuss the relationship between 'product image' and speech style in a number of Australian television commercials. These are not of course examples of natural language and therefore do not constitute appropriate material for the testing of hypotheses. For this other materials and other methodologies (or at least developments of the methodology used here) will have to be used. I suggest nevertheless that these materials constitute a useful starting point for the preliminary stage in the investigation of subjective attitudes-that of hypothesis formulation. The original Mitchell-Delbridge model postulates three varieties of Australian English, labelled 'Cultivated Australian' (CA), 'General Australian' (GA), and 'Broad Australian' (BA). It assigns individual speakers to one or another of these categories mainly on the basis of the variants they use for six variables-the vowels of the words say, beat, high, so, boot, how? I will represent these variables respectively as (ey), (i), (ay), (0), (u), (ow). Individual speakers are said to use one particular set of variants for these variables-each set being represented by a row in Table 1. The Mitchell-Delbridge model can in fact be seen to comprise two hypotheses, which I will call the Internal Consistency Hypothesis (ICH) and the Relative Consistency Hypothesis (ReH). I will argue

Archaeology · Australian English · Context (archaeology · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Natural (archaeology · Point (geometry · Product (mathematics · Sociology · Style (visual arts · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology

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