230127 English in Australia (BS) (WiSe 2019/2020)

This block seminar concerns the distribution, features and socio-historical ramifications of a variety of English spoken by around 20 million speakers in the Southern hemisphere – Australian English. We will specify and illustrate the main levels of linguistic description starting with morphosyntactic and phonetic features, investigate particular lexical items that play an important role in the interaction and particular mateship of Aussie speakers and we will dedicate a major proportion of the seminar to a cultural semantics assessment of Australians and what is considered the ‘Australian ethos’. One side topic will reflect upon typological aspects of Aboriginal languages in Australia, another side topic will look across the Tasmanian Sea to the English spoken in New Zealand.
All seminar participants are expected to present selected topics in a series of student talks.