Language attitudes in Australia: Results from a nationwide survey

Recent research on attitudes to Australian English (AusE) shows that there is a general increase in its acceptance, legitimacy, and endonormativity. However, a certain ‘cultural cringe’ exists, particularly when ‘broad’ AusE is seen as representative of the variety. A significant gap in the literature is how perceptions and usage of AusE may change as the population becomes more diverse. This paper presents findings of an online survey of language attitudes towards AusE with 661 respondents across Australia, over a third of whom were born overseas. Overall, there is minimal evidence of a standard language ideology, with 80% of respondents reporting having an accent to some degree. Almost half of respondents report occasionally or frequently changing their accents, due to context, interlocutor, or to make themselves understood. When asked to rate AusE along six traits on a seven-point scale, the traits of educatedness, professionalism and attractiveness consistently centre on neutral. For friendliness and likeability, the majority skews towards neutral and positive. Equal numbers find AusE either very/somewhat clear, or somewhat/not at all clear, indicating contradictory views as to whether the accent is clear or not. The findings further our understanding of attitudes and ideologies in Australia’s increasingly diverse language ecology.