Chloé Diskin-Holdaway

Little is known about parents’ attitudes towards their children’s accent and the role they play in transmitting an accent (and attitudes about accents) to their children. Even less is known about how these perceptions and attitudes emerge and are transmitted in multilingual families. We draw on an online survey of parental language attitudes in Australia (n = 267), where 45% of respondents were born overseas, and 61% reported speaking a language other than English. Parents were asked whether they think their children speak with an Australian or another accent; whether they change their accent when they speak to their children, and whether their children’s accents change when they speak to their parents as compared to other people. A total of 14% of parents reported that one or more of their children had an accent that was not Australian, with about half of these children having reportedly hybrid or mixed accents, and the other half no accent at all. Over 11% of parents reported frequently or occasionally changing their accent with their children. Of those parents, several disclosed specific strategies in changing their accents around their children, such as making a conscious effort to sound ‘clear’ or deliberately exposing their children to different accents. A total of 15% of parents reported that their children’s accents frequently or occasionally change when speaking to them. These findings have implications for the complex influences on children’s language and dialect repertoires as they relate to language attitudes, language ecology, and linguistic identity.

The collocational patterns of a word and its phonetic properties are often considered independent of each other. This corpus-based study tracks change in the word just over real and apparent time in New Zealand and Australian English and shows that these two phenomena take place in tandem. Four major changes are reported. First, the frequency of just has increased in both varieties, mirroring reports in Canadian and UK varieties of English. Second, the collocations of just demonstrate that it has undergone pragmatic change, evidenced by, for example, its increased co-occurrence with sort of, like, and an existential subject ( it’s just… ). Third, acoustic phonetic analyses of changes in the vowel in just indicate that it does not pattern with other content or grammatical words belonging to its canonical vowel class and has instead moved towards a closer and fronter realization. Finally, we show that this phonetic change is led by variants of just which occur in newer (more recent) collocational contexts. Together these findings provide an example of word-specific change and evidence that a word’s phonetic realization depends in part on its grammatical status, and that phonetic change over time can be linked with shifts in collocational patterns and pragmatic function.

The one-parent-one-language (OPOL) approach has traditionally been considered a widely recommended strategy for heritage-language (HL) maintenance in bilingual families. However, alternative strategies, such as both parents consistently speaking the HL, may be equally or more effective. This study examines families’ self-reported language policies and their perceived effectiveness in HL maintenance in Australia, where minority languages often hold lower status than English and receive minimal institutional support beyond the home. Using data from a nationwide survey of 280 families, we analyzed parents’ self-reported language-use patterns and their perceived impact on HL transmission. Most mothers, who more often identified as primary caregivers, reported speaking a HL with their children, while secondary caregivers’ self-reported language use was varied. Families were categorized into four language-use approaches: OPOL, mixed-language use from one or both caregivers, HL-only from both caregivers, and single-caregiver only. Comparisons across these categories revealed that families following the HL-only and OPOL approaches reported significantly greater success in maintaining the HL than the other two groups, which showed no significant differences in self-reported outcomes. Follow-up analyses showed that Mixed-language families who reported high HL use percieved success comparable to that of HL-only and OPOL families. Our findings suggest that language input may be a central, but not exclusive, contributor to HL transmission. Families who reported higher perceived success showed strong commitment to HL maintenance, with caregivers likely reinforcing each other's efforts beyond direct language input. This study contributes to discussions on bilingual parenting and family language policy, providing empirical insights to inform HL maintenance strategies in diverse linguistic settings.

Little Multilingual Minds (LMM) partners with universities, multilingual communities, and early childhood centres to offer a language exposure program for heritage language (HL) and additional language (AL) speakers in a naturalistic, play-based environment. This paper reports on two implementations of the LMM program conducted in a Spanish-English bilingual preschool in Sydney, Australia. Implementation 1 focused on HL children (n= 11; Mage = 4.24) for HL maintenance over six months, while Implementation 2 expanded to include both HL and AL children (n=27; Mage=2.93) with a new cohort over one year. Both implementations were quantitatively evaluated in three key areas: linguistic proficiency (vocabulary, listening, speaking, literacy/numeracy), alignment with educational principles (disposition, interaction, interest), and task-related precursors of school readiness (attention, cooperation, engagement), using Bayesian modelling for reliable statistical testing. Results from Implementation 1 showed significant improvements in HL children’s linguistic skills from the first to the last assessment, effectively strengthening HL proficiency while preventing a shift toward English. In Implementation 2, despite challenges, the program was successfully adapted to accommodate both HL and AL children in the same session, yielding encouraging outcomes for both groups. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for successful HL maintenance and AL learning within preschool classes with mixed language backgrounds.

This study investigates the English adjective amplifier system of eleven Mandarin Chinese L2 speakers of English residing in Australia compared to a sample of ten native Australian English (AusE) speakers from the AusTalk corpus. Employing a variationist framework, we find that the L2 speakers employ a markedly overall higher rate (50.2%) of use of adjective amplifiers than AusE speakers (34.8%). This has been shown to be a common phenomenon among L2 speakers, who have a smaller range of adjectives at their disposal, and thus “over-use” amplifiers. However, we also argue that the propensity for amplifier–adjective bigrams in Mandarin Chinese transfers to their L2 English. The results show that Chinese L2 speakers use very more than really, whereas really is more frequent than very in AusE, suggesting that the L2 speakers may be lagging behind in this previously-reported change in AusE. The results also show that higher rates of English proficiency and length of residence in Australia result in more Australian-like amplifier behavior among the Chinese L2 group. The present paper can provide meaningful insights for future language teaching and learning in classroom and naturalistic settings, revealing potential for the instruction of more authentic language among L2 English learners.

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 the 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 making themselves understood. When asked to rate AusE along six traits on a seven-point scale, the traits of educatedness, professionalism, and attractiveness were consistently centered on neutral. For friendliness and likeability, the majority skewed towards neutral and positive. For the trait of clarity, there was a greater range of responses, but overall, 50% of respondents found AusE to be somewhat, moderately, or really clear. These findings further our understanding of attitudes and ideologies in Australia’s increasingly diverse language ecology.

Changing patterns of global migration and increasing ethnolinguistic (super)diversity hold sociolinguistic consequences for heritage/community languages (HCL) and majority languages in large urban centres. Studies in different cities have noted the existence of (multi-)ethnolects, which may arise from second language acquisition and/or long-term bilingualism and may take on indexical social value. This chapter compares two majority English-speaking cities in Canada (Toronto) and Australia (Melbourne) that are characterised by increasing ethnolinguistic diversity. Previous research has identified (multi-)ethnolectal behaviour in both cities that has only recently been the subject of systematic investigation. Toronto English shows different overall rates of usage of a range of phonetic/phonological and grammatical/discourse-pragmatic variables, although parallel conditioning of the variation by language-internal factors across younger speakers suggests that speakers share the same underlying system. Previous work on Melbourne English has similarly identified a number of linguistic features characteristic of particular ethnolinguistic background. Adopting the variationist sociolinguistic approach, these projects explore the function of language in constructing and expressing (ethnic) identity in situations of ethnolinguistic (super)diversity and the potential for multiple linguistic systems to co-exist.

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.