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Indigenous Children’s Language Practices in Australia

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The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities

Abstract

While the documentation of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages has attracted considerable research attention, the use of these languages by children has only recently emerged as a field of research. Building on the small number of early studies of these children’s language acquisition, development, and practices, we review the now considerable variety of studies which have explored Australian Aboriginal children’s early language learning environments and processes. In this ecologically complex linguistic environment, studies investigate children’s acquisition of some remaining traditional languages—often in multilingual contexts, child-directed speech styles and practices, and the development of new and emerging contact languages—both mixed languages and creoles, and the ways that children and young people are altering and innovating the language ecologies. The studies focus particularly on those children who are being raised in remote settings where, while English is taught in school, it is neither the language the children learn as their first language nor the language of the community in which the children live.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Polysynthetic languages are typified by multiple morphemes constituting a word so that a whole sentence can be a single word.

  2. 2.

    http://www.cdu.edu.au/laal/

  3. 3.

    Aspect of a verb indicates how an action, event, or state is marked in relation to time, for example, ‘she is running’ (progressive) versus ‘she was running’ (past progressive) or ‘she has run’ (present perfect) versus ‘she had run’ (past perfect).

  4. 4.

    Transitive verbs (e.g. to want) require an object whereas intransitive verbs do not.

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Acknowledgements

The paucity of Indigenous researchers investigating child language practices represents a crucial shortfall, both in terms of the quality and type of such work from an insider’s perspective of someone with first language skills and of decolonising methodologies (Smith 1999). The studies reported here bear out the importance of scholarship and collaboration with Indigenous investigators. These studies reviewed could not have been carried out without the input of the Indigenous researchers who participated in the fieldwork, data collection, data analysis, and paper writing. Those named in this chapter are Julie Andrews, Cassandra Algy, Apri Campbell, Lizzie Ellis, Gurrimangu, Gordon Machbirrbirr, Barbara Martin, Betty Morrison, Nyomba, Katrina Tjitayi, and Yingi. While what has been achieved to date is limited, without their input, and that of others not named, it would be negligible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Samantha Disbray

  2. University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Gillian Wigglesworth

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  1. Samantha Disbray
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  2. Gillian Wigglesworth
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Correspondence to Samantha Disbray .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Gabrielle Hogan-Brun

  2. Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Bernadette O’Rourke

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Disbray, S., Wigglesworth, G. (2019). Indigenous Children’s Language Practices in Australia. In: Hogan-Brun, G., O’Rourke, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_14

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